Claude moves to speak to her little sister Margot whilst they are sat in their mother’s salon. ‘Sister? Do you trust me?’ she breathes into her ear, so quietly that Margot has to strain to hear her over the hubbub of the room, the ladies-in-waiting murmuring as they circulate.
Margot doesn’t answer, aware that her mother is close by. She sits deadly still, the only movement being her mechanical stitching of the linen on her lap, the repetitive in and out of her needle through the fabric. Claude looks down at the frantically uneven stitches and takes her work away, leaning close to her sister in the process.
‘Sister, do not leave your apartments tonight. On pain of death. Do you understand?”
Margot gets that something is up. She looks up at her big sister, violet blue eyes wide in confus
