Eliza’s head snapped around to a new azimuth, and her attention settled on a group of guests, mostly men, who had migrated off the marble floor of the gazebo and gathered on the gravel path to smoke. It was rude to break off her conversation with the Duke in such a way. But her movement had not been voluntary. It had been occasioned by a word, spoken loudly, by one of these men. The word was une esclave, which signified, a slave—a female slave. The speaker was Louis Anglesey, the Earl of Upnor. He was nominally an Englishman. But he had spent so much of his life in France that he was indistinguishable, in his speech, dress, and mannerisms, from a French noble. He had come over with James Stuart following the Revolution in England, and become an important man in the exiled King’s court at St.-Germain-en-Laye. This was not the first time Eliza had seen him socially.