Free Season of Light by Katharine McMahon Page A

shall be glad to see Caroline.’
    Afterwards she stood again by the window in her room. Didier did not come.
    Just after eight o’clock she raced along the passage, down the stairs and into the lobby, barging into a portly fellow guest who fell back against the wall in astonishment. Outside, the air was clear, as if scourged by the hail. She crossed the rue du Cherche-Midi and stood deep in the entrance to a courtyard so she could watch the street. Surely Didier would have returned to his apartment by now and received her note? After quarter of an hour she began to walk, oblivious to the fact she was wearing unsuitable shoes and her head was bare. Nobody noticed. All of Paris was stunned by the storm. But she sensed as soon as she reached his street that he had not come back. Summoning all her courage, she again knocked on the door, and this time received only a curt: ‘I’ve told you, he’s not here.’
    She waited until it was almost dark and the lamps were lit. By the time she made her way back to the hotel her skirts were heavy with mud. Surely, this time, by some miracle, he would be in the lobby. But there was no sign of Didier, and no message. Hour after hour she sat at her bedroom window, though she knew there could be no question of him coming now. If only wretched John Morton had made up his mind earlier, then she could have warned Didier last night that they were leaving. If only they’d never met Didier and his friends in the Tuileries.
    In the morning she sat heavy eyed and sick with suspense as Philippa sipped a tisane and ate a mouthful of brioche. He will come, Asa thought, as she watched the trunks being stowed on the roof of the carriage. Morton gave her his arm to lead her on to the wet street and in the seconds it took to cross the carpet of clean sacking between the hotel and the carriage steps, she strained for a glimpse of Didier, convinced he would still come and snatch her away. She even imagined Philippa’s astonishment when she and Didier announced their determination to marry at once, the hurried explanations, the untying of Asa’s trunk.
    As the carriage made its tortuous way through Paris, Asa pressed her face to the glass, sure that he would follow. In half an hour they halted at the gates to show their papers. Now, now he would race up and claim her. But soon the horses were picking up speed on the open road, spattering the carriage with mud.
    Three days later, in Calais, her face a mask of calm, she finally admitted to herself that he would not come; that there would be no pounding of hooves, no shouting of her name. Soon she was walking the breezy gangplank, the ropes were uncoiled, a strip of sea was widening between ship and harbour and she, Asa Ardleigh was being carried relentlessly to England while her lover, her Didier, was left behind in Paris.

Chapter One
    By the time the Morton party had returned to England in July 1788, Georgina was engaged. Within another month she was married. Her new spouse, Mr Geoffrey Warren, who had been introduced through a hunting acquaintance of her father’s, described himself as a financier and had impressed Georgina with his natty dressing and talk of prospects. Too late it transpired that none of his elderly relatives was about to die after all, let alone leave him their fortune, if they ever had any, and almost all his business ventures – including, incidentally, his marriage to Georgina Ardleigh – were to prove ruinously ill advised. But one of Georgina’s most endearing traits was her belief that at any moment her luck would change, and although it took nearly four years, in August 1792, it suddenly did.
    The Warrens’ lack of funds was in part due to their love of gambling. Georgina preferred cards, Warren the dice. Normally the establishments they patronised were more Billingsgate than Pall Mall, but that summer they had an unexpected invitation – issued as part of a gambling debt to Warren – to a party in St James’s Place, and