Before the Storm

by Melanie Clegg

  All too soon, she reached the bridge. She couldn’t see the Comte at first amongst the press of people crossing or idly standing and gazing down into the navy blue, swirling water but then, suddenly she spotted him. He was dressed in a long green coat and leaning pensively against a wall, examining his fingernails and casting brief, glowering glances at the people hurrying past.

  He looked relieved when he looked up and saw her walking slowly towards him. A small part of her had been hoping for the warm smile that she had once known so well, but it was not to be. ‘Thank God,’ he said with relief as she came to a halt. ‘I was beginning to think that you wouldn’t come.’

  ‘You were so certain until this moment then?’ she asked in French, raising an eyebrow and feeling a little put out. ‘I almost didn’t.’

  Jules sighed. ‘Don’t be angry with me, Sidonie,’ he said. ‘I don’t want us to have a row. I just wanted to see you.’

  She looked at him. ‘For what purpose?’ she asked. ‘I thought that it was absolutely finished between us and that we had nothing more to say to each other.’

  He frowned. ‘Is that what you think? Really? After everything that happened between us? I had rather thought that there would always be a bond between us.’ He turned then and petulantly stared out across the river, while Sidonie, well used to his moods remained where she was and watched his face. ‘Is it very wrong of me to want to see you again?’

  Sidonie laughed. ‘You have seen me several times over the last couple of weeks,’ she reminded him. ‘You are a frequent guest at Mrs Garland’s house after all.’

  The Comte shrugged. ‘That’s not the same,’ he said angrily. ‘There are always people there. That awful woman and her friends and those stupid girls. All of them watching me as though I am nothing but a piece of meat.’

  ‘Does that include Venetia?’ Sidonie enquired in a low voice.

  He considered this for a moment. ‘No.’ He sighed. ‘Venetia is different to the others. It’s not in her nature to make demands.’

  Sidonie leaned against the wall beside him. ‘Do you love her?’ she asked carefully.

  Jules turned to look at her, a rather shamefaced grin on his handsome face. ‘Love? No.’ He plucked a loose thread from his sleeve and cast it down into the water. ‘I’ve had her, you know,’ he said with a sidelong look. ‘She sneaks downstairs and lets me into her parents’ house at night.’ He peered at her, watching for a reaction to his words. ‘Does that startle you, Mademoiselle Roche?’

  Sidonie shook her head. ‘No, not at all,’ she replied. ‘I know you, Jules. Sneaking into the bedchambers of young ladies has always been your forte, has it not?’ She took a deep breath. ‘Are you going to marry her?’

  He laughed. ‘No. Why would I? Why marry someone who gives herself so freely? I wasn’t her first, you know. There is no great romance.’

  Sidonie thought of Venetia and the way that she looked at Jules whenever he was nearby, her eyes full of longing and need. ‘She loves you,’ she said.

  ‘I doubt it.’ Jules shrugged but Sidonie noticed that he was beginning to look uneasy. ‘She wanted someone to lay with her and I was happy to oblige. She’s just like me really.’

  ‘If that’s the truth then why are you still here?’ Sidonie asked, ignoring him. ‘Madame la Duchesse went back to London last week and you didn’t go with her.’

  Jules sighed. ‘You never miss anything, do you?’ he said with a wry grin. ‘I had forgotten that about you.’ He turned and looked directly at her. ‘Fine, then. I stayed because I wanted to see more of Venetia. I may not love her, but I enjoy her company. Is that good enough for you, Mademoiselle Roche?’

  Sidonie smiled. ‘That is good enough. You know, Jules, life is generally easier if you tell the truth every once in a while.’

  ‘Spoken like a true governess,’ he replied with a laugh that reminded her for one heart stopping moment of the charming boy that he had once been. ‘And that may be true for your pupils but I think you will find, mademoiselle, that lying will always serve an adult much better than honesty.’ He was standing much to close to her now and before she could put out her hands to prevent him, he had leaned towards her and stolen a kiss.

  ‘How sad that you think that way,’ she said, calmly stepping away from him and pulling her red wool shawl closer about her arms. ‘How damaged you must be, Jules.’ Before he could reply, she turned on her heel and started to walk back the way that she had come without a single backward glance to see if he was following her.

  The whole brief interlude had overset her horribly and she was conscious of her panting breath as she briskly walked back towards the Garland’s house. She had been a fool to meet him again, to waste so much as a second of her time listening to him. She had fallen for him once before and clearly he thought that she was likely to fall for him again. How wrong he was. How wrong and deceitful and cruel.

  Her hands were still shaking so much as she picked up her candlestick from a table in the hall and clumsily looked in her pocket for a tinder to relight it that in the end she had to sit down on the bottom step lest she drop it and burn the house down. The pale stone of the stairs was smooth and cold beneath her skirts and gradually the chill began to seep through to her flesh, calming her fluttering heart as it did so. ‘I am an idiot,’ she told herself angrily, blinking away hot, furious tears. ‘How could I have been so reckless?’

  Sidonie sat there for what felt like a long time in the darkness, listening to the comforting ticking of the tall wooden clock on the landing while in her mind she was eighteen and back in her cramped, cold garret in Paris again, listening to the rain fall heavily against the flimsy window panes as she lay in bed with her lover. She closed her eyes as she remembered his long fingers circling her breasts then moving slowly down her body as she gasped and shivered with delight then turned her face back to his for a kiss.

  That was all in the past now. Over and done with. She stretched out her frozen limbs and clambered to her feet. The candle was easy to light this time and with a weary heart she went up the stairs to her room. The packing could wait until tomorrow and she was no longer in the mood for her book.

  ‘I saw you.’ The hiss came from close by and alarmed, she whirled around, peering into the gloom that lay beyond the light of her candle. At first she couldn’t see anything but then suddenly a figure loomed out of the darkness. It was Minette. ‘I saw you meet him on the bridge.’

  Sidonie gave a nervous laugh. ‘Really, my dear, you made me jump! What on earth do you think you are doing?’

  ‘What do you think you are doing?’ Minette repeated with a sneer. ‘I saw you with him. I followed you.’

  Sidonie recoiled from the other woman. ‘You saw nothing,’ she said with a shaking voice. ‘The Comte was imprudent enough to ask for my help with Miss Wrotham and I told him that she is beyond my influence. That is all.’

  ‘That’s not really all, is it?’ Minette replied, stepping closer. ‘You kissed. I saw it all.’

  Sidonie backed away. ‘You are mistaken, Minette,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘And now, if you don’t mind, I am going to go to bed.’

  ‘I won’t forget what I saw,’ Minette whispered as she hurried past to the safety of her room. ‘I’d watch my step if I were you, Mademoiselle Roche. You think you are so much better than me, but you’re not are you.’

  Chapter Six

  London, July 1787

  Miss Phoebe Knowles looked around nervously as she stepped down from her carriage and prepared to navigate the crowded, noisy piazza that lay in front of the Covent Garden market. The cobbles were covered with a revolting, slushy slew of mud, discarded play bills, rotten food and horse urine and she fastidiously raised her voluminous pale green watered silk skirts above her ankles as she briskly edged through the jostling crowd, pausing only to admire a particularly skilful juggler who plied his trade in the middle of a throng of cat calling and applauding spectators.

  ‘Can I help you, Miss?’ A p
lump, over rouged female with frizzy blonde hair and several missing teeth stepped in front of her and reached out to touch Phoebe’s green silk sleeve, which she quickly whisked out of reach of her grimy fingers. ‘You look lost.’ She stank of cheap musky scent and gin.

  Phoebe shook her head and touched the black silk domino mask that she had put on in the carriage, reassuring herself that it was still in place. ‘No, I am not lost,’ she said curtly. ‘I know where I am going.’

  The woman shrugged, but her face was disappointed. It wasn’t the first time that Phoebe had been approached in such a way and she now knew that it was a common practice for the brothels who populated the winding old streets around Covent Garden to send old bawds out on the hunt for fresh meat. Their usual prey was naive country girls, newly arrived in London and keen to better themselves. You could spot them a mile off as they stood in the middle of the street, their cloth bags clutched tightly in their tanned hands, their eyes and mouths wide Os of wonder as they looked around them.

  Phoebe hurried on across the noisy, thronged piazza then plunged into the stinking warren of streets that surrounded it. She’d been there several times before and now instinctively knew her way to her destination, a small dark brick house on Maiden Lane. Her black mask and obvious youth attracted a few curious stares but to her relief, most passersby didn’t give her a second glance, probably because they were just as intent on not drawing attention to themselves.

  She shivered and pulled her black cashmere shawl closer about her shoulders as she turned off Bedford Street onto Maiden Lane. She had heard that at night the tall windows of the soot stained houses that loomed overhead were lit up with dozens of candles and filled with scantily clad girls who brazenly showed off their bodies and called down to passing men, trying to lure them inside. Now though the windows were dark and empty, giving no clue of what vice and depravity lay behind them.

  Taking a deep breath Phoebe marched up to the shiny red painted front door of number 5 and let herself in. The hallway was small and dark with raspberry pink painted walls, old portraits of wet lipped ladies with tumbled hair and shimmering silk robes that barely concealed their breasts and, most surprisingly, a large Bible lying open on the round mahogany table. It was covered in a thick layer of dust and had clearly not been touched for a long time.

  ‘Madam says it’s there to confound the Runners should they come a calling,’ said a young slender blonde girl who had slunk down the dark wood staircase. ‘She says they’ll see the Bible and think this is an honest house.’

  Phoebe smiled. ‘If she dusted it every so often, they might even believe her.’ She looked the girl over, taking in her magnificently gaudy purple and pink silk dress, the bright spots of crimson rouge that she wore high on her cheekbones and the false yellow saffron assisted tint of her loose, untidy hair, which hung below her thin waist. She was probably about the same age as Phoebe but in just a couple of years she would look like the woman who had accosted her in the piazza. The thought of it made her feel sad until she realised that the girl was looking her up and down with a derisive curl of her glossy red lips.

  ‘I’ve seen you here before,’ she stated flatly in a northern accent as she stepped closer. The air between them filled with the rich, heady jasmine scent that she wore. ‘You come to meet that man.’

  Phoebe didn’t reply, preferring instead to lift her chin and sweep past the other girl, who obligingly stepped aside but continued to stare after her as she went up the stairs. ‘You aren’t the first, my fine lady,’ she muttered resentfully as Phoebe pretended not to hear her. ‘You are no better than me so don’t bother giving yourself airs. We’re all here for the same thing - the only difference between you and me is that you give it away for free.’

  George Garland was waiting for her in their usual room and had clearly been there for a while as he’d taken off his blue silk jacket and white wig, throwing them over a pink upholstered sofa and had a half finished glass of claret in his hand. ‘I was starting to think that you weren’t going to come,’ he murmured, rising to his feet as she closed the door behind her and let her shawl drop to the floor, swiftly followed by her dress as he tore at the lacings then carried her, their mouths locked hungrily together, to the huge pink velvet hung bed.

  It had started in Bath, first with a few admiring glances then some pretty compliments about her hair, her eyes, her lovely face and then finally a stolen but deliciously lingering kiss in the dark ante chamber of her mother’s rented house. She had been simultaneously thrilled and terrified by the prospect of being found out and this had quickly caused their few brief meetings to become highly charged and addictive until finally they had returned to London and began to meet in this house. Tentatively at first but then with enthusiasm.

  That she had lost her virginity, which she had always been taught to prize above all things, in the highly scented pink bedroom of a brothel rather than within the starched expensive sheets of her future marriage bed was of course an annoyance but Phoebe tried not to let it trouble her too much. Better by far, she reasoned, for one’s first lover to be an experienced man of the world than some callow, fumbling youth. She dreaded to think how her mother would react should she ever find out though. The shock might actually kill her.

  She could hear the sounds of other couples in the house, their sighs and moans floating through the walls and surrounding them both as he gently slid her fine linen shift off her shoulders and kissed her breasts then slipped lower down her body until he was nuzzling between her thighs, gently teasing her legs apart as she groaned and pushed herself against his face. A bed somewhere else in the house was banging furiously against the wall behind it and she heard a man cry out with each thud until finally both he and the bed fell silent to be replaced by a woman’s high pitched giggle.

  ‘I wish that I could let down all your hair,’ George murmured as she mounted him, her long dark ringlets tickling his chest as she leaned forward to kiss him. ‘It’s so beautiful. You are beautiful.’ He flung his head back as she lowered herself up and down upon him, pressing his hands to her breasts and biting her lip to hold back the cries as pure pleasure flooded through her body.

  ‘My turn now,’ he whispered, kissing her hot neck as she collapsed on top of him. Obligingly she rolled to the side and spread her legs wide, stroking herself as groaning with lust, he lowered himself onto her. ‘Oh, you beauty, you beauty,’ he murmured as they kissed deeply and she clutched wildly at his buttocks, pulling him further inside. Their headboard was banging noisily against the wall now and the thought of the house’s other inhabitants hearing them made the pleasure sear and course through her body for a second time.

  They lay together for only a short time afterwards, softly kissing and gazing into each other’s eyes before George sat up, picked his white linen shirt up from the dusty floor and pulled it over his head. ‘I can’t stay for long today,’ he said over his shoulder as he did up the buttons at his wrists. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Phoebe stretched and sat up. ‘I have to go anyway,’ she said with a mischievous smile, resting her chin briefly on his broad shoulder. ‘I’m meeting your daughters for tea this afternoon.’

  He paused and turned to look at her. ‘At my house?’

  ‘Yes, at your house.’ She laughed at the look of abject horror on his face. ‘Oh come now, George. It was bound to happen eventually,’ she said, pulling her shift on over her head. ‘I can’t keep making excuses not to go there. Mama has started hopefully asking if I have fallen out with Eliza.’

  George watched her for a moment, admiring her slender figure and firm, rosy tipped breasts. She was so unlike his wife in every way. He still loved Arabella, of course but she no longer excited him in any way, there were no secrets left to discover and no great passion that made his feet hurry home to her at the end of a long day. ‘I have something that I’d like to give to you,’ he said now, reaching down to feel in the pocket of his breeches.

  ‘I can’t accept anything from you,�
�� Phoebe replied reproachfully as he handed her a small pale blue velvet covered box. ‘I don’t want to look at it,’ she said, longingly stroking the velvet with her fingers. ‘If I love it then it will be doubly hard to return to you.’

  ‘Why can’t you have it?’ he asked, standing up and pulling on his coat. He sounded a little hurt.

  Phoebe sighed. ‘Because there would be questions about where I got it from,’ she said. ‘Mama notices everything.’

  ‘Not everything,’ George replied with a smile. ‘Keep it for when you are married then,’ he said. ‘Husbands tend to be far less observant than mothers.’

  She laughed at that then took a deep breath and opened the box. ‘Oh George,’ she breathed, ‘it is beautiful. Really. It’s exquisite.’ Inside the box, resting on a bed of watered shell pink satin there lay a beautiful pale blue cameo pendant depicting a woman in profile with her long hair pulled back in a chignon. Impetuously, she leaped to her feet and kissed him on the mouth.

  ‘I am glad that you like it,’ he said, taking hold of her waist and pulling her towards him for another kiss. ‘It’s from Pompeii. I saw it in a dealer’s window and knew straight away that I had to get it for you.’ He kissed her neck. ‘She looks a bit like you, don’t you think?’

  ‘Pompeii?’ She stroked it reverently, imagining it around the throat of a now long dead Roman lady. ‘It’s so old and now it is here with me. Incredible isn’t it?’

  ‘I suppose so.’ Pleased that his present had been a success he carried on getting dressed, wondering as he did so if the pair of emerald earrings he had in his other pocket would go down as well with his wife. He gave a rueful smile as he half wished that he hadn’t fallen into the expensive habit of buying her some new trinket whenever he strayed - surely a nosegay of flowers or a new dress would be a far less ruinous way of assuaging his battered conscience?