‘I remember the flower … though I never wore it. I had forgotten it until this moment. It couldn’t have been my flower. I dare say I still have it … somewhere.’

She clenched her hands together. ‘Please don’t lie to me. I knew … and that confirmed it.’

‘It is all imagination, Sophie. Oh, do believe me.’

‘You wanted this to happen.’ She threw back her head and turned the scarred part of her face towards me. ‘A pretty sight, isn’t it? On that night he was with you. You left me there. He was intent on saving you. You both hoped that I would die.’

‘It’s not true. You know it isn’t true. He wanted to marry you … afterwards. He asked you again and again.’

‘He never wanted to marry me. It was arranged. He wanted you as soon as he saw you. You think I am foolish and blind. I may be … but not quite so blind as not to see what is right under my eyes. I will never forgive you … never … and I hope you never forget what you have done to me.’

‘Oh, Sophie,’ I cried. ‘Sophie …’

I attempted to go to her but she held up her hand.

‘Don’t come near me,’ she said.

I covered my face with my hands because I could no longer bear to look at her. I knew it was no use pleading with her, trying to make her understand. She was determined to blame me.

When I opened my eyes she had taken off the veil and was placing it reverently on its stand. The dress she hung up in the cupboard before she stepped into her own long robe.

‘Sophie,’ I said gently.

But she waved me away and, silent as a ghost, glided to the door.

There she paused. ‘Remember me,’ she said, looking straight at me. ‘All the time he is with you, remember me. I shall be thinking of you. I shall never forget what you did to me.’

The door closed on her. I stared at the veil on its stand and I thought: I shall never be able to forget either. She will always be there to haunt me.

When I wore that dress, when I wore that veil, I should be thinking of her standing there at the foot of my bed, accusing me, blaming me.

It was unfair. She could have married him had she wished. When she had convinced herself that he did not really want her, I could guess how deeply wounded she had been, and the wounds to her heart went as deeply as those which had disfigured her face.

She had spoken bitterly of the flower. I remembered vividly the day Charles had bought it. I had forgotten it and never worn it. It must be somewhere among my things. Whose peony was it that Sophie had seen? Someone who had visited Charles? The flowers were not exactly rare. They had been sold all over Paris at that time and Charles might well have had a woman visiting him in his rooms.

I couldn’t have told Sophie that. She would never understand the type of man Charles was. Poor Sophie!

She would not forget me, she had said. I could indeed tell her the same. I would always be haunted by the sight of that pathetic figure in my white wedding-dress and veil.

IT WAS THE SPRING of the year 1775 and four years since my marriage to Charles. I was a very different person from that girl who had travelled to Tourville for her wedding. I had grown up quickly under Charles’s tuition; he taught me how to come to terms with life and I was, on the whole, grateful for that.

I would say that our marriage had been satisfactory. There was a definite physical attraction between us and I had discovered that I, no less than he, could find great satisfaction in such a relationship.

During the first months of our marriage neither of us had thought of much else than the passion that we could arouse in each other. He had recognized in me what, in his cynical way, he called ‘a suitable companion of the boudoir’, which meant a woman who was not ashamed of her own desires and who could rise to those heights of passion which he liked to scale—so that as one they could revel in the delights of physical intercourse between the two sexes.

In the beginning I had thought a great deal about Sophie and consoled myself with the certain knowledge that she would never have been able to accompany Charles in those flights of ecstasy.

He was a connoisseur of love—perhaps I should say lust; and also of women. He told me once that he could tell at a glance when a woman had—his term again—love potentialities.

‘As soon as I saw you bending over that crystal ball I recognized those qualities to a large degree,’ he told me.

Was I in love with him? What was love? I asked myself that many times. In love as my mother and father were? No, not like that. That was some ideal state to which people came perhaps when they were old and wise and no longer bedevilled by the urgings of desire. What a contented relationship that must be! No, certainly Charles and I were not like that.

During those first months when we seemed to mean everything to each other, my heart would leap with joy when he appeared and I was always uneasy when he was away from me; I longed during the evenings when we were with his family in the long salon at the Tourville château for the moment when we should retire and be alone.

It never occurred to me to wonder then whether this excessive excitement would last. I supposed my parents had once felt like that in those long-ago days when I was conceived. Then they had parted for years and had only come together when they were middle-aged with much experience behind them, and with the raging desire no longer there to cloud their judgement. And so they reached that deeply contented, perfect relationship.

Charles was certainly the perfect lover. I could be sure he did not feign his need for me. I could not for a moment doubt it. Yet somewhere in my mind I knew that it could not last … not at that breathtaking level at any rate; and would what was left to us be strong enough to build on it that sort of love I had seen and envied a little in my parents?

The Tourville family itself was not very exciting. Charles’s father was an invalid; his mother a mild woman who adored her family. There was a sister Amélie for whom a marriage was being arranged.

They were a wealthy family, although not nearly so rich as my father; and clearly they had been delighted with the alliance between our families. They would have preferred Sophie, of course; but it showed how much they wanted an alliance to have accepted a daughter of illegitimate birth. However, the dowry had been the same as that which would have gone with Sophie.

I should have found life at Tourville very dull but for Charles.

So I went on in that excited state until I became pregnant, which was about eight months after my marriage.

Everyone at Tourville was delighted and when messages were sent to Aubigné there was great rejoicing there.

During the first three months I felt wretchedly sick and after that when I began to grow bulky I was in no state for night frolics with Charles. I guessed then that he found a mistress, for he was not the sort of man to deny himself, and he would think, from what he had always been brought up to believe, that it was the natural course of events.

Strangely enough, coming into motherhood had changed me too. I was absorbed now in the baby and that was enough for me.

Charles was the devoted husband, delighted that I had shown so soon evidence of my fruitfulness and he did not show any rancour because I could no longer endure him in my bed.

My mother came over from Aubigné to be with me at the birth and the delight of everyone was great when I produced a healthy boy.

We called him Charles, which soon became Charlot, and from the moment I heard his first lusty scream he was of the utmost importance to me.

Those were some of the happiest months of my life. I remember so well sitting up in bed with my baby in my arms and people coming in to admire him and congratulate me.