The number of her male admirers had not diminished over the years, but their nature had changed. When she’d been an eligible mademoiselle at Versailles she had caught the eye of the King and been pursued round the place by a horde of lust-blind fops. Now, having passed through marriage, maternity, smallpox, and widowhood, she was the kind of woman that important forty-, fifty-, and sixty-year-old men were always talking about in hushed corners of Clubbs and Salons. From time to time one of these would screw up his courage, sally forth from his redoubt, and buy her a château or something,
...more
