Tender the Storm (11 page)

A moment or two later, Madame Bertaut set down her pencil and surveyed her companion. Smiling, she observed "Zoë. That's an unusual name. I like it."

She could not have known the effect of those few words on the grave-faced girl who stared at her un- blinkingly. At the sound of her name, something inside Zoë, a tangled skein of suppressed emotion, seemed to unravel. Only then did she begin to feel a shadow of the old Zoë stir in her. It would be an exaggeration to say that she smiled. But her features softened with a becoming animation. She was Zoë again.

"We try to find everyone employment as soon as may be," explained Madame Bertaut, and thereupon launched into an account of opportunities which were available for a girl of Zoë's education and aptitude. "Fortunately, your English is impeccable," she confided.

Zoë was assigned to a small box room in the attic which she was to share with another unattached young female. Francoise had been in England for a number of months, and was older than Zoë by several years. Her poise, her quick intelligence was something to be envied, in Zoë's opinion, as was her sleek good looks.
Soignee
was the word that came to Zoë's mind.
Soignee
and very French, with her modish cap of dark curls and deeply
set,
chocolate brown eyes.

Over the next little while, Francoise became something of a mentor to Zoë. She found Zoë suitable clothes to wear and showed her how to adapt them to the current mode. She offered a hail of advice on how Zoë should conduct herself in society. And she introduced Zoë to the other residents of the house.

The house was crowded to the rafters. Whole families were domiciled in a single room. Few of the residents had any pretension to blue blood. They were journalists and professional men, with a sprinkling of officers of the old guard. Some of them were ardent Royalists. Most of them were moderates, idealists who were appalled when they found themselves the scapegoats of extremists on either side of the political spectrum. They gathered in the front parlor at all hours of the day and night. As the womenfolk bent over their embroidery or knitting, the gentlemen would hotly debate French politics, and relive the old quarrels in France. These were safe topics. There were few among them who did not show some reticence in revealing their personal histories, and Zoë divined that, like
herself
, they had family and friends in France they wished to protect.

From time to time, a courier would arrive at the house with reports of what was happening at home. As one day followed another, the news became more disquieting. The terror was growing in momentum and there seemed to be no end in sight to its excesses. Of her own family, Zoë heard nothing.

"The English have a saying: 'No news is good news.' "

The comment came from one of the newer residents. Charles Lagrange, a journalist, and one-time editor of the Paris
Liberie
,
had arrived in England almost at the same time as Zoë. She judged him to be something under fifty. He was thin almost to the point of emaciation. The rumor was that he had been hiding for months in a friend's cellar before he found safe passage to England.

"What does it mean, 'No news is good news'?" asked Zoë.

He put his hand on Zoë's shoulder in a consoling gesture and withdrew it almost immediately. "What it means,
ma petite,
is that there is still hope."

Zoë's eyes traveled to the young couple who were on the point of leaving the room. Madame Bertaut was with them. Her expression was grave. No one doubted that she was the bearer of bad tidings.

No news is good news.
In the days that followed, Zoë was to cling tenaciously to that worn, English proverb. And though there were few occasions for rejoicing in the house in Gloucester Road, she, like the others, maintained a cheerful facade from the moment she stepped outside her chamber until the candles were doused every evening.

In the close confines of the small room which she shared with Francoise, it was inevitable that the girls would begin to confide in each other. Even so, there was a certain circumspection which was impossible to overcome. By tacit consent, each girl permitted the other the privacy she wished for herself.

It soon became evident to Zoë that their reasons for drawing a veil over the past were far different. Zoë's one wish was to protect her family. Francoise was alone in the world. It was her sanity she wished to protect. She could not recall the last weeks of her life in France without falling into a deep despondency.

Happily, there was no dearth of amusements in London to distract those of a melancholy turn of mind. The members of the more established French community had taken it upon themselves to arrange outings and parties, duly chaperoned, for their more recently arrived compatriots.

London was far different from the Paris Zoë remembered. And though she did not consider the English capital the equal of its French counterpart in grandeur or beauty, in all other respects she much preferred it. To walk through its streets without fear of molestation was an experience to which she felt she would never become accustomed. The shops on Bond Street, no less than the fashionables who crowded its pavements, quite bowled her over. There were trips to
Ranleagh
Gardens in Chelsea and to Vauxhall across the river, and not even the chill December weather could dispel one iota of her pleasure. Hyde Park was within walking distance and scarcely a day went by that Zoë and Francoise did not persuade one of the gentlemen to act as their escort. More often than not, it was Charles Lagrange who accompanied them. With Zoë his manner was avuncular. With Francoise he was invariably scrupulously correct.

"Hyde Park again?" he asked, mildly teasing. "That's the third time this week. What's the attraction?"

"Nothing . . . nothing," answered Zoë at once, avoiding Francoise's eyes.
"Merely a walk to work up an appetite for dinner."

She missed the amused glance her two companions exchanged. It was live o'clock in the afternoon, the moment when the fashionable houses of nearby May- fair disgorged their blue-blooded occupants for their daily rendezvous in the park. The stylish carriages, the thoroughbred horses with their equally thoroughbred riders, the celebrated beauties —Zoë had never witnessed so much refinement in one place or such a display of elegance. Not that she would have admitted as much to her companions. Her extravagant admiration she deemed childish, and the last thing Zoë wanted was to be regarded in that light.

Her conviction that Hyde Park at five o'clock in the afternoon was the acme of elegance was dispelled on her first visit to the opera in the Hay Market's King's Theatre. The gorgeously bejeweled ladies in their opera boxes had her gaping. Surely Versailles at its zenith could not have boasted such splendor or ladies of such irrefutable breeding and grace.

It was Francoise who disabused her of such foolish notions.

"Fashionable
impures
?" repeated Zoë.

"That's what the English call them. Look at them — like merchandise in a shop window! They rent these boxes at astronomical prices to sell their wares to the highest bidder."

"Are you saying they are common prostitutes?"

"There's nothing common about them," Francoise snorted. "They're at the top of their profession. Some of them are mistresses to the wealthiest titled gentlemen in all England."

"Mistresses," said Zoë, and shuddered. She felt as if someone had just walked over her grave. "What are you wearing to the party at Devonshire House?"

The subject of mistresses was dropped, as Zoë hoped it would be. But she could not shut her mind to the distasteful thoughts which the word had evoked.

The Christmas party at Devonshire House was an event which Zoë anticipated with mixed feelings. The do was in the nature of a charitable gesture towards the French community in London. And though Zoë deemed the duchess of Devonshire's motives as the highest, she did not care to think of herself as the object of anyone's charity.

She voiced that thought to Francoise and was reproached with the older girl's irrefutable logic. "We
are
charity cases," said Francoise. "The bread we eat, the garments we wear, the roof over our heads, even our pin money— where do you think it all comes from?"

Zoë had no answer.
"Where?" she asked.

"From the fat purses of people like the
Devonshires
, that's where. We should be grateful to them, Zoë."

Zoë hastened to assure her friend that her gratitude was bottomless. Nevertheless, it was borne in upon her that she must give serious consideration to her future. She could not forever depend on the charity of others. If her parents did not come for her soon, she must strike out on her own. Madame Bertaut had intimated that there was time enough to find suitable employment in the
new year
, when the members of the
ton
returned to town from their great houses in the country.

"Madame has every confidence that she can place me as a companion or a children's governess," Zoë informed Francoise one evening as they undressed for bed,

"You know my feelings on that subject," answered Francoise flatly.

Since Zoë's first day in town, Francoise had dropped some elaborate hints about her one and only experience as a governess. As Zoë understood, she had been forced to hand in her notice or else be hounded into accepting
carte blanche
from the master of the house.

"Wedlock, Zoë. It's the only solution for girls like us. Find yourself a young man before you are whisked off to some godforsaken place in the country. You'll never find a husband there. Englishmen are not like to offer for dowerless French girls, whatever their pedigree."

"I have no wish to marry,"
demurred
Zoë. At her friend's words, her thoughts had taken flight. She was thinking of a young man with blond hair, whose eyes changed color with his moods.
Her
chevalier.
"Rolfe." She mouthed the word silently, over and over, as if it were a benediction, and wondered if it were his real name and where he was and what he was doing.

Rolfe eased back on the large
fourposter
bed, savoring the release of sexual tension which left him pleasantly replete. The warm, naked woman at his side moved restlessly and Rolfe stilled her with one arm flung carelessly around her waist.

"Rolfe?"

"
Mmm
?"

"You mustn't fall asleep! Not here! Not unless you're prepared for some very unpleasant consequences. I thought I told you. George is due to arrive within the hour."

Roberta Ashton
raised
on one elbow and with the pads of her fingers lightly traced the slumberous features of the man who had just made love to her.