Chapter Three
Sandrine slipped down the stairs the next morning, bathed and dressed in a new, buttery-yellow gown, with her hair curled and pinned. She fairly skipped, sure that her sense that something hovered on the horizon was true. Something great and lovely was about to happen, to change!
She moved through the grand hallway of the house, scented with fresh flower arrangements, bathed in light from high windows, and moved towards the pale green and gold music room, her mother’s favourite room, where the pianoforte and harp waited in splendour.
She smoothed her skirt, knocked on the door, and slid inside at her mother’s call of ‘Entre!’
That chamber was only used for important moments, with its beautifully fashionable arrangements, its giddily sunlit French paintings of shepherdesses in meadows and forests. Her parents sat under one of those images now, a tea table laid out before them, their heads bent together as they whispered.
‘Ah, Sandrine, there you are! It grows late,’ her mother said, as if she herself was not usually locked away in her darkened chamber at such an hour. ‘How pretty you do look, petite! I did once fear you would be my thin, gawky fille always, but no, no. Does she not look well, Pierre?’
Her father smiled at Sandrine fondly. He’d always been indulgent of her, kind, though now he didn’t have much time for her. ‘Our petite fleur! You will certainly do us proud.’
Sandrine perched on the edge of a chair across from them, fairly sure she would leap up and shout if she didn’t hear what was happening soon. ‘Will I, Papa? I have indeed always wished that.’
‘Our greatest desire for you is about to come true,’ her mother said, beaming on her often-unsatisfactory child, ‘thanks to our invitation to Madame de Fleurieu, and your beautiful behaviour there. You showed yourself quite worthy of the noblesse d’épée, just as we have worked so hard to prepare you. ’
She knew it! It was happening, really happening. It was no dream. ‘Do you mean…?’
‘Our little comtesse!’ her father boomed, and clapped his hands.
‘He—loves me?’ Sandrine whispered.
Her mother took her hand. ‘Your papa called on the d’Alencys yesterday, and they were all that is welcoming. It shall all be arranged, if you and young Alain agree.’
If she agreed. Sandrine had to restrain herself from leaping up in joy and running out to order the bridal bouquet. Her throat felt too tight for her to speak.
‘Indeed, they were very charming,’ her father said. ‘I fear their house as it is at present is not all that could be wished for, my little jewel, but that will be remedied soon enough. They were most amicable to my suggestions, once all comes to—’
‘Pierre!’ Sandrine’s mother snapped. ‘I did warn you about the correct way to broach such matters to the d’Alencys. Perhaps we are not at home in France now, but that is no reason for improper indelicacy.’
‘Indelicacy!’ her husband cried. ‘If we were in France, chérie, I would never have been admitted to their hallway, let alone negotiating a betrothal. There is no time for tiptoeing about this matter. They need us. You should have seen the state of their drawing room! And I must be sure our Sandrine is looked after suitably.’
‘Oh, Papa, I am quite sure that Al—that is, Monsieur d’Alency will always look after me,’ Sandrine insisted. She knew his reputation, his rakish ways, but surely she’d seen better. Surely she’d glimpsed his true self there in the conservatory. Everything was going to work out now.
Her father pinched her cheek. ‘Ah, my sweet flower! Indeed he will, if he knows what’s good for him.
And I will make sure of it.’ He reached for some papers laid out on the tea table.
‘We will find you a proper home, a townhouse near by, plus somewhere in the country, and provide you with a suitable dowry. But the money from your dear grandmother, who helped me so much in establishing our business here, that will be yours entirely from the wedding day to use as you must. It will not be the d’Alencys’. ’
‘Pierre!’ Sandrine’s mother gasped, her expression appalled.
Sandrine was no less shocked. She’d known her grandmother, who had worked with Sandrine’s father after they came to England and built her own fortune, had left her a sum that was carefully invested, but surely it wasn’t meant to be hers entirely.
It wasn’t the way when a lady married. ‘What must they have thought of such an extraordinary thing?’
Sandrine’s father shook his head, his jaw set.
‘I hardly care. Sandrine must have some measure of power, or people like that will drown her spirit! You must be able to visit your art-supply warehouses whenever you like, fleur, and you shouldn’t have to run to your husband whenever you need some new pencils or some such. ’
Her mother still seemed distressed by the unconventional concept, and Sandrine was sure Alain would always take care of her, but she knew when her father was unmovable. ‘If you say so, Papa,’ she murmured.
He smiled broadly and clapped his hands again. ‘But you need not worry about it! The money will be waiting for you in the bank. You need only listen to your young comte’s proposal when he calls this afternoon, and say your oui or non.’
‘Today,’ Sandrine whispered, her head whirling. Who would have imagined a dream could come true so quickly?
‘He will come to take you for a drive after luncheon,’ her father said.
She nodded. Surely Alain did care for her, just as she had hoped. Their life would be started today, their foundation laid. She kissed her parents quickly, and dashed off to prepare for that future to begin.
Sandrine added a shaded bit of Prussian blue to the scene she was painting, or rather trying to paint, and stepped back to examine it with a frown.
She always hated it when the mood of a scene, the colour and emotion and movement, did not match what she saw in her head—and it never did.
Nothing was ever quite as she longed for.
She tilted her head to study the arc of a cloud and added a dab of violet, a focal point of darker colour, hoping to add some richness.
A bit of complication. She didn’t want to be a mere ladylike dabbler, as her parents encouraged her to be.
Some pretty watercolours, a few competent sketches of flowers, were most acceptable, a lovely ornament.
They had even reluctantly set her up a studio in an unused sitting room, where the light from the tall windows was just right, and she could find quiet moments to herself that were elusive in the rest of the bustling house.
But they didn’t see how hard she worked to move beyond pretty, pleasing little scenes.
How she longed to pour all her emotions, her hopes and fears and dreams, all she concealed behind her shy exterior, onto paper and canvas.
To put a colour to her desires, to free those feelings and fly away!
On the rare occasions her mother wandered into that room, Sandrine would hide her half-finished canvases and put out her floral still-lifes.
She’d begun the new image of the stormy seascape with such high hopes. The wild sky, the lashing of the waves against the shore, called to something in her. Yet she couldn’t quite capture the turbulence.
Perhaps she simply needed to live more, she thought, as she so often did in her secret, yearning heart. She’d been stuck in her parents’ house for—for always, really. She’d thought life would begin in the future, once she found her destiny. Was it now in view?
Maybe, once she became Madame d’Alency, with Alain by her side, that life would truly begin. She almost twirled around at the thought. It couldn’t happen fast enough.
If he asked her. Hope, fear…it was all tangled up inside of her. He hadn’t arrived yet, as he’d promised her father he would.
Sandrine, now unable to concentrate on her work at all, pulled a cover down over the half-finished scene and put her brushes aside to clean.
She sat down on the old settee near the windows and took out her sketchbook instead.
She flipped through the pages of gowns and hats and jackets she’d dreamed up, and found the one she’d begun just after Madame de Fleurieu’s ball. A wedding gown.
At most weddings she’d attended, the brides wore very pretty dresses, lacy bonnets, many of the silks and muslins sourced from her father’s own warehouses, but they were not grand.
Weddings were quiet affairs here in England, of course, nothing like the tales she’d heard of French royal and aristocratic weddings.
Surely a wedding, that step forward into a new life, that melding of hearts, deserved something really special. Something unlike anything else.
She’d often imagined such gowns, created for characters in favourite poems maybe, or heroines in plays, but now she tried to envision what she herself would want if she was floating down the aisle of a great cathedral.
She studied what she had so far, a train beaded with pearl lilies, sleeves edged with lace flounces, yet just like the painting it wouldn’t quite come together as she hoped.
She closed her eyes and imagined a church filled with flowers, the glow of stained-glass windows, heard notes of music, and caught a glimpse of a figure cast in sunlight and shadows waiting for her…
Then it all melted away. She frowned down at the pencilled lines, and tried to decide instead whether there should be a longer train, a double sleeve. Could there be lace inserts, or some ribbon embroidery on the bodice edge?
She’d become absorbed in changing the waistline when she heard footsteps on the stairs outside. She had just turned the page from the gown to a scene of a vase of roses when Justine burst in. The usually dour maid looked positively animated.
‘Monsieur d’Alency has arrived!’ she cried.