Clementine shook her head. ‘No, the money isn’t a problem but can you imagine my mother’s rage should I turn up on her doorstep again?’
‘Perhaps she would like to show you off to London society?’ Venetia suggested hopefully as Phoebe and Eliza led them into a crowded, dimly lit restaurant. ‘You are Madame la Duchesse nowadays after all - she must be longing to drag you around all the very best ballrooms of Mayfair so that the English aristos can bow and scrape in front of you.’ She grinned.
Clementine laughed as she sat down at the table. ‘You make it sound so enticing. How could I possibly resist being part of such a spectacle?’
She sat quietly and watched the other girls as they drank champagne, tipped fresh oysters down their white throats and roared with laughter at the sallies of a trio of tipsy, sandy haired rich boys sitting at the next table. Eliza laughed the loudest of all, delighted and relieved to be out and having fun again. ‘Not that I don’t love my family,’ she leaned across to whisper to Venetia at one point, ‘but oh, my dear, how stifled I feel at times.’
‘I know,’ Venetia whispered back, reaching over to squeeze her friend’s hand. ‘I know. I wish I could say that it passes, but it doesn’t. Not really.’
After the restaurant, they moved on to a café, where long haired, untidily dressed young radicals drank wine from bottles and shouted earnestly across the chipped and stained tables at each other. Phoebe, of course, was in her element and soon found herself in the midst of a very heated discussion about the suppression of religious houses, while the other girls sipped wine at a corner table and kept a wary eye on her.
‘I don’t understand what our dear Phoebe finds so fascinating about such men,’ Eliza whispered a little sourly. ‘She can’t possibly be planning to marry one, can she?’
Clementine bristled. ‘Why shouldn’t she?’ she asked, a little too loudly. ‘After all, times are changing, Eliza.’
Her sister shook her head. ‘I think that this so called Revolution is just a storm in a teacup,’ she said. ‘They’ll soon tire of all this hotheaded nonsense and juvenile shouting about rights and then everything will go back the way it was before.’
‘As long as we don’t have to go back to Versailles...’ Venetia interposed with a dramatic shudder. ‘The court should have moved back to Paris years ago.’
Eliza looked at her friend. ‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand,’ she said with a sad shake of her head. ‘You’ve never had a proper respect for tradition or the grandeur of the Choiseul-Clermont name, have you?’
‘Tradition? Grandeur?’ Venetia stared at her then burst out laughing. ‘Oh dear, you really have convinced yourself that you are to the manor born, haven’t you? Dare I remind you that you were once Miss Eliza Garland of Highbury Place?’ She shook her head. ‘You can pontificate as much as you like about the family name and tradition, but they will never ever forget who and what you really are.’
Eliza flushed. ‘I haven’t got above myself, if that is what you mean,’ she replied stiffly. ‘And I don’t need you to remind me where I come from.’
‘Stop it.’ Clementine clumsily stood up and shoved back her chair. ‘Please, just stop it. We all agreed once that we could only make a success of being in France if we all worked together and now look at us.’ She picked up her fan and cloak. ‘I wish that we had never come to Paris.’
Venetia reached out and took her hand. ‘Do you really wish that, Clementine?’ she asked with a searching look. ‘It’s not too late, you know. Once you’ve had a son, perhaps the Duc will look the other way...’
Clementine pulled her hand away. ‘I am not like that, Venetia. I don’t condemn you for what you do with Eugène but that way of life, that path is not for me.’
Venetia shrugged, not at all insulted. ‘As you wish.’ She sighed. ‘But don’t go now. You never go out any more and said yourself that you don’t want to spend the evening at home. We promise to talk about something different if you will only stay.’
‘Don’t be such a fool, Clementine’ Eliza snapped, slamming down her glass of wine. ‘When will you stop behaving like a petulant child?’
Clementine stared at her sister. They’d never been close but now it felt like a vast and yawning ocean lay between them. It had briefly occurred to her to confide in her sister about her marriage but she saw now that it was impossible as Eliza would never be able to comprehend her feelings. ‘I’m not a fool,’ she said quietly. ‘Not everyone shares your delight in the grandeur of old family names and bowing and scraping at Versailles.’
‘I see that this hasn’t prevented you from taking a post at the Tuileries,’ Eliza pointed out, not quite hiding her jealousy that her younger sister still had a position at court, whereas she had yet to attain one.
Clementine shrugged. ‘I did so to please my husband,’ she replied. ‘I can assure you that it was not for my own benefit! Have you been to the Tuileries lately? It’s nothing but a gilded prison and none of us take any pleasure in being there.’
‘If you say so,’ Eliza retorted, turning her face away to signify that the conversation was at an end.
They left the café shortly after that, prising a pink cheeked Phoebe unwillingly away from her circle of admirers. ‘What would Lucien say?’ Venetia whispered to her as she pouted and said goodbye to them.
Phoebe laughed. ‘He wouldn’t care. We don’t own each other, you know!’ She took Venetia’s arm as they walked along the busy lantern lit arcade to Madame de Saint-Amaranthe’s famous gambling club, Cinquante. ‘How lucky we are to live in the most beautiful city in the world at such an exciting time,’ she exclaimed. ‘Perhaps I will marry Lucien after all...’
Venetia stopped dead and stared at her in surprise. ‘Has he asked you to marry him?’
Phoebe grinned. ‘Maybe.’ They swept into the lavishly appointed mirrored entrance hall to Cinquante, where a liveried footman, an echo of a rapidly vanishing era, was waiting to take their cloaks and then escort them to the gaming tables in a dimly lit salon upstairs. The play was presided over by Madame de Saint-Amaranthe herself, a beautiful if rather too highly rouged blonde with a low lisping voice and a husky laugh. She and Venetia were old friends and they smiled and waved to each other across the room as the latter settled herself down at a table and pulled out a velvet purse with an air of optimistic determination.
‘Is madame’s daughter, Emilie here?’ Phoebe leaned down to whisper. ‘I’ve heard that she is the most beautiful girl in all Paris and am agog to see her for myself.’
‘She is by the window,’ Venetia whispered back with a vague wave of her hand towards a frankly gorgeous redheaded girl in shimmering pink silk. ‘It’s not fair is it?’
Phoebe stared at Emilie de Saint-Amaranthe in amazement. ‘Is she betrothed?’ she asked. ‘I hope so, for all our sakes. No wonder Lucien keeps talking about her.’
Venetia laughed. ‘I think that every man in Paris is obsessed with Mademoiselle Emilie at the moment,’ she replied. ‘I’m sure it won’t be long before she is married off to the highest bidder - especially now that her fond maman is putting it about that she was fathered by the Prince de Condé...’
‘Was she really?’ Phoebe looked across at plump, pretty little Madame de Saint-Amaranthe speculatively.
Venetia shrugged and threw some money onto the table. ‘Who knows?’
Clementine idly listened to this conversation before drifting away to wander around the smoky, incense scented room. Gambling had never really attracted her, the clattering sound of gaming chips as they were pushed across a table did not thrill her as it did Venetia and her sister and her few attempts to join in had resulted in such hideous losses that she had given up in despair.
‘The trick is to keep going,’ Venetia had told her more than once. ‘Sooner or later your luck will change.’
‘Later rather sooner in your case,’ Clementine had once replied with a laugh, earning herself a gentle slap from her friend’s lacquered fan.
; Suddenly overwhelmed by the heat in the candlelit stuffy room and rather unnerved by the hushed intensity of the gamers as they held their breath at every turn of the cards or roll of the dice, Clementine hastened from the room, thinking she might go and sit for a while in one of the little sitting rooms that she had been told lay across the landing.
The obliging footmen from earlier had vanished and she hesitated before turning the handle of one of four closed doors, not entirely sure what she would find on the other side but hoping for some privacy and rest. A mirror hanging on the wall opposite the door reflected her own pale, scared face and gave her the initial impression that the sitting room was empty.
Too late did she realise that the small pink silk sofa in the corner of the room was occupied by a couple, who hastily sprang apart as she stepped inside. ‘I am so sorry,’ Clementine mumbled, instinctively backing away before she realised that the shocked faces turned towards her were those of Sidonie and Antoine’s father, the Comte. ‘My God.’
‘Clementine!’ Sidonie was the first to regain composure and called after her as she whirled blindly from the room. ‘Come back!’
Clementine took a deep breath and turned to face her former governess, while averting her eyes from the Comte, who stood in the doorway behind her. ‘It is none of my concern,’ she said before the other woman had a chance to speak. ‘There is no need to discuss this, is there?’
‘My dear...’ Sidonie reached out to her then let her hand drop. ‘I wish with all my heart that you had not seen the Comte and I together.’ She sighed. ‘I hate to think that I have disappointed you.’
Clementine shook her head. ‘You haven’t disappointed me,’ she replied, forcing her lips to form a smile. ‘Really, you haven’t.’ She looked past Sidonie to the Comte, who looked pale and thoughtful. ‘I am sorry.’
An awkward silence fell which was abruptly broken when the door to the main salon opened and Phoebe, looking harassed and red cheeked hurried out. ‘Oh there you are, Clementine!’ she said thankfully, taking the other girl’s arm. ‘We have to leave at once. Jules has turned up, half out of his wits with wine and God knows what else. He’s just shouted at Venetia and demanded that she breaks with Eugène and returns to him.’ She smiled wanly at Sidonie. ‘You know how Jules can be,’ she said with a tiny shrug.
‘I’m afraid that I do,’ Sidonie murmured and the two women exchanged a look. Phoebe was no fool and, alone of the girls, had eventually come to realise that there was an intimate bond between the pretty little governess and the dissolute young Comte. ‘Would you like me to speak to him?’ she offered in a quiet voice.
Phoebe hesitated then shook her head. ‘It isn’t fair to ask you to expose yourself in such a way,’ she said. ‘He’s so drunk, you have no idea what he might say. Poor Venetia is in a state.’
Just then the door opened and Venetia came out, her cheeks deathly pale beneath her vermilion rouge and her eyes red rimmed and filled with unshed tears. ‘We are leaving,’ she said simply to Clementine as she and Eliza swept quickly down the stairs, their gauze, velvet and silk cloaks ballooning behind them. ‘I refuse to spend another second in the same building as that man!’ she called up to them, wiping her tears away with the back of her hand.
Sidonie reached out and took Clementine’s arm as she went down the stairs after her friends. ‘Please don’t be angry with me,’ she whispered. ‘I can explain.’
‘There’s no need to explain,’ Clementine replied before gently but firmly pulling away.
Chapter Thirty
When the footman came to Clementine’s private sitting room the next morning to announce that Mademoiselle Roche was waiting downstairs, her first instinct was to order him to tell Sidonie that she was out. ‘Does she know that I am here?’ she asked.
The footman, well trained after decades working for the Coulanges family and with a special fondness for La Petite Anglaise as they called her in the servant’s quarters, shook his head. ‘I said nothing, madame.’
Clementine sighed then gave a shrug. ‘Bring her up to me,’ she ordered after a moment’s reflection. She had barely slept the night before as her mind was full of Sidonie, the Comte, Antoine, Jules and Venetia. In the end she had shouted in her sleep and woken up both herself and her husband in his room next door.
‘Are you having a nightmare?’ he had asked sleepily from the doorway as she quickly pulled the covers up over herself. ‘I heard you shout.’
‘It’s nothing, Charles,’ she had replied in a low voice, wishing she had the courage to ask him to leave her room. This was the first time he had set foot in there since the incident in the salon, and it was clear from his nervous stance that he felt uneasy. ‘Go back to bed.’
He’d hesitated for a moment on the threshold and turned back to her as if he wanted to say something, but then a moment later he was gone, closing the door softly behind him. Clementine rolled over and did her best to go back to sleep, but it was too late and so after a despairing look at the porcelain clock on a table beside the bed, she rang for her maid.
She went to the mirror as she waited for Sidonie to come upstairs, glad that she was still young enough for a sleepless night to have very little effect on her complexion. She knew that she could usually appear before Sidonie looking her very worst but not today.
‘Thank you for seeing me, Clementine.’ Sidonie had entered the room quietly behind her former pupil and was standing uncertainly beside the pale yellow silk sofa. ‘I half expected you to refuse to see me.’
Clementine inclined her head. ‘I almost refused,’ she admitted.
‘That is understandable,’ Sidonie said with a nod. ‘What I have done is unforgivable. You must be so shocked by what you saw.’
Clementine took a deep breath. ‘I am not shocked,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Everyone always assumes that I am shocked by everything, but the peculiar thing is that I never am.’ She sighed. ‘What you do with the Comte is your own affair, Sidonie.’
‘But it has upset you?’ Sidonie said in a low voice.
Clementine sank down onto the sofa. ‘The Comte is Antoine’s father,’ she said in a low voice without meeting the older woman’s eyes. ‘Seeing you together was a shock.’
‘Antoine?’ Sidonie stared at her former pupil, searching for a glimpse of the gawky, uncertain Clementine Garland that she had first met in Bath just three years before in the elegantly dressed, tall young woman who stood before her with diamond and pearl earrings hanging from her ears and a small fortune in pearls around her neck. ‘I see.’
A silence fell between them. ‘I think about him all the time,’ Clementine whispered so quietly that Sidonie had to bend to hear her. ‘Even on my wedding day. Antoine was all I thought about and I wished with all my heart that I was marrying him instead.’
Sidonie sat down on the sofa beside the girl. ‘I had no idea,’ she said. ‘Oh, Clementine...’
‘He’s never coming back, is he?’
Sidonie patted Clementine’s knee. ‘I don’t know, dear heart. No one knows.’ The Comte rarely spoke about his son and she had got the impression that he did not care to be asked about him either.
The door abruptly opened and Charles strode into the room, an unusually firm expression on his pockmarked face. ‘Mademoiselle Roche,’ he said with a cold bow towards Sidonie. ‘I am sure you will forgive me if I cut short your interview with my wife.’ He turned to Clementine and held out his hand as she stared at him in nervous astonishment. ‘Have you forgotten, my dear, that we are expected at the Tuileries this morning?’
Clementine ignored his outstretched hand and shook her head. ‘I think that I must have done,’ she said, flushing crimson. ‘You have not mentioned it before now.’
Her husband was relentless. ‘I am sure that I did, Clementine.’ He turned to Sidonie. ‘If you will excuse us, mademoiselle?’
Sidonie bowed her head in acquiescence, unable to meet Clementine’s embarrassed gaze. ‘Of course, Monsieur le Duc,’ she said in
a low voice that vibrated with suppressed hurt. ‘I will leave immediately.’
‘Don’t go, Sidonie,’ Clementine implored, jumping to her feet as her former governess sadly turned to leave. She turned to Charles but he averted his gaze and very deliberately put his back to them both.
‘I must go,’ Sidonie said gently. ‘I’m sorry, Clementine.’
‘Why should you go?’ Clementine demanded. ‘Sidonie, don’t listen to him!’
Charles turned then and looked stonily at his wife. ‘Stop making a scene, Clementine!’ he ordered, taking her arm and pulling her forcibly away from Sidonie who left with one last regretful look over her shoulder. ‘Remember who you are.’
She glared at him. ‘I am Clementine Garland,’ she whispered. ‘Clementine Garland.’
‘You are the Duchesse de Coulanges,’ Charles said from between gritted teeth, ‘and my wife, madame and that is why I will thank you not to consort in private with a woman of depraved morals who is said to be the mistress of the Comte d’Evremond.’
‘You mean Sidonie? How disgusting you make her sound. She’s not Messalina.’
He shrugged. ‘She has made her choice and must live with the consequences.’
‘Is that what you really think?’ She pulled her arm out of his grasp. ‘I made my choice too and now I wish that I wasn’t your wife!’ she shouted before she could stop herself, not caring that the sitting room door was open and everyone in the house could probably hear her. ‘How could I have been so stupid as to think that you could possibly make me happy?’
Without warning, he drew back his hand and slapped her across the face. ‘You push me too far, madame,’ he said, his cheeks flushed with anger. ‘Everyone advised me not to marry you but I ignored them, so blinded by love that I chose to turn a blind eye to your family and low descent. I was wrong to do so, madame, as you are clearly utterly unsuited for the title that I have bestowed upon you.’
Before the Storm Page 20