‘You wish to know what role I have played in this?’ she enquired, and then without pausing for my response pulled the backing from the portrait and revealed a secret compartment. Inside it were three letters, arranged like eggs in a nest of satin. ‘My correspondents are abroad, mostly in Coblenz and London. I convey intelligence to all parts. Thérèse Bertrand assists in this task. Some letters come in code, others in an invisible ink.’ She then pieced the frame together once more and returned it to the locked cabinet. ‘His Majesty’s Government desires to know Orléans’s designs and convictions; if he aspires to the throne. Mr Pitt wishes to know the dangers presented by those of Orléans’s acquaintance, if Madame de Buffon encourages him in his radical notions, and if he continues to empty what remains of his purse to fund the Revolution. He wishes to know if Orléans will vote for his cousin’s death . . .’ She aimed her gaze directly at me.

I might have told her, reader. I might have offered up to her that morsel of intelligence she most desired, but instead I held it firmly in my mouth. It was the only thing of my own which I felt I possessed.

Although I wept, I held her stare. I met her eye and did not waver.

‘It is imperative that you return to the Palais-Royal at once,’ she commanded me. ‘That you should choose to take your leave of Orléans on a day so critical as this . . .’ She shut her eyes and inhaled. ‘You shame me. You shame me before our King.’

I could make no reply, for I had no words but those of fury and anguish and shock. I nodded, almost imperceptibly, before I remembered.

‘Monsieur Valentin,’ I said. ‘He is in possession of my passport.’ Then, much to my chagrin I was forced to describe that scene which had transpired upon the road to Meudon, and how Monsieur Valentin had promised to return for me that evening.

She sighed and looked away. ‘This will not do,’ said she with growing agitation. ‘This Valentin – I shall order him away. I shall have to tell him you . . .’ She pressed her hand to her mouth as she cogitated on a lie. ‘. . . you ran off . . . that it was all a sham, a scheme to meet a lover . . . that even I know not where you have gone to . . .’

I regarded her with some uncertainty.

‘I do not think he will be inclined to believe you,’ I offered quietly.