‘Madam,’ she whispered. ‘Are you unwell?’ I squinted at her. Over her shoulder I glimpsed the figure of one of Madame de Buffon’s maids wearing an anxious face.

‘No, Lucy. I am well, but weary.’

‘Madam, if you please, Madame de Buffon has been asking for you. It is after midday. She wishes to converse with you,’ my maid informed me.

At the mention of this, my pulse leaped.

‘Is . . . is there something the matter?’ I enquired in French, gazing beyond her to La Buffon’s servant.

‘Madame has called for you. She wishes you to wait upon her in the Chinese aviary, mademoiselle.’

At that, I blanched. La Volière was filled with eyes, and many pairs of them had witnessed me quit the dining room with Orléans and not return again. But I could not imagine that gentlemen, officers no less, renowned for their feats of gallantry, would have acted with such indiscretion, with such malice. Then I recalled who else might have glimpsed me with the Duke as we disappeared into the dark, fragrant garden: Madame de Buffon’s companion, Madame de Laval. If there had been a spy, it was almost certain to be her, waiting, watching from her windows for some transgression. I stared at La Buffon’s maid, almost too frightened to move.

‘Do you wish to be dressed, madam?’ Lucy enquired.

Was I possessed of any other option, reader? It was an inevitability that I would be made to face my hostess, if not at that moment, then later in the day or upon the following one. And so, like a prisoner condemned, I consented, and rose from my bed to receive my sentence.

I felt myself sick with dread as I followed Madame’s maid along that same path to the aviary. The full heat of the cloudless day bore down upon me, burning through the crown of my flat straw hat, dampening my muslin gown, and yet I shook, quivering as if in the grip of a fever. I had begun to spin words in my head as frantically as my mind would permit. I thought a plain but honest confession would best suit. If I informed her simply what had come to pass, that he had attempted to embrace me and that I had denied him, she might not blame me so harshly, though it was unlikely she would heed such a tale. La Buffon was more likely to believe Orléans. I would be to her no more than another scheming siren, a sister to Madame de Morency.