‘I beg you, Henriette, do not be a fool! Can you not understand? You will be seen with her, with a royalist! You cannot hazard it, not at a time such as this, for you will be taken for one too and then . . .’ She paused. ‘Then I cannot hazard to be seen with you! Why, you will bring suspicion upon all of us, like a disease! I will not be able to know you, ma chère!’ She tugged more forcibly at me, determined to fix me in place. ‘Do you not perceive what is to come, my dear sister? Is it not plain to you? After the King is brought to justice, those who have supported him will also go beneath the guillotine. The finger will soon come to point at Madame Elliot, and I could not bear to behold you there beside her.’ Her eyes grew round with desperation. ‘Not even Orléans would be able to preserve you.’

‘I shall not suffer myself to be seen by anyone, Agnès, I swear it to you,’ was the only assurance I could offer. It was a feeble one, and she recognized that as well as I.

It was with great reluctance that I pulled away from her, my heart breaking as I did.

‘You are no different from her,’ La Buffon snapped at me. ‘Dorothea. Madame Meyler. You are the same.’

My back was turned to her as that dart pierced me. She could not observe that my features were twisted with pain.

‘Henriette!’ she cried after me. ‘Henriette, you betray me, sister! Henriette!’ She wept as I passed through her dressing-room doors and down the long, empty enfilade of rooms. ‘Henriette!’ she wailed until I could bear it no longer. I clapped my hands over my ears and fled. I ran from her like the coward I was.

Chapter 23

I CANNOT THINK how I must have appeared when I boarded Monsieur Valentin’s coach in the courtyard of the Palais-Royal. The sting of the act I had committed was so fresh that I could scarcely gather the words to speak. I was incapable of pleasantries, or even polite greetings. All the warmth had been hollowed from my heart and it sat cold and dead within my breast. For the entire journey to Meudon, which was two hours beyond the barriers, my head was filled with nothing but the sound of my friend’s sobs. I cut such a melancholy figure that I am certain Monsieur Valentin and his two young daughters thought me poor company indeed.