‘Orléans offered to assist me.’ Of all the falsehoods I had fed to her, I knew that upon this one point I could not fib. There was no other person to whom I might have applied, and she would have concluded as much in an instant. I observed her lips part in astonishment and her round blue-grey eyes open wider still. Slowly, she raised her hand towards her mouth, but then stopped and instead laid it upon her heart.

‘Why would he do such a thing?’ she whispered. ‘Why would he wish to send you to her, when he knows the perils? He promised me that he would never speak to her again, nor call upon her, and now, now he would put you in that place of danger?’ Her gaze tightened upon me and as it did, tears began to form. ‘Why has he not informed me of this? Do you not understand, Henriette? She is a royalist, an aristocrat! Her friends despise Orléans; they despise me. They would have us on trial rather than the King.’ She frowned and vigorously shook her head. ‘No, you cannot go to her. I will not countenance it!’

I own that from the very first instance that Agnès de Buffon had called me friend, I had come to dread this day. My heart had hoped it would never come to pass, but it was inevitable, was it not? In the end, it was certain that I would be made to choose between them.

I was never so deluded as to suppose that my residence at the Palais-Royal was anything more than a temporary situation, but my friendship with this most cherished of kindred spirits I had believed unyielding and eternal. That such affection had managed to blossom was a thing both remarkable and delightful to me, but I understood as well what it would mean for my association with Mrs Elliot. She was the one to whom I owed everything. She, like me, was a stranger in this land, a fellow countrywoman who would one day wish to return to the shores of her birth, as would I.

I pressed my lips together so as to prevent my chin from quivering. The tears left straight, wet trails down my cheeks.

‘I must,’ I breathed.

As I turned from her, she snatched my hand.