‘This will do perfectly,’ said she, holding out my saffron-striped gown. ‘The colour draws the blush from your cheeks.’ Her eyes then wandered to my throat and ears. ‘And you need not concern yourself as to your adornments, Hetty, for my ruby necklace is perfectly suited. And you might make use of my diamond girdle buckle and shoe buckles as a complement to it. They were gifts to me from the Prince de Condé. How do you fancy that, eh?’

And so that afternoon Mrs Elliot’s maid, Victoire, appeared, bearing two gold coffers inlaid with amber, which she placed upon my dressing table. Close behind her followed a thin little man, a friseur by the name of Monsieur Gris.

‘Madame suggested you might wish to wear your hair à la Coblenz, as does she,’ offered Victoire, turning to Monsieur, who had already begun to spread out his tools. ‘It is best for displaying the jewels,’ she added.

And so I sat beneath his fingers as he removed the curling papers and teased the crown of my hair upward before affixing it in place with a red swatch of silk. He then let lengths of my locks down my back and shoulders, smoothing them with pomade, so that only the ends retained their curl. Into the back of this construction was fastened one grand white ostrich feather. Only once this stage had been set, the curtains of hair drawn back and the background painted with rouge and powder, were the jewels permitted to appear upon it.

A short collar of square-cut rubies, each the size of my thumbnail, was arrayed about my neck. The stones appeared so large that, had I not known better, I might have guessed them to be made of glass. Victoire then removed three vast circles of brilliants from a flat gold case. The shoe buckles were so broad, they fairly covered my toes and sat heavily upon the tops of my feet. The girdle buckle which she threaded through the band of scarlet satin at my waist was nearly the circumference of my palm.

I stared at myself in the looking glass, astounded by the magnificence that hung from me. No heir to a Barbadian sugar fortune, no son of the English gentry might have purchased such wonders. These were the fruits of an unimaginable wealth, grown from miles and miles of vines and fields and harvested for centuries. And to consider they represented but an insignificant thimbleful of what belonged to the royal Dukes and Princes of the Blood. For each necklace or buckle in Mrs Elliot’s coffers, there were more elsewhere. There were other mistresses with other boxes, and wives and daughters and mothers and aunts and sisters all with caches of similar treasures. The thought fairly humbled me, that these men were each as wealthy as a king.