Rose brightened. ‘My parents have a box at the opera. We could go there.’

‘Excellent. I will ask Mr Jarvis to arrange a carriage for us. We will go en grande tenue and then you will feel better, nein?’

The opera was Rigoletto. Rose leaned forward in the box, lost in the music. At the interval, Madame Bailloux raised her opera glasses and scanned the boxes, demanding to know the names of all the best-dressed women.

She lowered them and said, ‘So many people are staring at us. Why is that?’

‘I am considered scandalous,’ said Rose. ‘They have no doubt read in the newspapers about the events in Paris. I am afraid my parents will really have to send me to India now. I have become unmarriageable.’

‘The good captain seems taken with you. He is not what I would call conventional.’

‘I do not think he wants to marry me,’ said Rose. ‘We were engaged, but only in name. We arranged it to stop me being sent to India.’

‘If Captain Cathcart agreed to such a scheme, then he really must care for you.’

‘I think I irritate him, madame.’

‘You may call me Celine. We are friends, non?

‘I hope so,’ said Rose and felt a little of her feeling over the loss of Daisy dissipate.

As they stood outside the opera house after the performance, waiting for their carriage, Rose felt the same frisson of fear she had experienced on the quay in Paris and looked wildly around.

‘What is the matter?’ asked Celine.

Just a feeling,’ said Rose. ‘I had the same feeling in Paris just before I was pushed in the river.’ She could see the earl’s carriage inching through the press of cars and carriages. Rose scanned the crowd. Apart from the people leaving the opera, there were crowds of onlookers, come to gaze at the fine gowns and jewels of the ladies.

She sighed with relief when at last they were safely in the carriage. ‘Probably my imagination,’ she said.

When they arrived at the town house, the first footman told them that Captain Cathcart was waiting for them in the drawing room.

‘Don’t tell him anything about my fears,’ said Rose to Celine, as they mounted the stairs. ‘I do not want to be sent away to anywhere nasty again.’

‘Why did you go out?’ demanded Harry as soon as they walked in.

‘I was restless,’ said Rose. ‘It is miserable being confined here.’

‘Someone tried to kill you in Paris and that someone has probably followed us back to London. I wish we knew the real identity of Dolores Duval. I wonder if she was English, but then why would she turn up in Brittany?’

‘My parents are due back,’ said Rose. ‘What am I to do? They will either send me to India or back to that convent’

‘I will discuss matters with them when they return. You must be sent somewhere safe.’

‘I am dreading their return,’ said Rose in a small voice. ‘What if they send Madame Bailloux away?’