I cannot imagine what expression I wore. I can only think it was one so contorted with shock that Orléans believed I was teasing him. He whooped with amusement at it. He laughed as he fumbled with the strings on his robe, this man so unaccustomed to dressing himself. He laughed as if he could not contain himself, the hilarity bursting forth from him. He laughed so loudly that once he had opened my door and passed through it, the noise carried down the enfilade of deserted rooms, filling each one, however briefly, with the sound of his emptiness.

Chapter 19

I SHALL NOT pretend to you that I did not suspect that which Orléans discovered. Indeed, what woman cannot correctly guess at her condition before proof of it stirs within her? The truth of the matter was that I had chosen not to see it, for its implications were too terrible to contemplate by far.

I had taken every precaution. I had made diligent use of the halves of lemon and lime that had been placed in my bidet cabinet. I had laved myself with the astringent waters until my privies smarted. I could not fathom how it came to pass, but Nature forces herself upon the fair sex in often miraculous ways.

There was nothing I desired less on earth than to find myself in such a predicament. While Mrs Elliot would have viewed this turn of events as a triumph, I did not doubt that La Buffon would conceive of it as a betrayal. Why, it was she who had arranged for my bidet to be equipped with those preventative devices. On many occasions she had peered into my eyes and enquired earnestly if I ‘had employed the conveniences with care’. I took pains to assure her that I had.

‘I have no more desire to bear Orléans a child than I have designs upon his affections,’ I vowed to her repeatedly. ‘You know my heart has been claimed by another, Agnès. I wish only for a future with him, and do not seek to make my fortune by filling Orléans’s nursery.’

By God, truer words than those I had never spoken. I had once carried a child, placed inside me by a spark of love. I had pushed him through me as death held my hand. I had nurtured him and watched him grow fat on milk before a man determined that he was not mine to keep. He was snatched from my arms, never to be returned. This, beyond any other pain, I could not endure again.