The idea seemed to hang like a dark menacing cloud over her head and even made the dining room and every other part of the Palace seem less attractive than it had before.
Almost as if she could look into the future, she felt she could see the rooms in the Palace filled with the King’s vulgar friends and see the tasteful decorations changed to the kind of gaudy display that they admired.
And nowhere in the picture could she see herself except, as she had felt last night, an outsider, neglected, forgotten or perhaps worse still, embroiled in the reprehensible behaviour of the young men and women with whom she had absolutely nothing in common.
‘I cannot do this – I cannot!’ Zosina told herself again.
She thought that even to please the Regent and gain his respect she could not go on with
