The French House by Helen Fripp (english readers TXT) 📗

maid came in and bobbed a curtsey and discreetly averted her eyes as Nicole slipped behind the screen to cover herself.

‘What is it?’ asked Thérésa, cool as a cucumber.

‘General Roussillon is here to see you, Madame. He made a special request…’

‘Get him a glass of brandy and put him in a corner. I’ll see to him later.’

‘Yes, Madame.’

Nicole’s lips felt bruised.

Thérésa bustled over to the armoire, pulled out a blue-grey dress and held it up to her, their moment forgotten. ‘Perfect. The colour of your eyes, like a soft winter morning. Put it on, but don’t look yet.’

Nicole closed her eyes and submitted to her powders and rouges. Thérésa slicked on the lipstick with her finger, tenderly pressing her lips, then used the same for her own.

‘Red suits you.’ She twisted her hair, pinned it, stood back and clapped. ‘Now look.’

A beautiful, luscious woman with glittering eyes was reflected back at her. Her lips looked like she’d eaten a punnet of blackberries and the dress was a winter sky. She swung her hips and the silk rippled. They giggled.

‘Thank you,’ Nicole whispered.

Thérésa kissed her shoulder. ‘You’re a businesswoman. Use all of your assets.’

‘I’m not a businesswoman any more, just a widow, no longer Madame, but Veuve Clicquot. François is dead and my duty is to withdraw into grateful silence, or marry again splendidly,’ she said bitterly.

‘Finally you’re beginning to see sense. A nice man to take your mind off things, instead of moping about like a tired old washerwoman. I have the perfect person!’

‘I won’t marry again. I’ll endure the party, but only for your sake.’

‘Darling, I know you’ll change your mind. Lonely women always do. But let me tell you something. I know you genuinely loved your husband. Very quaint, by the way. But you’ll recover, and when you do start to look elsewhere, you mustn’t hook yourself to someone who can dictate your every move. You have produced a child, you have married. Society will happily accept you as a woman of means in your own right now. Just think how lucky you are. You think I am calculating, a manipulator? I see it in you, too. I saw it that day in Reims, at the party, the way you held court with those men.’

Nicole shook her head.

‘I know that old reprobate Moët is desperate to get his grubby hands on your prize vineyards. Don’t let him. We all survived the revolution. For what? For men to be free and women to be shut in their houses? I know that isn’t what you want.’

‘I don’t know what I want any more.’ She thought of the pile of correspondence with Moët. He would sign tomorrow and take the whole wine business and land off her hands for triple what it was worth if she agreed. But she kept stalling, not quite able to make the final cut.

‘I saved my neck from the guillotine by being an observer of people. It makes people eminently malleable if you know all about them. But let’s have no more being serious tonight! You can think tomorrow – you can be anything here. No one will judge. These people are survivors, and they have been through a bloody revolution to be here, each in their own way.’

Thérésa steered Nicole out of the boudoir. Footmen bowed as she passed, following her with their eyes.

Entering the ballroom, they strolled through the gathering, Thérésa making a stir as she fluttered past clusters of guests, strutting men in uniform, sneering women in empire-line dresses, the braver ones sporting Thérésa’s coiffure à la victime. A quartet played in the corner and the chandeliers threw prisms in the candlelight. Nicole’s sharp eyes picked out the quality of the crystal, caught the ‘M’ for Moët on the champagne corks before they were popped.

‘General Roussillon, my favourite soldier!’ Thérésa pecked him on the cheek.

‘Meet my dear friend Nicole Clicquot. She’s just up from the country, so you make sure not to tease her.’

And she was gone, leaving the General following her smooth back and raven hair until she disappeared into the crowd. Nicole flew daggers into that perfect back. How dare Thérésa burden her with the title of paysanne, country peasant?

‘From the country? Whereabouts?’ the General muttered, still more interested in Thérésa.

‘Reims. Where the cathedral of kings is.’ She gulped her champagne, doubting everything about the evening.

‘Don’t drink that muck, it’ll make you ill,’ she heard a voice with a German lilt behind her say.

Nicole swung round. Long boots, damask waistcoat and a fat cigar.

‘Louis!’

‘La sauvage.’

The General melted back into the crowd as Nicole hugged her friend tight.

‘You’re safe! I heard about the dangerous situation in Russia and wrote several times to call you home, but we… I never heard a word back from you.’

‘I never got it, communications are terrible and the situation is dire. The talk is of a French invasion now that Napoléon’s made it as far as Moravia, so all French in Russia are seen as spies. Four months on horseback across the forests and steppes, then ship and barge. I would have come straight to Reims, but Thérésa told me she had lured you here.’

‘Louis… did you hear about…?’

‘I wrote straight away. You didn’t receive my letter either?’

She shook her head, aware of curious eyes on them. ‘I knew you would contact me if you could, but it wouldn’t be the first time one of your Russian letters went astray. Everything’s been such a blur. I still have letters I can’t bear to open.’

‘He loved you more than most men could in a hundred lifetimes. Are you managing?’

‘I keep busy.’

‘You are always busy, Madame Clicquot.’

‘Veuve Clicquot now,’ she replied, getting used to her new title of widow.

He kissed her cheek; both blinked back tears. ‘Dance with me.’

They wove through the crowds, and stepped onto the dance floor, her widow’s dress forgotten in a heap in Thérésa’s boudoir. No one cared who they were as the chandeliers glittered and the candles cried slow wax tears. The revolution had