Before the Storm (9 page)

‘You don’t know that at all, ‘ Sidonie retorted, snatching her hand away. ‘Oh, Jules. You’re engaged to a beautiful girl who adores you and still determined to ruin everything for yourself aren’t you?’ They began to walk slowly along a tree shaded avenue that led towards Green Park and the distant stately elegance of Buckingham House. The sight of a woman dressed in a flower patterned blue cotton gown walking with a fashionable gentleman in a green and black striped silk suit and talking together in French attracted a few curious stares but Sidonie held her head high and pretended not to notice.

‘There’s nothing to ruin,’ Jules said with a shrug. ‘Venetia is no fool. She knows what I am like and yet is determined to marry me anyway. I told you once that she is just like me in many respects.’ He looked down at Sidonie, admiring the way that her face was dappled by the pale green light that filtered through the trees above. ‘She wants a husband and I fear that I am somewhat obliged to marry her.’

Sidonie abruptly stopped walking and looked at him in shock. ‘Obliged to marry? What do you mean?’ she gasped. ‘Jules, what have you done?’
 

‘I have done nothing,’ Jules replied irritably. ‘Or at least, I have done nothing that she did not want.’ He looked at Sidonie with concern as she turned away from him, her hands pressed to her lips as she fought a sudden feeling of nausea. ‘I am sorry if this shocks you, mademoiselle,’ he said. ‘I had thought, had assumed that you had already worked it all out in that clever head of yours. I told you in Bath that I had no intention of marrying Venetia...’

Sidonie turned back to him then, her eyes wide with horror. ‘Is she with child?’ she demanded. ‘Is that what this is all about?’ She thought back to the last time she had seen Venetia Wrotham, when she had come to Highbury Place to announce her engagement. She had seemed her usual slender self but had perhaps been a little pale.

Jules had the grace to look embarrassed. ‘Yes, she is with child.’ He shrugged and gave a nervous half laugh. ‘Please believe me when I say that I absolutely regret everything that has happened. She went to her mother and they came to me and demanded that I marry her or be shamed forever.’ He took off his grey powdered wig and ran his fingers through his short dark hair. ‘Sidonie, I am entirely dependent on the good graces of my father - if word of this was to reach him, he would entirely cast me out of the family.’

Sidonie nodded, remembering Monsieur le Duc de Choiseul-Clermont very well. He was mocked at the light hearted, flirtatious rose scented court of Versailles as a dinosaur, a crusty old fashioned throw back to a more hypocritical and moral age. However, clearly what was a figure of fun to the elegantly depraved courtiers was a far more serious problem for his offspring, who must live by his rules or lose everything.

‘It’s not a bad match,’ Jules went on as he carefully replaced his wig. ‘Venetia is immensely rich and very obliging. It could be a lot worse.’

‘Worse for whom?’ Sidonie asked as they resumed their walk. ‘You gain a wife and a fortune but what does Venetia get out of this?’

Jules looked surprised. ‘She gets to be married and to have a title and to live in Paris. Is that not enough?’ He gave her a swift look that didn’t quite meet her dark eyes. ‘Also, don’t forget that I am saving her from ruin. Imagine if you will, the dire consequences to Miss Wrotham had I been at liberty to walk away from her.’

Sidonie gave a hollow laugh. ‘How very noble of you, Monsieur le Comte,’ she said. ‘How heroic.’

‘Come now, don’t be like that,’ he implored. ‘I am doing the best that I can, mademoiselle. I can’t promise that I will be the perfect husband that she craves, but I have offered her my protection and intend to always treat her with respect.’

Sidonie gave him a long, measuring look then turned her face away. ‘All of this is of no consequence at all,’ she said after a moment’s pause as she gathered her disordered thoughts. ‘Your dealings with Miss Wrotham are none of my business and I did not ask to meet you in order to discuss your personal affairs.’

‘So why did you ask to meet me then?’ They had come to stand at a wall that overlooked Buckingham House, the stately chief residence of Queen Charlotte, a square rather squat pale stone building with a symmetrical facade lined with gleaming rows of tall windows.
 

As they watched, the great iron gates swung open and a royal carriage lumbered out to be instantly mobbed by waving, cheering people. ‘Astonishing how you all adore your royal family so much,’ Jules murmured as they watched this display. ‘If this was Paris, they would have been showered with rotten vegetables by now.’

‘It wasn’t always so,’ Sidonie reminded him. ‘Do you remember the time that we saw the Queen go past on her way to the Opéra? The cheers were deafening that day.’ She sighed, remembering the scene as the glossy black and yellow royal carriage had rolled down the Rue de Rivoli and they had caught a glimpse of Marie Antoinette smiling and waving inside, dressed in blue and silver silk and gauze with beautiful lace tumbling from her elbows and bosom and fabulous jewels flashing at her plump white throat.

He nodded, a smile stealing onto his handsome face. ‘That was just seven years ago wasn’t it? A long time but short too when one thinks about how much everything has changed since.’

‘I want to ask you a favour,’ Sidonie said, abruptly ending the reminisces before they had properly had a chance to flourish.
 
‘I do not like to do so, but fear that I have no choice.’ She looked directly at him. ‘It is about the ball that Lady D’Eversley proposes holding for Venetia.’

Jules looked surprised and also somewhat disappointed to be brought back to the present. ‘The ball?’ he enquired. ‘Is that all? What of it?’

Sidonie took a deep breath. She had underestimated just how much she would hate asking Jules for help and was beginning to wish that she had never arranged to meet him. Even seeing Clementine and Eliza disappointed once again must surely be infinitely preferable to standing in St James’ Park in front of someone that she rather despised, asking them for help. ‘The thing is that my charges, Venetia’s friends, will not be invited to the party and I want you to find a way of getting them on to the guest list.’

Jules looked rather confused. ‘Why me? And why have they not been invited?’ He pulled a blue and white porcelain snuff box decorated with a pattern of cornflowers out of his pocket and frowned as he scattered some on to his wrist in a practiced manner. ‘Venetia has not said anything to me about this.’

Sidonie shook her head. ‘It probably has not occurred to her that her friends might be excluded,’ she replied. ‘People of a generous nature, such as Miss Wrotham, rarely comprehend or predict just how ungenerous others are capable of being.’

‘So why haven’t they been invited?’ Jules asked, still frowning. As someone who had always been invited everywhere ever since he had first appeared in society, the concept of not being overwhelmed with invitations and attention was a difficult one to grasp.

‘Have you ever seen them at a party that you have been to?’ Sidonie asked a little impatiently. ‘The fact of the matter is that the Garland girls and their friends, Phoebe and Matilda are somewhat outside society as you are fortunate enough to know it. They have wealth, accomplishments and beauty in abundance but as you well know, that is not enough to secure them a position in the very highest society.’

Jules nodded as understanding gradually dawned. ‘Oh, I see,’ he murmured thoughtfully. ‘I had no idea. I never noticed.’ He put away the snuff box and turned to Sidonie. ‘So what do you want me to do about it?’

‘I thought that was obvious, ‘ Sidonie replied. ‘I want you to secure invitations for them all.’

Jules looked wary. ‘I am afraid that I don’t have much influence though, Sidonie,’ he said with a shake of his head. ‘Lady D’Eversley is a very old friend but I am afraid that it will be difficult to persuade her to invite four girls of whom she knows nothing to her ball.’ He sighed, seeing from her face that she intractable. ‘Fine. I see that I have no choice in the matter so what do you, oh clever Mademoiselle Roche, propose that I do?’

‘How you go about it is up to you,’ Sidonie replied with a small shrug, straightening her plain green wool shawl and preparing to go. ‘But I would have thought though that a man with four younger sisters would know just what to do in a situation like this.’ Smiling faintly, she offered him her hand as he stared down at her in confusion. ‘Now, I really must go as it is almost time to collect Clementine from her lesson.’

She smiled to herself as she walked back along the gravel path, knowing full well that he was watching her go but not daring to look back and see what expression was on his face. She hoped that he was smiling too though and for a brief moment she fondly recollected the uncertain, mawkish boy that he had once been all those years ago when they had fancied themselves to be in love.

Chapter Eight

The invitations arrived at Highbury Place a few days later, delivered by hand by the Comte Jules himself who bestowed them with a charming wink upon the eldest Miss Garland. ‘I believe that my friend Lady D’Eversley has been somewhat remiss in getting these to you,’ he murmured as he handed them over.

Eliza opened the packet and reverently pulled out the two precious stiff gold edged ivory invitations before giving him a swift look of surprise. ‘But...’

‘Sssh.’ Jules grinned and placed a finger on her lips. ‘Venetia has enclosed a note explaining it all.’ He turned to Sidonie, who was sitting in the corner of the drawing room with a book, pretending not to hear anything. ‘I trust that you are well, Mademoiselle Roche?’ he enquired mischievously.
 

Sidonie briefly looked up, affecting some surprise that he should address her so directly in public. ‘Very well, thank you, Monsieur le Comte.’ She quickly dropped her eyes to her book again but there was time enough for him to see that they brimmed with amused gratitude.

The next few weeks passed in a delicious whirl of excited preparations for the grand ball. Mrs Garland in particular was beside herself with delight as she dealt with hairdressers,
modistes
, florists and cobblers then, most thrillingly of all, sent for some of her finest jewels which were kept in a bank vault in the city. ‘I am quite determined that our lovely Eliza should wear my best diamonds,’ she told her spouse over dinner. ‘Clementine would look well in the Indian rubies you gave me when she was born. I always intended that she should have them one day.’

‘No, not the rubies,’ Mr Garland said with a brief and unusual flash of interest as he poured himself a glass of red wine from a carafe at his elbow. ‘Pearls.’ He looked fondly down the table to his youngest daughter, who was eating apple charlotte with great relish. ‘Save the rubies until she is married, Arabella. Pearls are much more becoming on young girls.’

‘Oh, what would
you
know about the matter?’ Mrs Garland exclaimed, but she secretly acknowledged that her husband was right and on the night of the ball, it was her perfectly matched pearls that she proudly clasped around Clementine’s neck as they stood together in her cosy, candle lit yellow and white bedroom with its charming prints of Van Dyke portraits of ladies from Charles I’s court hanging on the walls.

Clementine reached up and gently touched the chill pearls as she looked at herself in the full length mahogany mirror that stood in the corner of the room. After much obsessive consultation of various fashion magazines and the most fashionable
modiste
on Bond Street, Mrs Garland had settled on a beautiful dress of petal pink silk covered with pale blush gauze and decorated with pink ribbons and bunches of silk roses and peonies for her youngest daughter.
 

An extremely expensive hairdresser had spent the best part of the afternoon doing the hair of the two Misses Garland, first backcombing and curling it around hot irons it then rubbing violet scented waxy pomade through before piling it high around their faces and lightly dusting with iris scented powder. After this it was decorated with fresh peonies, roses and lilies.

‘You look charming,’ Mrs Garland said as she walked around her youngest daughter, tweaking the long ringlets that hung down to the small of her back and twitching at her gauzy voluminous skirts. ‘Quite perfect.’

Clementine gazed at herself in the mirror then turned away. ‘I feel very grown up,’ she said with a nervous laugh as she fastened two broad diamond decorated black velvet bracelets around her wrists. ‘I almost don’t recognise myself.’

‘You will get used to it,’ Mrs Garland said shortly. ‘You are sixteen now, Clementine and with any luck this will be the first of many such balls for you.’ She turned away as Eliza walked into the room. ‘Now, my dear!’ she said in warmer tones to the elder girl. ‘How beautiful you look! How exquisite!’

Eliza smiled. ‘Thank you, Mama.’ She did a little twirl, which made the huge silver gauze skirts of the much desired dress float around her. The hairdresser had matched the silver stars on the bodice with silver fringed feathers and diamond stars in her frizzed and powdered hair. ‘I think we look very well, don’t you agree?’

‘You do indeed, my love,’ Mrs Garland agreed with a wistful sigh. ‘It is just such a pity that dear Lady D’Eversley did not extend an invitation to myself as well so that I would be able to accompany you.’ She pouted a little. ‘I must say that I still think that was most peculiar.’

Eliza frowned and cast an anxious look at Clementine who almost imperceptibly shook her head and gave a tiny shrug. ‘Oh now, Mama, you know what Venetia said in her note! It’s a ball for young people and we will all be most carefully chaperoned by Lady D’Eversley herself.’ She sauntered up to her mother and lightly kissed her cheek. ‘You need have no fears about us.’