Cover

About the Book

Paris, 1789

Henrietta Lightfoot, a young Englishwoman, trips on her silk gown as she runs for her life along the bloodstained streets of revolutionary Paris. She finds refuge in the opulent home of Grace Dalrymple Elliot, the city’s most celebrated courtesan. But heads are rolling, neighbours fear neighbours, and masters whisper before servants.

As the sound of the guillotine echoes outside, within the gilded salons of high society Henrietta becomes a pawn in a vicious power game.

Seductive and finely plotted, this tale of one woman’s flight through the bloodiest times in history resonates with a sense of modern revolution and tyranny.

Title Page

Dedication

To my father, Sydney

Foreword and Dedication

To the Right Honourable Marguerite, Countess of Blessington

Little more than a year has passed since I sat in the drawing room of Gore House as the guest of the lady to whom this work is dedicated. The hour was late and we found ourselves quite alone when she pressed my hand and spoke in a low voice.

‘I have often wished to enquire, my dear Mrs Lightfoot, how it was you came to make the acquaintance of Grace Dalrymple Elliot.’

At first her question startled me. I had not heard that name mentioned for some years and I wondered how it was she came to know of Mrs Elliot, or indeed my time in Paris during that period of revolution and bloodshed. Rarely did I mention either, and to no one but my most intimate of associates.

‘Is it true what they say of her?’ She raised an eyebrow into an inquisitive arch.

I folded my fan into my hands and smiled pleasantly in the manner I had learned to do when wishing to divulge nothing.

‘I am afraid I have very few stories to tell of Mrs Elliot,’ I said. ‘Our acquaintance was but a brief one.’

My hostess did not for a moment appear satisfied with my response.

‘Very well, my dear Mrs Lightfoot,’ said she in a teasing tone. ‘I know you well enough to understand your games. If you insist on refusing, I shall have to compel you to reveal your secrets.’

She then made me a very pretty little offer: in exchange for penning an account of my time in Paris during the French Revolution, she would settle upon me a tidy annuity of which, she claimed, she understood me to be in need. She then ventured to set forth her terms: I was to commit to paper a perfect record of all that befell me while I sojourned in that city. I was instructed to omit nothing, no matter how scandalous or indelicate. All my adventures, my opinions, all that I had witnessed or experienced, were to be laid plain so that at the conclusion of my memoir she would be in a fair position to judge for herself the truth of the rumours she had heard.