Trembling, Camille lowered the pistol and tucked it back in her belt. The barrel burned a line against her side.

‘What have you done?’ Molyneux roared, face tomato-red and throbbing. ‘You stupid, hateful girl.’

He made a lunge for her and she skittered back.

‘She’s safe now. She said she’d rather die and so I made the only choice I could. That kind of power should never be in your hands, nor the duc’s.’

‘You’ve ruined us! You’ve doomed us all.’

The screaming of the crowd reached them at the top of the mountain.

‘I did what I had to do. You’re sick, all of you. Did you read what the duc did to her? What Comtois did? They cut her up and drowned her and shocked her. That’s not science, it’s torture.’

‘You think sacrificing the future of the Republic is the better choice?’

‘Find an alternative,’ she said, hating the churlish note in her voice.

‘Oh, dear, stupid Camille. You get the wrong end of every stick, don’t you?’

He crossed the summit towards her, and she whipped out her gun again to hold him at bay.

‘Stand back!’

Holding his hands up, he paused by the tree, then gestured to her gun.

‘Your father’s,’ he said. ‘You hold it with such pride.’

‘Yes. Because he was a far better man than you. He believed in the Revolution, but he would never stoop to such cruelty.’

‘The wrong end of every stick, as I said.’

Camille held the pistol steady, fighting temptation. And lost.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your father was no saint.’

‘He was better than you. He never tortured helpless girls. He would be proud of me for standing up to you.’

‘No. He was far more petty than that. That gun, you know it’s one of a pair?’

Camille glanced at the long barrel and pearl inlay on the handle. She hadn’t known that.

‘Your father and Will were insufferable about it.’ Will was James’s father. ‘He’d bought the duelling pistols while they were on their grand tour, and when Will moved back to England, they took one each. Some sort of gesture of their friendship. Ironic, really, given how things ended up. And stupid.’

‘So? They were friends. Loyal friends. Maybe that’s why they weren’t so keen on you, they knew what you were.’

‘Do you know what it was like watching them from the outside? Neither of them truly cared about the Revolution. They were concerned with their appearance as romantic Revolutionaries, not the bitter reality of bureaucracy and control. They wanted to stay up all night talking about wonderful utopias, while men and women and children starved in the streets. You might not like Robespierre’s methods, but he gets things done.’

‘Whatever you have to tell yourself to sleep at night,’ she said, with less venom than she’d hoped.