But our nursemaid Mary is cheerful and full of her usual clucking approbation of my beautiful hair and my beautiful skin and if she had half my looks she would have run away to Paris – as ever – and when I have bathed and she has dried my hair and plaited it, I cannot help but be encouraged by the linen under-gown with the new ribbons, and by the new shoes and by the beautiful cloth-of-gold gown, and the headdress. The maids come back in to help me dress, and tie the laces of the gown and straighten my headdress and pull the veil over my shoulders and finally pronounce me ready for my wedding and as beautiful as a bride should be.

I turn to the great looking glass that my mother ordered to be carried into my chamber, and my reflection looks back at me. The maids hold it before me and tip it slightly downwards so that I can first see the hem of my gown, embroidered with little red lions rampant, from the standard of our house, and my red leather slippers with the curling toes. Then they hold the mirror straight, and I can see the cloth-of-gold gown gathered at the high waist and the embroidered heavy belt of gold that is slung low over my slim hips. I gesture and they raise the mirror so I can see the expensive cream lace veiling the low-cut neck of the gown, the gold sleeves falling from my shoulders, with the white linen under-gown revealed tantalisingly through the slashings at the shoulders, and then my face. My fair hair is plaited away and tucked under the tall headdress, and my face looks solemnly at me, enhanced by the silvery reflection of the mirror. My grey eyes are wide in this light, my skin clear and pearly, the mirror makes me look like a statue of a beauty, a marble girl. I gaze at myself as if I would know who I am, and for a moment I think I see Melusina, the founder of our house, looking back at me through moonlit water.

‘When you are a duchess you will have a great mirror of your own,’ my mother says. ‘Everything fine. And you will have all her old clothes.’

‘Duchess Anne’s clothes?’

‘Yes,’ she says, as if wearing the wardrobe of a recently dead woman should be a great treat for me. ‘Her sables are the best I have ever seen. Now they will be yours.’

‘Wonderful,’ I say politely. ‘Will I get my own clothes as well?’

She laughs. ‘You will be the first lady in France, all but the first lady in England. You will be able to have whatever your husband wants to give you. And you will soon learn how to persuade him.’

A woman whispers something behind her hand about how a girl like me might persuade a man as old as he with one hand tied behind her back. Someone says, ‘Better with both hands tied, ’and a couple of them laugh. I have no idea what they mean.