The French Lesson - Couverture souple

Paris, 1792

It was a head, but one so bloodied, so rolled in filth, that it was scarcely recognisable but for its long red curls. It had been stuck on a pike like a lump of bread upon a toasting fork ...

Henrietta Lightfoot, a young Englishwoman, trips on her silk gown as she runs for her life along the bloodstained streets of revolutionary Paris. She finds refuge in the opulent home of Grace Dalrymple Elliott, the city’s most celebrated courtesan. But heads are rolling, neighbours fear neighbours, and masters whisper before servants.

As the sound of the guillotine echoes outside, within the gilded salons of high society Henrietta becomes a pawn in a vicious power game.

Seductive and finely plotted, this tale of one woman's flight through the bloodiest times in history resonates with a sense of modern revolution and tyranny.

‘Georgette Heyer meets Flashman . . . A gleefully modern retelling of a juicy chapter in history’ The Times

‘Rubenhold unfolds a complicated plot with great dexterity, brilliantly evoking a society in which traditional bonds are being sundered’ Sunday Times

‘Compelling, operatic, modern’ SIMON SEBAG MONTEFIORE, author of The Romanovs

Paris, 1791, Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI are in captivity and the French Revolution is in full swing: Henrietta’s reunion with her lover Lord Allenham has ended abruptly and she is left with nothing but his strange message to guide her to him. Alone in a foreign city spiralling into bloodshed, Henrietta is aided by Grace Dalrymple Elliott, a celebrated Scottish courtesan whose looks and fortune are on the wane. But Mrs Elliott’s assistance comes at a price, and Henrietta soon finds herself a pawn in a vicious rivalry of powerful women.

Determined to unravel the mystery of Allenham’s disappearance, Henrietta must form a number of dangerous liaisons. But within the mirrored rooms of the Palais Royal, everyone is keeping secrets and nothing is what it seems. As the ways of the aristocratic old order crumble beneath her, politics and passion lead Henrietta into a deadly game, where the life she is striving to save may not even be her own.