Adelaide, spirited daughter of Louis XV, is at odds with her father's decadent but restrictive court of Versailles in 1745. Forty-four years on Madame stalks the corridors of the palace as it is stormed by the women of Paris and Revolution looms. But so much has changed for the hopes of one young girl who was once in love with fencing and who despised the extravagant 'panniers' the extreme fashions of the eighteenth century French court dictated. Kate Brown skillfully sketches in those missing years, starting with the arrival of the notorious Madame de Pompadour at the Palace as Adelaide becomes obsessed with her mysterious and intoxicating world. But as love and shame stretch family ties to the limits, Adelaide's teenage rites of passage become increasingly desperate, as does the fate of the court in which she lives.