Paris, July 1794
Marie Tussad put down her paintbrush and stared at her latest work. Mon Dieu! This is the most hideous thing I have ever done! Impatiently, she reached for the cloth and covered the easel. It was getting late, and she was tired. Tomorrow, she would correct her mistakes. Hearing the clatter of a rider outside, she turned in alarm, then smiled as she recognized her husband. Unbolting the door, she rushed into his arms as he mounted the stairs.
Phillipe Tussad clasped his wife in his arms tightly. "Robespierre has been executed."
Marie closed her eyes. "Thank God. I know that is a horrible thing to say, but perhaps this horror will end with that…beast's death."
"Marie." Her husband still held her close, and the note in his voice made her still. "There is more. Chauvelin is…missing. There's been no sign of him. The rumor that he was killed was just that, a rumor." He pulled back and looked into her suddenly terrified face. "We have to leave this house. With Robespierre's fall, he might come for us."
Marie shuddered. No, we are not the ones in danger. He won't stay in France, with his Republic in ruins, where those he has injured are hunting him. He will go after Marguerite. Other than the Republic, she is all that ever mattered to him. "He is on his way to England, Phillipe. We must send word to Sir Percy and the League."
Phillipe held her shoulders. "England? That is madness! Why would he go to England? The League is there…" He trailed off.
"And so is Marguerite." Marie finished for him. "I was in Paris at the beginning of the Revolution, darling. You were not. I saw Chauvelin with Marguerite. I know how much he has always wanted her. And Heaven help her, we both know how far he would go to obtain what he wants. Remember what happened that last day, when he captured the St. Justs."
Her mind went back to that night, the last night when the League was plotting the rescue of Marguerite and Armand. Percy had attempted to send his friends away, insisting that he had no right to ask the men to risk their lives. She could not forget the look on his face when he told the League that his life was over if his wife and her brother died.
She had found Percy pacing frantically in the back room. Soon, it would be time to become Grappin again. With Chauvelin, he would follow the coach to the coast of Michelin and God willing, rescue his wife and brother-in-law.
Unable to stand the grief on his face, she turned to leave. "Marie," he stopped her before she could slip out of the room. "You knew about Marguerite's liaison with Chauvelin, didn't you? You were so close to her. The night of her last performance, when she announced our engagement, you told Armand to take her out of France at once. He was very confused as to why. You know that Chauvelin is still obsessed with her."
Marie sat down and leaned her head in her hands. "So, she told you. I am so sorry, Sir Percy. I was the one who advised her to keep silent about her past. Therefore I am the one to blame for the trouble between you and Marguerite." Percy would have protested, but she continued. "It has been my experience that men of your type-English and well born-could not accept a woman who had so much as kissed another man. Frenchmen are more realistic about the relationships of men and women, but unfortunately, she fell in love with you."
Percy flinched. Marie gasped, appalled at her tactless words. "I did not mean to say that, Sir Percy! You are a very good man. I meant…I would never have matched Marguerite with an English aristocrat. As an artist, I was in demand at court and in the homes of several titled personages. I saw the customs of the English nobility at close quarters."
Percy laughed bitterly. "If you spent any time with some of the people I grew up with, I am surprised that you did not lock Marguerite away in a closet until she came to her senses and jilted me. I don't blame you for telling her to keep her past a secret. It is a time-honored custom in my world to say one thing and mean another. To hound a woman until she submits, then condemn her for immorality. The man who ruins the woman goes on his way with no consequences. But of course, the worst sin of all is to be caught. You may be as licentious as you care to be in private."
He sat down. "None of that matters now. I do not care about Marguerite's past. Compared to the behavior of the vapid girls that have been tossed at my head ever since I attained my majority, my wife's "sins" are nothing. At least she acted from honest feelings, not ambition or greed. I will not pretend that I like the thought of Chauvelin and Marguerite, but I prefer it to the horrors that I have been imagining."
"What horrors have you been imagining?" Marie asked. "I could not help but notice how unhappy you both were. I could not understand why, when I knew how much you loved each other."
Percy rose and walked across the room, unable to face Marie. "I thought that she was a spy for Chauvelin. I cannot believe that I was so blind about this. Until that night she told the Pimpernel about her past, I never saw Chauvelin as a man capable of…love. He has never stopped wanting her back, has he?"
She came back to the present at her husband's voice. "Finish packing, darling. I'll get a message to our friends."
London, England
Percy Blakeney paced back and forth in the expensive guestroom at Carleton House. Damn! How was he going to last until the morning? After the news that the Prince had just given him.
Robespierre was doomed. The Terror was over. And most important to Percy, Chauvelin was dead.
He tried to feel guilt at this unseemly happiness. He couldn't feel anything but relief at the news of his enemy's fate. Marguerite was safe. Nothing else mattered. If Chauvelin's death was partly his fault, then it was a fact that he would just have to live with. Face it, he thought, it likely would have come to this sooner or later. You've known that for a long time. Ever since that night on the bridge, when Marguerite told the Pimpernel of her past, you've known it.
Her past…with Chauvelin. Oddly enough, he understood his foe now, although he had come to hate him more than ever. Hated him for using Armand to blackmail his wife, hated him for using her against the League, and hated him for loving Marguerite. Although she had confessed to him her long-ago liaison with Chauvelin on the footbridge, he had still been shocked by the intensity of the other man's feelings for his wife.
He had seen Chauvelin only as an obsessed Revolutionary. He had not been able to see him as a man capable of love or desire. After all, Marguerite herself had said that the affair had ended several years before. How long could a man like Chauvelin continue to feel passion for a woman he could not have?
How foolish of me, Percy thought. I was hers from the moment I met her. I always will be. Even when I believed that she had betrayed me. Marguerite will always have men falling in love with her. Why would Chauvelin be immune?
No, he hadn't seen the other man's obsession in time. He had observed Chauvelin's contempt for him and his friends and completely misread it as hatred for all aristocracy. Indeed, he had encouraged it, laughing to himself that his worst enemy had no idea who he was, complacent in the belief that Chauvelin thought him a non-entity, a simple-minded fop.
And all the while, Chauvelin was seething with jealousy of the man who possessed the woman he still craved. Until that night at the prison, Percy had not believed him capable of such feelings. He had gone to the prison that night in his Grappin disguise, hoping against hope that he could simply take Armand from his cell with the excuse of using him to trap the Pimpernel. It would have meant abandoning the Grappin identity, of course, but he would have done far more than that to bring the boy home to Marguerite. Instead, he had walked in to find his wife captured while attempting to rescue her brother.
In front of "Grappin", Chauvelin had dropped the (barely) civilized mask, making no attempt to hide his desire, or his triumph at having Marguerite at his mercy at last. He had intended to take her to his bed that very night… The only thing that had stopped Percy from challenging Chauvelin then and there was the bitter knowledge that he would be condemning his wife and her brother to death. Watching her walk to her cell alone, unable to tell her who he was, to reassure her, had been hell.
The confrontation the next day with Chauvelin. He had seen his own hatred mirrored in his enemy's eyes. There had been no masks or disguises that time. Both of them knew they were fighting, not for a political ideal, but for the woman they both loved.
And his last view of Chauvelin. He had been holding Marguerite, screaming for a doctor as she lay bleeding on the ground. As he and Armand swiftly carried her away, he had looked up to see Chauvelin. The mixture of grief and fury on the man's face… He had almost felt pity for the man.
But it was over now. As soon as the Prince released him, he could go back to Richmond. With the Terror over, he and Marguerite would begin again. He smiled. God, it would be wonderful to be able to tell her everything!