Because she has heard it said the death of Queen Marie-Thérèse was actually a murder, Charlotte de Frontenac is arrested and secretly confined. Her protector, Madame de Montespan, finally finds her with the help of Louvois, the Minister. Charlotte returns to Court for the inauguration of the Gallery of Mirrors, but the months spent far from Versailles have left their mark, and, confronted with life at Court, the young woman is filled with a now-exacerbated malaise. She decides to return to the family home, unaware that treachery awaits her there as well. A diamond her father acquired long ago inspires envy in more than one corner. She herself is the unwitting object of a powerful minister's passion, thus threatened with dishonour and regarded with disgrace by Louis XIV.
Her unlikely saviour is Alban Delalande, a young police officer whom she has never stopped loving but whom she, herself, must first rescue.
La Chambre du Roi is the second* installment of the adventures of Charlotte de Frontenac. The story setting is the Court of Versailles, plunged in the sinister Affair of the Poisons that began in the 1670s, an event whose ripples of consequence extended irrevocably to every corner of Louis XIV's life and that of his Court. The intrigues Charlotte is inexorably caught up in realistically reflect the pernicious atmosphere that enveloped Versailles at the time. With passion and a vibrant imagination, Juliette Benzoni recreates them through the ordeals endured by her sympathetic, flesh-and-blood heroine.
*Volume 1 « On a tué la Reine » published in June 2008