Marianne and the Privateer

CHAPTER ONE Tragedy at the Ball

It was the evening of the first of July and an unending line of carriages stretched all down the rue Mont Blanc and overflowed into the adjoining streets, invading even the courtyard of the big private houses whose double gates had been thrown open to provide more room and to relieve the pressure a little. It was clear, early as it was, that the ball being given by the Austrian ambassador, Prince Schwarzenburg, was a success. The Emperor himself was to be present and, what was more to the point, so was the Empress, in whose honour the party was being held, so that the twelve hundred guests felt themselves highly privileged persons while a good two or three thousand of the uninvited sat at home brooding on this unfeeling neglect.

One after another, at foot-pace, the carriages turned into the short avenue of poplars leading to the colonnaded entrance to the embassy, lit up for the occasion by great cressets of antique design flaring cheerfully in the darkness. The house, which had once belonged to Madame de Montesson, the morganatic wife of the Duc d'Orléans, was not over large and could not compare for splendour with its opulent neighbour, the Russian embassy, housed by Napoleon in the luxurious Hôtel Thélusson which he had purchased from Murat at the cost of a million francs and the Elysée Palace, but it was exquisitely decorated and possessed extensive grounds in which there was even a miniature farm, as well as a Temple of Apollo.

It was these grounds which had given the ambassador an idea how to provide for the entertainment of all those whom he desired to invite in spite of the comparative limitations of his drawing-rooms. He had commissioned the erection in them of an enormous temporary ballroom made of oilcloth stretched over a light wooden frame, linked to the main reception rooms of the house by a further temporary arcade. This ballroom and its delightful decorations had been the talk of Paris for a week past.

Like everyone else, Marianne had been obliged to sit for an hour or more, wedged in the jam between the house of the banker Perregaux and the embassy, before she could set foot on the acres of red carpet that covered the steps. The carriage in which she rode belonged to Talleyrand who had insisted on escorting her to the ball since, in a way, it marked her official entry into Parisian society.

'The important thing is to be there before the Emperor, eh?' the Prince of Benevento remarked. He was, as ever, a model of restrained elegance, his dark coat relieved only by the ribbons and medals of his Austrian decorations, the grandest of which, the Golden Fleece, nestled unobtrusively in the snowy folds of his cravat. 'Besides, one should always be fairly early if one wants to be noticed, and tonight I trust no one will have eyes for anyone but you.'

Indeed, that night Marianne was breathtakingly beautiful. The pale gold stuff of her dress had been chosen by Leroy, after long thought, to blend perfectly with the warm colour of her skin and the setting of her jewels, the huge, fabulous emeralds which had belonged to the sorceress Lucinda and which Nitot the jeweller had miraculously succeeded in transforming into a parure just in time for this evening. They flashed with green fire as Marianne stepped from the darkness of the carriage into the glittering fairyland of the salons, rousing an answering flash of envy in the eyes of every woman present, and of their male escorts too, although the men's desires were bent as much on the wearer as on her magnificent jewels. She looked like some fantastic, gilded statue and no man watching her as she moved forward slowly to the rustle of her long train could have said whether his admiration was given most to the perfection of her smooth features, the purity of the breast on which the scintillating green tear-drops lay quivering lightly, or to the brilliance of her eyes or the tender, irresistibly touching curve of her smiling lips. Yet not one would have dared give open expression to the feelings she aroused and this not only because she was known to be the Emperor's, but because of something at once remote and detached in the attitude of the dazzling creature herself.

Any daughter of Eve would have burst with pride to wear those fabulous gems. Probably only Madame de Metternich, newly elevated to the rank of princess, boasted stones of such fine cut. Yet Marianne wore them with an indifference that was almost melancholy and her eyes, below the tiara which so wonderfully matched their deep, uncommon colouring, were strangely absent.

A subdued murmur followed the passage of this oddly-assorted yet impressive pair. The age and austerity of the Limping Devil served as a foil to the Princess Sant'Anna's brilliant beauty. Well aware of the effect they made, Talleyrand smiled to himself behind his bland diplomatic façade. Among those present he could see the most fashionable and admired women of the Empire, women like the Duchess of Ragusa, wearing the diamonds given her by her father, the banker Perregaux, or like Marshal Ney's wife, decked in the sapphires some of which, rumour had it, had belonged to the late queen, Marie-Antoinette. And besides these, there were the great Austrian and Hungarian ladies: Countess Zichy with her famous rubies and Princess Esterhazy whose collection of jewels was accounted the richest in all the Habsburg Empire. Yet not one of them could outshine the young woman leaning so gracefully on his arm who was, he could not help feeling, to some extent his own personal creation. Not even old Prince Kurakin, though he seemed to be dripping with diamonds, or those noble Russian ladies whose massive, barbaric ornaments might have come straight from the legendary realm of Golconda, were more brilliant or more exquisitely regal than the girl at his side. He revelled with an artist's delight in Marianne's unspoken triumph.

Marianne herself neither saw nor heard. Her smile was mechanical, pinned to her face like a mask. She had the curious feeling that the only part of her which was truly alive was her gloved hand resting lightly on the Prince of Benevento's arm. Everything else was blank and dead, an icy façade lit by no inner warmth.

She could not understand what she was doing here in this foreign embassy among all these strangers whom she could feel devouring her with their eager curiosity. What had she come for, beyond a pitiful social triumph over people who had already talked over her strange story to their hearts' content and were now agog to discover more of her secret, of how the daughter of a noble house had descended to treading the boards for love of an emperor, only to rise to yet greater heights by virtue of a marriage that was stranger and more mysterious than anything else in her life?

How they would sneer, she thought bitterly, if they could but know how miserable and lonely was the woman they envied, and how heavy the heart which lay in her breast as silent and dead as a lump of lava. Life, love, passion were all gone. All her charm, her femininity, her perfect beauty, everything in her which asked only to live and nourish in the warmth of love, had been frozen into this effigy of solitary pride. Her eyes dwelt sadly on a little scene being enacted not far away from her: a girl had entered the room, following in the wake of her plumed and impressively bejewelled mama, and a young lieutenant of hussars stepped quickly forward to meet her with an exclamation of delight. The girl was very young and not particularly pretty: she was rather plump with a dull complexion and a shocking air of timidity, besides being dressed in a gown of stiff pink gauze which made her look exactly like a shuttlecock, but the eyes of the young hussar shone like stars at the sight of her, whereas they had scarcely rested on Marianne or any other of the lovely women present. To him, that awkward, insignificant girl was the most beautiful of women because he loved her and with all her heart Marianne envied the child who possessed not a fraction of what she herself had and who was yet so infinitely richer.

The young couple disappeared into the crowd and Marianne sighed as they passed from her view. She turned to greet her host and hostess, who were standing to receive their guests in the doorway of the large drawing-room from which the covered way led into the ballroom.

The ambassador, Prince Carl Philipp von Schwarzenburg, was a man of about forty, dark and stocky, his white uniform strained to bursting-point over powerful muscles. The impression he conveyed was one of strength and obstinacy. Beside him, his sister-in-law Princess Pauline seemed a picture of graceful fragility in spite of being pregnant and very near her time, a fact which she concealed most artistically beneath a muslin peplum and flowing, gold-threaded draperies. Marianne stared with amazement and considerable respect at this mother of eight children who looked like a young girl and whose whole being breathed total enjoyment of life. Then she found herself greeting this charming creature's husband, Prince Joseph, and reflected, not for the first time, that love was a very strange thing.

She collected her thoughts sufficiently to respond with grace to the Austrians' eager welcome and then allowed Talleyrand to lead her in the direction of the ballroom, still striving to throw off the odd feeling of unreality, the torpor that was enveloping her mind. At all costs, she must find something to interest her, she must try at least to look as if she was enjoying the party, if only to please her friend Talleyrand, now pointing out to her in an undertone those foreign dignitaries who came within his vision. But what did she care for any of these people?

At last, a ringing voice did manage to pierce through the dangerous fog which had wrapped itself around Marianne. In a strong Russian accent, it declared: 'My dear Prince, I claim the first waltz! It is mine by right, for I have paid for it with my blood, and would pay as much again twice over!'

The voice was a gravelly baritone, stony as the Urals themselves, but it did at least bring Marianne back to earth. She saw that the owner of the voice was none other than her impudent pursuer from the Bois de Boulogne, the man she had already privately christened the Cossack. It was that odious Chernychev.

He stood, adroitly blocking their path, and though his words were for Talleyrand, his slanting Mongol eyes were staring boldly at Marianne. She gave a faint, scarcely perceptible shrug, not bothering to hide the contempt in her smile:

'It is yours by right? I do not even know you, Sir.'

'Then why, if you do not know me, did you frown so when you saw me? Say you dislike me, Madame… but do not say you do not know me.'

Two green sparks of anger showed briefly beneath Marianne's lowered eyelids:

'You were importunate, Sir. You become impertinent. You are making progress. Must I make myself plainer?'

'You might try, but I should warn you that we are an obstinate race and I am noted for my persistence, even among my own people.'

'Much good may it do you! I am no less determined, I assure you.'

She was about to pass on, fanning herself irritably, when Talleyrand, who had observed this encounter with a smile of silent amusement, restrained her gently.

'Perhaps I should intervene before we have a diplomatic incident on our hands, eh?' he remarked cheerfully. 'I set too much store by my friends to leave them floundering in misunderstandings.'

Marianne regarded him with a look of astonishment that was a masterpiece of gracious arrogance.

'This gentleman is a friend of yours? Oh, Prince – I knew you to be acquainted with all the world, but I had thought you more selective in your friendships.'

Talleyrand laughed. 'Lower your sword, my dear Princess, as a favour to me. I grant that Count Chernychev's manners may smack too much of the camp to satisfy the taste of a pretty woman, but what would you? He is both a brave man and something of a noble savage.'

'And proud of it!' the Russian exclaimed, with an unmistakable glance at Marianne. 'Only savages can speak the truth and are not ashamed of their desires. It is my most ardent desire to obtain a dance with the most beautiful lady I ever beheld and, if I may, a smile! I am ready to beg for them on my knees, here and now if need be.'

This time, Marianne's anger was touched with surprise. She had no doubt that this strange man would do precisely what he said and kneel at her feet right there in the middle of the ballroom, without a thought for the scandal it would cause. She knew that his was one of those wild, fantastic and unpredictable natures of which her instinct had always told her to beware. Talleyrand must have been thinking something similar because he intervened quickly, smiling as ever, but holding a little more firmly to Marianne's arm.

'You shall have your dance, my dear Count – or so I hope, if Princess Sant'Anna will forgive you your Tartar manners, but do not be in such a hurry. Leave her to me for a while longer. There are a host of people here wishing to meet her before she will be free to indulge in dancing.'

Chernychev stepped aside at once and bowed in a way that Marianne could not help but find a trifle menacing.

'I yield,' he said briefly. 'But I shall be back. Until then, Madame.'

As they resumed their way to the ballroom, Marianne permitted herself a faint sigh of relief and the smile she turned on her escort was full of gratitude:

'Thank you, Prince, for rescuing me. That Russian is quite inescapable!'

'So most women appear to think. True, they usually say it rather more languishingly, but who knows, perhaps you too may sigh one day? He has great charm, eh?'

'Don't count on it. I am afraid I prefer people to be civilized.'

There was no mistaking the surprise in the look he directed at her. However, he said merely: 'Hmm… I should not have thought it.'

The much talked-of ballroom which had been erected for this one night was a miracle of beauty and elegance. The blue canvas which formed its fragile walls was hung with shining gauze and swathed in garlands of many-coloured flowers made of fine silk and tulle. A profusion of gilded candelabra carried innumerable candles, lighting up the room like fairyland. The passage leading into it was decorated in the same style. A tall aperture provided a view of the lighted gardens and the ballroom, which had been built over a large, dry pool, was illumined outside by oil lamps in sockets.

When Marianne entered on Talleyrand's arm, the floor was already filled with couples dancing to the strains of a Viennese orchestra: glittering dresses and uniforms whirling delightfully in the waltz which had been sweeping Europe for some years now.

'I shall not offer to dance with you,' Talleyrand said. 'It is not an exercise I am fitted for. But I am sure you will not lack for partners.'

This was true. A crowd of young officers was already forming about Marianne, jostling one another in their eagerness to lead her away in time to that seductive music. She refused them all kindly, fearful of the scene which the Russian was quite capable of enacting, for she could feel his eyes still fixed on her. She had just seen her friend Dorothée de Périgord talking to Countess Zichy and the Duchess of Dalberg and was about to join them when she was prevented by the arrival of Their Majesties, the Emperor and Empress. The orchestra stopped dead and the dancers ranged themselves obediently at either side of the room.

'We were just in time,' Talleyrand observed, smiling. 'A little later and the Emperor would have been before us. I can't imagine he would have been pleased.'

But Marianne was not listening to him. Her attention was riveted suddenly on a man whose head rose above those of most of the crowd of guests standing on the far side of the space left for royalty to pass. For a moment she thought she must be seeing things, suffering from a delusion brought about by some wish of her own, so deeply buried in her heart that not even she was aware of it. But those keen features, that thin, fine-boned face, the taut, bronzed skin, dark almost as an Arab's, with the deepset, twinkling blue eyes and firm lips crooked into a half-smile that was both gay and impudent, the thick, unruly black hair that always looked slightly windblown, the careless set of the dark coat across those broad shoulders… surely there could not be another man like that in all the world. And suddenly, quite inexplicably, Marianne's heart gave a joyful leap and cried out his name with certainty long before her lips could bring themselves to frame the word: 'Jason!'

'Eh, so it is, upon my word!' said Talleyrand's voice placidly in her ear. 'Our friend Beaufort, to be sure. I knew he was expected but I had no idea he had already arrived.'

Marianne's eyes unfastened themselves briefly from the American and regarded the diplomat in surprise:

'You knew?'

'Don't I always know everything? I knew that a more or less unofficial envoy from President Madison was due in Paris some time soon, ostensibly on a goodwill mission from the United States government, and I knew who it was to be—'

'Jason! An ambassador? You can't be serious!'

'I did not say ambassador. I said envoy, and a somewhat unofficial one at that. It is not difficult to understand. Now that his brother is King of Spain, the Emperor is eager to get his hands on the Spanish-American colonies and is carrying out a propaganda campaign there which President Madison is very far from disliking. He has no respect for the deposed king, the imbecile Ferdinand VII and besides, he hopes to get Florida as a reward for his benevolent neutrality. It's Spanish territory but Bonaparte sold Louisiana to the Americans in 1803, so it would appear to be a logical move. Ssh now, here comes the Emperor.'

Napoleon, dressed as usual in the green uniform of a colonel of Chasseurs of the Guard, had already entered the ballroom. On his arm, Marie-Louise was in pink satin, shimmering with diamonds. They were followed by a brilliant train which included, as well as the Emperor's sisters and his military staff, the charming Prince Eugene, viceroy of Italy, with his wife Princess Augusta of Bavaria, the Duke of Würtzburg, the Queen of Spain, and a whole galaxy of other highnesses.

Like everyone else, Marianne sank into a stately reverence but her head remained obstinately unbowed, her green eyes still on the tall figure of Jason as he made his bow. He had not seen her. He was not looking in her direction. All his attention was fixed on the doorway through which the royal couple had entered and on the Emperor himself. His direct gaze swept past the new Empress and fastened with a curious intentness on the pale face of the imperial Corsican. He seemed to be seeking something in those Roman features.

Napoleon passed on, smiling now at his young bride, now at his host, Prince Schwarzenburg, speaking to no one, only nodding genially from time to time to one or other of the guests. He appeared to be in a hurry to reach the gardens where a grand firework display had been arranged and did not spare so much as a glance for the throne which had been set for him; but perhaps his haste was not to be wondered at, for the heat inside the canvas pavilion was growing more oppressive every moment, in spite of the fountains playing everywhere in the grounds.

Behind the imperial pair and their suite, the mass of guests flowed together like the Red Sea after the passage of the Jews, inspired in part by the courteous wish to keep as close as possible to their sovereigns and, to a still greater extent, by a purely human anxiety not to miss any of the fun. Within seconds, Marianne was submerged in a sea of silks and laces and separated from her partner by a twittering, shrieking throng which bore her irresistibly outside. Jason had vanished amid the swell and not all her efforts could give her a glimpse of him. Talleyrand, she had forgotten altogether. Doubtless he was somewhere in the tide of people.

Her mind was in a strange, feverish state, raging impatiently against all these people who had come between them just as she was on the point of running to Jason. It did not occur to her until much later to be surprised at the indifference with which she had regarded the Emperor's passing when, not so long before, he had been the centre of all her thoughts. Even Marie-Louise, gazing complacently around the assembled company with her pale eyes brimming with gratified vanity, had failed to irritate as she usually did. Indeed, Marianne had scarcely seen the newly wedded pair, so full was her heart of the new, wholly unexpected and revitalizing joy of seeing Jason once again: Jason, for whom she had waited for so many days in vain! She was not even angry at the thought that he was here, that he must have had her letter and yet had not come to her. Without being aware of it she was already seeking, and finding, all sorts of excuses for him. She had always known, after all, that Jason Beaufort was not like other people.

She did not catch sight of him again until the first rocket sent a gigantic spray of rose-coloured sparks rushing across the dark sky to fall back softly towards the terraces where the women's jewels rivalled the splendour of the milky way in a shower of light that silhouetted every figure sharply against the massed banks of flowers and shrubs. He was standing with some other people, a little apart, by the balustrade of one of the terraces leading to a grotto illuminated within by a soft, pearly light. He was standing with folded arms, watching the dazzling display as calmly as if he had been watching the courses of the stars from the deck of his own ship. Deftly catching up the long train of her dress over one gloved wrist, Marianne threaded her way between the knots of people, intent on joining him.

It was not easy. The terrace between Marianne and Jason was packed tight with guests, all pressing inward around the carpeted area where chairs had been placed for Napoleon and Marie-Louise. Marianne had to push her way past a number of persons who stood gazing upwards, wholly absorbed in what was, beyond a doubt, a very remarkable spectacle. But she was, almost without realizing it, in the condition of a swimmer who, at the end of her strength, had felt her foot touch on the shifting, sandy bottom. She wanted to reach Jason and to reach him now. She had waited too long already.

At last she climbed the three steps leading up to the grotto and as she did so the sky blazed into golden fire from innumerable rockets, surrounding her with such a halo of bright light that the eyes of the occupants of the little terrace were drawn instinctively to the lovely creature who, in her gown and her fabulous jewels, seemed the very spirit of the ball incarnate.

Jason Beaufort, standing a little apart from the group, leaning against an outsized urn filled with flowers, saw her too. A world of feelings flashed for an instant across his set face: surprise, disbelief, admiration, happiness – but only for an instant. Then he was moving forward very coolly to bow before her:

'How do you do? I confess that, coming to Paris, I had hoped to have the pleasure of seeing you, but I did not think to find you here. Allow me to compliment you – you are exquisite tonight.'

'But I—'

Thrown off her balance, Marianne stared at him uncomprehendingly. His tone, so coldly formal, almost ceremonious – when she had come to meet him with hands outstretched, a heart overflowing with gladness, within an ace of casting herself into his arms? What could have happened to turn Jason – her friend and the only man, apart from Jolival, whom she trusted in this vile world – into this polite, disinterested stranger? What, not even a smile? Nothing but worn-out conventionalities?

Stiffened by pride, she managed with a painful effort to dominate her disappointment and accept the slap which fate had dealt her. Up went her head, while her fan fluttered quickly, hiding the trembling of her fingers as she schooled her features to a smile and her voice to the necessary social lightness.

'I thank you,' she said sweetly. 'For myself, your presence took me wholly by surprise.' She laid the faintest of stresses on the 'your'. 'Have you been in Paris long?'

'Two days.'

'Indeed…'

The words were nothing, the merest commonplace such as might have been exchanged by virtual strangers. All of a sudden Marianne found herself wanting to cry. She could not understand it. What had happened to her friend? Could this cold, handsome stranger be the same man who, in the summerhouse at the Hôtel Matignon, had begged her to go with him to America, who had snatched her from the quarries of Chaillot, who had sworn never to forget her and charged Gracchus to watch over her every second of her life?

Even as she sought in vain for something to say that would not be either stupid or inept, she was aware of his eyes scrutinizing every detail of her appearance and she resented it, as if he were doing her an injustice. He had only just reached Paris. He could not have heard yet of her marriage and must be thinking that Napoleon maintained his mistress in extravagant style. His bright eyes went from the emeralds to the gold dress, then back to the emeralds, merciless and accusing.

The silence grew uncomfortable, despite the noise of the fireworks. Marianne dared not raise her eyes to Jason's now, for fear he should see the tears in them. She was about to move away, telling herself wretchedly that there was nothing more to be said between them, when his voice stopped her:

'If you will allow me, Madame—'

Hope welled up, instinctively, released by the half-dozen words. 'Yes?'

'I should like to present my wife…'

'Your…' Marianne's voice failed her. She felt suddenly weak, lost and helpless. Her fan shut with a click and her fingers tightened on it so viciously that several of the slender ivory sticks snapped suddenly, but Jason did not appear to notice her confusion. He held out his hand and drew towards him a woman of whose presence Marianne, absorbed in her own feelings, had not been aware until that moment. Now she stared with all the horror of one seeing a ghost at the slightly-built young woman, dressed in a robe of black lace over an underdress of silver, who stepped out of the shadows behind the American. She wore her dark hair in the Spanish fashion, with a high comb covered by a mantilla of the same lace as her gown, in which was a white rose, matching those which bloomed at her breast. Below the mantilla, Marianne saw a grave young face with finely moulded features and lips which, for all their delicacy, showed a bitter twist surprising in one so young. Her eyes were large, dark and melancholy, surmounted by slim, arched brows pencilled on pale skin. The general impression was of extreme physical fragility but the face revealed both pride and obstinacy.

Whether she was pretty or not, this woman who had stepped from the shadows of a summer night to shatter her new-found happiness, Marianne could not for the life of her have said. There was no room for anything in her vision, her heart or her mind but one vast disappointment which, little by little, became an aching pain. It was like waking from a dream of joy and warmth and light to the greyness of a dull November morning and for an instant Marianne found herself wishing she could close her eyes and slip back into the dream. As though out of a fog, she heard Jason speaking to the stranger and was aware, even through her misery, that he was speaking Spanish:

'I want to make you known to a very old friend of mine. You permit?'

'Of course – if she is indeed your friend.'

The tone, lightly contemptuous and at the same time more than a little suspicious, made Marianne's hackles rise. A little surge of anger momentarily diverted her thoughts from her own grief and actually did her good by helping her to regain her self-command. She smiled dangerously and, in a voice no less disdainful, asked in the purest Castilian: 'Why should I not be, indeed?'

The beautiful brows rose slightly but the answer came perfectly gravely:

'It does not seem that the word friendship is treated here as seriously as I have been used to find it at home.'

'At home? You are Spanish, I think?'

With the instinct of all seafaring men for the approach of a squall, even a mild one, Jason possessed himself of his wife's hand and, tucking it securely within his arm, was quick to answer for her:

'Pilar is from Florida,' he said quietly. 'Her father, Don Agostino Hernandez de Quintana, owned great estates at Fernandina, near our frontier. It's a small town, maybe, but a vast country, less than half-civilized, and Pilar is seeing Europe for the first time.'

The girl looked up at him, her expression as gloomy as ever:

'And for the last, I hope! I have no wish to return, or indeed to remain here, for I dislike it heartily. Only Spain I wished to see, but it is impossible to go there, alas, with this terrible war! And now, querido mio, perhaps you will inform me of this lady's name?'

Marianne seethed inwardly. The girl was a savage! Stuffed full of pride and religious bigotry! And probably an enemy of the Emperor's into the bargain! Was she to spend the whole night meeting barbarians? First that Mongol and now this creature!

She was so angry that it was all she could do to choke back the temper that was making her whole body tremble. And as Jason, unaware of her marriage, opened his mouth to make the introductions, she forestalled the threatened gaffe by saying coldly: 'Let me spare you the trouble. As you yourself said, Mrs Beaufort is very naturally ignorant of society. Allow me to introduce myself, Madame. I am Princess Corrado Sant'Anna. If we meet again, as I sincerely trust we may, you may address me as Serene Highness!'

Denying herself so much as a glance at the shock in Jason's blue eyes, she bowed slightly and then turned away from them to go in search of Talleyrand. The firework display was already coming to an end in a blaze of glory, with the two imperial eagles, the French and the Austrian, colourfully united by the genius of the Ruggieri brothers. There was a burst of applause but Marianne regarded this remarkable pyrotechnic achievement with a jaundiced eye.

It's absurd! she told herself. Pretentious and absurd! And so am I. Flinging my titles at that stupid child! But it was her own fault entirely. I wish the ground had opened and swallowed her up! I wish, yes, I wish she were dead… To think that she is his wife, his wife! The two short syllables stung Marianne like so many wasps. She was seized afresh by the old longing to run away. It was a primitive urge, a legacy perhaps from some remote, nomadic ancestor, which overcame her whenever she was unhappy. It was not cowardice, she was not afraid to face her troubles, but rather a need to hide her feelings from prying eyes and seek her own cure in silence and solitude.

She went with the crowd, automatically, back into the ballroom where the violins were once again in full swing. She had some idea in her head of going straight out to find her carriage, of going home to the quiet of her own house and her own room. She found herself hating this embassy and all the people in it. Even Napoleon, seated on the red and gold throne which had been prepared for him and for Marie-Louise at the far end of the room, no longer had any power over her. She wanted only to go home. But then she saw, coming straight towards her, a group of ladies which included Dorothée and Countess Kielmansegg and a sound of annoyance broke from her at the sight. Now she would have to stand and chatter inanely when all she wanted was peace and quiet to listen to the odd, unhappy murmurings of her heart and try to understand… No, she could not, it was too much…

Almost in the same instant, she caught sight of Chernychev, standing close by in his dark green uniform and watching her. Scarcely thinking what she did, she turned to him:

'You asked for a dance, Count. This one is yours if you will have it'

'Oh cruel! Does one ask the humble votary if he would approach the divinity?'

Cold, green eyes stared into the Russian's. 'I did not invite you to make love to me, merely to dance this waltz,' she said concisely.

This time, his only answer was a bow and a smile which showed a glint of white teeth. As they stepped on to the floor, Marianne let fall her broken fan and, catching up her long train, abandoned her waist to her partner's encircling arm. He swooped on it like a bird of prey and bore her off into the midst of the dancers with such enthusiasm that she could not help a small, sad smile.

She did not love this man but he desired her, unashamedly, and in her present confused state Marianne was ready to find comfort in any kind of positive feeling, even that. He was a perfect dancer with an amazing sense of time and to Marianne, whirling in his arms, it seemed as if she were floating on air. The waltz seemed to free her from the weight of her body. If only her mind could be freed of its burdens as easily!

As she danced, she saw the Emperor seated on his throne, the Empress at his side, speaking quietly, but her eyes did not linger, and already Chernychev had swept her on, his gloved hand firmly clasping her waist. Next she saw Jason, dancing with his wife. Their eyes met briefly but Marianne looked away hurriedly and moved by some feminine impulse of coquetry, by the need which lurks deep in every woman to deal blow for blow and give back hurt for hurt, she favoured the Russian with her most dazzling smile.

'You are very quiet, my dear Count,' she said, loudly enough to be overheard by the American couple. 'Has joy robbed you of your tongue?'

'You forbade me to make love to you, Princess, and since I cannot think of anything else…'

'Do you know so little of women that you always take them so literally? Surely you know we sometimes like to be disobeyed, if it is done gracefully enough?'

The Russian's green eyes darkened very nearly to black. His arm tightened in a way that left no doubt of his delight at this unexpected softening. Marianne's sudden cordiality appeared to stir him to such transports of joy that any moment she expected him to burst into some savage yell of triumph. He restrained himself, however, and merely leaned a little closer, until his cheek was pressed against her forehead and his hot breath was on her neck. Held tight against him, conscious of the hardness of his muscles, Marianne had the momentary fancy that she was dancing with some well-regulated machine.

'Take care how you drive me to disobey you,' he murmured passionately into her ear. 'I might want more than you are ready to grant, and when I want something, I do not give up until I have it.'

'But – surely you have got what you wanted? We are dancing together, and I think I even smiled at you.'

'That's just it! With such a woman, how can a man help wanting more and more?'

'Oh, indeed?' Her smile challenged him.

But she was not fated to learn how far Chernychev's desires might have carried him that night, for suddenly, without warning, he uttered an inarticulate cry, startling the couples closest to them out of their abandonment to the music. Marianne found herself released, so abruptly that she kept her feet only by a miracle. Before she could find her voice to protest, or ask him what he meant by it, she saw the Russian officer thrust his way unceremoniously between the pairs of dancers on the floor and spring for the ballroom wall, both arms outstretched to snatch at one of the flimsy garlands of artificial roses which had caught fire from a sagging candle in one the gilded holders and was blazing merrily. Heedless of burned bands, Chernychev tore down the garland but already it was too late. The flames had seized on the silvery gauzes draping the canvas walls and were spreading rapidly. Within seconds, the whole wall was ablaze.

With one great gasp of horror, the dancers pressed back to the other side of the room, towards the throne. Carried along with the rest, Marianne found herself standing close to Napoleon as Prince Eugene, who had been chatting to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Champagny, at a little distance, forced his way urgently to the Emperor's side. She saw the young viceroy say something quietly to the Emperor who turned at once and took Marie-Louise by the arm.

'Come,' he said. The room is on fire. We must go.'

But the young Empress remained seated, her eyes riveted on the blazing wall, apparently fascinated by the flames.

'Come, Louise!' the Emperor commanded. Almost dragging her from her chair, he hurried her swiftly in the direction of the passage to the house. Marianne tried to follow them but a movement of panic in the crowd lifted her like a straw and bore her helplessly towards the opening leading into the grounds. Nothing, now, could have halted the terror-stricken throng. In another instant, the oiled canvas roof was alight. The fire ran along the other walls with terrifying speed. One by one, the gilded chandeliers with their loads of lighted candles fell from the ceiling on to the milling crowd below, felling some and setting fire to the clothes of others. A girl's dress of blue tulle became a sheet of flame. Screaming in agony, she hurled herself like a living torch blindly into the crowd which, far from offering her any assistance, only tried frantically to avoid her. One officer did rip off his jacket and throw it round her in an effort to smother the flames but both were soon swallowed up in the hysterical stampede.

Very soon, the exits, the tall windows in the canvas walls and the passageway by which the Emperor had left, were blocked by the fire. The gallery itself was blazing, carrying the fire straight into the embassy drawing-rooms. Now the only passable way out was by the lofty doorway opening into the gardens and towards this the crowd surged with all the violence of water bursting through a dam. A thick, suffocating black smoke was filling the blazing ballroom, stinging the eyes and lungs.

To escape it, men and women fought their way towards the single exit with a savage fury, thrusting with fists and elbows, trampling one another down, battling for life with no thought for anything beyond the naked, primitive instinct of self-preservation.

The women were the first to fall, trodden down by the more powerful males, by the very man perhaps who, only a moment before, had been bowing with exquisite grace over the very fingers he now crushed beneath his heel, or murmuring sweet nothings into ears he would have torn off ruthlessly if it would help him to escape more quickly and win through into the blessed, breathable fresh air outside.

Carried away in the midst of this desperate scramble for life, bruised, half-stifled with smoke and by the pressure of so many human bodies, the train ripped from her dress, Marianne had a horrified vision of glaring eyes and screaming mouths, of faces contorted with terror. The heat was unbearable and the drifts of smoke that filled the room with a thick, grey fog made her feel as if her lungs would burst. Among the press of heads around her, she caught sight of Savary's, bobbing like some absurd ship on an angry sea. The Minister of Police was looking very nearly as green as his braided uniform but, shrieking incomprehensibly, he was making a vain attempt to bring some order into the panic-stricken crowd.

The opening leading into the garden was not far away now but the hangings with which it was draped were already beginning to burn and the pressure of the crowd was growing ever more frantic as each person fought to get across the threshold before the way was barred by the flames. Such was the press of bodies with everyone trying to escape at once that the crowd became jammed tight in the doorway, like the cork of a bottle. It was impossible to move, either forward or backwards. People struggled wildly. Marianne was hit in the chest by a senator's flailing elbow and felt hands grasping her hair. Fortunately for her, there was, not far behind her in the crowd, a giant of a man, a great, bearded, bear-like creature whose massive shoulders were clad in the brilliant uniform of the Russian guard. This man was fighting like a fury, pushing at the crowd in front of him with his great hands. Sparks from a falling chandelier set light to his hair and, uttering an inhuman cry, he gave such a violent thrust that the human stopper burst out into the open amid billows of smoke. Marianne found herself, horribly bruised about the chest but safe, outside the ballroom, on the steps leading to the gardens. But she had hardly drawn a breath of slightly cooler air into her lungs before an anguished cry broke from her. A woman beside her groaned piteously, then another gave a shriek that ended on a choking sob. The lamps which had twinkled so gaily on the outside of the ballroom were tipping over, spilling hot oil on to the bare shoulders and uncovered breasts below, causing fearful injuries. Marianne stumbled forward towards an ornamental pool whose waters glowed redly. Servants were hurrying towards it with buckets and basins: none too soon, for by now the ballroom doorway was ablaze.

From the steps, Marianne saw a piece of burning timber crash down on old Prince Kurakin. The massive, gouty Russian ambassador collapsed with a grunt like a wounded bear, but a man in the tattered uniform of a French general sprang forward instantly to rescue him.

Leaning her bare back gratefully against the cold stone of one of the statues, Marianne stared, wide-eyed with horror, at the spectacle of desolation and death which, all round her in the gardens, had replaced the magical beauty of so short a time before. She was still gasping for breath and her chest hurt her, and her shoulder where the skin was blistered and cracked from her burns. Even here, the air was almost too thick to breathe. The ballroom was now a blazing inferno, shooting roaring flames up into the dark sky, as if in search of something more to feed on. Vague shapes could still be seen emerging from the furnace within, their garments blazing, and rolling themselves screaming on the ground in their efforts to put out the stinging flames.

The injured and dying were everywhere. People were rushing hither and thither in panic, not knowing what they were doing. Marianne saw Prince Metternich run towards the flames, a bucket of water in his hands. She saw another man, also running, carrying a woman in a silver dress and she recognized Jason, oblivious of everything but the need to bear his wife, Pilar, safely out of danger.

I no longer exist for him, Marianne thought bewilderedly. He is thinking only of her. He has not tried to find out if I am even alive…

She felt suddenly very weak, and very much alone. Among all these people, there was not one who was her friend, not one whose thoughts were only for her. She felt so desolate that she put her arms round the statue, a little figure of Ceres in white marble, and started to cry bitterly, clinging to the stone which was already growing warm from the fire.

'Antonia! Antonia!'

The piercing shriek close beside her roused Marianne from her agony of self-pity. Looking up, she saw a woman clearly far advanced in pregnancy running desperately towards the blaze. Her tangled hair fell about her shoulders, over the shreds of a white muslin gown, and her arms were stretched out before her. To her horror, Marianne recognized the ambassador's sister-in-law, Princess Schwarzenburg, and darted swiftly in pursuit:

'Madame! Madame!… Where are you going? For pity's sake—'

The eyes the young woman turned on her were so dilated with horror and anguish that it was doubtful if they even saw her.

'My daughter!' she said. 'Antonia! She is in there!'

With a sudden movement, she wrenched herself free from Marianne's grasp, leaving her holding nothing but a few strips of tattered muslin, and resumed her blind race. Still shrieking and calling, she had reached the fire when, with a mighty crash, the floor of the ballroom collapsed into the empty pool above which it was built and Marianne saw the wretched woman vanish into the fiery pit below.

Sick with horror, her stomach heaving, Marianne could only double up and vomit. Her head was hammering and she was sweating heavily. When she lifted her eyes it was to see with disgust that the musicians, who had escaped with the rest into the gardens, were busy among the injured, robbing them of their jewels. And they, unhappily, were not the only ones. The people who had swarmed up on to the walls of the embassy garden to watch the fireworks with shouts of delight, had come in for their share of the spoils. Groups of ill-favoured rascals were slipping over the walls into the gardens, eyes gleaming like a pack of hungry wolves, and were going silently about their grisly work.

The efforts of the embassy staff to keep the evil tide at bay were worse than useless. A few men attempted to defend the women victims, but they were too few to offer any effective resistance.

But, Marianne thought, with mounting horror, the firemen should be here, soldiers… Where is the Emperor's escort?

But the Emperor had gone and his escort with him. How long would it be before a regiment of troops could be brought in to restore order and drive off the looters? A hand fell on her suddenly, snatching the tiara from her head, and a handful of hair with it, then tugging at the emerald necklace, trying to break the clasp. Marianne screamed in terror:

'Help! Thieves!'

A second hand, rough and evil-smelling, stopped her mouth. Instinctively, she struggled with her attacker, seeing a long, pallid face and cruel eyes, a man dressed in dirty overalls, reeking of sweat. Biting and scratching, she managed to wriggle from his grasp and started to run, her hands gripping her necklace, but he was before her, hurling himself forward to jerk her back. She felt a steel blade pricking her throat.

'Give me those!' said a hoarse voice, 'or I'll cut yer throat!'

He pressed lightly, so that the blade nicked the soft flesh. Petrified with fear, Marianne put up trembling hands to unfasten the necklace and saw the man slip it into his sleeve. Then she took the sparkling drops from her ears. The knife was removed and Marianne thought that now he would let her go, but he did not. Instead, he bent over her, chuckling evilly. She felt his breath on her face, foul with the reek of cheap wine, and gave a choking scream; but moist, cold lips were clamped hard on hers, stifling the cry with a kiss that made her retch. At the same time, the man holding her was thrusting her roughly in the direction of a bed of huge peonies guarding the entrance to a shrubbery.

'This way, my beauty! It's not every day I gets me 'ands on a swell mort like you!'

Marianne was no sooner released from the stinking embrace than she began to scream and struggle again, thin, piercing screams uttered on a high note of hysteria. Failing to muffle them, the man drew back his arm and struck her with such force that she fell to the ground. But even as he bent to drag her in among the bushes, a man's figure sprang from the shadows and grappled with him, flinging him down a yard or two from Marianne. The ruddy glow of the fire enabled her to recognize Chernychev. He was bleeding from a cut across his temple and his uniform was badly charred, but he seemed otherwise unhurt.

'Run!' he snarled. 'By St Vladimir, I mean to gut this moujik like a herring!'

He did not look at Marianne. In the unnatural, flickering half-light, she could see his green eyes shining with savage joy at the prospect of a fight. He stood with his hands held low and open, ready to grip, his body tense and perfectly controlled, unarmed and wholly forgetful of his recently-healed wound, confronting the villain with the butcher's knife.

'He stole my jewels,' Marianne whispered, holding her hand to her bruised throat and feeling the raw wound on her neck where the necklace had bitten into it as the man pulled.

'That is all? He did not rape you?'

'He had no time, he—'

'Get yourself to safety. I will recover your jewels. As for this gallows-bird, he may thank Our Lady of Kazan he was not born in Russia! There he would have died under the knout for daring to so much as touch you.'

The man gave a crack of laughter and spat out some vile oath, settling the knife more comfortably in his grimy paw.

'But he is armed!' Marianne wailed. 'He will kill you.'

Now it was the Cossack's turn to laugh, his slanting eyes narrowed to gleaming slits as he surveyed his adversary:

'He? His knife will not save him. I have slain bears and tamed wild horses with these bare hands. I shall have throttled him in two minutes, knife or no!'

Then, with a powerful thrust of steely muscles, Chernychev sprang. Caught off-balance, the other man fell heavily, with a choking gasp, striving to tear away the hands that clutched ferociously at his throat, half-throttling him before he could use his weapon. The knife had fallen from his hand and Marianne bent quickly to seize it, but the man was strong for all his gaunt frame and already he had wrenched his neck free and was making a recovery. Both men rolled over and over on the ground, as closely intertwined as a pair of fighting snakes engaged in a savage struggle on the damp grass of a smoothly-shaven lawn.

The Russian was a skilful wrestler and Marianne was not greatly alarmed for him. She was confident that he would emerge victorious. Then, suddenly, she realized to her horror that two more men in working clothes and three-decker caps were creeping up silently on the struggling pair. She guessed that they were associates of the first bully coming to the rescue and knew that it would be no longer a fair fight. It came to her in a flash that Chernychev would need help and she looked round wildly, in time to see a company of soldiers entering the grounds by way of the walls, carrying stretchers and other rescue apparatus. Gathering up the rags of her dress, she ran towards them and seeing a group of men in green uniforms bending over the injured seized one of them by the arm.

'Count Chernychev!' she gasped out. 'He is in danger. Come quickly! They will kill him!'

The man whose arm she held turned and looked at her and so strong was the atmosphere of unreality which haunted that terrible night that Marianne felt almost no surprise to see it was Napoleon himself. Black with soot, his Chasseur uniform charred and torn, he was supervising the removal of an injured woman who lay moaning softly on a stone bench. It must have been he who, on his way back to the stricken embassy, had called out the rescue parties who were already taking control of the grounds. He spoke briefly:

'Who will kill him?'

'Some men… over there, by the bushes! They attacked me and the Count came to my rescue. Hurry, there are three of them, all armed – and he is alone, with nothing but his bare hands—'

'Who are these men?'

'I don't know. Robbers! They came over the wall—'

The Emperor stood up. His grey eyes, set beneath frowning brows, were hard as stone, as he called out: 'Eugene! Duroc! Over here! It seems there is murder being done now.'

With the viceroy of Italy and the Duke of Frioul hard on his heels, the Emperor of the French sped off as fast as his legs would carry him to the assistance of the Russian attaché. Marianne, assured now of Chernychev's safety, wandered back automatically towards the fountains. She did not know what to do now, or where to go. She watched, beyond either surprise or relief, the arrival of the fire brigade at last, or of what passed for the fire brigade, for they numbered only six men in all, and those more than three-parts drunk. She heard Savary's roars of rage:

'Six of you, only! Where are the rest?'

'We – don't know, General.'

'What of your commander, that fool Ledoux? Where is he?'

'I-in the country, General…'

'Six!' Savary was beside himself with rage. 'Six out of two hundred and ninety-three! And where are the pumps?'

'Here – but there's no water. The conduits in the Grand Boulevards are locked fast and we have not the key.'

'And where is the key?'

The fireman's answer was an evasive gesture which served to madden the already infuriated Chief of Police still further. Marianne saw him turn and hurry away, dragging the unfortunate fireman with him, while the wretched man fought desperately to keep his feet, knowing that any moment would surely bring him face-to-face with an anger far more terrible than any Minister's.

Yet help was forthcoming. The Imperial Guard, summoned by Napoleon and reinforced by a regiment of tirailleurs, was now engaged in attempting to save the embassy and those within. The tall ladder had been fetched from the library in the rue de la Loi and the waters of the fountains had been pressed into service. But Marianne soon lost interest in all that was happening around her. Now that the Emperor had taken charge, everything would be all right. She could hear his ringing tones somewhere in the garden…

Her head ached and her mind was a blank. She felt bruised in every inch of her body and yet was unable to summon up the strength to try and get away, to find a carriage to take her home. Something had snapped inside her and she gazed round, with what was almost indifference, at the scene of unbelievable devastation which filled the gardens. The terrible fire which, in a few minutes, had transformed a happy, elegant assembly of people into a scene of carnage was too much like the circumstances of her own life not to have a profound effect on her. This tragic ball had dealt her the final blow, the last, unbearable wound. And she had no one to blame but herself. How could she have been so blind to her real feelings? There had been so many wrong turnings, so much obstinacy in the face of the evidence, of the advice even of her best friends, so many fruitless struggles against nothing, all culminating at last in this cruel ending which resolved itself into a single image, the image of Jason carrying another woman in his arms, and it had taken all this for the truth to break upon her unwilling eyes at last, blindingly but too late: she loved Jason, she had always loved him, even when she believed herself in love with another, even when she thought she hated him. How could she have failed to realize it when, in her bridal chamber at Selton Hall, she had felt herself swooning under his stolen kiss? How could she have failed to understand in the midst of her joy at seeing him in the caverns of Chaillot, her disappointment when he left Paris without seeing her, excitement at finding the camellias in her dressing-room on the night of her one, public concert, the impatience and, at last, the bitter disappointment when she had looked for him in vain, along all the roads of Italy, right up to the last moment before she pledged herself to an insensate marriage? She could still hear Adelaide saying with quiet concern: 'You are quite sure you do not love him?'

Yes, she had been sure then, in her folly and pride at having enslaved the giant of Europe in the burning chains of sensual passion. For in that bitterest moment of all, Marianne looked clearly at last at the real nature of the bond between her and the Emperor. She had loved him with pride and with terror, with a delight that carried with it a faint, delicious sense of danger and forbidden fruit; she had loved him with all the ardour of her youth and her eager flesh which, through him, had come to know the magic spell born of the perfect unison of two bodies. But she knew now that her love had been made of wonder and gratitude. She had fallen victim to the curious power of attraction he possessed over other human beings and, even suffering from his neglect, the jealousy she had felt was a fierce, burning thing that was somehow stimulating. It was not this pain, this rending agony, this uncontrollable quivering of her whole being at the thought of Jason and Pilar together. And now that she had lost, lost for ever the happiness which had lain so long within her grasp, Marianne felt that she had lost also the will to live.

Feeling that her life was ruined through her own fault, she felt again, more strongly than ever, the sense of being nothing but an empty doll which had haunted her on her arrival at the ball. In her blind folly and pride, she had allowed Jason to slip through her fingers and, turning to another woman, join his life with hers. Pilar was the one who would live with him in the land where the cotton grew, where the black men sang, she would share each moment of his life and sleep at night in his arms, and bear his children…

Around her, the gardens had become a battlefield as the newly arrived troops set themselves to drive out the looters, while medical men were supervising the removal of the injured, many of whom were already past help. More soldiers, armed with buckets of water, were endeavouring to halt the progress of the fire and save the embassy building itself. No one paid any attention to the woman watching from the shelter of a bush.

She was fascinated by the great fire. She could feel the heat of it even where she stood. The trees nearest to it had caught fire and long, greedy tongues of flame were shooting up triumphantly from the mass of timbers and falling tree trunks. There were no more screams now, no more groans, only the loud voice of the fire, filling the night. Marianne listened, her eyes full of tears, as if out of that blazing heart might come the answer to her own searing pain. A line from Shakespeare floated up from the depths of her memory: 'One fire burns out another's burning.' Her love for Jason, so suddenly made clear to her, had quenched her love for the Emperor, leaving only kindness and admiration like glowing gems amid the dying ashes. But what fresh fire would come to put out the love that racked her now, before despair brought her to the verge of madness? Jason was far away by now. He had borne his young bride away from this scene of carnage and at that very moment he was probably at her side, calming her fears with soft caresses and whispered words of love. He had forgotten all about Marianne, and his forgetfulness was death to her. Revelation had come too late. It had destroyed her, as lightning destroys the tree it strikes. Nothing remained for her now but to tiptoe quietly away for ever…

She had a sudden recollection of Princess Schwarzenburg, casting herself into the flames in search of her child. She had gone into the fire as though into a shrine, unhesitating, unflinching, with a blind certainty, the certainty of finding there the being whom she sought. And the bitter, fearful gateway to death had been transformed for her into a triumphal arch, a way of sacrifice freely consented to, an entry into eternal peace. All that was needed was a little, so very little courage!

With eyes wide open, Marianne left the shelter of the bushes and walked towards the fire. She did not tremble. Grief is a powerful opiate against fear and her anguish was stronger than the Indian hemp on which Hindu widows were gorged by their priests to make them throw themselves unresisting on their husbands' pyres. She wanted to escape from pain but wished no one to suffer for her death. An accident… a simple accident… And like the poor princess a little while before, Marianne began to run towards the blaze. She tripped over a stone that lay in her path, but the sharp Stab of pain was not enough to break the spell that held her. She picked herself up and ran on. She seemed to hear her own name called above the roaring in her ears but even that could not stop her. Whoever was calling her, it could only be to bring her back to the monotonous round of a life she no longer had any use for, to a long trance, a death-in-life, rotting gently in solitude. The death she had chosen for herself was cruel but swift and led to a longer peace, one free of memories and regrets.

The heat was so great that she halted at the edge of the inferno and recoiled involuntarily, shielding her face from the hot breath of the flames. She was ashamed of herself at once and, murmuring the first words of a prayer, launched herself forward. Flames caught at the torn rags of her dress and a long tongue of fire licked up her body, so that she screamed with the pain of it. But just as she was about to fall into the white-hot abyss, a black shape descended on her, enveloping her in its dense folds, and she felt herself rolled violently on the ground. At the last moment, someone had come between her and her death, condemning her to live.

Conscious of the weight of a body, she struggled wildly in an effort to escape the paralysing grip which had successfully smothered the flames, trying in her fury to bite the hand which held her. The man, whoever he was, released her, got to his knees and slapped her face, deliberately, twice. Her eyes could make out only a black figure silhouetted against the ruddy glow of the fire, but she hurled herself at it blindly, clawing and scratching in a mad desire to fight back. The man grasped her wrists and held her off. At the same time, a voice said icily:

'Keep still or I will do it again. My God, are you mad! Another instant and you would have been incinerated! You damned little fool! Is there no room in that brainless skull of yours for anything but stupid, selfish vanity?'

Marianne collapsed abruptly, like a taut bowstring released suddenly by a weary archer, and listened to the torrent of abuse which Jason vented on her with as much rapture as if it had been heavenly music. She did not attempt to ask herself by what miracle he was there, by what unspeakable marvel he had managed to snatch her from the flames when she had seen him quit the scene so short a time before. It was enough for her that he was there. His anger was nothing, it proved only that somewhere in his heart he still cared a little, and only to have him kneel there beside her, Marianne would gladly have submitted to being abused the whole night long. Even the crushing pain he was inflicting on her wrists was happiness.

She gave a blissful sigh and, regardless of her burns, sank back on to the grass and smiled with all her heart at Jason's dark form.

'Jason!' she murmured. 'You are here… you have come back…'

Abruptly, he released her wrists and interrupted his tirade to stare with a kind of dazed bewilderment at the graceful figure stretched before him, clad in the tattered shreds of a gold dress through which the flesh showed bruised and torn and streaked with blood. Mechanically, he dragged his sleeve across his sweating brow, pushing back the damp hair, trying to smooth away the mixture of terror and anger which had taken hold of him when he saw that the woman racing madly towards the fire was Marianne. And now she was gazing at him as though at a vision, her great, green eyes sparkling with tears, smiling at him for all the world as if her body were not covered in burns, as if she could not feel them… But he too was unaware of the burns he had sustained in smothering the flames with his own body, conscious only that he had come in time. He felt more tired than he had ever felt in all his life. It was as if the last few minutes had drained him of every particle of strength.

Marianne herself was blissfully happy. For her, the sound and fury all about them no longer existed. Nothing remained but the dark figure, silently regarding her, and breathing heavily because of the pounding of his heart against his ribs. She wanted to touch him, to find in his strength the refuge she had so long sought and she held out her arms to draw him to her. But even as she did so, the movement ended in a gasp of pain, a terrible, stabbing pain which made her feel as if she were being torn apart.

Jason was on his feet in a moment, staring, shocked, as Marianne lay writhing in the grass at his feet:

'What is it? Are you hurt?'

'No – I don't know… the pain… aah!'

He knelt beside her again, bending over her, trying to raise her head which lolled alarmingly, but almost at once a long moan escaped from her blanched lips and her body arched beneath a fresh onslaught of pain. When it had passed, Marianne's face was ashen and she was gasping like a hurt animal. She cast a terrified look at Jason, who was very nearly as white as she. Then she felt something warm and wet between her legs and knew, in a flash, what was happening.

'My – my baby,' she whispered. 'I am losing my baby.'

'What's that? You are – pregnant?'

She nodded, saving her strength for the fresh wave of pain that was building up inside her.

'Of course. You are married. But where is your husband, where is this prince of yours?'

How could he mock her so cruelly when he could see that she was in such pain? She uttered a long moan and clung to his arm with all her strength for support. Then she managed to gasp: 'I don't know. Not here. In Italy!… Help me, for pity's sake!… The child… the Emperor… I…'

The rest was lost in a scream. Leaping to his feet, Jason swore comprehensively and was off like an arrow, making for the group of people standing by a little temple watching as if in a nightmare as the remains of the ballroom and the passage leading into it burned themselves out. It was possible to see beyond them now, to the blackened walls of the embassy, with their shattered windows and the groups of servants and troops still working to extinguish the fires in several of the rooms. Jason saw the Emperor and ran towards him. Marianne had mentioned the Emperor in the same breath as the child.

A few minutes later, Marianne surfaced from a fresh wave of suffering to see two faces bending over her, Jason's and the Emperor's. She heard the Emperor speaking in a strained voice:

'She is having a miscarriage. Hurry. Bring a stretcher. She must be got away from here. And fetch Corvisart – he must be here somewhere, seeing to the injured. You there! Over here!'

Marianne heard no more, nor did she see to whom the last words were addressed. She was aware only that Jason was leaving her and struggled up to call him back. Napoleon's hand forced her gently back again. Then, stripping off his jacket, he rolled it up and placed it beneath her head:

'Hush, carissima mia … do not try to move. You will be all right… do not be afraid. I am with you…'

He groped for her damp fingers and squeezed them gently. She looked up at him gratefully. So he still loved her a little, after all. She was not altogether alone in the world with her broken heart and her pain-racked body. It was good to feel that warm, strong hand holding hers reassuringly. Marianne forgot that she had wanted to die and clung to it, as a frightened child dings to its father. Yet would that handsome officer in the gilded frame have soothed his daughter in her wretchedness with such patient tenderness?

Sunk in another tide of pain, she was yet conscious of being lifted carefully and carried with all possible speed through the ravaged gardens where ashes, still warm, drifted on the night wind. In the intervals of pain she looked eagerly for Jason and not finding him whispered his name. The Emperor's hand tightened on hers. He bent over her:

'I sent him back to his wife. You do not need him now that I am here… He is only a friend…'

A friend… It was the word she would have used herself the day before, and meant it, yet now it tortured her. A friend… only a friend, not even that, perhaps, if this Pilar forbade it! A moment ago, she had believed he had come back to her. But no, it was all over. Jason had gone back to his wife and she had nothing left to hope for, except perhaps death which, a moment ago, had rejected her. She was still losing blood, not fast but enough, perhaps, to drain away her life…

With a little, quivering sigh, she gave herself up to pain.

CHAPTER TWO Monsieur Carême's Chocolate

Baron Corvisart rolled down his shirtsleeves, fastened his pleated linen wristbands with care and inserted himself into the coat of blue superfine cloth which Fortunée Hamelin was holding ready for him. Then, after a cursory glance at the glass to assure himself that not a hair of his white head was out of place, he returned unhurriedly to the bed and stood for a moment in silent contemplation of the thin, pale face on the pillow, before transferring his gaze to Marianne's hands, like objects carved out of delicate ivory against the whiteness of the sheets.

'Well, you're out of danger now, young lady,' he said at last. 'All you have to do now is get your strength back. Try to eat a little and get up for a bit. You'll live, not a doubt of it, but I don't like the look of you, all the same. We'll have to do something about that.'

Marianne summoned up a smile and answered him in a weak voice:

'Indeed, I'm truly sorry, doctor. I wish I could please you. You have looked after me so patiently. But I don't want anything… food least of all. I feel so tired…'

'And if you don't eat, you'll feel a little more tired every day,' the Emperor's doctor scolded her. 'You have lost a great deal of blood, and you have to make it up again. Good gracious, you are a young woman, and a strong one, for all your dainty looks! One does not die at your age from a miscarriage and a few burns. What do you think the Emperor will have to say to me when I tell him you won't do as I tell you?'

'It isn't your fault.'

'Oh ho! If you think His Majesty will believe that! He expects his orders to be obeyed, and we have both had our orders: me to make you better, and you to get better as fast as possible. We've neither of us a particle of choice. I attend the Emperor every morning and he always asks after you, let me tell you.'

Marianne turned her head on the pillow so that he should not see the tears in her eyes.

'The Emperor is very kind…' she said in a tight little voice.

'He is to those he cares for,' Corvisart agreed. 'Tomorrow, at all events, I mean to tell him that you are better. So don't you let me down, Princess.'

'I'll try not to, Doctor. I'll try.'

The physician smiled and bent forward on an impulse to pat his patient's cheek affectionately:

'That's better, my child. That's more what I like to hear. Until tomorrow, then. I'll have a word with your people here and I trust I'll find you've been a good girl and done as you're bid. Your servant, Madame Hamelin.'

With a bow to the exquisite Creole, Corvisart trod across the room and the door closed softly behind him. At once, Fortunée rose quietly and came to sit on the edge of her friend's bed, enveloping her in a strong scent of roses. Her dress of simple cotton lawn embroidered with tiny coloured flowers was perfect for the warm, summer day, and made her look like a young girl. A huge sun-bonnet of natural straw swung from one white-mittened hand. Looking at her, Marianne felt strangely old and tired, and the expression on her face was so bleak that Fortunée frowned quickly.

'I don't understand you, Marianne,' she said at last. 'You have been lying here for a week now and you are behaving just exactly as if wanting to be done with your life for good. It's not like you…'

'It was not like me once. But now, it's true. I do not want to live. What is the use?'

'Was it so important… the child?'

Once again, Marianne's eyes filled with tears and this time she made no attempt to restrain them, but let them flow freely.

'Of course it was important,' she said. 'It was the only thing that mattered in my whole life, my whole reason for living. I could have lived for him, through him. All my hopes were in him, and not only mine…'

Ever since she had recovered consciousness on that terrible night and learned that she had lost the child, Marianne had been blaming herself bitterly, and most of all for forgetting, all through those dreadful hours, that she was soon to be a mother. From the moment she had set eyes on Jason, everything else that had mattered to her before suddenly ceased to exist before the blinding discovery of the love which she had carried with her unwittingly for months. The garden, illumined by the blaze of fireworks, had been her road to Damascus and she had emerged from it, like Saul, blind, blind to everything around her, blind to the whole world, to her own life, to everything except this love, so deep that she could not contemplate it without a feeling of vertigo. And by risking her own life, by seeking to make an end of it, she had wantonly imperilled that of the child! Not for an instant had she thought of it, or of the man, far away in the villa in Tuscany, who would wait now in vain for news of the birth of that child on whom he had pinned every hope of his hermitic existence.

Corrado Sant'Anna had married her for the sake of a child of the imperial blood to inherit his name. And now, through her own fault, she, Marianne, had lost all hope of fulfilling her part of the bargain. The prince had been cheated.

'You are thinking of your mysterious husband, are you?' Fortunée said quietly.

'Yes. I am ashamed, ashamed, do you understand? Because I feel now as if I had stolen the name I bear.'

'Stolen it? But why?'

'I have already told you,' Marianne said wearily. 'Prince Sant' Anna married me only for the sake of the child, because it was the Emperor's and so he was not ashamed to acknowledge it…'

'So, having lost it, you think yourself unfit to live and, if I understand you correctly, your present plan is simply to go into a decline and die?'

'More or less. But don't imagine I am trying to punish myself. I told you: I just do not wish to live.'

Fortunée got up and walked nervously over to the window, threw it open and then returned to her place by the bed:

'If your will to live depends purely on the existence of a child of Napoleon's, then I should think the answer was obvious. Napoleon will give you another and all will be well.'

'Fortunée!'

Gasping, Marianne turned a shocked face to her friend, but the Creole only grinned:

'You may well say Fortunée! like that! Do I shock you? You don't appear to have been quite so squeamish in practice, do you? And if there's one thing I can't endure, it's hypocrisy. Leave that to the experts, like Madame de Genlis, or Madame Campan and her mealy-mouthed set, unless you mean to ally yourself with those mewling dowagers who come flocking back from abroad wailing about the decline in good manners! I like to call a spade a spade! If you want to do right by your invisible husband, you must give him another child, and a child of Napoleon's. Moral: Napoleon must give you another! To my mind, it's as simple as that! Besides, I hear the Austrian is in high hopes, so he may be easy on that score and will have all the more time for you.'

Marianne regarded her with awe. 'But Fortunée,' she protested, 'don't you know you are immoral?'

'Of course I know!' Madame Hamelin crowed delightedly. 'And you can't imagine how happy I am to be so! What I have seen of morality all around me makes me sick! All for love, my sweet, and a fig for your principles!'

As if in endorsement of this declaration of war on conventional principles, there was a sudden report of cannon fire outside, followed almost immediately by a second and then a third. At the same time, borne on the summer breeze, came a sound of solemn, martial music and the murmur of a crowd.

'What is it?' Marianne asked.

'Of course, you don't know! It's the state funeral of Marshal Lannes. Today is the sixth of July and the Emperor is having the body of his old comrade-in-arms transferred from the Invalides to the Pantheon. The cortege must have just now left the Invalides.'

The guns were now firing almost continuously. The melancholy sound of the trumpets and the muffled roll of drums were coming nearer, filling the garden and penetrating into the quiet room, reinforced by the tolling of every bell in Paris.

'Would you like me to shut the window?' Fortunée asked, impressed by the rumble of these solemn obsequies by which the city paid its tribute, for one day, to one of the greatest soldiers of the age. Marianne made a gesture of refusal. She too was listening, more conscious than she had been perhaps during the contrived gaieties of the marriage celebrations, of the greatness of the man who had taken charge of her fate and who, high as he was, could still find time to watch over her. Her heart stirred as she remembered the hand which had held hers through those first moments of her long agony. He had promised not to leave her and he had kept his word. He always kept his word.

She had learned from Fortunée, and also from Arcadius de Jolival, how he had stayed at the Austrian embassy, working tirelessly, until the fire was altogether extinguished, rescuing even a simple housemaid who was trapped by the fire in an attic room. She had learned, too, how angry he had been the next day, and of the retribution he had meted out: the Prefect of Police, Dubois, dismissed, Savary severely reprimanded, the architect who had thoughtlessly designed the ballroom arrested, the chief of the fire service relieved of his post and measures put in hand without delay for a complete reorganization of the entire force, such as it was. Certainly, it was reassuring to find oneself the object of his solicitude but Marianne knew now that her passion for him had snuffed itself out like a candle, leaving something else in its place, a deeper feeling, perhaps, but how much less ennobling!

When she spoke, it was in answer to this secret thought. 'I shall never give myself to him again, never…'

'What?' Fortunée said, startled. 'To whom? To the Emperor? You won't…'

'No,' Marianne said. 'I can't. Not now.'

'But – why ever not?'

Before Marianne could reply, there was a tap at the door and Agathe, her maid, appeared, deliciously neat and fresh in striped cotton dress and starched apron:

'Monsieur Beaufort is below, Your Highness. He desires to know if Your Highness is well enough to receive him.'

Marianne's cheeks were suffused with a wave of crimson:

'He is here? Downstairs? No, no, I cannot—'

'I dare say you may not know, my lady, but the gentleman has called every day since the accident and when I told him this morning that you were better—'

Fortunée, who had been a bright-eyed observer of Marianne's abrupt change of colour, judged it time to take a hand in the matter:

'Ask the gentleman to wait a moment, will you, Agathe. And then you may come back and help me to make your mistress presentable. Be off with you now!'

Appalled at the very idea of coming face-to-face with the one man who had figured so persistently in her thoughts ever since the ball, Marianne tried to protest. She looked a fright, she knew she did! She was so pale and thin… No normal man could help, but be horrified at the spectacle she presented! Madame Hamelin, ignoring all this, refrained from pointing out to her friend that, for a woman so wholly determined on renouncing her existence, she was showing highly interesting symptoms of agitation at the prospect of a visit from a gentleman. She confined herself to ascertaining that the Monsieur Beaufort in question was in fact the American who had vanished from her friend's life so abruptly at about the same time as she herself had entered it. This being confirmed, she set to work.

Quick as a wink, Marianne found herself nestled amid the voluminous folds of an exquisite confection, all pink ribbons and snowy lace, her hair combed out, her face rendered a little less pallid by discreet reference to the rouge-pot and her person so liberally besprinkled with Signor Gian-Maria Farina's excellent Cologne that it made her sneeze. The room began to exhale delicious odours of bergamot, rosemary, lemon and lavender.

'Nothing is more abominable than the smell of a sick-room,' Fortunée declared, arranging a rebellious curl with a flick of one clever finger. 'There. That will do now.'

'But, Fortunée, what are you up to?'

'Oh… nothing. Just an idea of mine. Now I shall leave you.'

'No!' Marianne almost shrieked. 'No, you must not!'

Fortunée did not argue but went and seated herself in a chair by the window with an alacrity which suggested that her proposal had been made with no very serious intention. She was, in fact, burning with curiosity and by the time Jason, admitted by Agathe, crossed the threshold of Marianne's room that indefatigable man-hunter was lying in wait for him, securely ensconced behind a book which she had picked up at random, in the posture of the perfect sick-room attendant. But, above the leaves, her black eyes made an instant appraisal of the visitor.

He, after a slight bow to the stranger, directed his steps towards the bed in which Marianne lay watching his advance with an unfamiliar feeling of breathlessness. With his clear eyes, tanned face and energetic movements, Jason seemed to bring the whole wide ocean with him into the sea-green bedchamber.

To Marianne, he seemed to have swept away the four walls of the room and let the sea air blow in in great, sweeping gusts, yet in reality he had done nothing. He had only strolled across the room and bowed and uttered some polite expressions of satisfaction at finding her sufficiently recovered to receive him. Overcoming her feelings with an effort, she managed to force herself to answer audibly:

'I have been wishing to thank you for saving me,' she whispered, in what she hoped was an ordinary, conversational tone. 'But for you, I do not know what might have happened—'

'Well, I do,' Jason retorted coolly. 'You would have been like Madame de Schwartzenburg and the Princess de la Leyen and a good many more. Just what, may I ask, did you think you were after to that inferno? Not the Emperor, at all events. He was in the garden, helping the rescue work.'

'Is there no one but the Emperor I might have been seeking in the fire? In fact, it was something else, I think.'

'Someone dear to you, I imagine. A member of your new husband's family, perhaps? Which reminds me' – a tiny smile twisted one corner of his mouth although his blue eyes remained unwarmed – 'which reminds me, you must tell me all about this marriage. So unexpected, was it not? Where did you dig up the impressive name and title? Another present from the Emperor? He has certainly been generous this time, though scarcely more than you deserve. It suits you better to be a princess than a singer.'

The Emperor had nothing to do with it! My marriage was arranged by my family. You may remember my godfather, the Abbé de Chazay, from Selton, he—'

'What? So this time it was he who found you your new name? You know, you are quite the most astonishing woman of my acquaintance. I never know who you will be the next time I meet you…'

He paused and glanced significantly at Fortunée. She, her curiosity satisfied, and probably thinking that the conversation seemed to be taking a strange turn, judged it advisable to withdraw. She rose and moved with dignity towards the door. Marianne made a move to restrain her, then changed her mind. If Jason meant to be disagreeable, she preferred to face him alone. Fortunée must have realized, in any case, that in trying to present Marianne to advantage, she had been wasting her time. Jason observed her departure with one eyebrow raised, then turned back to Marianne with a saturnine grin:

'Charming woman. Now, what was I saying… Ah, yes, that one never knows what name you will be using next. I met you as Mademoiselle d'Asselnat, then, almost immediately, you became Lady Cranmere. The next time we met, in the Prince of Benevento's house, you were Mademoiselle Mallerousse. Not for long, though. The moment my back was turned, a wave of the imperial wand and you were transformed into that ravishing Italian singer called, what was her name? Maria Stella? Now, you are still Italian, am I right? Only you have become a princess, a – what was it you called yourself? Serene Highness, wasn't it? It's not easy for an American citizen like me to understand these things…'

Marianne listened with incredulity to this flow of calculated insult, delivered in a cordial, conversational tone, and asked herself what devious ends her visitor was pursuing. Was he mocking her, or was he trying to show her that the warmth of friendship which had developed in the underground caves of Chaillot had changed into a quiet, amiable contempt? If that was it, she thought she could not bear it, but she had to know. Turning her head wearily on the lace pillow, Marianne closed her eyes and sighed:

'I was told that you had called to inquire of me every morning since the ball and, in my innocence, I thought this a sign of friendship. I see that I was mistaken. You merely wished to assure yourself that I should soon be in a fit state to endure the shafts of your sarcasm. I am afraid you will have to excuse me. Unfortunately, I am not yet sufficiently restored to fight you on equal terms…'

There was a short silence. To Marianne, behind her closed eyelids, it seemed to go on for ever. For a moment, she thought that he had gone, and she was on the point of opening her eyes anxiously to see when she heard him laughing. She swung her head round instantly, eyes blazing with indignation:

'You can laugh?'

'I'll say I can! You are a truly remarkable actress, Marianne. You nearly took me in for a moment. But one look at the gleam in your eyes is enough to give you away.'

'But it's true. Baron Corvisart—'

'Has just left. I know. I met him. He told me you were very weak, certainly, but I know now that your weakness is only physical. Praise God, your spirit is unharmed and that was all I wanted to know. Forgive me. I was only trying to get a reaction out of you. Since that night, I have been living with the fear that it might no longer be possible.'

'But why?'

'Because,' he said seriously, 'the woman I saw at the ball and during the fire was not the woman I had known. She was cold, distant, there was nothing in her eyes. It was the look of a woman who goes seeking death. You had everything a human being could ask for: wealth, beauty, honours, the love of a great man – and you were going to have a child. And yet you wanted to die a dreadful death. Why, Marianne?'

A rush of warmth pervaded her whole being, reawakening the nerve centres which had been numbed by despair and physical suffering. So his cruelty and indifference had been a pose? Seeing him there, beside her, with that drawn look on his face which betrayed how deeply he felt, she felt a sudden, keener awareness of her love for him. The feeling was so strong that for an instant she had a wild impulse to tell him the truth, tell him that it was grief at the thought that she had lost him which had made her want to die. She was on the point of confessing at that moment how much she loved him and how wonderful her love seemed to her, but she recollected herself just in time. The man before her was a married man. He no longer possessed the right, or even the will perhaps, to listen to a declaration of her love. What had brought him here was simply friendship. And Marianne was fundamentally too honest not to respect the marriages of others, even if her own experience had proved doubly disastrous.

Even so, she summoned up the courage to smile, unaware that her smile was more heartbreaking than tears, and as he repeated 'Why?', she answered at last: 'Perhaps because of all those very things, or because most of it is only a snare and a delusion. The Emperor is married, Jason, and happy in his marriage… I am nothing to him now beyond a loving and devoted friend. I believe he loves his wife. For my part—'

'You still love him, do you?'

'I – am fond of him, more than that, I admire him with all my heart.'

'But the child? Was the child too a snare and a delusion?'

'No. It was the one tie which bound us together irrevocably. Perhaps, after all, it is better so, for him at any rate. For me, it complicates matters considerably… Prince Sant'Anna—' Marianne broke off suddenly and said impatiently: 'But if you have been coming here every day, you must have seen Arcadius?'

'Of course.'

'Then do not tell me he has told you nothing? Surely he has told you all about my marriage.'

'Yes, he has,' Jason agreed placidly, 'but I wished to hear it from your own lips. The first thing he told me was that there was a letter waiting for me with Patterson in Nantes – where I did not put in because I was being chased by an English privateer and was obliged to run to avoid a fight.'

'You! Avoid a fight?'

'The United States are not at war with England. But I'm sorry now I didn't go about and sink that Englishman and then put in to Nantes. It would have made a world of difference. I'm regretting my law-abiding impulse more than you can think.'

He turned and, like Fortunée a little while before, walked slowly over to the window. His broad shoulders and clear-cut profile were etched against the green, leafy garden outside. Marianne held her breath, overwhelmed by a delicious anguish at the real anger she now heard in his voice.

'You are sorry you did not receive the letter? Does – does that mean you would have done what I asked of you?'

In three steps he was at her side, on his knees by her bed, her two hands locked fast in his.

'And you?' he asked eagerly. 'Would you have honoured your pledge to me? Would you have gone with me? Left everything? You would really have become my wife, meaning it, with no regrets?'

Marianne gazed wonderingly into his eyes, searching for confirmation of the truth of what she already knew yet scarcely dared to believe.

'With no regrets, Jason. With a happiness I have only been fully aware of myself for a little while. You will never know how I waited for you… to the last moment, Jason, to the very last moment. And when it was too late—'

'Stop!'

His face was buried in the white sheets and Marianne felt his lips warm on her hand. Gently, half-tremblingly, she laid her free hand on the mariner's thick, black hair, lightly caressing the unruly curls and happy in this sudden display of weakness in him, the iron man, happier still in the knowledge that his confusion was as great as her own.

'You see now,' she said softly, 'why it was I wished to die the other night. When I saw you with—Oh, Jason! Jason! Why did you marry?'

As abruptly as he had come to her, he rose and tore himself away, not looking at her.

'I believed that I had lost you for ever,' he said grimly. 'There is no opposing Napoleon, least of all when he loves. And I knew that he did love you. As for Pilar… she needed my help. Her life was in danger. Her father, Don Agostino, made no secret of his American sympathies. When he died, some weeks ago, the Spanish governor of Fernandina immediately turned on Pilar who was his sole heiress. He sequestrated her lands and she was on the point of being thrown into prison with little hope of release. The one way to save her and to keep her safe was to make her an American citizen. I married her.'

'Was it necessary for you to go to such lengths? Surely you could have taken her to your own country and established her respectably there, under your eye?'

Jason shrugged. 'She is a Spaniard. Things would have been rather more awkward than that. And I owed a great deal to her father. When my own parents died, Don Agostino was the one person who came to my assistance. I have known Pilar all her life.'

'And, naturally, she has loved you all her life?'

'I think so… yes.'

Marianne was silent. Dazzled by the revelation of her own love, she was only just beginning to discover that she knew hardly anything of Jason Beaufort's life before that autumn afternoon when he had walked into the drawing-room at Selton Hall. He had lived so many years without her, unaware of her very existence! Until that moment, she had thought of Jason only in relation to herself, to the part he played in her own life but before that, away in that distant, vast and, to Marianne, mysterious and vaguely frightening country of his, he had formed other ties of his own and beaten out a path for himself. His memory was full of scenes in which she, Marianne, had never figured, of faces she had never seen yet which aroused in Jason feelings that might vary from hatred to love. That world, or some of it, was Pilar's also. To her, it was familiar, she was at home there and their common experience must have woven between her and Jason one of those bonds which, derived from the same tastes and the same memories, often proved stronger and more enduring than the flamboyant chains of passion. All these thoughts were in Marianne's mind as she said in a small, unhappy voice: 'I love you, yet I do not know you at all.'

'I feel as if I had known you always,' he answered quickly, devouring her with haggard eyes. 'But what is the use? We let go the moment when fate decreed our paths should cross. Now it is too late.'

'Why should it be too late?' Rebellion jerked Marianne out of her natural reserve. 'You do not love this Pilar. You said so.'

'No more than you love the man whose name you have taken, but the fact remains: you bear his name, just as Pilar bears mine. I am no moralist, God knows, and I must be the last person on earth to preach morality to you, but, Marianne, we have no choice. We cannot abandon those who have trusted us. We have no right to make them suffer.'

'I see,' Marianne said. 'She is jealous…'

'She is a Spaniard. She knows I am not in love with her but she does expect respect, some affection, that I will preserve at least the outward appearance of a contented, if not a loving marriage.'

There was silence again, a silence occupied by Marianne in examining what Jason had just said. Her joy of a moment before evaporated before harsh reality. An adventurer Jason might be, equal to any risks, bold enough for anything, but one thing he would not do, and Marianne knew it: he would never deal dishonestly with himself, and he would expect the woman he loved to show the same strength. There was no arguing with such determination. Marianne sighed:

'I see. Then you have come to say good-bye. I suppose you are leaving. Your wife did not appear to care for it here.'

A glint of laughter shone briefly in the American's eyes. 'She finds the women too pretty and too bold. She trusts me, naturally, but when I am not with her, she would rather have me at sea than in a salon. We remain for another fortnight. A friend of my father's, Baguenault, the banker, has offered us the use of a place at Passy – a charming house in the rue de Seine set in extensive grounds. It belonged once to a friend of Queen Marie-Antoinette. Pilar is happy enough there so long as she need not go out and I still have some business to settle. Then we return to America. My ship is waiting at Morlaix…'

His tone had resumed its ordinary, conversational level and Marianne, sinking back in her lacy nest, gave a small, regretful sigh. The passionate outburst of a moment ago had been suppressed by the iron force of Jason's will, most probably never to be reborn. That will divided them as surely as all the width of the vast ocean which would soon lie between them. The vessel which had sometimes haunted her dreams would sail with another woman on board. Something was coming to an end before it had even begun and Marianne knew suddenly that she could not long hold back her tears. She closed her eyes for an instant and gritted her teeth, then she took a deep breath and said at last: 'Well then… let us say good-bye now, Jason. I wish you… every happiness.'

He had risen but still stood, staring fixedly at the floor, without looking at her.

'I do not ask for that,' he said, more harshly than perhaps he meant. 'Wish me peace of mind, that will do very well. And for you—'

'No. For pity's sake wish me nothing.'

He turned and walked to the door. Marianne's eyes followed his tall figure helplessly. He was going, going out of her life, back to the world of Pilar, when the sum of their common memories was still so slight. She was seized by a kind of panic and as he laid his hand on the door handle was powerless to stop herself crying out:

'Jason!'

Slowly, very slowly, the blue eyes came back to her, filled with such weariness that Marianne was deeply shaken. At that moment, Jason seemed to have grown much older.

'Yes?' he said in a controlled voice.

'Won't you – we shall not meet again – won't you kiss me before you go?'

She thought he would have sprung towards her. The impulse was written so clearly, almost palpably on his face. But he controlled himself with an effort which whitened the knuckles of the brown hand still holding the ivory door knob and brought a sudden flash of anger into his eyes.

'Can't you understand?' he said, through clenched teeth. 'What do you think would happen at this moment if I were to lay so much as a finger on you? In another moment, we should be lovers and how could I tear myself away from you then? Before I left this room, I should have lost all respect for myself – and for you, too, perhaps. I should have become your slave… and for that I should not forgive you.'

Marianne had raised herself to hold out her hands to him, but now she sank back, defeated, on her pillows:

'Go, then… Go, quickly! Because I am going to cry and I would not have you see my tears.'

She looked so piteous, so defenceless, that even as she begged him to go Jason turned and, with the irrationality of love, would have gone back to her.

'Marianne—'

'No! If you have any love for me at all, please go! Can't you see that I can't bear any more? I was stupid, I see that now. I should have realized sooner, I should have understood my own feelings, but since it is all lost now, irrecoverably, it is best to end it quickly. Go back to your wife, since you believe you must be faithful to her, and leave me alone…'

And as Jason still hesitated at the door, torn by the misery and anger in her voice, she cried fiercely: 'Go away! What are you waiting for? Do you want me to make a complete fool of myself?'

He did go then, without pausing even to close the door behind him. Marianne heard his boots clatter on the stairs, then die away, and, with a gasp of misery, she closed her eyes and let the tears she had been holding back so desperately, stream down her face. Yet even in her wretchedness she was conscious of a feeling of absurdity which shocked and frightened her a little. If she were honest with herself, she had to admit that the elevated moral plane on which Jason appeared to exist seemed to her rather too high. For herself, she would have felt neither shame nor remorse in giving herself to him. Surely, it was absurd to be saying eternal farewells at the very moment they had realized their love for one another? That was how Fortunée would look at it, certainly. To one with her compliant moral code and declared belief in the precept of 'all for love', such a scene as had just taken place between Marianne and Jason would appear the height of the ridiculous. Goodness, how she would laugh, and what mockery she would heap on Marianne! And Marianne could not find it in her heart to blame her. It was this which frightened her, her own instinctive, shameful wish that Jason had united them in body as they were already in their hearts, that he had not chosen flight, however glorious and however much in keeping with his Huguenot blood and American upbringing, in preference to the joys beyond all price two lovers find in each other's arms. Had she, all unknowing, so far adopted Fortunée's outlook on life? Or was she, Marianne, one of those women, so infinitely less complex than she had ever realized, for whom to love a man and to belong to him was one and the same, utterly simple and natural thing?

No doubt it was highly complimentary to be placed on a pedestal in the most secret corner of a man's heart in the enviable position of an untouchable divinity, but Marianne thought she would have preferred rather less worship and more passion. Remembering her abortive wedding night, she told herself that Jason had changed a great deal. At Selton, he had been perfectly willing to make love to a young woman who had been married only hours before, even to take her husband's place in the bridal chamber. What had brought about this extraordinary access of puritanism? It was certainly ill-timed, to say the least. Supposing, as Napoleon was in the habit of claiming, that love's greatest triumph lay in flight, then Jason had indubitably won all along the line but Marianne could have wished that this model victory had not left her with such a dismal feeling of defeat. She found herself wondering if he had fled in order to sublimate his love – or prompted by the instinctive longing of every married man for peace and quiet at home, safe alike from passion and domestic strife. That Pilar was evidently as jealous as a cat and rather than cross her Jason seemed prepared to abandon, like an unwanted parcel, the woman he claimed to adore. And she, Marianne, had accepted it! She had even, for an instant, admired him for his lofty sentiments! She had even allowed him to reject her innocently offered kiss with as much evidence of loathing as if it had been the most insidious of love potions! What did he expect her to do now? Sink back into her pillows and wait for death to earn her a place among the legendary heroines who died for love and a less lasting memorial, like the faint scent of faded flowers, in Jason's own memory? Oh no, it would be too stupid, too—

At this point in her reflections, she was prevented from lashing herself into a further fury by the lighthearted entrance of Madame Hamelin. The Creole smiled coaxingly: 'Well? Happy?'

It was not the most felicitous of words. Marianne scowled: 'No. He loves me too much to deceive his wife! So we said goodbye for ever!'

There was a moment's astonished silence, then Fortunée reacted precisely as Marianne had foreseen she would. She let out a hysterical wail of laughter and collapsed heavily on to a small sofa which groaned under the shock. She went on laughing so helplessly and for so long that in the end Marianne began to feel that she was rather overdoing things.

'You think it's funny?' she said in an aggrieved voice. 'Oh! Oh, my goodness, yes!… Oh, dear!… It's priceless!… And perfectly ridiculous!'

'Ridiculous?'

'Yes, indeed. Quite ridiculous!' Fortunée's hilarity gave way abruptly to the most earnest indignation. 'It's more than ridiculous. It's farcical, grotesque! What are you made of, the two of you? Here is a splendid, charming, fascinating man (and I am allowed to be a judge!) for whom, by all accounts, you represent the One and Only Woman with a capital W, and who longs for you all the more fiercely because he can't bring himself to speak… And here are you, head over ears in love with him – for you do love him, don't you?'

'I have only just found it out,' Marianne confessed, 'but it is true. I do love him – more than anything in the world!'

'I could have sworn you did, though it has taken you long enough to discover it! Very well, you love him… and all the pair of you can find to do about it is to say – what was your absurd phrase? – Good-bye for Ever! Wasn't that it?'

That was it.'

Well, the answer's fairly obvious. Either you aren't so passionately in love as you like to think, or neither of you deserves to live!'

'He has a wife… and I have a husband!'

'Well, as to that, so have I a husband. Not much of a one, it's true, but I have. Somewhere, there is a Hamelin, just as somewhere there is a Prince Sant'Anna. But if you—'

'Fortunée, you don't understand. It's not the same thing at all.'

'And why isn't it the same thing?' Fortunée inquired, with deceptive sweetness. 'You think, don't you, that because when I want a man I take him, without any question, I must be a lightskirt, a loose woman? Well, I don't deceive myself and I'm not ashamed of it.' Her expression grew suddenly grave. 'You see, Marianne, youth is a great gift, too wonderful and too short for us to waste it. Love, too, the real, true love that everyone hopes for and yet no one dares to believe in, a love like that is worth something more than just sitting on opposite sides of the ocean dreaming regretfully of what might have been. When we are old, it will be better, believe me, to have memories to live on rather than regrets. And don't tell me you don't agree with me,' Fortunée concluded briskly. 'Your regrets are written all over your face!'

'You're quite right,' Marianne acknowledged honestly. 'Just now, I asked him to kiss me before he went. He would not, because… because he believed he could not control himself if he touched me. And it's true, I did regret it, and I still do because in my heart I don't care in the least about Pilar or Sant'Anna. It's him I love and him I want. No one else… not even the Emperor. And yet… in a fortnight, Jason will be gone. He will have left France with his wife, perhaps for ever.'

'If you go about it the right way, he may still leave but he'll be back… and fast! As soon as he's taken his lady wife home, I daresay.'

Marianne shook her head dubiously:

'Jason is not like that. He is sterner, more unbending than I ever thought. And—'

'Love moves mountains, and can turn the wisest heads.'

'What can I do?'

'Get up, for a start!'

Fortunée put out her hand and gave the bell an energetic tug. When Agathe appeared in answer to the summons, she demanded to know if everything was ready. Receiving an answer in the affirmative, she gave the order to 'bring it up immediately'. Then she turned back to Marianne.

'First,' she said firmly, 'you have to get back your strength. And downstairs is just the very thing for you. Talleyrand has seen to that, bless him!'

Before Marianne could open her mouth to ask any questions, a strange procession entered the room. It was led by Agathe, who flung wide the double doors. She was followed by Jeremy, the butler, looking every bit as gloomy as if he were presiding at a funeral, although he was succeeded by nothing more alarming than a pair of footmen bearing between them a large silver tray surmounted by a formidable array of pots, jars and cups, after whom came a third footman carrying a small, portable stove. After these again, came two under cooks upholding with a more than religious reverence a small, silver-gilt saucepan which was apparently extremely hot. Finally, bringing up the rear with all the majestic gravity of a priest approaching the altar to perform a more than usually sacred rite, appeared the celebrated Antonin Carême, the Prince of Benevento's own cook, and the genius whose services half Europe, including the Emperor, envied him.

Marianne had not the least idea what the famous chef could be doing with all this paraphernalia in her bedchamber, but she had lived long enough in Talleyrand's household to realize that Carême's attendance represented an immense honour of which good manners demanded she should show a proper appreciation, or risk being classed by Carême, who, like all true artists, was dreadfully sensitive, as wholly beyond the pale.

She therefore hastened to respond to the bow bestowed on her by the king of cooks and schooled herself to listen with due attention to the speech which he addressed to her once safely arrived in the middle of the room. From it, she learned that Monsieur de Talleyrand, deeply concerned for the health of Her Serene Highness and discovering to his great distress that she was refusing all sustenance, had taken long counsel with himself, Carême, and that the two of them had concluded that Her Serene Highness must be offered such choice selection of delicacies as would most speedily restore her to health and strength, and that these must be presented to her in such a way as to make refusal an impossibility.

'I informed His Highness that I should personally attend Your Highness's bedside and prepare for you with my own hands an infallible restorative of such powerful recuperative properties that it has revived even the most failing spirits… I trust I may prevail upon Your Highness to accept what it is my privilege to offer.'

The implication was clear that, short of provoking some unimaginable cataclysm, refusal was out of the question. Amused by all this polysyllabic eloquence, Marianne indicated graciously, in language very nearly as florid as his own, her delight in the prospect of tasting another of Monsieur Carême's matchless creations. Only then did she inquire politely what it was she was required to consume.

'A chocolate, Madame, a simple chocolate, the recipe for which is in fact an invention of Monsieur Brillat-Savarin, although I have had the honour of perfecting it. I do not hesitate to prophesy that, after a single cup of this magic beverage, Your Highness will feel another woman.'

To feel herself another woman was in fact the very thing that Marianne longed for above all. Especially if by some miracle that other woman could possess a heart wholly free from any attachment. But Carême had interrupted his flow of speech for a moment and, with his rich coat of plum-coloured velvet covered by a huge, stiff, white apron carefully draped about his person by one of his assistants, had commenced his office. The small saucepan was placed upon the stove and the lid solemnly removed, allowing a fragrant steam to escape into the room. Then, with the aid of a golden spoon, Carême embarked on an exploration of the various jars which his acolytes held deferentially open for his inspection, at the same time resuming his discourse:

'I may say that this chocolate, the result of many earnest cogitations by the most distinguished minds, is, in itself, a veritable work of art. The actual chocolate, at present contained in this receptacle, was cooked yesterday, in accordance with the recommendations of that expert judge, Madame d'Austerel, Superior of the Convent of the Visitation at Belley, so that by allowing it to stand for twenty-four hours the required smoothness might be imparted to the texture. It was concocted initially from three varieties of cocoa: Caraque, Sainte-Madeleine and Berbice, but in order to create what Monsieur Brillat-Savarin has so aptly called 'invalid chocolate' we must have recourse to the subtle skills of the Chinese, adding to it vanilla, cinnamon, a trifle of mace, pulverized cane sugar and, above all, a few grains of ambergris, which constitute the prime element in the almost magical virtues which this beverage may be said to possess. My own personal contribution is expressed in a little honey of Narbonne, some roasted almonds, finely ground, fresh cream and a few drops of fine Cognac. Now, if Your Highness will oblige me…'

As he spoke, Carême had been adding the various ingredients to his chocolate. Then, after letting it simmer for a few moments, he filled a delicate porcelain cup and, still with the most elaborate care, placed it upon a small tray which he bore majestically to Marianne's bedside. The tented canopy of sea-green silk became filled with the fragrant odour of chocolate.

Conscious of taking part in a kind of ritual, and of Carême's stern eye upon her, daring her to find fault with it, Marianne carried the cup to her lips and sipped at the boiling liquid. The taste, in so far as it was possible to taste anything so very hot, was very sweet and not unpleasant, although, in her opinion, the scent of ambergris did nothing to improve it.

'It's very good,' she ventured, after two or three painful sips.

'You must drink it all,' Carême commanded her imperiously. 'It is necessary to imbibe a certain amount before the effects are felt.'

Marianne took her courage in both hands, swallowed heroically and succeeded in getting down the whole scorching cupful. A rush of warmth invaded her body and she felt as if a river of fire were running down inside her. Scarlet as a boiled lobster and beaded with perspiration, yet curiously invigorated, she fell back on her pillows and favoured Carême with what she hoped was a grateful smile:

'I feel better already. You are a wizard, Monsieur Carême.'

'I, no, Princess, but the cooking, yes indeed! I have prepared enough for three cups and I trust Your Highness will drink them all. I shall return tomorrow at the same time and make you some more. No, no, it is no trouble. A pleasure, I assure you.'

Regal as ever, Carême removed his apron, tossed it magnificently to one of his assistants and, with a bow that would not have disgraced a courtier, departed from the room, followed by his escort in the same order as before.

'Well?' Fortunée demanded, laughing, as soon as she was once more alone with her friend. 'How do you feel?'

'Boiling! But a good deal stronger. All the same, I do feel rather sick.'

Without answering, Fortunée poured a little of Monsieur Carême's chocolate into a cup and drank it with evident enjoyment, closing her eyes, like a cat with a saucer of milk.

'Do you really like it?' Marianne asked. 'Don't you find it a bit too sweet?'

Madame Hamelin laughed. 'Like all Creoles, I love sugar,' she said. 'Besides, I'd drink it if it were as bitter as chicory. Do you know why Brillat-Savarin called it 'invalid chocolate'? Because the amber it contains, my dear, has aphrodisiac properties – and I dine tonight with the most magnificent Russian.'

'Aphrodisiac!' Marianne cried, horrified. 'But I don't need those!'

'Don't you?'

Fortunée strolled over to her friend's dressing-table and, carelessly, from among the litter of jars, bottles and gold and silver toilet articles scattered upon it, picked up a large jewel case and opened it. The emeralds Marianne had worn at the ambassador's ball, and which Chernychev had returned on the following day, gleamed in the last rays of the setting sun. Madame Hamelin took out the necklace, dangling it thoughtfully from her fingers and watching the play of light glinting in flashes of brilliant green fire:

'Talleyrand is an old rogue, Marianne… and he knows quite well that the best way to restore your zest for life is to revive your appetite for love.'

'My appetite for love! Well, you have just seen where love has got me…'

'Precisely. Weren't you telling me that your handsome sea rover remains with us for another fortnight?'

'That's not very long! What can I do?'

Fortunée did not answer directly but went on playing idly with the necklace, at the same time pursuing her earlier train of thought:

'It's not very difficult, perhaps, to renounce a woman dawdling invalidishly in bed. To turn one's back on a dazzling beauty who can lead one of the most notorious rakes in Europe by the nose, is a very different matter. Why don't you let Sasha Chernychev take you out driving, or to the theatre one of these days? If half of what I hear is true, he has amply deserved it… if only for not putting these beauties into his pocket! I'm sure I could never have resisted the temptation! But then, when a man's interest in a woman leads him to incur a sword thrust and a knife wound, all in the space of seven days…'

She let the gems slide heavily through her fingers and drop back into their nest of black velvet. Then, as though losing interest in the subject, she sat down at the mirror and began rearranging her dark curls, patting a little powder into her already flawless complexion, touching up the cupid's bow of her lips and finally amusing herself by opening every bottle of scent and sniffing it critically. With her vivacious expression, and the opulent figure so attractively belied by her virginal print gown, Fortunée was such a perfect picture of womanhood at its most glorious that Marianne could not help but be aware of it. Unconsciously, or perhaps not altogether unconsciously, Fortunée was showing her where her real weapons lay, weapons against which the noblest and most determined of men's plans were powerless.

Raising herself on her elbow, Marianne stared for a moment at her friend, watching her dab perfume delicately in the warm hollow of her breasts.

'Fortunée!'

'Yes, darling?'

'I… I think I feel like finishing that chocolate.'

CHAPTER THREE Britannicus

Four days later, dressed in a robe of flame-coloured muslin with a head-dress of feathers dyed to match, Marianne made her appearance in a first-floor box at the Comêdie Française and caused a sensation. Count Chernychev was at her side.

The second act of Racine's Britannicus had already begun but the couple strolled to the front of the box and, without a glance for the actors on the stage, stood scanning the audience (which, to be fair, was amply returning their interest) with cool insolence. Without other ornament than a fantastic Chinese lacquered fan, trimmed with feathers the same colour as those in her hair, the unrelieved red bringing out all the golden glow of her skin and the brilliance of her great eyes, Marianne was a superb and altogether arresting sight, like some exotic, tropical flower. Her whole appearance was provocative, from the boldness of her deep décolletage to the forbidden fabric of her dress, a silky, smooth-flowing muslin which Leroy had acquired through his own mysterious channels at extravagant cost and which, contrasting strongly with the satins and brocades of the other women present, rendered full justice to every line of the Princess Sant'Anna's magnificent body.

At her side, in a tight-fitting uniform of green and gold, stiff with decorations, Chernychev surveyed the house arrogantly.

They were a striking couple. Talma, playing Nero, had just reached the lines:

'… so fair sight ravished mine eyes,

I tried to speak, but lo, my voice was dumb,

I stood unmoving, held in long amaze…'

The actor's voice died away and he stood, motionless in the centre of the stage, staring, while the audience, struck by the coincidence contained in the words, burst into spontaneous applause. Marianne, amused, smiled down at him and Talma stepped forward instantly, hand on heart, and bowed to the box as if it had contained the Empress herself. Then he turned to resume his interrupted dialogue with the actor playing Narcisse and Marianne and her escort took their seats at last.

But Marianne, who was still not fully recovered, had not come to the theatre that night for the pleasure of seeing the Empire's greatest tragic actor. She was looking round, her face partly screened by her fan, scrutinizing the house attentively in search of the face she had come there to find. The great Talma's performances were always well attended and Marianne had hinted discreetly to her friend Talleyrand that she would like him to invite the Beauforts to share his box for Britannicus.

There they were, in fact, in a box almost directly facing that occupied by Marianne herself. Pilar, looking more Spanish than ever in a gown of black lace, was sitting in front, next to the prince, who seemed to be dozing with his chin sunk in his cravat and both hands clasped on the knob of his stick. Jason was standing behind, one hand resting lightly on the back of Pilar's chair. The other occupants of the box were an elderly woman and a man evidently a good deal older still. The woman retained some traces of what must once have been quite remarkable beauty. Her bright, black eyes still held the fire of youth in them and the red bow of her lips revealed both sensuality and firmness. She, too, was dressed, severely but sumptuously, in black. The man, who was bald-headed except for some few remaining red hairs, had the flushed, slightly bloated complexion of one over-fond of the bottle, but despite his bowed shoulders it was clear that this man had once possessed strength and endurance above the average. He looked like nothing so much as an ancient, riven oak tree that still manages somehow to survive.

With the exception of Jason, who appeared absorbed in what was taking place on the stage, they were all looking at Marianne and her companion. Pilar had even invoked the assistance of a pair of lorgnettes, which she wielded with about as-much cordiality as if she had been looking down the barrel of a gun. Talleyrand smiled his habitual lazy smile, lifted his hand fractionally in greeting and appeared to fall asleep again, despite the efforts of his other neighbour, the black-eyed woman, who seemed to be bombarding him with questions about the new arrivals. Marianne heard Chernychev, at her side, give a soft, mirthless laugh:

'We would appear to have caused something of a stir…'

'It surprises you?'

'Not in the least.'

'You dislike it, then?'

This time, the Russian laughed outright. 'Dislike it? My dear Princess, you must know there is nothing I like better; except, of course, when it would conflict with my duty as an officer. But it's not merely a stir that I should like to make with you, it is a scandal.'

'A scandal! You must be mad!'

'By no means. I say: a scandal – so that you will be bound to me, irrevocably, for ever, with no possibility of escape.'

Underlying the lightness of his words there was a faint suggestion of a threat which shook Marianne. Her fan shut with a click.

'So,' she said slowly. 'This is the great love you have been pouring into my ears ever since our first meeting? You want to chain me to you, make me your private property – and guard me fiercely, I dare say? In other words, you would put me in prison…'

Chernychev showed his teeth in a smile which Marianne could not help comparing with that of a wild animal, but his voice, when he answered her, was smooth as silk:

'I am a Tartar, you know… Once, on the road to Samarkand, where the grass never grew again after it had been trampled down by the hordes of Genghis Khan, a poor camel-driver found the most beautiful emerald, dropped, probably, from some robber's hoard. He was poor, he was hungry and cold and to him the stone represented a great fortune. Yet, instead of selling it and living in ease and luxury, the poor camel-driver kept the emerald and hid it in the folds of his greasy turban, and from that day forth he neither hungered nor thirsted for he had lost the need for food or drink. All that mattered to him was the emerald. And so, in order to be sure that none should steal it from him, he travelled on, ever farther and farther into the desert, until he came to the deep, inaccessible caverns where there was nothing to look for but death. And death came, very slow and painful, but he watched it coming with a smile because he had the emerald pressed close to his heart…'

'A pretty story,' Marianne said coolly, 'and flattering in its implications, but really, my dear Count, I think I shall be very glad to see you go back to St Petersburg. As a friend, you are too dangerous by far!'

'You mistake me, Marianne. I am not your friend. I love you and I want you, that is all. And do not rejoice in my departure too soon – I shall return before long. In any case—'

He broke off. A chorus of indignant 'Sshs' was directed at them from all parts of the house while, from the stage, Talma was regarding them with deep reproach. Concealing a smile behind her fan, Marianne turned her attention to the play and Talma/Nero, satisfied, returned to his passionate scene with Junia:

'Ponder it, lady, weigh within your heart

This choice, meet guerdon for a prince that loves you,

Meet for your beauty, too long held in thrall,

Meet for that part which to the world you owe.'

Suddenly, the Russian chuckled under his breath. 'You hear? The piece could scarcely be more apt! You'd think that Nero must have heard me…'

Marianne only shrugged, conscious that the slightest retort would revive the argument and bring the wrath of the audience down on them again. But Racine had no power to interest her tonight and indeed it was not for Britannicus, nor even for Talma, that she had come to the theatre. She had come simply in order to see Jason and, more important, for him to see her. Her eyes resumed their discreet study of the house.

The Emperor and Empress had returned to Compiègne, so that few members of the court were present and the imperial box might well have been empty, but in fact it was occupied by Princess Pauline. Napoleon's youngest sister found the festivities at Compiègne little to her taste and much preferred to spend the summer at Neuilly, where her new chateau was on the point of completion. Tonight, she was radiant with happiness, with Metternich, very handsome in a dark blue coat which suited his slim build and fair hair perfectly, on one side of her and on the other a young German officer, Conrad Friedrich, known to be the latest lover of this most charming of the Bonapartes.

Apart from Marianne, the princess was the only woman present who had dared to disobey the Emperor's command. Her gown of snowy muslin, cut so low in front as to be scarcely decent, seemed to have been designed to reveal more than it concealed of her justly-famous form and to enhance the splendour of a magnificent set of turquoises of a deep and dazzling blue which were Napoleon's most recent gift to one who was not known for nothing as 'Our Lady of the Trinkets'.

Marianne was in no way surprised to see Pauline favour Chernychev with one of her brilliant smiles. The Tsar's dashing courier had long been intimate with the princess's boudoir. However, the smile did not linger but passed on to the stage, where Talma almost forgot a line from sheer rapture. Pauline was another who did not visit the theatre to see the play. She came to be admired and to enjoy the effect, always sufficiently gratifying, which her presence produced on the men in the audience.

Not far from the imperial box, Prince Cambacérès, huge and smothered as usual in gold-braid, slumbered in his seat, sunk in the pleasures of a good digestion, while next to him, Gaudin, Minister of Finance, elegant and old-fashioned at the same time in his coat of the latest cut and bob-wig, seemed to find his snuff-box infinitely more absorbing than what was going forward on the stage. In another, darkened box, Marianne caught sight of Fortunée Hamelin, deep in whispered conversation with an unidentifiable hussar who, in turn, was attracting apparently idle but actually extremely penetrating glances from the exquisite Madame Récamier. Next door, in the quartermaster-general's box, his wife, the beautiful Countess Daru, in a gown of peacock blue satin, was sitting dreamily beside her cousin, a young civil servant by the name of Henri Beyle with a broad, plain face redeemed from the commonplace by a magnificent brow, a bright and piercing eye and a sardonic curve of the lips. Finally, in a large centre box, Marshal Berthier, Prince of Wagram, sat dividing his attentions between his wife, a homely and good-humoured Bavarian princess, and his mistress, the tempestuous, wickedly sharp-tongued and grossly overweight Marchesa Visconti whose long-standing liaison with him was a source of never-failing irritation to Napoleon. Of the remainder of the audience, a great many were strangers to Marianne; Austrians, Poles, Russians and Germans who had come to Paris to attend the wedding celebrations and at least half of whom clearly had not the faintest comprehension of Racine. Among them, the palm of beauty undoubtedly belonged to the dazzling Countess Atocka, handsome Flahaut's latest conquest. These two were sitting in a box discreetly to one side, she radiant, he still a little pale from his recent illness, but neither with eyes for anything but each other.

'Talma does not stand a chance!' Marianne thought, but just then the act came to an end amid thunderous applause as those who had failed to understand or simply failed to listen sought to make amends for their lapse. 'The Emperor has to be here,' she told herself, 'to make them really pay attention. When he is in the audience, no one dares to breathe.'

The curtain came down and at once the auditorium was filled with the noise of laughter and conversation. Good manners demanded that all the men should now become extremely active, paying courtesy calls on the wives of all their friends, who, for their part, sat in their boxes receiving visitors with as much grace and dignity as if they had been in their own homes. Some of the boxes were large enough to have small salons attached to them in which refreshments – sweets, ices and drinks – were served. The theatre was just another excuse for the gossip and idle chat so dear to society's heart.

Marianne was familiar with the custom and as soon as the curtain fell on the bowing actors she found herself waiting feverishly for what would happen. Would Jason come to speak to her, or would he stay in Talleyrand's box with the prince's other guests? She was burning with eagerness to see him close-to, to touch his hand and seek in his eyes for such a look as he had given her during their mad drive to Malmaison. Even supposing that he were to leave the box, would he come to her – or would the precious visit fall to some other woman's share? Perhaps Chernychev's presence at her side would put him off? Perhaps she ought not to have saddled herself with him, after all? But she need not have worried.

Chernychev, like most other men, had risen and was excusing himself with an air of boredom: he must leave her for a moment. Princess Pauline was beckoning to him with a gesture which brooked no refusal.

'Go, by all means…' Marianne spoke absently, her eyes and her thoughts elsewhere, concerned only to conceal her joy as she saw Talleyrand get to his feet with the help of his stick and prepare to leave the box in company with Jason. Marianne's eyes were bright with impatience. If Jason was with Talleyrand, the two of them must be coming to call on the Princess Sant'Anna. She was going to see him!

However, her inattention was not lost on Chernychev. He frowned and said shortly: 'I do not like to leave you alone.'

'I shall not be alone for long. Go now, the princess is waiting.'

It was true. Pauline Borghese was again beckoning to the Russian. Suppressing a movement of irritation, Chernychev made his way to the door of the box but before he could pass through he was obliged to stand aside to permit Fortunée Hamelin to enter. Crisp as a lettuce in a dress of bright green brocade trimmed with tiny crystal beads that made her look as if she had just stepped out from a fountain, Fortunée smiled at him provocatively:

'It seems Her Highness does not care to see her favourite stallions disporting themselves in pastures new,' she said with a chuckle. 'You had better run, my dear Count, or I fear you will get a sad welcome!'

The handsome colonel took her at her word, without pausing to take up the challenge. Fortunée was notorious for the freedom of her language, a freedom which in her was by no means unbecoming. She was smiling brightly as she came forward to greet her friend, and Marianne, turning, forced herself to smile back, hiding her annoyance at this unwanted company. The box was suddenly filled with the scent of roses.

'Well!' Madame Hamelin sank into a chair beside her friend. 'My dear, I simply could not resist coming over to hear all about it. When I saw our American friend in the dear prince's box—'

Marianne glanced at her with somewhat sardonic amusement. 'And what have you done with your hussar?' she inquired.

'Sent him off to drink coffee. He was showing a distinct tendency to fall asleep, and that, I promise you, is more than I can allow! It's a positive insult! But tell me, dearest, is that prune-faced Murillo in the black lace really our fascinating pirate's lawful wedded wife? She reeks of the most Catholic realm of Spain, I grant you that. I should think she probably puts incense behind her ears!'

'Yes… That is Señora Pilar. And Jason is not a pirate—'

'The more's the pity! If he were he wouldn't clutter himself up with a lot of worn-out prejudices that are as dusty as the Spanish sierras themselves. But pirate or not, I do sincerely trust he may be on his way here now to call on you?'

'Possibly…' Marianne smiled faintly. 'But don't count on it.' It seemed to her that the two men were taking a very long time to pass through the intervening corridor.

'Gracious! Talleyrand is no fool and if he has him in tow we're sure to have them here at any moment. And don't worry—' She patted her friend's knee reassuringly. 'I don't mean to play gooseberry, you know. I've a host of things to say to the dear prince. So you may have your little talk…'

'With that pair of black eyes glaring at us? Have you seen how the Señora looks at me!'

'Black eyes, black looks!' the Creole said philosophically. 'Personally, I think I might find it rather amusing. You can't think what fun it is, teasing a jealous wife.'

'Talking of black eyes, who is the woman in black sitting on the Prince of Benevento's other side? Elderly, but still rather striking…'

'What? You don't know her?' Fortunée exclaimed, genuinely surprised. 'Why, she and her husband, that gingery old Scot who looks like a heron asleep on one leg, are close friends of Talleyrand's. Have you never heard of Mrs Sullivan? The beautiful Eleonora Sullivan and the Scotsman Quintin Crawfurd?'

'Oh! Is that who she is?'

Marianne remembered now a bitter little confidence she had received from Madame de Talleyrand at the time when she had been acting as her companion. The princess had spoken angrily about a Mrs Sullivan as an adventuress who had been the morganatic wife of the Duke of Würrtemberg and implicated in innumerable conspiracies: she had lived with an English agent, Quintin Crawfurd, whom she had finally married for the sake of his great fortune. Marianne recalled also that the princess's antipathy had been motivated chiefly by the fact that Mrs Sullivan, although very far from young, retained a singular power to fascinate men, and in particular Talleyrand, whose relations with her were a source of anxiety to the princess because they appeared to be compounded of a curious mixture of physical attraction and business dealings. It was the Crawfurds who had sold the magnificent Hôtel Matignon to the prince and they now lived in his old home in the rue d'Anjou.

'I don't like to have that woman here,' Madame de Talleyrand had said. 'She reeks of underhand affairs.'

Madame Hamelin, however, waited patiently while her friend studied Mrs Crawfurd, who seemed to exert a considerable fascination for her. She, like Pilar, was dressed in black but in a heavy, dull black silk which had the austerity of mourning.

'Well?' Fortunée asked quietly. 'What do you think of her?'

'Strange! Still beautiful, to be sure, but she would appear to greater advantage in a less gloomy colour…'

Fortunée gave a little gurgle of laughter. 'She is in mourning, for her favourite lover. Not quite a month ago, if you remember, the Swedes killed Count Fersen, poor Marie-Antoinette's cavalier.'

'He was that woman's lover?'

'Yes, indeed. The poor queen had a rival, although she did not know it. At one time, let me tell you, they made a very pretty ménage à trois: Eleonora, Fersen and Crawfurd, but it was a ménage of conspirators and both Quintin and Eleonora were deeply involved in the affair at Varennes. I am sure they did all they could to help the royal family to escape from Paris. So, I need hardly tell you that the Emperor is not very popular in the rue d'Anjou.'

'And he allows it? And that man is English?' Marianne said in horror.

'And a long-standing agent of Pitt's. Yes, my sweet, he allows it. It is part of the magic of our dear prince's personality. He answered for them. It is true, of course, that just at this moment he could do with someone to answer for him, but that is life…'

It seemed as if Marianne could not tear her eyes from the box where the two black-clad women sat on either side of the empty chair as if keeping some ominous vigil. At last she said softly: 'How she stares at me, that Mrs Crawfurd. She might be trying to learn my face by heart. Why is she so interested in me?'

'Oh, as to that…' Fortunée opened her reticule and took out one of her favourite violet-scented chocolates. 'I think it is the Princess Sant'Anna who interests her. Her maiden name, you know, was Leonora Franchi and she was born at Lucca. She probably knows all about your mysterious husband and his family.'

'Yes, perhaps she may…'

All of a sudden, the strange woman seemed to take on a new dimension. Once connected with the irritating aura of secrecy surrounding Corrado Sant'Anna she ceased to appear suspicious to Marianne and became only desperately interesting. Too many times, since losing the child, she had asked herself what Prince Sant'Anna's reaction would be, so that she could not but feel the temptation now to approach anyone who might be able to help her unravel the enigma he represented. There were moments when in spite of the dread which had driven her from the villa, she still blamed herself for cowardice. The terror she had gone through in the little temple had grown blurred with time. Very often, in the long hours while she lay ill, and especially in the endless nights, her mind had gone back to the fantastic figure of the rider in the white mask… He meant her no harm, had in fact saved her from the criminal madness of Matteo Damiani. He had carried her back to her own room, tended her, perhaps… put her to bed… and at the recollection of how she had woken to find her bed strewn with flowers, Marianne's heart beat wildly once again… He loved her, perhaps, and she had run away, like a scared child, instead of remaining there to drag from the masked Prince Sant'Anna the secret of his hermit-like existence. She should have – yes, she should have stayed! She might even have left there a chance to find peace and, who could tell, even a kind of happiness?'

'Dreaming?' Fortunée's voice sounded teasingly in her ear. 'What were you thinking of? You were staring at the Sullivan as if you meant to hypnotize her.'

'I'd like to meet her…'

'Nothing simpler! Especially as the wish is undoubtedly mutual. But—'

Before she could finish, the door opened and Talleyrand, with Jason at his heels, made his way into the box. There was an interlude of bowing and of dainty fingers raised to masculine lips before the incorrigible Creole, having first favoured Jason with a smile so dazzling that it could not fail to contain a strong element of flirtatiousness, laid her hand compellingly on the prince's arm and guided him inexorably from the box, announcing that she had something of the very greatest secrecy to impart to him. Marianne and Jason were left alone.

Instinctively, Marianne had pushed her chair back into the comparative shadow of the back of the box. Out of the direct light, she felt less vulnerable and it was easier to forget Pilar's black gaze fixed on her. It was so little to ask, a moment alone together in the midst of this great chattering throng, but for Marianne everything to do with Jason, everything that came from him or related to him, had become infinitely precious. Their surroundings vanished in an instant: the red and gold furnishings, the glittering crowd of people with their idiot noises, the refined artificiality of it all. It was as if Jason possessed some strange power of breaking down any setting in which he found himself, however civilized, and substituting for it his own world, made to his own size and with the strong, sea-scent of adventure blowing through it.

Speechless, she sat gazing at him with eyes luminous with joy. She had forgotten everything, even the very presence in the theatre of Chernychev, whom she had nevertheless deliberately chosen as her escort for the evening. Because Jason was here beside her, all was well. Time could stand still, the world come to an end, nothing else mattered.

Looking at him, she was conscious of a deep feeling of happiness and she tried vainly to understand how she could have failed to guess, how she could have missed the impalpable signs by which two beings who love each other are bound together secretly and which would have told her that she could never love any other man.

And even the knowledge that he belonged to another woman could not quench that happiness, as if the love she felt for Jason were of a kind that nothing human could touch.

Jason, however, did not appear to share her speechless happiness. His eyes had barely rested on her as he made his bow, and then had slipped away towards the far corner of the auditorium, as if he had indeed nothing to say. He stood with arms folded, his lean face turned in the direction of the royal box as if to find there the answer to the problem that made his fine-drawn face look sterner than ever and brought that dark, brooding look into his eyes…

To Marianne, this silence soon became unbearable, unbearable and insulting. Had Jason come to her box for no better reason than to show the world how little he cared for her? When she spoke, it was with unconscious wistfulness:

'Why did you come here, Jason, if you can find nothing to say to me?'

'I came because the prince asked me to go with him.'

'Is that all?' Marianne's heart contracted. 'Do you mean to say that but for Monsieur de Talleyrand you would not have come to see me?'

'Precisely.'

The curtness in his voice stung Marianne and she began to ply her fan with quick, nervous movements.

'Charming!' she said, with a tiny laugh. 'I suppose you are anxious not to offend your wife who, I see, has her eye strictly upon us? Well, I would not wish to detain you. Pray return to her.'

'Don't talk such nonsense,' Jason ground out through his teeth. 'Mrs Beaufort has nothing to say to what I may do or not do, nor would she dream of it. I should not have come because you had no need of my presence. I think you made your feelings abundantly clear tonight.'

'Did I indeed?' Marianne said furiously. 'Is that what you think? And, pray, where am I at fault in appearing in public escorted by a very gallant gentleman to whom I owe my life?'

This time their eyes met, Jason's dark with anger and contempt, Marianne's glittering with rage. He gave a harsh crack of laughter:

'That is something you should ask your husband, my dear! Your latest husband, I mean. This Tuscan prince who seems to fill so negligible a place in your life! You have not been married three months and far from staying at home like any decent woman on your own estates, you flaunt yourself half-naked in that ridiculous costume in the company of the most notorious rake in two hemispheres, a man who boasts that no woman has ever denied him!'

'If I did not know that America was a land of barbarians,' Marianne flung back at him, crimson as the feathers in her hair, 'that would have taught me! Not content with being a pirate, or sea rover or whatever, and then a special, and my goodness what a very special, envoy! Now you must needs turn preacher! The Reverend Beaufort! It sounds very well, to be sure! And I can assure you that with a little practice your sermons will be admirable! But then of course when one numbers among one's forebears—'

'At least I number some respectable women! Women who knew enough to stay at home!'

Jason's face might have been carved out of stone and there was a saturnine twist to his mouth which made Marianne want to hit him.

'To hear you, anyone would think I chose my own fate! As if you didn't know—'

'I know all right. All of it. While you were obliged to struggle for your life or liberty you had right on your side – and I admired you for it. Now, you have one right only: to repay the man who gave you his name by at least showing some respect for that name.'

'And how have I failed to respect it?'

'Not three months ago you were known to be the Emperor's mistress. Now you are generally regarded as the mistress of a Cossack famed more for his valour in the boudoir than on the battlefield.'

'Aren't you exaggerating a little? Let me remind you that the Emperor decorated him with his own hand at Wagram, and Napoleon is not in the habit of handing out decorations to all and sundry.'

'I appreciate the ardour with which you spring to his defence. What better proof of love could he ask.'

'Love! I love Chernychev?'

'If you do not love him you are giving a fair imitation of it. But I begin to think imitations are your stock-in-trade. Did you do another for your mysterious husband?'

Marianne sighed wearily. 'I thought I had told you all about my marriage. Must I tell you again? Except in the chapel where the service was performed, and where I saw nothing of him beyond one gloved hand, I have never met Prince Sant'Anna. And let me remind you, if you had received a certain letter in time, there would have been no wedding to the prince…'

She broke off as Jason began to laugh, hard, painful laughter, rasping like a false note on a violin:

'After what I have seen here tonight, I may thank heaven that letter did not reach me. Because of it, I have been able to save Pilar from a fate she had done nothing to deserve, while as for you, I think you are best left to a future which does not seem altogether repugnant to you, and which seems to me, considering the ease with which you are able to transfer your affections, to be no more than you deserve.'

'Jason!'

Marianne sprang to her feet. Her face changed from crimson to white and her fingers clenched on the fragile sticks of her costly fan. There was a pathetic little cracking sound as the sticks snapped. She fought with all her strength to keep back the tears which started to her eyes from a heart overflowing with unhappiness. Whatever happened, he must not be allowed to see how deeply he had hurt her… For she was too much hurt to see that his words had sprung from a bitter, yet reassuring, jealousy. She groped briefly, but in vain, for a biting reply, to give back blow for blow, hurt for hurt and blood for blood. Before she could speak, a tall, green-clad figure had interposed itself between herself and Jason:

'You have just insulted both Her Serene Highness and myself. It is too much. I regret only that I am unable to kill you more than once.'

Chernychev's accent sounded a little thicker, his manner was a little more dramatic, but he was making a visible effort to control his temper. Jason faced him with a faint, contemptuous smile which only added to the Russian's rage:

'It does not occur to you that I might possibly kill you?'

'Never,' Chernychev said simply. 'Death is a woman. She will do as I wish…'

Jason laughed. 'If you rely on a woman, you will be disappointed. Nevertheless, I do not go back on my word. I am at your service, Sir. Although I was not aware it was your habit to listen at keyholes.'

'No!' Marianne stepped quickly between the two men. 'No! Please! I won't let you fight over me!'

Chernychev took the hand which she had laid instinctively on his arm and dropped a swift kiss upon it:

'Permit me to disobey you for once, Madame.'

'And suppose I were to add my entreaties, eh?' Talleyrand had entered the box hard on the Russian's heels and now he continued in his leisurely tones: 'I do not care to have my friends slay one another…'

This time, it was Jason who answered:

'Just so. You know us both too well, Prince, not to have known that this was bound to happen, sooner or later.'

'That may be so, but I should prefer it to be later.' He turned to Marianne as he added: 'Come, Madame, I am sure you cannot wish to remain here. I will escort you to your carriage.'

'Will you wait for me?' the Russian interposed quickly. 'Give me a moment to settle this affair and I will be with you.'

In silence, Marianne allowed him to place the great wrap of dull red velvet which had lain over the back of her chair around her shoulders, then, placing her hand on the Prince of Benevento's arm, she left the box, without a glance for either of the two prospective adversaries. The curtain was just rising on the next act and her exit was therefore accomplished without attracting more than a minimum of attention.

As she made her way slowly down the great staircase, empty except for the footmen standing rigidly between the tall torcheres, Marianne gave way to her misery and anger.

'What have I done?' she cried. 'Why is Jason so angry with me? Why does he despise me so? I thought…'

'One must be very old or exist in a very rarefied atmosphere to be immune from jealousy. Quite between ourselves, wasn't it really what you wanted? If not, what devil prompted you to show yourself here tonight alone with Sasha?'

'You are quite right,' Marianne admitted. 'I did want to make Jason jealous… He is so changed since this senseless marriage to Pilar…'

'And changed you, also, it seems. Come, Marianne. Stop tormenting yourself. We have to learn to take the consequences of our actions, eh? In any event, Chernychev may be an experienced duellist, but this time I think that he may well find he has met his match.'

Stop tormenting herself! Talleyrand was an optimist! Alone in the cushioned darkness of her carriage, Marianne abandoned herself to her fury. She loathed them all: Chernychev for, in her view, meddling in what did not concern him; Jason for treating her so unkindly when she had longed for a kind word, a look, such very little things; all those people who must have been following every moment of the quarrel with eyes agog at the prospect of a juicy scandal to relate; but most of all she loathed herself for the childish vanity which had caused so much trouble…

'I must have been mad,' she told herself. 'And yet, I did not know then that love could hurt so. And now what if Chernychev should wound Jason or even—' Her mind shied away from the thought. Then it occurred to her that she was even then sitting there like a fool waiting for the Russian when she hated him at that moment with her whole heart, and she leaned forward to give Gracchus the word.

'Home, Gracchus. And hurry!'

As the vehicle began to move, Chernychev emerged from the pillared entrance to the theatre, gained the step with one bound and fell rather than jumped inside.

'You were leaving without me! Why did you do that?'

'Because I did not wish to see you again tonight. Please get out.' She raised her voice: 'Gracchus! Stop!'

Half-kneeling on the floor at her feet, Chernychev looked up at her in surprise:

'You want me to get out? But why? You are angry with me? Yet by challenging the man who dared to insult you I was doing no more than my duty.'

'Your duty did not require you to interfere in a private conversation. I have never needed any assistance in defending myself! But just remember this: if Jason Beaufort is even wounded I shall never forgive you, and I will never see you again as long as I live!'

Chernychev did not stir but Marianne could see his eyes glittering in the dimness of the carriage, narrow green slits, luminous as cats' eyes in the dark. Slowly, he stood up, and it felt to Marianne as if some huge bird of prey were hanging over her, filling the small, scented satin-lined interior with its presence. But already, the Russian had opened the door and sprung down into the road. He stood for a moment with his white-gloved hands gripping the door frame, looking up at her, half-smiling. His voice, when he spoke, was infinitely gentle:

'You were right to warn me, Marianne. I will not wound Monsieur Beaufort, I promise you that…' He leapt back and, sweeping off his cocked hat, made an elaborate bow. His voice sank to a caressing murmur: 'Tomorrow morning I shall do myself the honour of killing him.'

'If you dare—'

'Oh, I shall dare… since there appears to be no other way of removing him from your thoughts. With him dead, I shall know how to make you love me.'

In spite of the fear and anger that clutched at her heart, Marianne stiffened, flung up her chin and stared very deliberately at Chernychev from the vantage point of the carriage. She succeeded in summoning up an icy smile:

'Do not be too sure. You will have very little time, my dear Count. For if Jason Beaufort dies tomorrow by your hand, believe me, before I make an end of a life which will have ceased to be of any interest to me, I shall make it my business to kill you with my own hands. I should tell you, perhaps, that I am accounted as good a shot as any man… Good night to you. Home, Gracchus!'

The youthful coachman cracked his whip and the equipage moved off at a fast trot. As it turned into the rue St-Honoré, the St Roch clock struck one, but Marianne did not hear it. When they reached the Tuileries bridge she was still trying to calm herself sufficiently to think sensibly of a way to save Jason from the Russian's murderous intent. With the boundless generosity of love, she blamed herself entirely for what had taken place. She even went so far as to blame herself for Jason's unkindness, by reason of the magic word, alarming yet so obscurely comforting, which Talleyrand had uttered: jealousy. If Jason were jealous, so jealous that he could insult her publicly, it might mean that, after all, everything was not quite lost.

'What can I do?' she asked herself desperately. 'How can I prevent this duel?'

The rattle of the carriage wheels over the deserted streets of the sleeping city of Paris filled her ears like a vast, threatening roar. She stared out at the passing houses, shuttered and silent now, filled with honest citizens lying peacefully in their beds for whom the tempests of the heart were probably matters of very little importance.

The carriage had almost reached the rue de Lille when an idea came to Marianne. By now, she was blaming herself further for wounding Chernychev. Like a fool, she had believed her power over him greater than it was. Instead of reasoning with him, making him understand that it would grieve her to see anything happen to a friend, she had allowed him to divine her love for Jason and had inevitably roused the very natural fury of a man who finds that the woman he desires prefers another. She ought, at least, to make another effort in that direction.

She reached out and gave a little pull on the cord whose other end was attached to the coachman's little finger. Gracchus looked back.

'Turn round, Gracchus. We are not going home just yet.'

'Very good, Madame. Where are we going?'

'Chassée d'Antin, the Russian embassy. You know it?'

'Used to be the Hôtel Thélusson? 'Course I know it.' The carriage was turned neatly and headed back towards the Seine, this time at a gallop. The streets were empty and it was possible to maintain this rapid pace, so that it was not many minutes before the enormous triumphal arch, thirty feet high and as many broad, which served as a gateway to the Russian embassy, loomed up ahead. Beyond lay a glimpse of extensive gardens, dotted with statues and pillars, with the house at the far end, lights blazing as though for a party. But the gate was guarded by a pair of Cossacks in long robes and drooping moustaches who were firm in denying her admittance. In vain did Marianne declare her name and titles and explain that she desired to see the ambassador, Prince Kurakin. The guards remained adamant: no pass, no passage. It was not just anyone who could gain admittance to the Russian embassy, at night especially.

' 'Strewth!' Gracchus exclaimed. 'They certainly guard the place well enough! Makes you wonder what's going on inside to make them so suspicious. It's easier to get to see the Emperor… What do we do now, Your Highness?'

'I don't know,' Marianne said miserably. 'I must get in or—Listen, Gracchus. Go and ask them whether Count Chernychev has returned yet. If he has not, we will wait for him. If he has…'

'What then?'

'Oh well, go anyway. We will think of that later.' Obediently, Gracchus clambered down from his box and strolled over to the Cossack on the left, whose face looked rather the less forbidding of the two. There began an animated dialogue in which gestures seemed to play a more important part than words. In spite of her anxious state of mind, Marianne could not help being diverted by the contrast between Gracchus's stocky figure, as broad as it was high in the huge, caped coachman's overcoat, and that of the gigantic Russian, with his huge fur hat and splendid whiskers, bending down towards him. The conversation continued for a minute or two, after which Gracchus came back and informed his mistress that the count had not yet returned.

'Good,' Marianne said. 'Get back on the box. We'll wait for him.'

'Are you sure that's a good idea? Seems to me as you didn't altogether part friends…'

'Since when have you been in the habit of questioning my orders? Draw up the carriage by the gate and wait.'

But before Gracchus could carry out this command there was the sound of a vehicle approaching through the embassy grounds. Marianne promptly told her driver to stay where he was, with the carriage blocking the gateway so that nothing could leave the embassy. With luck, the person coming might even be the ambassador himself…

In fact, it was Talleyrand. Almost at once, Marianne recognized the livery and the great English Arab horses which were the prince's pride. Talleyrand, for his part, had caught sight of Marianne's carriage and given his coachman the word to draw up alongside. His pale head and sapphire-blue eyes appeared at the window.

'I was going to call on you,' he said with a smile, 'but since you are here, I may go home to my bed with the satisfaction of knowing my duty done – and so may you. I don't think there's much more you can do here now, eh?'

'I don't know. I was going to—'

'See the ambassador? Was that it? Or see Chernychev, at any rate? Then I was right and you may go home and sleep with no fear of bad dreams. Count Chernychev leaves for Moscow tonight with… er… urgent despatches.'

'He was to go tomorrow…'

'Well now he goes in an hour. Prince Kurakin was very ready to understand that some messages are too urgent to be delayed – or possibly endangered by the turn of a sword. Our friend Beaufort handles his weapon quite as skilfully as the handsome colonel, so the chances were equal. Now it seems that just at present, the Tsar requires his favourite courier's presence urgently… You need have no fear. Chernychev will do as he is told.'

'And… the duel?'

'Put off for a month of Sundays – or at least until the two gentlemen in question find themselves face-to-face again, which will not be for a very long time, since Beaufort is due to return to America in a week's time.'

Marianne's chilled heart melted in a rush of warmth. So great was her relief that tears started to her eyes. Impulsively, she held out her hand to her old friend, through the open window.

'How can I thank you? You are my good angel.'

But Talleyrand shook his head, his face suddenly grave. 'No, I am afraid not. I fear I must bear a large share of the blame for the troubles which beset you. Today is not the first time I have regretted that I ever introduced you to – to you know who. If it had not been for that ill-conceived idea, you might have been happy today. I ought to have realized – that night when you met Beaufort in my house. Now, it is too late, and both of you are married.'

'I shall never give him up! I, too, should have realized it sooner, but I will not listen when you tell me it is too late. It is never too late for love.'

'Oh yes, my dear… when you are my age!'

'Not even then!' Marianne cried so passionately that even the cynical statesman was shaken. 'If you really wanted it, you could still love – really love! Who knows, perhaps it might even be the great love of your life.'

The prince did not answer. Hands clasped on the gold knob of his stick, chin resting on his hands, he appeared to be lost in a kind of daydream. Marianne saw that there was a sparkle in the pale eyes, usually so cold, and wondered if perhaps her words had conjured up for him a figure, a face… a love, perhaps, which he had not allowed himself to dream of, believing it impossible. Softly, as if he had spoken, but really in answer to her own thoughts, Marianne said: 'Impossible love is the only kind that I believe in, because it is the only kind that gives a savour to life, the only kind worth fighting for…'

'What do you call an impossible love, Marianne? Your love for Jason – for you do love him, don't you? – is not what one would call impossible. Difficult, merely…'

'I am afraid not. To me, it seems every bit as impossible as if…' she groped for a moment and then went on, very fast: '… as if you, for example, were to fall in love with your niece, Dorothée, and wish to make her your mistress—'

Talleyrand's gaze shifted to meet Marianne's. It seemed to have grown colder and more inscrutable than ever.

'You are quite right,' he said gravely. That is, to be sure, an excellent example of impossible love. Good night, my dear Princess. I do not know if I have ever told you this, but I am very fond of you, you know.'

The two carriages moved apart and Marianne, with a sigh of content, let herself slide back among the cushions, closing her eyes, the better to enjoy her wonderful relief. She felt suddenly terribly sleepy. The relief from nervous tension had left her feeling drained, longing for nothing but the peace of her own room, her own cool sheets. She could sleep so well now that Talleyrand had averted the results of her stupidity and Jason was no longer in danger.

She was still basking in the same sense of gratitude when she reached her own house, and she was even humming a little as she went lightly up the great stone staircase to her room. When she was able to think more clearly, she would find some way of making Jason listen to reason, so that he would understand that he could not insist that they must part for ever. Perhaps when he saw how much she loved him…

The first thing she saw when she opened her door was a pair of shoes, gleaming man's shoes, resting on a low stool covered in sea-green silk.

'Arcadius!' she cried, thinking the owner of the shoes must be her old friend Jolival, come home unexpectedly. 'Oh, but I am so sleepy—'

The words died on her lips as the door swung wide open under her hand, revealing the man who sat, very much at his ease in a deep armchair, waiting for her. And all at once, Marianne knew that there would be no sleep for her yet, for the figure which was already rising nonchalantly to greet her with a deep, profoundly mocking bow, was that of Francis Cranmere.

CHAPTER FOUR Night – and an Open Window

Marianne's nerves had suffered too much that night for the sight of her first husband to awaken any feeling in her other than one of profound boredom. However dangerous he might be, and whatever her own reasons to fear him still, she had reached a degree of indifference where she was wholly beyond fear. It was therefore without the slightest trace of feeling that she closed the door behind her, and, according her untimely visitor no more than a single chilly glance, walked coolly over to her dressing-table, dropped her wrap on to the velvet stool and began stripping off her long gloves. Nevertheless, her eyes continued to survey his reflection in the tall mirror.

She was conscious of a certain satisfaction as she observed that Francis seemed disappointed. No doubt he had expected a movement of recoil, a cry. This cold silence must be disconcerting for him. Deciding to continue the game, she patted her curls idly into place, then picked up one of the many cut-glass bottles cluttering the table and dabbed scent on her neck and shoulders. Only then, did she ask: 'How did you get in? My servants cannot have seen you, or I should have been told.'

'Why? Servants can be bribed…'

'Not mine. Not one would risk his place for a few coins. So?'

'The window, of course.' Francis settled himself back into the armchair with a sigh. 'Your garden walls are not insurmountable, and, as it happens, I have been your neighbour for some three days past.'

'My neighbour?'

'You did not know you had an English neighbour?'

Yes, Marianne had known that. She was, in fact, on quite good terms with Mrs Atkins who had once provided her cousin Adelaide with a refuge when she was being sought by Fouché's police. She was a former actress from Drury Lane whose stage name had been Charlotte Walpole, and had acquired a reputation and the right of residence in Paris by risking her life and fortune in an attempt to assist in the escape of the royal family from the Temple after the death of Louis XVI. What chiefly astonished Marianne was that a woman so sweet-tempered, ladylike and eminently kind should be on friendly terms with such a man as Francis, and she made no attempt to hide her thoughts. Lord Cranmere laughed:

'I might even say that dear Charlotte has a great affection for me. Do you know, Marianne, you are one of the very few women who do not like me? The majority of your contemporaries find me altogether charming and delightful.'

'Perhaps they have not had the pleasure of being married to you. That is the difference. Now, I should be glad if this conversation could be brief. I am very tired.'

Francis Cranmere placed the tips of his fingers together and studied them attentively:

'To be sure you did not stay long at the theatre. Do you not care for Britannicus?'

'You were there?'

'Most certainly, and, as a connoisseur, I greatly admired your entry with that magnificent creature Chernychev. Really, there could hardly be a more perfectly matched couple – unless, perhaps, it were you and Beaufort. But I gather that things are not going too smoothly in that direction. It seems the two of you are still at daggers drawn? Is it still the old business at Selton? Or don't you care for his Spanish bride?'

The deliberately airy flow of talk was beginning to irritate Marianne. Swinging round suddenly to face Francis, she interrupted brusquely:

'That will do! You did not come here tonight for idle gossip. Say what you want and go! What is it? Money?'

Lord Cranmere looked at her with a broad grin, then he laughed outright:

'I know you are not short of it. It means nothing to you now. For me, I must confess, matters are a little different, but that is not what I came to talk about…' He stopped smiling and, getting to his feet, moved a few steps nearer to Marianne. His beautiful face wore a serious expression unlike anything Marianne had seen there before, for it was unmarred by either pride or menace.

'In fact, Marianne, I have come with an offer of peace, if you are willing to accept it.'

'An offer of peace? You?'

Francis walked slowly over to a small side table on which Agathe had left a small cold collation in case her mistress should happen to feel hungry on her return from the theatre. He helped himself to a glass of champagne, drank about half of it, sighed contentedly and resumed:

'Yes. I think we both stand to gain something. On the occasion of our last meeting I went very badly to work with you. I should have been gentler, more adroit… It did me no good—'

'No indeed! And to be honest with you, I believed you dead!'

'Again!' Francis looked pained. 'My dear, I do wish you would rid yourself of this habit of continually numbering me among the departed. It becomes a trifle depressing after a while. However, if you mean to allude to the bloodhound whom the police put on my tail, I had better tell you that I lost him without the slightest trouble. But there, even the best hounds may be thrown off the scent when the fox knows what he's about. But where was I? Ah, yes… I was saying how much I have regretted my somewhat unsubtle conduct towards you. It would have been infinitely preferable to have reached an understanding.'

'And what kind of understanding had you in mind?' Marianne asked, simultaneously irked and comforted by this reference to her friend Black Fish and his quest: irked because the agent had evidently allowed his quarry to slip through his fingers and comforted because, if Black Fish had merely lost Francis, then at least it meant that he was alive. When she had first recognized the Englishman, she had seemed to hear in her head the Breton's furious voice declaring: 'I swear I will kill him, or die in the attempt,' and her heart had contracted at the thought of what Francis's living presence must mean. Her fears had been groundless. Well, so much the better. Even the best-laid plans could go astray.

Francis, meanwhile, had calmly drunk the rest of his champagne before turning his attention to the small writing desk which stood between the two windows, open on to the dark garden. From among the papers that littered the table top, he picked up a gold and jade seal which Marianne used to seal her letters, and stood for a moment, contemplating the device engraved upon it.

'A cordial understanding, naturally,' he said at last. 'And also something in the nature of a defensive alliance. You have nothing more to fear from me, Marianne. Our marriage is over. You have a new husband and the name you bear now is among the greatest in Europe. I can only congratulate you. To me, fate has proved less generous. I am obliged to live like a hunted man, hidden in the shadows, and all in the service of a country which pays me very ill for my pains. My life is—'

'The usual life of a spy!' Marianne cut him short. This new, mild and strangely generous Francis made her nervous and deeply suspicious. He gave a little smile that did not reach his eyes.

'You are not easily softened, are you? Well, so be it. The life of a spy. But it is one which enables me to find out many things, hear of many secrets which may, I think, be of some interest to you.'

'Politics do not interest me, Francis, and now, more than ever, I intend to keep clear of them. The best thing you can do is to leave this house at once – before I forget that I once bore your name and remember only that you are an enemy of my country and my sovereign.'

Francis flung up his hands. 'Amazing! A proper little Bonapartist! And you, an aristocrat! Although they always say there's nothing like sharing a pillow to smooth away hostile feelings, don't they? Don't worry, I did not come to talk to you about politics of that kind. You are not interested, very well. But are you interested in what touches Beaufort?'

'What makes you think I should be interested in Monsieur Beaufort?' Marianne asked with a shrug.

'Oh no, Marianne, don't play that line with me. I know women, and I know you better than you think. You are not only interested in Beaufort, you are in love with him. And he loves you, for all he thought himself in honour bound to marry that sour-faced shrew. The way the two of you were glaring at each other just now was enough for anyone watching you with their eyes open. So now stop beating about the bush. Tomorrow, Beaufort will be in great danger. All I want to know is, do you want to save him or not?'

'If you are referring to the duel—'

'No, I am not. Good God, should I have put myself out for the sake of a duel? I should think Beaufort is the best swordsman in the whole of America. When I tell you he is in danger, I mean really in danger.'

'Then why not go and tell him so?'

'Because he would not listen to me. And also because he would not pay to find out what danger threatens him. Whereas you will certainly pay… won't you, Marianne?'

Marianne said nothing, rendered speechless with anger and stupefaction. At the same time, she was aware of a curious feeling of relief. This new aspect of Francis had worried her. There was something there which did not go with his real nature. Now she found herself back on familiar ground. He had not changed. It was like him to think of coming to her to bargain for a friend's safety. She could not resist letting him see her thoughts.

'I thought he was your friend?' she said with contempt. 'Not that friendship can mean much to you, of course.'

'My friend? That is a large claim… The fact of having lost a fortune to a man does not constitute the greatest bond of affection in the world. And these are no times for sentiment. Now, how much will you give me in return for what I know?'

There was excitement, ill-concealed, behind the words and Marianne eyed him with distaste. He was young, undeniably handsome and, at first sight, extremely prepossessing in his fashionably cut coat of dark green velvet. His fair hair was brushed into the style most becoming to his almost too perfect features and his slender hands were very nearly as white and well shaped as those of Cardinal San Lorenzo himself. The grey eyes might be cold and unemotional but his smile was full of charm. And yet the soul which animated this pretty gentleman was a chilling quagmire, a desperate quicksand of selfishness, cruelty, deceit and wickedness. It was a soul its owner would have sold without hesitation for a handful of gold. 'And to think that I loved him!' Marianne thought, sickened. 'To think that for months he seemed to me the incarnation of every hero of romance, all the knights of the Round Table rolled into one! To think that Aunt Ellis believed him to be the paragon of all virtues! It's laughable…'

But at all costs she must keep calm, even, and indeed especially, if she was beginning to feel the creeping onset of real fear. She knew Cranmere too well now not to know that he never uttered idle threats. There was undoubtedly a dreadful truth at the base of this bargain he was trying to drive, and it was Jason who would pay for it if she failed to pay up. And now that Francis had discovered her love for Beaufort, he would not easily let go. Marianne clenched her hands hard behind her back to keep her nerves from betraying her, but her face showed no trace of emotion as she said: 'And what if I decline to pay?'

'Then I shall keep my information to myself. But I do not think that we shall come to that, shall we? Suppose we say… twenty-five thousand pounds? A reasonable figure, I think?'

'Reasonable? You have the most astonishing effrontery! Do you take me for the Bank of France?'

'Don't be tiresome, Marianne. I know that you have made a very wealthy marriage and twenty-five thousand pounds is nothing to you. Indeed, if the need for money were less pressing I should have been a little more demanding, but I am obliged to leave Paris at dawn. So, enough of this prevarication. Will you or will you not hear what I have to tell you of the threat to Beaufort? I swear to you that if you do not, tomorrow at this time he will be dead.'

A thrill of horror shot up Marianne's spine. She had a sudden picture of a world without Jason and knew that if that were to be, then nothing should prevent her from joining him in death. What was money beside such a disaster: money which for Francis Cranmere was supreme felicity and for Marianne was less than nothing. It was true that ever since her marriage the Prince Sant'Anna's agents had been holding vast sums at her disposal. She bent on Francis a glance heavy with dislike:

'Wait for me a moment. I will go and fetch the money.'

As she made her way to the door, Cranmere frowned and put out a hand as though to stop her. She gave him an icy smile:

'What are you afraid of? That I shall scream for help and have you arrested? In that event, nothing, I should imagine, could save Jason Beaufort.'

'Nothing, certainly. Go, then. I will wait for you.'

Marianne never kept money in her own apartments. It was Arcadius de Jolival, formerly her impresario, now promoted to her man of business with her elevation to the status of princess, who took care of all such matters. There was a safe built into the wall of his room which always contained a considerable sum in cash, along with Marianne's jewels. Only he and Marianne herself possessed keys to it. Now, having first assured herself that Francis was not, after all, following her, she made her way to Arcadius's room.

Arcadius was away. He had announced his intention of leaving Paris to take the waters at Aix-la-Chapelle, the one-time capital of the Emperor Charlemagne being famed throughout Europe for its warm baths and mineral springs. When Marianne had expressed some surprise at this sudden desire to take a cure and inquired anxiously after his health, Arcadius had promptly declared himself to be racked with rheumatic pains and within an ace of losing his voice most irrecoverably. Whereupon Marianne had immediately expressed complete understanding and had confined herself to wishing him a good journey, adding at the last moment: 'Oh, and give Adelaide a kiss from me. And tell her how much I miss her. If she could come home…'

She saw from her old friend's suddenly glowing look that she had guessed right and was touched to discover Arcadius in something remarkably like a secret fondness.

Stepping quickly into Arcadius's room, Marianne shut the door carefully and locked it. Then she sat down to recover her breath. Her heart was beating wildly, as if this were some stranger's room which she had come to burgle. She was afraid, without altogether knowing why. Perhaps it was simply because, wherever he was, Francis Cranmere brought with him an atmosphere of menace. Her one thought, now, was to get rid of him. Then she would be able to run to Jason and warn him of this mysterious peril she had paid so dearly to discover.

When her nerves had steadied a little, Marianne extracted the key to the safe from the tiny hiding place hollowed out of the solid mahogany bedpost and concealed by part of the ormolu decoration which moved on a pivot. Next, making for a particular spot on the wall, she selected one of the palmettes in the plaster moulding and pressed it, whereupon a section of the green silken panelling slid aside to reveal a metal safe. Inside, were stacked a number of jewel cases, several bundles of Bank of France notes and two bags of gold coins. Without hesitation, Marianne took out three bundles of notes, put two aside and counted the third, Then, after returning some of its contents to the safe, she locked the door with care, closed the panel and, putting the key back in its hiding place, left the room, clutching what she could not help thinking of as Jason's ransom money. The house was still utterly quiet. The servants, in their own quarters, and Agathe, in her little room next to that of her mistress, were all fast asleep, quite unconscious of the drama which was being played out under their mistress's roof. But not for anything in the world would Marianne have had the servants know anything about it.

When Francis Cranmere saw the notes in Marianne's hands, he frowned:

'I should have preferred gold.'

'I dare say you might, but I do not keep such a sum in gold about me. And do not tell me you do not know a banker who will change them for you. Your friend Baring in London, for instance.'

'You know about him, then?'

'I know a great many things. Such as how it comes about that you were able to run free in Paris when Fouché was Minister of Police. But Fouché is no longer in power—'

'And I, therefore, cannot afford to linger. Give me the notes. I will manage somehow.'

Marianne whipped both hands swiftly behind her back, laying the notes down on a small table behind her:

'One moment! You shall have them when you go. But first, tell me what you know.'

Her heart missed a beat. Francis's eyes, fixed on the money, had narrowed to thin, grey slits. His face was flushed and she knew that the greed of riches was on him once again. There was nothing to prevent him attacking her, wresting the money from her and escaping with it. Perhaps, after all, he had no information for her…

Scarcely knowing what she did, she sprang towards a valuable marquetry cabinet, wrenched open the box which stood upon it and drew out one of the two loaded duelling pistols that lay within upon a bed of crimson plush. Levelling the weapon at Francis, she said grimly: 'If you lay a finger on that money before you have told me what you know, you will never reach that door alive. You know I never miss my aim.'

'What ails you now? I do not mean to rob you. What I have to say can be said in a very few words.'

This was true. The sum of it was that on the following night, Jason was engaged to visit Quintin Crawfurd in the rue d'Anjou, ostensibly to inspect his celebrated collection of paintings, in reality to meet a messenger from Fouché who, although at present in exile, was in no way reconciled to his loss of power and determined to retrieve his position by any means, even including high treason. Two fanatical royalists, the Chevalier de Bruslart – who was already well known to Marianne – and the Baron de Vitrolles, would also be there.

'Savary has been informed,' Cranmere went on, 'and all four men will be quietly apprehended before they even set foot over Crawfurd's threshold, taken to Vincennes and shot before daybreak.'

Marianne started. 'You are out of your mind! Execute four men without trial, without the express command of the Emperor!'

Francis's handsome face twisted into a mocking smile:

'Have you forgotten Savary was the man who assassinated the Duc d'Enghien? Bonaparte is at Compiègne and this time those concerned are enemy agents.'

'Jason an enemy agent? Who do you think will believe that?'

'Why – you, my dear. Like a good many other sensible men, he is of the opinion that peace with England is necessary for a host of reasons, chief of which is the good of trade. This peace will be made with or without Boney. King Louis XVIII is wholly committed to it.'

Sheer, cold rage overcame Marianne. She resented it as a personal insult that anyone should associate Jason, the man she loved, with those devious and unscrupulous politicians who, entirely for their own ends, were ready to overthrow empires and set up no matter what wretched puppet on a still reeking throne:

'There is just one thing you may not be aware of, Jason both likes and admires Napoleon. Have you forgotten that he is here in an official capacity, on behalf of his government?'

'Precisely. A most useful position. And have you forgotten that Beaufort is perennially short of money? I should have thought that we had both of us good cause to know that!'

'He is not the only one—'

'Have you forgotten,' Francis went on, ignoring the interruption, 'the circumstances of your first meeting with him, at Selton in England – as one of the intimates of the Prince of Wales? What better proof do you need? The English privateer which he so opportunely let slip just recently on the excuse that America was not at war with England, that privateer was on her way from Spain carrying important despatches from the Duke of Wellington, which His Lordship had judged it wiser to entrust to a fast vessel. And yet the Sea Witch is unusually well armed for a merchantman, far outweighing the Revenge, and she is swifter, too. Are you convinced?'

Marianne could not bring herself to answer. She looked away. Naturally, she could not blame Jason for placing his own country's interests before those of France, but the thought that he could come back to France under cover of friendship, be received by the Emperor, treated as an honoured guest, and at the same time conspire with the French ruler's worst enemies, was unbearable to her. But there was no denying there was something in what Francis said. Before meeting with Napoleon, Jason had undoubtedly been on friendly terms with the Prince of Wales, even to the point of making one of his intimate circle.

After revolving the matter in her mind for a moment, she said: There is one thing I do not understand. You have come here to sell me information which can save Monsieur Beaufort – but this information does not concern him only. What about Crawfurd – and the others?'

'If Crawfurd has enemies, he will find his own way of dealing with them,' Francis said with a short laugh. 'If Savary has got wind of the matter, the source of his information is not far to seek.'

'You mean…'

'That Crawfurd is very agreeably situated in Paris. He is no longer a young man and no doubt values his peace far more than the convictions for which he may well feel, and with good reason, that he has made sufficient sacrifice of his purse and person in the past. You need not worry, Crawfurd can have nothing to fear. As for the others, I will take care of them.'

'It may occur to one of them to warn Beaufort?'

'They will have little enough time to get themselves to safety. Have I earned my reward?'

Marianne nodded. She lowered her hand and laid the pistol back in its case as Francis moved slowly to the table. In silence, he stowed the money away in his capacious pockets then bowed deeply and stepped to the window. Marianne was in haste now to have him gone. The transaction which had taken place between them, if it had not added to her hatred of this man, had at least done away with the fear which he had inspired in her ever since that night at the Théâtre Feydeau, and considerably increased her contempt for him. She knew now that a little money would always make it possible to muzzle Francis Cranmere and render him harmless, and money was the one thing she would not be short of in future. More difficult to digest were his revelations concerning Jason. Despite the facts, Marianne could not bring herself to accept that her friend was a common spy. And yet…

The Englishman had one leg over the balustrade, preparatory to letting himself down from the balcony into the garden, when he paused suddenly:

'I nearly forgot. How do you mean to warn Beaufort? Will you write to him?'

'I do not see how that may concern you. I shall do as I think best.'

'You know where he is living?'

'He told me he was at Passy, in a house belonging to a friend of his, Baguenault the banker.'

That's right. A big house with a terraced garden going down to the river. A beautiful place which used to belong to the Princesse de Lamballe and is still known locally by that name. Well, let me give you a piece of advice.'

'You? Give?'

'Why not? You have been generous. I will be so too, and spare you a piece of foolishness. Do not write. You never know what may happen in matters like this and in the event of Beaufort's house being searched a letter could prove dangerous for you. Where there is no evidence, there is no proof, Marianne, and there are circumstances in which your relations with the Emperor could be damaging to you. It will be best for you to see Beaufort yourself – say, at about nine o'clock tomorrow evening, when he will be at home. The meeting at Crawfurd's is not until eleven.'

'How do you know this? He may not be at home all day—'

'Yes, but I have certain information that he is expecting an important visitor at about eight o'clock tomorrow evening. Consequently, he will be at home.'

Marianne studied Cranmere curiously:

'How is it you are so well informed? One would think Jason made no move without first informing you.'

'In my trade, my dear, it is often a matter of life or death to know as much as possible, about friends or foes. You are at perfect liberty to disbelieve me, after all, and act as you think best – but do not blame me if your actions lead to disaster.'

Marianne made a gesture of impatience. She wanted only one thing now: to get rid of him and then run to Jason without loss of time, go to him that instant and make sure he would not go to that senseless meeting. But her thoughts were written so clearly on her face that Cranmere had no difficulty in reading them. Putting up one hand carelessly to straighten a fold of his neckcloth, he said idly, as if it were a matter of no importance: 'It will not do you much good to go running out to Passy at this hour of night. You would have the devil of a job to get them to admit you. Señora whatshername – Pilar, isn't it? – guards her marital bliss as closely as the original Jason cherished his Golden Fleece. She is the only person you would be likely to see, whereas, tomorrow, I can promise you the lady will be at Mortefontaine, visiting that poor little bourgeoise from Marseille whom they have turned into the Queen of Spain. It appears that Queen Julie, as they call her, considers it her duty to surround herself with anything even remotely connected with Spain, although on the face of it it seems highly unlikely that she will ever set foot there. Her noble husband much prefers to leave her where she is. Where was I?'

'You were about to take your leave,' Marianne said tartly.

'Have patience. I am in the process of behaving with remarkable gallantry. That is worth the expenditure of a few moments' time. I was saying… ah, yes. I was saying that tomorrow the Señora will be away from home and the field, my dear Princess, wide open for you. Assuming that Beaufort is not altogether a fool, I imagine it will be up to you whether you return home before morning.'

Marianne's cheeks flamed but at the same time her heart missed a beat. The meaning behind Cranmere's last words was only too clear, but while she could not repress a thrill of pure joy at the image they conjured up, she was by no means pleased to hear the innuendo in his sardonic tone. That Francis Cranmere should presume to bestow his blessing on it seemed to her to besmirch her love.

'You think of everything,' she said cuttingly. 'One would think your whole object in life was to throw me into Mr Beaufort's arms.'

Cranmere rustled the notes in his pocket.

'Twenty-five thousand pounds is a goodly sum,' he remarked casually. Then, without warning, his attitude changed. He sprang at Marianne and, seizing her wrist in a painful grasp, began to speak in a low, angry voice:

'Hypocrite! Filthy little hypocrite! You haven't even the courage to confess your love! But it was enough to see your face, the way you were looking at him in the theatre tonight, to see that you were dying to fall into his arms! But that would be too mortifying, wouldn't it? Fancy admitting after that farcical episode at Selton, after all your fine airs of outraged virtue, that you had finally fallen in love with him! Tell me, how often have you regretted your silliness that night? How many nights have you lain alone in your bed thinking of it? Tell me? How many times?'

Wrenching her arm free of his grip, Marianne fled to the bed and seized hold of the gilded bell rope that hung beside it:

'Get out of here! You have your money, now go! At once, or I call the servants!'

The anger cleared like a mist from Francis's taut face. He took a deep breath and turned back to the window with a shrug:

'Never mind, I'm going. At any moment you will tell me it is none of my business and you are right, after all. But I cannot help thinking that – things might have been very different if you had been less foolish.'

'And you less vile! Listen to me, Francis. I regret nothing that is past and I have never done so.'

'Why not? Because Napoleon taught you how to make love and made you a princess?'

Ignoring this, Marianne shook her head. 'You did me a great service at Selton. You gave me a taste for liberty. Your only excuse, if any, is ignorance. You knew nothing about me. You thought that I was made of the same stuff as you and your friends and you were mistaken. As for Jason, I love him, and I am willing to cry it from the rooftops, and I have you to thank for that, too. If I had yielded to your horrible bargain, I should not love him now as I do. If there is any one thing I am sorry for, it is that I did not see at once what kind of man he was and go with him that first night as he asked me. But I am young enough, thank God, and love him well enough to wait for my happiness as long as need be. For I know, I know in my heart that one day he will be mine…'

'Well – I wish you no worse fate!'

Without another word, he stepped out on to the balcony, climbed over the balustrade and began to let himself down. Marianne reached the window in time to see his white hands cling for a moment to the wrought-iron balcony rails. Then there came the muffled thud of a falling body, followed almost at once by quick, light footsteps making for the wall of the neighbouring house. Half-unconsciously, Marianne followed him out on to the balcony and walked quickly up and down, striving to calm her agitated nerves and at the same time put some order into her confused thoughts.

Her first impulse was to ring for Gracchus to put the horses to and drive her to Passy that instant, but Francis's words had not been without their effect and in spite of all her knowledge of him she could not but grant their plausibility. Who could say how that Spanish woman would react to the sight of Marianne on her doorstep in the middle of the night? Would she even agree to warn her husband? Or would her dislike of Marianne provide her with all the reasons she needed to disbelieve every word of what she had to say? And even supposing that she, Marianne, were to attempt to attract Jason's attention by a scene, the result would only be to create a scandal that would do no one any good. Nor did the idea of sending Gracchus alone with a note make more appeal to her, knowing as she did that she would not rest until she knew for certain that Jason was safe. It might take all her tears and entreaties to make him renounce a meeting on which he might have pinned great hopes. Probably the best thing to do would be to wait until morning and then go to Beaufort.

Despairingly, Marianne brushed her forehead with a trembling hand and took two or three deep breaths in an attempt to still the frenzied beating of her heart. The night was still and warm. The distant heavens were bright with stars and from the garden came the sad, silvery note of the little fountain and a scent of roses and honeysuckle. It was a night made for those in love to be together and Marianne sighed at the strange, persistent twists of fate by which she, whom so many men desired, seemed doomed to everlasting loneliness. A wife without a husband, mistress without a lover, mother robbed prematurely of the child whose fragile form she had so often cradled in imagination. Surely this was a kind of injustice, a mockery on the part of fate? What were they doing now, the men whose influence had helped to shape her life? The one who had just left so swiftly, with that strange expression of weariness in his eyes, what was he doing now, in the house of that quiet, romantic Mrs Atkins whose whole life was spent in a long wait for the return of the child of the Temple, the little Louis XVII whom she was convinced that she had helped to escape from his prison? And the masked horseman of the Villa Sant'Anna whose own dreadful solitude seemed to seek an echo in that of his wife in name only, what was he doing now? As for what Napoleon might be doing, amid the splendours of Compiègne, in the company of his Austrian woman – apart, of course, from nursing his sweet-toothed bride through another of her frequent attacks of indigestion – Marianne could imagine it quite well, but the thought gave her no pain. The warmth and brilliance of the imperial sun had dazzled her for a time, but now the sun had set into an horizon of ordinary domestic bliss and had lost something of his fascination in the process.

Infinitely more heartbreaking was the thought of Jason, threatened with deadly danger yet closeted, even then, alone with Pilar in the beautiful house beside the Seine which Marianne had more than once admired. The big, terraced gardens must be especially lovely at this hour of a summer's night… but how could that stiff Pilar who hated France feel the potent spell of its old-world charm? She would most likely be happier shut up in some dim oratory, all alone, praying to her own proud and implacably just God!

Abruptly, Marianne turned her back on the night with its strong evocations of the past, and went crossly back into the room. One of the candles on the chimney-piece was smoking, on the point of going out, and she snuffed the whole lot, leaving the room with no other light than the soft, pink glow shed by the small lamps placed at the bedside. But the room, with its dim, mysterious light and the soft, inviting bed, had no longer any power to attract Marianne. She had just made up her mind to go to Passy at once, whatever might be the consequences. She knew that she would never rest until she had seen Jason, even if she had to rouse the whole district and trample over the body of the odious Pilar to do so. But first, she must get out of that dress…

She began to undress, first tugging off the head-dress of flame-coloured feathers which was beginning to make her head ache dreadfully and shaking out her hair with both hands so that it tumbled, like a thick, black snake, down to the small of her back. The muslin dress was more difficult to manage and for a moment, driven to distraction by the innumerable hooks, Marianne was on the point of summoning Agathe, but then she remembered that Jason had disliked the dress and with a sudden spurt of anger she tore the fragile stuff away from the fastenings altogether. She was just sitting down in her brief shift tied at the shoulders with narrow white satin ribbon, preparing to take off her shoes, when she had a strange feeling that someone was watching her and looked up quickly. She had been right. A man was standing quite still at the window with his eyes upon her.

With a gasp of indignation, Marianne sprang towards a green silk bed-gown which lay over the back of a chair and hurriedly wrapped it round her. At first, she could see nothing but a gleam of fair hair in the darkness and she thought that Francis must have come back. A closer look, however, told her that the resemblance ended there and, even before he spoke, she knew him. It was Chernychev. Motionless as some dim statue in his severe, dark green uniform, the Tsar's courier stood and devoured her with his eyes. But there was something in those eyes, such a fixed and unnatural brightness that Marianne felt her throat tighten. Clearly, the Russian was not himself. Perhaps he had been drinking? She knew already that he had the capacity to absorb prodigious amounts of alcohol without losing an iota of his dignity.

'Go away,' she said quietly, her voice a little thickened by nervousness. 'How dare you come here!'

Without answering, he took one step forward, then another, turned and snapped the window shut behind him. Seeing him about to close the other, Marianne sprang forward and gripped the casement.

'I told you to go!' she said furiously. 'Are you deaf? If you do not go away this minute I shall scream.'

Still there was no answer, but Chernychev's hand fell heavily on her shoulder, wrenched her away from the window and sent her sprawling on the carpet to fetch up against the leg of a sofa, uttering an instinctive cry of pain. Meanwhile, the Russian calmly shut the window and then turned back to Marianne. His movements were those of an automaton and left a horrified Marianne in no doubt that he was totally drunk. As he came closer, a powerful smell of spirits assailed her nostrils.

She tried to wriggle underneath the sofa to escape him, but already he was upon her. With the same irresistible strength, he picked her up and carried her over to the bed in spite of her frantic struggles. She made an attempt to cry out but instantly a hand was clamped roughly over her mouth while the Russian's slanting green eyes shone like a cat's in the dim light with such an ominous gleam that Marianne felt a chill of real fear creep through her veins.

He released her but only for a second to pull away the gilded cords that held back the bed curtains of heavy, sea-green silk. The curtains swung forward, enveloping the bed in a greenish shade, through which the lamp at the bedside showed like a spot of gold. Before Marianne could make a move to protest, she found her wrists tied, swiftly and efficiently, to the bed-head. She tried to scream but the sound was choked in her throat as a summary hand thrust a rolled-up handkerchief into her mouth.

In spite of her bonds, Marianne continued to twist and turn like a snake in a desperate effort to escape from her tormentor but she only succeeded in making the metallic cords bite deeper into her wrists. She was wasting her time. Immobilizing her legs by the simple method of sitting on them, Chernychev proceeded easily to tie both her ankles to the bedposts. Then, as Marianne lay, spread-eagled and quite unable to move, the Russian stood up and regarded his victim with satisfaction.

'You made a fool of me, Aniushka…' he said, so thickly that the words were barely intelligible. 'But that's all over now. You went too far. It was very foolish of you to prevent me killing the man you love, because I have never yet turned my back on a challenge. You touched my honour when you made my duty a means to save your lover, and for that I have to punish you…'

He spoke slowly and deliberately, each word following the last as monotonously as a child repeating a well-learned lesson.

'He is mad!' Marianne thought, although it required very little imagination to divine the form that Chernychev's punishment was to take. She guessed that he meant to rape her and just then, as though his intoxicated brain were telling him that he had talked enough, the Russian bent and, setting aside the green robe, ripped open her shift from neck to hem and parted the two sides carefully, yet all without laying so much as a fingertip on Marianne's bare skin. This done, he straightened and without another glance at her began to divest himself of his clothes as calmly as if he had been in his own bedchamber.

Half-throttled by the handkerchief which had been rammed so far down her throat that it made her retch, Marianne watched appalled as he revealed a body as white and well-muscled as a Greek god's but approximately as hairy as a red fox. This body descended, without further preliminaries, upon her own and what followed was unbelievably swift and savage and, to Marianne, as unpleasant as it was unexciting. This drunken Cossack made love with the same furious concentration that he might have given to chastising some insubordinate moujik with the knout. Not only did he make no attempt to give the least pleasure to his companion, he seemed to exert himself to cause her the greatest possible discomfort. Fortunately for Marianne, nature came to her rescue and her martyrdom, which she bore without a murmur, was mercifully brief.

Weak and half-stifled, she thought that her release had come at last and that Chernychev would leave her and take the road to Moscow; but her tormentor got up and, far from releasing her, said in the same toneless voice: 'Now I am going to make quite sure that you can never forget me. No other man shall touch you and not know that you belong to me.'

It seemed that he had not finished with her after all. Marianne, watching helplessly, saw him take from his finger a large, gold seal-ring of the kind used for sealing letters, with his arms engraved upon the stone, and hold it to the flame of the lamp. As he did so, his eyes roved over the girl's sweat-streaked body with a calculating expression. But Marianne, guessing his intention, was moaning wildly and writhing against her bonds with such a fierce energy of desperation that the Russian's hand, which was in any case none too steady, missed its aim. He had aimed for the belly but it was on Marianne's hip that the searing hot seal landed…

So excruciating was the pain that, despite the gag, a strangled shriek of agony burst from Marianne's throat. The only response was a chuckle of drunken satisfaction, followed almost immediately by the sound of breaking glass. More dead than alive, Marianne heard the window flung open with a crash and then, as though in a dream, she saw the curtains round the bed dragged away and in their place the dark figure of a man in hussar uniform, his right hand holding a naked sword. As he took in the extraordinary spectacle before him, the newcomer uttered a magnificently comprehensive oath.

'Well, well,' he remarked, in a strong Périgord accent which sounded to Marianne like the sweetest music in all the world. 'I've seen a good deal one way and another, in my time, but nothing quite like this.'

Marianne was in too much pain from her burned hip and had been through too much that night already to be capable of further surprise. Not even the sight of Fortunée Hamelin's favourite lover, the effervescent Fournier-Sarlovèze, standing at the foot of her bed with a drawn sword in his hand had any power to amaze her. In any case, after a curt command to the Russian, who was sitting blinking on the bed, a good deal astonished, to get dressed 'sharpish' and be prepared to answer to him for this, the dashing François turned his attention swiftly to Marianne, removing the handkerchief which was all but suffocating her, cutting the gilded cords and folding the torn clothes modestly over her maltreated person, all of this without interrupting the flow of his conversation.

'It seems it was rather a bright idea of mine to go home by way of the rue de l'Université,' he said cheerfully. 'In fact, I was only thinking of you, dear lady, and telling myself it was high time I called on you to thank you for getting me out of prison, when I saw this fellow here just heaving himself over your garden wall. Naturally, my first thought was that he was expected, but then I said to myself that a lady who lives alone has no need to make her lovers ruin their clothes with scrambling over walls. When I visit Fortunée, I go in by the door like everyone else. You're up to something, I thought. Besides, if you must know, I'm not overly fond of Russians, and this chap less than most. So I thought about it for a bit, and finally made up my mind to follow. Once I was in the garden, though, I nearly popped out again. There was nothing to be seen and all the windows, even those with lights in, were closed. Damned if I know what it was made me climb up here – curiosity, perhaps. I never could resist other people's business.'

While Fournier talked, Chernychev had been putting on his clothes, still in the same mechanical way, paying not the slightest attention to what was going on.

He was soon brutally reawakened. No sooner was Marianne released than she leapt up, regardless of the pain in her hip, and rushing at her tormentor dealt him a ringing box on the ears. Then, beside herself with fury, she picked up a large Chinese vase which with its bronze base was no light weight and smashed it over his head.

The vase shattered into a thousand pieces but the Russian remained on his feet. His eyes opened wide in an expression of enormous surprise and he swayed slightly. Then he sat down heavily on the edge of the bed while Fournier-Sarlovèze gave vent to a great shout of laughter that effectively drowned the torrent of abuse which Marianne was heaping on her late attacker. When, however, she made a lunge for a second vase, the twin of the first, with the object of following up her advantage, the hussar general saw fit to intervene:

'Now then, easy does it, young woman! Pretty things like that don't deserve such treatment.'

'And what about me? Did I deserve such treatment as this brutal savage meted out to me?'

'Precisely. So there's no need to add to the injury by destroying your own property. You might use the poker or the fire irons just as well—No!' he added firmly, seeing Marianne's eye light with a gleam on the heavy bronze poker. 'Leave that where it is. All things considered, I'd rather kill him myself.'

With difficulty, because she was still in great pain, Marianne summoned up a smile for her unlooked-for preserver. She wondered how on earth she could ever have disliked François Fournier.

'I don't know how to thank you,' she said shyly.

'Then don't try, or we shall never be done with thanking each other. How do you summon your maid? The girl must be deaf!'

'No, no, don't call her! She does sleep soundly, so soundly that she ties the bell rope to her little finger in case I should wish for her in the night. But for once, I am glad of it. I – I am not precisely proud of what has happened.'

'Don't see why you should be ashamed of it. Call it war-wounds! With his kind, it's always war to some extent. But I intend to rid him of any desire to repeat the experiment.' He turned to the Russian. 'Well, you? Are you ready?'

'One moment,' the Russian said gravely. Then he walked with equal gravity to where a carafe of water stood on a table and emptied its contents straight over his head. Water streamed over the smart green uniform and dripped heavily on to the carpet, but Chernychev's eyes at once lost their dull, fixed expression. He shook himself like a dog and, tossing his soaking wet hair out of his eyes, drew his sword and smiled disdainfully at Fournier.

'When you like,' he said coldly. 'I do not care to be interrupted in my amusements.'

'Funny idea of amusement, you have! But I think, if it is all the same to you, we will settle this affair in the garden. There appears,' gesturing with the point of his sword at the torn curtains, the broken window, the shattered vase and the pool of water sinking slowly into the carpet, 'there appears to have been sufficient damage for one night.'

Marianne uttered a small, contemptuous laugh. 'The count is not at liberty to fight,' she said frostily. 'He has a mission to perform and should be already on his way to his own country.'

'I am already behind time,' Chernychev agreed. 'A little more or less… I can spare time to kill this interfering fellow – who I take it is another of your lovers?'

'No,' Fournier corrected, with dreadful affability. 'Her best friend's lover. Come, now, Chernychev. Stop playing the fool. You know quite well who I am. The best swordsman in the Empire is not easily forgotten, once you have encountered him on the battlefield,' he added with simple pride. 'Remember Austerlitz.'

'And you,' Marianne broke in, 'remember your present position. I swear on my father's memory that I would give ten years of my life to see this villain lying dead, but have you thought of what will be the outcome if you kill him? You have only just come out of prison. The Emperor will have you back there instantly.'

'With the greatest of pleasure,' Fournier agreed. 'He dislikes me extremely.'

'I can't speak for his pleasure, but he will certainly send you back. And for how long? This man must be covered by diplomatic immunity. It will mean the end of your career… and I owe you too much to let you do that—however much I may want to.'

Fournier-Sarlovèze made a careless pass that made the air whistle past his naked blade and shrugged:

'I will try not to kill him outright. I dare say a stiff lesson will be enough and, since he too is in the wrong, I should think he will keep quiet. As for yourself, Princess, it is useless to persist. There is no power on earth would prevent me from crossing swords with a Russian when I find one. You must realize that this is a high treat for me. You there, are you coming?' The last words were addressed to Chernychev, but before the Russian could reply, Fournier-Sarlovèze had vaulted swiftly over the edge of the balcony and dropped lightly down into the garden. His opponent, following more slowly, paused for a moment before Marianne where she stood with folded arms, watching him with eyes bright with hatred. 'He will not kill me,' he said, the faint slur of drunkenness still sounding in his voice. 'And I shall return.'

'I do not advise you to.'

'I shall come all the same, and you will go with me. I have set my seal upon you.'

'Burns heal, or may be covered by another.' Marianne's voice grew suddenly fierce. 'And I would tear out my own flesh before I retained the least mark of yours! Go! And never set foot here again! And know that if you should ever dare to, the Emperor shall know of it within the hour, if I have to show him what you have done.'

'What can he do to me? I serve the Tsar.'

'And I serve the Emperor. And it may be that your master may not relish the displeasure of mine.'

Before Chernychev could answer, Fournier's voice came up to them impatiently from the garden:

'Are you coming down, or must I come up and fetch you?'

'Go,' Marianne told him, 'but remember this also: I can use a man's weapons and if you ever dare to enter this house again, should you leave it alive this time, know that I will shoot you like a dog.'

A shrug was Chernychev's only reply, then he turned and made for the garden at such speed that he all but dived over the balcony. The next instant, the two men were facing each other on the small, circular patch of grass in the centre of the garden. Clutching her green silken wrap around her, Marianne stepped out on to the balcony to see the fight. Her feelings had undergone a considerable alteration. She was as anxious as ever to see her late, unworthy attacker spitted without mercy, but gratitude towards the general made her hope that he would not ruin his career irreparably for the sake of chastizing a brutal sadist.

Before stepping outside, Marianne had paused to relight the candles and now the light from the room threw a pale glow over the two duellists, making the naked blades gleam as they met in a shower of sparks. The two men were evidently well matched. The Russian was slightly taller than the Frenchman and looked the more powerful of the two but Fournier's lithe, southern build concealed formidable strength and tremendous agility. He was everywhere at once, encircling his adversary in a dance of death and weaving a flashing spider web all about him.

Wholly intent, caught in spite of herself by the odd, boyish fascination which the formidable art of swordplay had always held for her, Marianne was eagerly following every step of the duel when suddenly a head appeared above the wall at the bottom of the garden, adjoining the rue de l'Université, the same wall which Chernychev and Fournier had both climbed in their turn. The head was surmounted, somewhat alarmingly, by a cocked hat. Another head appeared, followed by a third.

'The law officers!' Marianne thought. 'That was all we needed!'

She leaned over the balcony to tell the two men to put away their swords but she was too late. A gruff voice announced: 'Duelling, gentlemen, is against the law. You ought to know that. I arrest you in the name of the Emperor.'

Unperturbed, Fournier laid his sword across his arm and presented it to the officer who was engaged in climbing over the wall, presumably by dint of standing on his horse's back, then smiled disarmingly:

'A duel? Why, officer, whatever gave you such an idea? My friend and I were merely trying a few passes, nothing more.'

'At four o'clock in the morning? And with a lady looking on, and not as if she was enjoying it much, either,' the officer said, looking up at Marianne's troubled face.

It had not taken her very long to realize that the arrival of the officers of the law upon the scene was quite the worst of the night's disasters. After what had occurred at the theatre that evening, a duel at her house in the middle of the night between Chernychev and Fournier was bound to cause a scandal: it meant the wrath of the Emperor, who had grown extremely sensitive in the matter of the respectability of those about him since his marriage to his archduchess, and there would be severe penalties for the culprits as well as the dreadful blow to Marianne's own reputation. Add to that Chernychev's position as a Russian engaged on diplomatic service, and the affair could even develop into an international incident. Something must be done to stop it, and at once! Seeing that the officer, having succeeded in scaling the wall, was now warning the late adversaries that it was his duty to escort them to the nearest police station, Marianne leaned hastily over the parapet:

'Wait, officer! I am coming down. We can talk this over more comfortably indoors.'

'There is nothing to talk about, Madame, as far as I can see. Duelling is against the law. Unfortunately for these two gentlemen, we heard the clash of swords as we were going our rounds. It's a clear case.'

'Not quite as clear as you think perhaps. Do, please, be good enough to wait for me. It will in any case be necessary for me to have the gates opened – unless of course you wish to take these gentlemen out over the wall?'

Hurrying down the great marble staircase as fast as her injured hip allowed, Marianne forced herself to think. The officer had quite obviously not believed in Fournier's rather unlikely explanation. They must think of something else, but unfortunately Marianne's mind, still wholly taken up with Jason and the danger threatening him, was not finding it easy to adjust to this new demand. She was burning to run to Passy and warn Jason and now this stupid duel had come to prevent her and to hold her up for goodness knew how long.

When she emerged into the garden the darkness was already growing perceptibly less thick. A pale band of light showed in the east, revealing a scene of total confusion among the law officers and their prisoners. Fournier was defending himself vigorously against the efforts of two men to apprehend him, while the officer in charge was engaged in gallant but futile attempts to scale the wall from inside which, in the absence of the horse which had assisted him in his entry, was proving an altogether impossible task for a man of unathletic build and hampered, moreover, by a pair of outsize boots. Of Chernychev there was no sign, but from the other side of the wall came the sound of receding hoofbeats.

Realizing the futility of his endeavours, the officer abandoned his assault on the wall and returned to where Fournier was still putting up a spirited defence. He was by this time thoroughly out of temper:

'You are wasting your efforts. Your accomplice has got away, but we shall catch him and meanwhile you shall pay for both, my lad.'

'I am not your lad!' Fournier exploded furiously. 'I am General Fournier-Sarlovèze and I will thank you, officer, not to forget it!'

At this, the other drew himself up and gave a military salute:

'Pardon me, General. I had no means of knowing! Nevertheless, you are my prisoner – I am sorry to say. Not but what I'd rather have kept a hold of the other fellow. It passes me why you should have helped him as you did by hurling yourself on my men like that.'

Fournier gave a shrug, and favoured the officer with a mocking smile:

'I told you. He's a friend of mine. Don't you believe me?'

'How can I, General, when you would not give me your word that you were not engaged in fighting a duel?'

Fournier was silent. Deciding that it was time for her to intervene, Marianne laid her hand, at once soothing and cajoling, on the officer's arm.

'And if I were to ask you to close your eyes for once, Officer? I am Princess Sant'Anna – a close friend of the Emperor.' A timely recollection of the invitations she had received from Savary prompted her to add: 'The Duke of Rovigo is well disposed towards me, I believe, and no one, after all, has been killed or injured. We might—'

'A thousand regrets, Princess, but I must do my duty. Setting aside any questions my men might ask and the awkwardness of explaining matters to them, I should not care to put myself in the position of a colleague in a similar situation. He was lenient, the matter was found out and it broke him. His Grace of Rovigo is very strict in matters of discipline. But then, you know him, Highness, and must surely know this? Now, General, if you please…'

Unwilling to admit defeat, Marianne would have gone on pleading and in her distress at the thought that Fournier would be imprisoned again because he had defended her she might well have committed the folly of offering the man money, had not Fournier himself intervened: 'I am coming,' he said; then, turning to Marianne, went on more quietly: 'Do not worry about me, Princess. This is not the first duel I have fought and the Emperor knows me well enough. It seemed better to let the Cossack escape. The thing might have proved more serious for him. The worst I can expect is a few days in prison and a little holiday at home at Sarlat.'

Marianne's sensitive ear did not miss the little note of regret in the hussar's voice. Sarlat might hold for him all the sweetness of home but it also meant inaction, idling away his time away from the battlefields which were his life and, but for this stupid affair, he would soon have been on his way back to in Spain. To be sure, she also remembered what Jean Ledru had told her of the horrors of war in that God-forsaken country but she knew that no such considerations weighed with the finest swordsman in the Empire and, indeed, would probably only whet his appetite for the fray.

She held out both hands impulsively. 'I will go to the Emperor,' she promised. 'I will tell him all that has passed and what I owe to you. He will understand. I will tell Fortunée, too. Though I doubt if she will be as ready to understand.'

'Not if it were anyone but you!' Fournier said, laughing. 'But for you she will not only understand, she will even approve. Thank you for your promise. I may well stand in need of it.'

'It is I who should thank you, General.'

Not many minutes later, Fournier-Sarlovèze was swaggering, hands in pockets, out of the front door of the Hôtel d'Asselnat under the bewildered and faintly shocked gaze of Jeremy, the butler, who, still only half-awake, regarded the officers of the law with a kind of scandalized disapproval. One of the men recovered the horse which Fournier, like the rest, had left outside the wall in the rue de l'Université and the general sprang into the saddle as lightly as if about to go on parade, then, turning, blew a kiss to Marianne who was standing on the steps:

'Au revoir, Princess Marianne. And do not let this worry you. You can't think how exhilarating it is to go to prison for the sake of a woman as lovely as you!'

The little cavalcade moved away into the dawn which was already beginning to touch the white stone face of the house with tones of rosy pink, while from the gardens all around came a faint freshness of rising mist and the first notes of birdsong. Marianne was deathly tired and her hip was hurting her atrociously. Behind her, her nightcapped servants, blinking sleepily, preserved a respectful silence. Only Gracchus, the last on the scene, barefooted and barechested, dared to ask his mistress: 'What is it? What has been happening, Miss M – Your Highness?'

'Nothing, Gracchus. Go and get dressed and put the horses to. I must go out. And you, Jeremy, you need not stand there gaping at me as if I were about to sentence you to death. Go and wake Agathe. If the house fell down about her ears that girl would sleep through it!'

'Wh-what shall I tell her?'

'Tell her you're a blockhead, Jeremy!' Marianne exclaimed exasperatedly. 'And that I shall dismiss you from my service if she is not in my room inside five minutes!'

Back in her own room once more, she anointed her burn with Balm of Peru and swallowed a large glass of cold water, without sparing a glance for the desolation of her once-charming bedchamber with its torn hangings and shattered porcelain. When the flustered Agathe came running in, she told her to go at once and make her some strong coffee but, instead of obeying, the girl stood in the doorway staring at the spectacle which met her eyes.

'Well?' Marianne said impatiently. 'Did you hear me?'

'Oh M-Madame!' Agathe managed to say at last. 'Who was it did this? It Hooks as if the d-devil himself had been here!'

Marianne gave a small, mirthless laugh and went to the wardrobe. 'You may well say so,' she remarked as she took down a dress at random. 'The devil in person – or rather in three persons! Now, my coffee, and hurry.'

Agathe departed precipitately.

CHAPTER FIVE The House of the Gentle Shade

Sunset was lighting blood-red fires behind the hill of Chaillot as once again Marianne's chaise crossed the Pont de la Concorde en route for Passy. The coming darkness, brought on faster by the heavy clouds which had invaded the sky over Paris as the day wore on, seemed to be smothering the last red glow of the dying sun beneath a heavy grey blanket. The air was unbearably hot, clammy and oppressive, and little enough of it made its way through the open windows of the chaise to where Marianne sat stifling among the warm velvet cushions, scarcely able to breathe for the heat and the strain on her over-stretched nerves.

This was her second journey to Passy. When she had reached the house that morning, determined to see Jason, even if only for a moment, at the cost of whatever scene might be necessary, in order to warn him, she had found the house shuttered and closed. A Swiss porter in carpet slippers, grumpy and half-asleep, had appeared eventually in response to Gracchus's repeated summons on the bell and told them in his heavily accented French that there was no one at home. Mr and Mrs Beaufort were at Mortefontaine, having gone there straight from the theatre.[1] The sight of a gold coin did however induce the man to admit that the American was to return that evening. Marianne turned back, disappointed, sorry for once that she had not taken Francis's advice. But then, she had to admit, it was unlike him to be telling the truth.

Tired though she was as a result of her sleepless night and the pain of her injured side, which was making her slightly feverish, she was unable to rest. She had wandered about like a lost soul between her own room and the garden, and running into the salon a hundred times to look at the exquisitely decorated bronze enamelled clock there. The only event which occurred in the whole of that endless day was a visit from the police inspector who came to ask some embarrassed but persistent and distinctly leading questions concerning that morning's duel. Marianne had stuck to Fournier's story, that it had not been a duel, but the man had gone away visibly dissatisfied.

The chaise had now passed out of the Cours la Reine and was travelling at a smart pace along the tree-shaded length of the Grand Chemin de Versailles, following the river Seine in the direction of the Barrière de la Conférence. There was a slight hold-up as they came to the massive building works around the Pont d'Iena, now nearing completion, on account of a load of stone which had been overturned at some time during the day and which was still partly blocking the road. But Gracchus, swearing like a trooper, had succeeded in circumventing the obstacle, coming perilously near overturning the chaise in the process, and, touching up the horses with a quick flourish of his whip, set them speeding towards the barrier.

It was quite dark by the time they reached the first houses of the village of Passy, a darkness rendered thicker and more menacing by the storm clouds still rolling up like billows of black smoke. No lights showed through the dense mass of bushes which overhung every gateway except for a dim, yellow glimmer from a small house tucked in beside a pair of double gates, which indicated that the porter of the sugar-beet refinery owned by the banker Benjamin Delessert was at his post. A little bit farther on, the old spring gardens of Passy, once filled with noise and animation, presented a blank, dark front, a heavy stillness in which even the trees seemed petrified.

Gracchus took a right-hand turning and edged his horses into a road ascending in a gentle slope between the Jardin des Eaux and the wall of some large property. At the far end, elegant gilt lanterns hung from black iron stanchions illumined the tall gates and twin lodges guarding the entrance to the Hôtel de Lamballe. Marianne, however, stopped her chaise half-way up the slope and told Gracchus to wait with it where he would be as far out of sight as possible. In answer to his surprised question, she said: 'I want to try and get into the house without being seen.'

'But, this morning…'

'This morning it was broad daylight and it would have been folly to attempt secrecy. It is dark now, and late, and I wish my presence in the house to remain unknown, if that is at all possible. To have it known would only result in awkwardness for everyone, and especially for Mr Beaufort.' She thought as she spoke of the jealous Pilar's reaction should she ever hear that Jason had been visited by a woman at night, in her absence, and that woman Marianne.

She saw Gracchus shift uncomfortably, not meeting her eyes, and realized that he was thinking of something quite different and believed that this was a lovers' assignation. She lost no time in explaining matters:

'Jason is in great danger tonight, Gracchus, a danger from which I alone can save him. That is why I have to go in there. Will you help me?'

'Help you save Monsieur Jason? I should just think I will!' The eagerness in his voice gave Marianne the measure of his relief. 'But it'll not be easy. The walls are high and the gates pretty stout. There is an entrance giving on to the Versailles road but…'

'I noticed this morning that there is a little door somewhere about here. Do you think you could open it?'

'What with? I've only my bare hands, an' if I try to force it—'

'With this.' As she spoke, Marianne produced a picklock from the soft, dark green silken folds of her cloak and put it into her coachman's hand. Gracchus, feeling the shape of the tool in his palm, gave vent to a muffled exclamation:

'Ah! That's the ticket. But where—'

'Hush. Never you mind,' said Marianne, who had found the implement in Jolival's little collection. Like the late king, Louis XVI, the Vicomte Arcadius had always been something of an amateur locksmith and kept a pretty little bag of tools in his room which might have laid a less respectable man open to some suspicion. 'Do you think you could open the door with that?'

'It'll be child's play – so long as it's not barred on the inside,' Gracchus assured her. 'Just you wait and see.'

'Wait! Go up to the gate quietly first and see if there are any lights in the house. And see if you can see a carriage or horses in the drive. I know Mr Beaufort was expecting a visitor at about eight, he may still be there.'

Gracchus nodded by way of an answer and taking off his hat and livery coat laid both articles inside the chaise, which he then moved to a position alongside the spa gardens where it was overhung by the branches of a huge tree. Having once made sure that the chaise was more or less invisible to anyone not actually looking for it, he turned and made his way up the road to the gates, making no more noise than a cat.

Marianne's eyes had grown sufficiently accustomed to the darkness by this time to enable her to make out the little side door. She went towards it and, having made sure that it was indeed locked, settled down in the angle of the wall to wait for Gracchus.

It was still stiflingly hot but the storm was on its way. There was a dull rumble of thunder away to the south and once a flash of still distant lightning illumined for an instant the watery ribbon of the Seine. Somewhere not far off, probably in the little church of Notre-Dame des Graces, a clock struck nine and Marianne's heart thudded in her breast in agonized counterpoint. She was beset by vague and terrible fears. What if Jason had not returned to Mortefontaine before going to Crawfurd's house? Suppose the meeting Francis had spoken of had been cancelled – or Jason had already set out, against all expectation, contrary to all Cranmere's supposed information? Suppose that tomorrow in the ditch at Vincennes…

The picture which Marianne's imagination conjured up was so real and so hideous that it was all she could do to bite back a groan. She leaned against the wall, shivering and trying to cool her burning forehead by pressing it to the cool stone. She was not yet fully recovered from her recent illness and the brutal treatment to which Chernychev had subjected her the night before had not improved matters, but at the thought of the man whom she now hated with all her heart she felt her courage revive and, fumbling for her handkerchief, began automatically wiping away the sweat which poured down her face. The cool freshness of the eau-de-Cologne which she had sprinkled liberally over it before she came out did her good, and then Gracchus was coming back.

'Well?'

'There are lights in the house,' whispered the lad. 'And there is a coach at the door, as if it's about ready to go. I caught a glimpse of someone come quickly out of the house and jump in. Listen—'

There was indeed a sound of wheels approaching. Then the creak of the gate, the hollow clop of horses' hooves and finally the dark outline of a big berline coming down the hill. Marianne and Gracchus stepped back hastily into the shelter of the doorway, although it was so dark that the driver of the berline never suspected the existence of the small door in the wall and of the two people hidden there. The coach came to the end of the road away in the direction of Versailles.

'I think all's clear now,' Gracchus murmured. 'Let's see what that tool of yours will do.'

He felt about for the lock and inserted the wire hook. There was a scrape of metal on metal, it stuck for a moment and then yielded. The bolt slid back quite easily but the door, which seemed to have been long out of use, remained firmly closed. Gracchus had to set his shoulder to it before it finally gave way, revealing a corner of the grounds. Beyond the ivy-covered tree trunks which occupied the immediate foreground, a pale blur and tall, lighted windows giving on to a row of three stone balconies showed the position of a large white house. From the centre windows, which were also the largest and most ornately decorated, a shallow stone stairway, railed with a tracery of delicate ironwork, descended in graceful twin curves to where marble nymphs reclined at ease.

Marianne's heart leapt in her breast, even before her feet had taken the first steps towards the lighted windows which told her, more clearly than any words, that Jason was at home. Thunder, closer than before, rolled overhead and Gracchus cast a quick look up at the thick roof of leaves:

'Storm's coming. It's going to rain any moment and—'

'Wait here,' Marianne commanded. 'I shall not need you. Or, better still, wait for me in the chaise. But take care to leave this door slightly ajar.'

'Sure I hadn't better come with you?'

'No. Find yourself some shelter, especially if it should come on to rain. I am in no danger here… or if I am,' she added, smiling involuntarily into the darkness, 'there will be nothing you can do to help me. Good-bye for the present.'

Without further ado, she picked up her skirts to keep them from getting caught up in the undergrowth and made her way with a light step towards the house. As she came nearer, she was able to appreciate more fully the perfect proportions and restrained elegance of the building. It was certainly a fit dwelling for a delicate and lovely lady, one of the many who had perished in the carnage of the Terror. The shallow steps, as Marianne climbed them with no more sound than a sigh, seemed made for the subtle whisper of full taffeta skirts and satin panniers…

Reaching the top of the stairs, Marianne was obliged to stop, pressing her hand to her breast to still the fluttering of her heart, which was pounding as though after a stiff climb. The middle one of the row of tall french windows was open slightly and enabled her to see into a large room, lit by branches of candles in gilt sconces set against walls hung with grey brocade. The fact that all the pictures and hangings within her field of vision seemed to be quite new suggested to Marianne that the house must have suffered during the upheavals of the Revolution. So far as she was able to see, the furniture consisted of a number of chairs, a tall bookcase filled with faded bindings and a harpsichord with old cracked varnish…

She put out her hand and gave the window a light, nervous push, afraid in her heart that she would find the room empty and the lights burning only in anticipation of someone's return. Then, suddenly, she saw Jason and a wave of happiness swept over her, driving out fatigue, anxiety, fever and pain.

He was seated a little sideways at a writing desk, writing intently. A silver candlestick stood on the desk and the long goose quill moved steadily over the paper. In the candlelight his strange, hawklike profile took on a curiously softer look, the high bridge of his nose and firmly jutting chin were thrown into relief while deeper shadows lurked around the thin mouth and the deep-set eyes, now hidden by the lowered lids. The light fell, too, on his strong, slender, strikingly beautiful hands, one of which held the pen as firmly as if it had been a weapon, the other spread upon the desk to anchor the paper on which he was writing.

He had discarded his coat, waistcoat and neckcloth on account of the heat and above his breeches and topboots was wearing only a fine white linen shirt, open at the neck to reveal a firm, strongly muscled throat. The arms that showed below his rolled-up shirtsleeves might have been carved from old mahogany. In this elegant drawing-room, with its dainty knick-knacks of silver and precious porcelain and the feminine touch of the harpsichord, Jason looked as out of place as a boarding cutlass on a lady's work table. Yet Marianne stood breathlessly in the window staring at him, forgetful of the reasons which had brought her there, sure now that he could never leave her for his perilous assignation, and conscious of a funny little feeling of tenderness at the sight of the lock of black hair which would keep on falling forward over his forehead.

She might have stood there for hours without moving if some animal instinct of Jason's had not made him sense someone's presence. He looked up and round and sprang to his feet so suddenly that he knocked over his chair and it fell noisily. Frowning,

Jason peered at the dark figure standing in the darkness by the window and knew her at once:

'Marianne! What are you doing here?'

There was nothing in the least lover-like in his tone and Marianne, brought down abruptly from the dreaming heights of a moment before, could not suppress a sigh.

'If I had any hope that you might be pleased to see me, that would have taught me,' she said bitterly.

'That is beside the point. You appear there in the doorway, without any warning, without anyone being in the least aware of your presence, and then you are surprised when I ask you what you are doing here? Don't you know that if one of the servants had chanced to come in just then they would most probably have fled screaming?'

'I fail to see why.'

'Because they would certainly have taken you for the ghost of the Princesse de Lamballe who is supposed to haunt this house – or so they say, for I myself have never seen her. But the people here are very sensitive about her. They sent so many to the guillotine that now they see ghosts everywhere!'

'I trust, however, that I did not frighten you?'

Beyond a slight shrug, Jason made no answer to this but walked towards his visitor who was still standing as though rooted to the spot:

'Very well, and now I am asking you again, what are you doing here? Have you come to find out if your Russian killed me? The duel did not take place. Prince Kurakin compelled your champion to abandon it for the present. Considerably to my regret.'

'Why? Were you so eager to die?'

'What a poor creature you must think me,' Jason observed, with a faint, crooked smile. 'But your Cossack was in much greater danger, let me tell you, for I should have done everything in my power to kill him. I suppose, by the way, we have not got you to thank, have we, for this – er – postponement? I should not put it past you to drag Kurakin out of his bed in the middle of the night and implore him to put a stop to it!'

Marianne reddened. The idea had occurred to her, certainly, and but for Talleyrand it was precisely what she would have done if at all possible. The Prince of Benevento's intervention had saved her, however, from the necessity of confessing her intentions in going to the Hôtel Thélusson. Heaven only knew what construction he would have put upon it! She shook her head:

'No. Not me. You have my word for that.'

'Very well. I believe you. Now, for the third time—'

'What am I doing here? I will tell you. I came to save you from an infinitely greater danger than anything which could have threatened you at Chernychev's hands.'

'Good God, what danger is this?'

The last words were drowned in a violent clap of thunder, so close that it seemed to be right above the house. At the same time, a fierce gust of wind swirled in through the open windows, lifting the curtains and the papers on the desk. The window banged to behind Marianne. Jason sprang to shut everything tight, then moved about, picking up the scattered sheets of paper and relighting various candles which had been blown out by the wind. At last he turned back to Marianne who meanwhile had come a few steps farther into the room. It seemed to her to have grown suddenly stifling and she took off the light silken wrap which she had flung over her simple, almost girlish dress of white linen sewn with daisies but which now felt unbearably hot, and laid it over a chair. Looking up again, she saw that Jason was observing her curiously and was conscious of a sudden feeling of embarrassment.

'Why do you look at me like that?' she asked, unable to meet his eyes.

'I don't know. Or rather… yes. In that dress, with the ribbon in your hair, you reminded me of the kid I met at Selton for the first time less than a year ago. So little time for all that has happened to you! To think that you have had two husbands, that Napoleon is your lover – and not, perhaps, the only one – it seems incredible!'

'Bearing in mind that neither of my husbands has been so more than in name, is it so hard to believe?' Marianne asked bitterly.

'I know. By your own account, the Emperor would appear to have coped adequately with the practical side of things.'

He spoke sarcastically, with a kind of cold contempt in his voice. Anger welled up suddenly in Marianne's heart, flushing her cheeks and bringing a sparkle to her eyes. She had come to him in desperate anxiety, half out of her mind with the fear that he might die before dawn before a firing squad, she had come to him crying out that he was in danger, and all he could offer her was sarcastic hints and innuendoes about how she had come to lose her virginity!

'I never said that!' she burst out in a voice quivering with anger. 'If you must know, the Emperor was only the second of my lovers. The first was a Breton sailor, a fugitive from the hulks at Plymouth, who was with me when I escaped from England. He saved my life when we were shipwrecked and captured by wreckers and he was the first man I lay with – on a heap of straw in a barn! And I let him do it because he wanted to – and because I still needed his help! Would you like me to tell you his name? He was called—'

A smack which made her catch her breath cut off her anger in mid-flight. She put her hand to her burning cheek and stared up at Jason out of big, tear-filled eyes, like a hurt child. The look of sheer, blazing fury on his face made her flinch. He was so frighteningly angry that she would have turned and fled had he not caught and swung her round, dealing her another ringing slap:

'You grubby little whore! And how many have there been since? How many more men have you given yourself to, eh?… And to think that I loved you! Loved you, did I say? I worshipped you… I was besotted – so besotted that I dared not even touch you! So besotted that there was a time when I could have killed the man who possessed you, although he was a man I admired with all my heart! And him, how often have you deceived him? And with whom? With this Russian, to be sure—'

All the fury of the storm outside seemed concentrated in that thickened, hideously distorted voice. Half-mad with terror and despair at the outcome of her senseless burst of temper, Marianne realized that she had unleashed in him all the hidden forces of a passionate nature, all the more terrible because the inflexible will of the man made him normally able to master them. In a frantic effort to soothe him, she clung to the iron hands which had her by the shoulders and were shaking her mercilessly to and fro, like a plum tree in August.

'Jason!' she implored him. 'Be calm! At least, listen to me—' But he only shook her harder.

'Yes, I'll listen to you all right! I'll make you tell me. This Russian, now? Can you swear by your mother's memory that you have never been his?'

Hideous recollections of the events of the previous night flitted through Marianne's mind, dragging a groan of anguish from her lips.

'No! No, not that!'

'Will you answer me? Answer me, I tell you!… I will be answered.'

This time a strangled shriek was his answer. In his rage, Jason had fastened his hands round Marianne's throat and was squeezing it tighter, and tighter… She shut her eyes and ceased to struggle. She was going to die… to die at his hands! How much simpler that would make everything! There was nothing for her to do, nothing she need say… and tomorrow Savary's men would unite the two of them in death.

Already she was beginning to lose consciousness. Red lights danced before her eyes. Her body went limp in his throttling hands and all at once Jason seemed to realize that he was killing her. He let go of her so suddenly that she would have fallen to the ground but for the chair which happened to be standing directly behind her. For a moment she lay there, helplessly, among the cushions, gasping for the air which was slowly filtering back into her lungs. Her hand went gingerly to her bruised throat, and she gave a sob which felt as if she had swallowed a ball of fire. Outside, the storm had reached its height, but the hellish fury of the elements all about them was no worse than the inferno within. Painfully, she forced herself to utter a few despairing words:

'I love you… As God hears me, I swear to you I love you and I belong to no other man.'

'Get out!'

Opening her eyes, she saw that he was standing with his back to her and the whole length of the room between them. But she saw too that he was shaking and that the sweat was making his shirt stick to his brown skin. She stood up, shakily, but was forced to cling to the chair for support. She felt hot and feverish and the room seemed to be spinning around her but she could not go away without telling him what she had come to say, without warning him… Since he had not killed her, she did not want him to die either. He must live, live! Even if the rest of her days were one slow death because she had lost him. It was her own blind rage which had made her commit an ineffable blunder: it was right that she should pay for it.

At the cost of a violent effort of will, she made herself walk towards him, over the hundreds of miles of empty desert which the room seemed to have become.

'I can't,' she croaked. 'Not yet… I must tell you—'

'You can tell me nothing that I want to hear! I do not want to see you again – ever!'

The words were harsh, but the fury had gone out of Jason's voice. It was flat and heavy – strangely similar, all at once, to a voice Marianne had heard once before, one night, in a mirror…

'No – listen! You must not go out tonight. That is what I came to tell you. If you go to Quintin Crawfurd's house, you are lost… you will be dead by morning.'

Jason turned abruptly and regarded Marianne with genuine astonishment.

'To Crawfurd's? What are you talking about?'

'I knew you would deny it, but you are wasting your time. I know that he is expecting you at eleven o'clock, with some other men, for reasons which I do not wish to know, because that is your own business and because – because in my eyes you cannot be altogether wrong.'

'Who are these other men?'

Marianne hung her head, hating even to be forced to speak the names. 'The Baron de Vitrolles… the Chevalier de Bruslart.'

Against all probability, Jason had begun to laugh:

'I have never heard of Monsieur de Vitrolles, but the Chevalier de Bruslart I do know, and so do you, if I remember rightly. Are you seriously trying to tell me that I have anything to do with these conspirators? Do you expect me to believe that you are doing me the honour to count me one of them?'

'How can I help it? It is true, isn't it, that you are going to Crawfurd's house in the rue de Clichy?' Marianne insisted, a trifle disconcerted by this unalarmed, not to say hilarious, manner of receiving her news.

'Quite true. As it happens I am to visit Crawfurd in the rue de Clichy—tomorrow morning. I am to take a luncheon with him and inspect his very fine collection of pictures. But your idea seems to be that I am to go there tonight, to meet these very dubious-sounding gentlemen. Do you mind telling me the motive?'

'How should I know? All I know is that you are involved in a royalist plot aimed at bringing about peace with England at any cost, that there was to be a meeting at Crawfurd's house tonight, and incidentally that this Crawfurd is playing something of a double game, and that Savary is preparing to arrest you all on the spot and have you taken to Vincennes and shot out of hand. That was my reason for coming here – to beg you not to go… to keep you alive, even if your life belongs to another woman.'

Jason sank into a chair, where he sat with his elbows on his knees looking at Marianne. Amusement struggled with amazement in his face:

'I'd like to know where you got this cock and bull story? I can assure you that I am involved in no conspiracy. I, join with royalists, with the men who saved their own skins while they left their king to mount the scaffold and the child Louis XVII to waste away in the Temple? I, plot with the English?'

'Why not? It was in England that I met you first. Weren't you a friend of the Prince of Wales?'

Jason shrugged, got to his feet and wandered over to the bookcase. 'It is not hard to become one of Prinny's friends. All it takes is a certain originality, something a little out of the ordinary. He made me welcome, in fact, because I was a friend of Orlando Bridgeman, who is one of his intimate circle. It was Orlando who came to my rescue, dusted me down and put me back in the saddle, after my ship was wrecked off the Cornish coast. We have known each other for ever. Very well. I have one English friend. I imagine that does not mean that I must take all England to my bosom? More especially when, although my country is not yet at war with England, relations are becoming every day more strained and war cannot be all that far off.'

While he was talking, he had opened one of the cupboards at the bottom of the bookcase and extracted from it a decanter and a tray with two glasses, both of which he proceeded to fill. Outside, the noise of the storm was moving away. It was now only a distant mutter underlying the din of the torrential rain which had followed in its wake and which was now scourging the trees and battering furiously against the roofs and windows of the little town. Filled with an unutterable sense of relief, Marianne subsided on to the harpsichord stool and waited for the pounding of her heart to slow down a little. The only thing that made sense to her in the whole of that night's idiotic adventure was that Jason was not in danger, he had never been in danger – neither had he ever had any thoughts of plotting against Napoleon. It crossed her mind, also, that his attitude to herself had softened remarkably… Her throat felt stiff and tight and her head ached feverishly. She had never felt so tired in all her life. In quiet, obstinately, she was still trying to piece together the fragments of the ridiculous puzzle of all that had been happening to her, trying to understand.

'But,' she said at last, slowly, thinking aloud more than addressing herself directly to Jason, 'but you were at Mortefontaine with your – with Señora Pilar and you came back without her?'

'Correct. I was there and I returned this evening.'

'You returned… because someone was coming to see you – someone I saw leave this house…'

'Right again,' Jason said. 'Your information up to that point is quite correct but, I repeat, only up to that point. This Crawfurd business is the product of a brilliant imagination and I think it is my turn to ask some questions on that subject. Here, drink this. You must need it.'

'This' was one of the two glasses of sherry he had been pouring. Marianne accepted it automatically and drank a little. It burned her throat but it did her good.

'Thank you,' she said, putting the glass down on the corner of the harpsichord. 'Ask what you like. I will answer.'

Prepared for a fresh tirade when she mentioned the name of her informant, Marianne resigned herself with a little sigh and sat looking down at her clasped hands. A short silence followed during which Marianne dared not raise her eyes, thinking that Jason was choosing his questions. However, he merely gazed at her.

'Very well,' he said at last. 'In that case, I have only one thing to ask you, and that is the name of the person who told you this extraordinary story. I must try and get to the bottom of this nonsensical affair. You did not think it up for yourself. Who told you I was going to Crawfurd's to meet these conspirators?'

'Francis…'

'Francis? You mean Cranmere? Your husband?'

'My first husband,' Marianne corrected acidly.

'Never mind that now,' Jason said impatiently. 'Where the devil did he spring from? Where and when did you see him?'

'Last night, at my house. He was waiting for me in my room when I got back from the theatre. He had got in by climbing over the garden wall and up to my balcony.'

'This is fantastic! Insane! Go on. I want to know everything. Where he is concerned, all things are possible.'

All trace of amusement had vanished from Beaufort's expression. His face was very tense and he was leaning against the harpsichord, his tall figure dominating Marianne as she sat and his eyes fixed compellingly on her sweet, downcast features. His voice was stern as he added: 'And look at me, for a start. I must know if you are telling me the whole truth.'

Still that suggestion of contempt, the same hint of distrust. What must I do, Marianne asked herself despairingly, to make him understand that I love him, that he is the only person in the world for me? But she looked up as he bade her and her green eyes met those of the man leaning over her with a gaze that was wholly candid and direct.

'I will tell you everything,' she said simply. 'You shall judge…'

Few words were needed to describe the scene which had taken place on the previous night between herself and Francis Cranmere. As she spoke, Marianne was able to follow the swift succession of emotions reflected on the keen face before her: surprise, anger, indignation, contempt, even pity. But all the time the story took to tell Jason did not utter a single word, not even the smallest exclamation. Even so, when Marianne came to the end, she saw with joy that nearly all the hardness had vanished from the sea rover's blue eyes.

He remained where he was for a moment, watching her in silence, then, with a shrug and a sigh, he turned and walked away a little.

'And you paid!' he said roughly. 'Knowing him as you do, you paid, blindly! It did not occur to you that he could have been lying, that it was simply an excuse to get money out of you?'

And you, Marianne thought sadly, it does not occur to you that I love you so much I lost my head, that to save your life I would have given him everything I possess? But she did not utter these bitter thoughts aloud. Instead, she merely answered miserably: 'He had it all so pat that I was forced to believe him. It was he who told me that you would be at Mortefontaine all day today, and that you would be alone when you returned, and he told me, too, that you would have an important visitor this evening – and it was all quite true because I came straight here first thing this morning and had it all from the man at your gate. It was all true – except the one, most important thing, but how was I to guess?'

'A conspirator! I? Jason flung at her. 'And you believed it? Surely you knew me well enough?'

'No,' Marianne said seriously, 'no – I don't really know you at all. Remember I saw you first as an enemy, and then as a friend and a saviour, and then at last as someone – someone indifferent.' The word was not easy to say, but Marianne did say it firmly. Then she went on, very gently: 'Which of these men is the real one, Jason? For from indifference you seem to have come to dislike, even to hate me?'

'Don't talk such rubbish,' Jason retorted sharply. 'What man could be indifferent to a woman like you? There is something about you which drives a man to commit the wildest follies. One must either love you to distraction – or want to wring your neck! There can be no half-measures.'

'You – you seem to have chosen the second alternative. I can't blame you. But before I go, there is one thing I should like to know—'

He was standing with his back to her, staring out, unseeingly, at the rain streaming down the windows and at the blackness of the garden beyond.

'What?'

'This visitor – who was so important as to bring you back from the Queen of Spain. I should like to know – forgive me – I should like to know if it was a woman?'

He turned and looked at her again, but this time there was in his eyes something like an involuntary tenderness:

'Does it matter so much?'

'More than you could ever believe. I – I will never ask you anything else. You will never hear of me again…'

It was said in a tone of such doleful resignation, and with such humility, that it found the chink in his armour. A force which he could not control brought the privateer to his knees beside her, imprisoning both her hands in his:

'Little fool! That visit was important only from a business point of view. And the visitor was a man, another American, a boyhood friend of mine, Thomas Sumter, who has just gone off to supervise the loading of my ship. You probably don't know, but on account of the blockade a number of major French exporters are using American vessels to transport their goods. One of these is a delightful lady at Rheims, Madame Veuve Nicole Cliquot-Ponsardin, the head of great champagne caves, who has done me the honour to entrust her wares to me. Thomas has just been settling our latest agreement and has driven off to Morlaix tonight to arrange for the cargo's conveyance to – well, to somewhere outside the Empire. That is all my conspiracy. Are you satisfied?'

'Champagne!' Marianne cried, laughing and crying at once. 'It was all about champagne! And I thought—Oh dear, it's too much, it's really too wonderful… too funny! I was right when I said I did not know you at all!'

But Jason had only smiled perfunctorily at her relief, and there was no laughter in his eyes as he searched her radiant face with painful eagerness:

'Marianne, Marianne! Who are you yourself with your childlike innocence and the artfulness of a woman of the world? Sometimes you are as clear as day, and at others full of strange shadows, and it may be I shall never know the truth about you.'

'I love you – that is all the truth.'

'You have the power to make my life a hell, and to turn me into a devil. Are you a woman or a witch?'

'I love you – I am only a woman who loves you.'

'And I almost killed you. I wanted to kill you…'

'I love you. I have forgotten it already.'

The strong, brown hands had moved steadily up Marianne's arms and folded round her, drawing her close to a hard, warm chest, and Jason's lips were on her eyes, her cheeks, were seeking her mouth. Trembling with a joy so great that for an instant it seemed that she would die, Marianne abandoned herself to the arms that now held her fast, pressing herself close to Jason and closing her eyes which were so full of tears that they overflowed and her cheeks were wet with them. Their kiss tasted of salt and fire, bitter-sweet, with all the passion and tenderness of a thing long awaited, long desired, long prayed for without real hope of that prayer being answered. It was eternity in a few seconds, broken off only to begin again, more passionately still. It was as if neither Jason nor Marianne could ever quench their grievous, burning thirst for each other, as if both were trying to cram into this fleeting moment of happiness all their share of paradise on earth.

When at last they drew apart a little, Jason took Marianne's chin between his fingers and pushed her head up a little until the candlelight shone in the marine deeps of her eyes.

'What a fool I've been,' he murmured. 'How could I ever have imagined for a moment that I could live the rest of my life away from you? You are a part of myself, my flesh and blood!… Now what are we going to do? I cannot keep you with me, and you have no right to stay. There is—'

'I know,' Marianne said quickly, laying her hand on his lips to keep him from uttering the names that would have broken the spell. 'But these few hours belong to us. Surely we can forget the real world for a few moments more?'

'Like you, I wish we could – oh, how I wish we could!' he said desperately. 'But Marianne, there is this peculiar behaviour of Cranmere's, this false information – and all that it cost you—'

'The money is nothing. I have more than I know what to do with.'

'Nevertheless, I will repay you. But it was not the money I was thinking of. Why did he spin you this yarn?'

Marianne laughed. 'Just for the sake of the money, of course. You said so yourself, he was undoubtedly in need of it and he found a perfect means. The only thing to do now is to forget it.'

She slid her arms tenderly round his neck and tried to draw him to her once again but Jason unfastened her encircling arms very gently and got to his feet:

'Can you hear? There is a window banging in the next room.'

'Call one of the servants.'

'I sent them all to bed before Thomas came. My business affairs are my own concern.'

He moved towards the door which led to the adjoining room and Marianne followed him automatically. Now that the rain had stopped and everywhere was quiet, she sensed a strangeness in the atmosphere of the house, as if it were full of the rustle of skirts, faint whisperings which were probably nothing more than lingering drops of water dripping from the trees on to the gravel paths outside. The room where the window was banging, a large, almost empty salon, was dark but, glancing out of the windows, Marianne thought she saw lights flitting among the shadows in the grounds that ran down to the Versailles road. There was something ominous about them in the thick dark out there, and she hurried after Jason, who was making the window fast.

'I thought I saw lights in the garden. You saw nothing?'

'Nothing at all. Your eyes have been playing tricks on you.'

'And the noises?… Did you hear nothing? As it were a rustle of silk, a sighing?'

It might have been the effects of darkness, for it was almost completely dark, the lights in the next room casting only a feeble shaft through the half-open door, but Marianne found that her hearing and her mind seemed attuned to a host of faint, disquieting sounds. It was as if every board, every panel, every piece of furniture in the house had taken on a life of its own – a frightening feeling.

Startled by the odd note in her voice, Jason folded her once more in his arms, clasping her to him gently, like some fragile, precious object, then, as he realized that she was burning hot, he began to worry:

'You're feverish! It is that which makes you see and hear things. Come, I can feel you shivering… You need care. Oh, my God, and to think I…' He tried to urge her forward but she hung back, staring wide-eyed into the darkness, which now began to seem less black.

'No. Listen! It is like someone crying. A woman… she is crying to warn us…'

'Any moment you will tell me you are another who has seen the poor princess's ghost! Enough of this, Marianne. You are doing yourself no good and I am afraid that I have made matters worse. We must not stay here.'

Without further argument, he picked her up in his arms and carried her through into the other room and shut the door carefully behind them before depositing his burden on a small sofa. Having first wrapped Marianne in her silken cloak and placed a cushion underneath her head, he announced his intention of rousing the cook to bring her some hot milk. Walking over to the corner by the bookcase, he pulled the bell rope which had been concealed there. Muffled to her chin in the green silk, Marianne followed him with her eyes.

'It's no good,' she said unhappily. 'The best thing is for me to go home. But – I didn't see the ghost, you know. I heard it. I know I did.'

'Don't be so silly. There is no ghost outside your own imagination.'

'There is… it was trying to warn us—'

Quite suddenly, the house seemed to be wide awake. Doors opened and shut noisily and there was a sound of hurried footsteps. Even before Jason could reach the door to inquire what was afoot, it was flung open to admit a bewildered-looking footman bearing all the signs of one who had dressed in great haste:

'The police! It is the police, Monsieur!'

'Here? At this hour? What do they want?'

'I – I do not know. They made the lodge keeper open the gate and they are already in the grounds.'

Seized with a horrible foreboding, Marianne sat up and began feverishly putting on her cloak, tying the silken strings with trembling hands. She stared up at Jason with frightened eyes. The thought in her mind was that Francis might have cheated her and, without the least shadow of proof, have informed on Jason as a conspirator.

'What are you going to do?' she asked in an anguished undertone. 'You see, I was right to be afraid…'

'There is nothing to be afraid of,' Jason said stoutly. 'I have done nothing I need be ashamed of and I have no reason to suppose that I have enemies.' He turned to the footman, who was still trembling in the doorway. 'You may tell whoever is in charge that I am ready to see them. No doubt it is all a mistake. But ask them to wait a moment…'

He was buttoning his shirt as he spoke, winding his neckcloth deftly about his throat and reaching for the coat which he had taken off earlier for the sake of coolness and laid over the back of a chair. This done, he came back to Marianne and helped her to her feet.

'How did you get in?'

'By the little door in the wall in the rue de Seine. Gracchus is waiting for me there, with the chaise hidden close by.'

'Then you must go to him at once… I hope you may still be able to get out without being seen. Fortunately it has stopped raining. Come! They will still be at the front of the house.'

But Marianne clung to him desperately:

'I don't want to leave you! If there is any danger to you, I want to share it.'

'Now you are being childish. I am in no danger. But you, or your reputation at least, will be horribly compromised if these policemen find you here. No one must know—'

'I don't care!' Marianne cried wildly. 'You want to keep it from Pilar, that is all—'

'For heaven's sake, Marianne! Stop this foolishness! I give you my word that in asking you to leave now I am thinking only of you—' He broke off suddenly and his arms, which had been holding her, fell to his sides. It was too late. The door had opened and a man was already in the room. He was a big man, very solidly-built, dressed all in black, buttoned high to the chin below a long, drooping moustache. In his hand he held a high-crowned velours hat, black likewise, and his eyes, Marianne saw in the light of the candles, were the hardest and coldest she had ever seen.

The newcomer sketched a brief salute, 'Inspector Pâques. I'm sorry to disturb you, Monsieur, but we have received information to the effect that there has been a crime committed in this house and that we should find a body here.'

'A crime?' echoed Jason and Marianne together. But while Jason advanced to meet the policeman, Marianne stayed where she was, leaning heavily on a chair. She felt as if she were about to faint. The absurd, yet horrifying menace which had hung over her life since that fateful evening at the theatre seemed to have come home to roost. What was all this about crimes and dead bodies? It was like some dreadful farce in rather bad taste, the police bursting in in the middle of her love scene… Then she heard Jason's voice, calm and even a little amused:

'Are you sure your information was correct, Monsieur? I knew this house was supposed to be haunted, but this talk of corpses lying about… I would not cast doubts on your informant but I confess I find it all very surprising.'

His level, courteous tone must have impressed the police officer because he gave a small, rigid bow before replying:

'I am very willing to admit, Monsieur, the information in question reached us anonymously, but it was so definite – and so serious – that I did not hesitate to act.'

'So serious? Does that mean you know whose body you expect to find here?'

'No. We know only that the man is a loyal servant of the Emperor and – and that he is a special agent. I could no more ignore the matter than if a political assassination had been involved.'

It was Jason's turn to bow. 'Very true. Although I am amazed as I am intrigued! My dear Sir, the house is yours. Pray search. I shall be most interested to accompany you. But first, if you will excuse me, I will escort this lady to her carriage. This business is not suitable for her.'

Inspector Pâques was already half-way to the door but he turned at this and came back to the young couple:

'I regret that will not be possible, Monsieur. I must ask you not to leave this room until the search has been made. This lady is the Princess Sant'Anna, I believe?'

This time it was Marianne who answered. She had listened with mounting alarm to the polite exchange between Jason and his unexpected visitor but now at the mention of her own name her fears, although still nameless, took on a new edge of horror. All the same, it was with dignity and a fair assumption of coolness that she said: 'That is so. May I ask how you know me?'

'I have not that honour, Madame,' Pâques replied chillingly. 'But our information stated that you would be found with Monsieur Beaufort—whose mistress you are.'

Before Marianne could say a word, Jason had stepped between her and the policeman. The muscles of his jaw were taut with a rage barely under control and his eyes were very bright.

'That will do!' he said sharply. 'Do what you came to do, since the word of an anonymous informant is enough to make you invade a respectable household, but do not insult people!'

'I was not insulting anyone. I speak as I read—'

'If you believe everything you read, I am sorry for you. Moreover, no accusations have so far been made against either myself or the lady, I think. For myself, it makes no difference, but let me advise you to behave more courteously towards one who is a personal friend of the Emperor, unless you wish me to register a complaint against you. I am, after all, an American citizen, as you may know.'

'Very good,' the inspector cut him short. 'If I have made a mistake in coming here, Monsieur, I'll engage to apologize, but for the present I must ask you not to leave this room.'

He went out and Marianne and Jason were left alone. They looked at each other, he with a faint shrug and a quick, reassuring smile that yet did not reach his eyes and she with an anxiety she no longer made any attempt to hide.

'This is ridiculous,' Jason said. But Marianne shook her head:

'No – I am afraid it may be somehow the work of Lord Cranmere. And there is nothing ridiculous there, unfortunately.'

Jason gave a start and frowned. 'You think this police fellow's letter may have come from him? It's possible – but from what he said, I seem to be the principal target and I cannot see why Cranmere should wish me harm…'

'Because he knows quite well that the best way to hurt me is to strike at you!' Marianne's voice held all the passionate urgency of her need to convince her friend of what was growing every moment clearer to herself. Everything pointed to it, even the strange noises in the house which only she, with her extremely delicate sensitivity and an ear which, perhaps owing to the English side of her nature, seemed unusually attuned to anything connected with the supernatural, had heard.

'Think, Jason! You yourself were struck by the coincidence of all that has happened since last night, when I found that man in my house. This curious mixture of truth and falsehood which keeps recurring…'

'Truth?' the American said with sudden ferocity. 'What truth do you see in that damned anonymous note, apart from the reference to your presence here tonight?'

'Lord Cranmere was the only person who knew that I was coming—'

'That's as may be. But that is as far as it goes. You are not my mistress, are you? While as for this fictitious crime, this wholly imaginary corpse—'

He stopped short, becoming aware of the sudden reappearance of Inspector Pâques, this time through the french window by which Marianne had entered earlier, and looking, if possible, even chillier than at his first entry:

'Will you be good enough to come with me, Monsieur? And you also, Madame.'

'Where to?' Jason said.

'To the billiard-room in the small pavilion in the grounds.'

Marianne's presentiment of some imminent catastrophe had become a certainty. She read disaster in the set face of the policeman and she was sure that his eyes held a threat. Jason, too, had scanned Pâques's uncommunicative features with surprise, but he gave no sign beyond a slight shrug as he held out his hand to Marianne, saying on a note of exasperated resignation: 'Oh, very well! Since you insist.'

They went out into the garden. The heat which had made the earlier part of the evening so unpleasant had given way to a cool freshness and from the drenched earth and dripping trees there came a reviving smell of new-washed leaves and wet grass. But the dark figures of the police were stationed grimly among the roses on the three terraces and Marianne shivered, thinking that there were enough of them to surround a whole village and wondering at the extravagance which could employ so many men to check on a single house. It was possible, of course, that Inspector Pâques had been expecting a gang of criminals and had been determined at all costs to prevent an escape, which must always be reckoned a possibility in a garden of such size. The men stood quite still. One or two held shaded lanterns in their hands to throw a light on the path, but altogether they gave the impression of some ominous guard. Marianne must have trembled perceptibly because she felt Jason's fingers tighten on hers and drew some comfort from the warmth of the contact.

The little pavilion which had once been used as a billiard-room at some time in the past stood slightly to the right of the house. The light inside gave it the air of a big, yellow lantern standing there in the dark. Two men were standing guard at the door, leaning heavily on the knotted cudgels which were formidable weapons in their hands. They stood, silent and ominous, like two black attendants at the mouth of a tomb, and Marianne's hand clutched Jason's nervously. Pâques opened the door and stood aside to allow the couple to enter:

'Go in and see.'

Jason entered first and after a quick start moved instinctively to block his companion's view, and at the same time to keep her from stepping in the blood which covered the room. But it was already too late. She had seen what lay within.

She gave a single horrified shriek, then turned, her knees giving way beneath her, to escape the nightmare vision, only to come full against the inspector's large chest, blocking the doorway.

In the middle of the room, the legs half-hidden under the billiard-table with its torn cloth, lay a gigantic corpse, with gaping throat and eyes wide open on eternity. Yet for all the bloodless pallor of the face, for all the terrifying fixity of the expression, rigid in a look of horrible surprise, there was no mistaking the identity of the man who lay there, in that place which had once been built for amusement and was now so dreadfully transformed into a scene of carnage. It was Nicholas Mallerousse, Marianne's adoptive uncle, alias the seaman Black Fish, the friend of prisoners escaping from the English hulks and the man who had sworn to destroy Francis Cranmere or die in the attempt.

'Who is this man?' Jason asked tonelessly. 'I have never seen him before.'

'Ah! Is that so, indeed?' the inspector said, making vain attempts to disengage himself from Marianne who was clinging to him, sobbing convulsively, in the first stages of hysteria. 'And yet your initials were found on the razor which killed Nicolas Mallerousse.

'Now then, lady, now then, if you please! I've better things to do than stand here supporting you.'

'Leave her alone!' Jason cried fiercely, snatching Marianne away from the inspector who had started to shake her in his efforts to get free. 'No one looks to a policeman for compassion! If this poor fellow is indeed Nicolas Mallerousse, as you claim, then this young woman has just received a terrible shock. Get her out of this slaughterhouse, I implore you, or the Emperor shall hear of it, I swear to you! Come, Marianne, come with me…'

Still talking, he lifted her shuddering form and carried her outside. Piques let them go and merely indicated a stone bench which stood beside the path, backed by a bed of tall white lilies whose heady scent filled all that part of the garden. Jason laid down his burden and asked for someone to be sent to find Gracchus-Hannibal Pioche and tell him to bring the carriage for his mistress. Inspector Pâques, however, had his own views:

'Not so fast. I haven't finished with this lady yet. You told me it came as a shock to her that the body was that of Nicolas Mallerousse? Why should that be, now?'

'Because he was a good friend to her. She was very fond of him.'

'Do you expect me to believe that? The shock was caused by the sight of the blood and maybe because she had not thought to be confronted with your handiwork.'

'My handiwork! Are you accusing me of this disgusting piece of butchery? Simply because you found a razor with my initials on it? Razors can be stolen—'

'But motives can't. And you had two, two very good ones.'

'Two motives? How should I have two motives for murdering a man I'd never even met?'

'At least two,' Pâques amended, 'each better than the last. Mallerousse had been on your tail ever since you came to France, trying to get proof of important smuggling ventures you were involved in. You killed him because he was about to arrest you just as you were leaving France with your holds full of—'

'Champagne and burgundy!' Jason cried exasperatedly. 'You don't kill a man for the sake of a few bottles of wine!'

'If what that letter has to say is true we shall find something else besides that will give us all the proof we need. As for the second motive. The lady herself supplies that. You killed him to save her!'

'To save her? Save her from what? I tell you she—'

'From this! We found it on the body. I don't doubt she knew Mallerousse well enough, or that he, poor devil, knew a good deal more about her than she liked. But I can't imagine her being so very fond of the man who was carrying this paper. Here, Germain, fetch a lantern over here!'

One of the policemen came over to them. The light from his lantern fell on a scrap of yellow paper, the sight of which was enough to rouse Marianne from the depths of horror and grief that had overwhelmed her. Still shaken by sobs, she had heard what was said without being able to gain sufficient control of herself to respond to the inspector's accusations and Jason's angry replies. But this piece of paper, the yellow paper she had seen once before on that day in the Place de la Concorde, in the hands of her worst enemy, acted on her as a counter-irritant because it gave her clear proof; it was the signature added to the nightmare in which she and Jason were caught.

She held out her hand and, taking the paper from the inspector, unfolded it and read it quickly. Yes, it was the same as the one she had already seen, except that it had been brought up to date and the name 'Princess Marianne Sant'Anna' substituted for that of 'Maria-Stella'. But the contents, the accusation that the Emperor's mistress was a spy and a murderess still being sought by the law in England, were the same as ever, still characteristically vile.

Holding it distastefully between finger and thumb, Marianne returned the yellow broadsheet to the inspector:

'You were quite right to keep me here, Monsieur. No one is better able to give you the full story of that abominable piece of libel. I have seen it before. I will tell you, too, how it was I came to know Nicolas Mallerousse, of the kindness I received from him and why I had good cause to love him, whatever ideas you may have formed on the strength of one anonymous letter and another, equally anonymous pamphlet.'

'Madame—' the police officer began impatiently.

Marianne held up her hand. She looked proudly at the inspector with an expression at once so haughty and so candid that his eyes fell before hers:

'Allow me, Monsieur! When I have done, you will see the impossibility of further accusations against Monsieur Beaufort because what I have to tell you will reveal the names of the real perpetrators of this – this hideous crime.'

Her voice failed her as once again her memory set before her every detail of the scene she had just beheld. Her friend Nicolas, so kind and brave, basely slaughtered by the very ones he should have brought to justice. How it came to pass that this should have happened in this house, the house in which Jason was living, a house which belonged to a man of the utmost respectability, Marianne did not know, but she knew with all the infallible insight of her grief and anger, and her hatred also, who had done this. If she had to cry it aloud to the whole of Paris, if it cost her the last shred of her reputation, she would bring the real culprits to justice!

Inspector Pâques, meanwhile, began to lose some of his assurance in the face of a woman who spoke with such firmness and certainty:

'All this is all very well, Princess, but the fact remains that someone committed the crime and the body has been found here…'

'Someone committed the crime but it was not Monsieur Beaufort! The real murderer is the author of that pamphlet,' Marianne cried, pointing to the yellow paper which Pâques still held in his hand. 'He is the man who has hounded me ever since the evil day I married him. He is my first husband, Lord Francis Cranmere, an Englishman—and a spy.'

Marianne could feel, suddenly, that Pâques did not believe. He was looking alternately at the yellow paper and at Marianne with an odd expression on his face. At last he shook the paper softly under her nose:

'In other words, the man you killed? Do you take me for an imbecile, Madame?'

'But he is not dead! He is in France, he goes by the name of the Vicomte—'

'Think of another story, Madame,' the inspector interrupted her roughly, 'and do not try to divert me with these taradiddles! It is easy enough to accuse a ghost. This house is supposed to be haunted, let me remind you. Perhaps that may provide you with a further exercise for your imagination. For myself, I believe in facts.'

In her indignation, Marianne might have continued to plead, reminding this suspicious policeman of her position in society, her influence with the Emperor, her connections, even, despite the shame evoked by the recollection of those dark hours in her life, of her past record as one of Fouché's most trusted agents. But four more policemen came down the path at that moment. Two carried lanterns while the other two were maintaining a firm grip on a burly individual dressed in a seaman's rough woollen jersey which had seen better days.

'Here, Chief!' one of the men said. 'We found this fellow skulking in the bushes, down by the wall on the Versailles road. He was trying to climb over and make off.'

'Who is he?' growled Pâques.

The answer to his question came from an unexpected quarter. It was Jason who spoke. He had taken the lantern from the hands of one of the policemen and held it up so that the light fell on the prisoner. The face emerging from the shadows and from the filthy collar of the seaman's jersey was bony and unprepossessing, with a broken nose and eyes like black coals.

'Perez! What are you doing here?'

The man appeared to be labouring under all the effects of considerable terror. Strong as he looked, he was shaking so that only the grip of the two policemen kept him on his feet.

'You know this man?' Pâques asked, frowning.

'He is one of my men. Or rather, he was, for I discharged him from my ship when we docked at Morlaix. He is an unmitigated rogue,' Jason said sternly. 'I have no idea what can have brought him here.'

The man uttered a howl like a stuck pig, and before the two surprised policemen could stop him he had sunk to his knees on the ground and was crawling to Jason, clutching at his arms, weeping and groaning all at once.

'No, boss!… No, don't do it! Don't give me up!… Mercy!… No my fault… no help it, boss! We go move him, Jones and me, but no time, boss… they here already… police, boss!'

Marianne listened, stupefied, to the frenzied outpouring of disjointed words, spoken in bad French with a strong Spanish accent, without apparent rhyme or reason, yet terrible to her. She knew now that fate was against her and that Inspector Pâques would never listen to her now that he had what seemed to be a real, live witness. Jason, however, losing his temper at last, had the man by the neck of his grimy jersey and was lifting him bodily from the ground:

'Move him? Who? What?'

'B-but-the b-body, b-boss! That dead man!' the wretched creature gasped out, half-throttled. 'Jones say run and he run fast… but I was afraid to run… when I get there… find the gate shut… then I try to climb the wall… Mercy! Don't kill me, boss!'

The last word ended in a strangled choke. Beside himself with anger, Jason had his strong fingers clamped so tightly round the man's windpipe that he all but choked the life out of him. He thrust his keen face hard into the other's congested one. 'Liar!' he spat out. 'What orders have I ever given you except to have you flogged off my ship for a sneaking thief? Say it, you snivelling pickpocket! Admit that everything you've said is lies before I—'

'That's enough!' the inspector cried sharply, springing to the rescue of the unfortunate Perez. 'Let that man go! By trying to kill him you admit the truth of what he says. Here, men!'

The four policemen had not waited to be told. They converged upon Jason, and Perez, abruptly released, dropped heavily to the ground and began fondling his bruised throat and whining. 'Tries to kill me… after all I've done for him… there's ingratitude…'

Seeing that Jason was firmly held, the wretched creature dragged himself slowly to his feet, shaking his head, more in sorrow than in anger, as it seemed:

'Always it is the same, with the fine gentlemen… When things go wrong, they blame the poor wretch who only obeys orders…'

'But this man is lying!' Marianne burst out. She had been watching with a mixture of horror and disgust as this stranger played out his terrible part, for a part it must surely be, just one more act in this fiendish comedy which Francis had devised to ruin Jason, and to ruin her with him. How? By what means was it to be done? She did not know but all her thoroughbred instincts, all the heightened sensitivity of a woman deeply in love cried out to her that this was all part of a plan, lovingly and skilfully prepared.

'Of course he is lying,' Jason said icily. 'But tonight seems to be the night for liars. I don't know what this scoundrel is doing here but he has certainly been bribed.'

'That will have to be gone into,' the inspector said sternly, 'at the trial. In the meanwhile, Monsieur, I arrest you in the name of His Majesty the Emperor and King!'

'No!' Marianne screamed desperately. 'No! You can't do that! He is innocent!… I know he is! I know everything! Everything, I tell you…' She flung herself after Jason who was already being led away by the men. 'Let him go! You have no right!'

Like a fury, she turned on Pâques, who was busy putting handcuffs on Perez and giving him into the care of one of his men. 'You have no right, do you hear? Tomorrow I shall go to the Emperor! He shall know everything! He will listen to me.'

The inspector's hand reached out and caught her arm in a grip of such brutal hardness that she gasped with pain:

'That's enough of that. Be quiet, now, unless you want me to take you along as well! It is not proved that you were an accessory to the crime and I am letting you go free for the present. But you will be watched… and you are free only so long as you keep quiet. One of my men will see you to your coach and escort you home, after which you will not go out again on any pretext whatever. And remember, I shall have my eye on you.'

Marianne's sorely-tried nerves gave way all at once. She sank down on to the stone seat and, laying her head in her hands, began to cry hopelessly, using up what little strength she had left. Two men came out of the billiard-room carrying a stretcher on which lay a large form covered with a cloth which was already showing sinister dark stains here and there. Marianne watched in a kind of daze as it passed by her, her eyes and her mind a blank, beyond knowing even whether her heartbroken tears were for the good, brave man who twice saved her life, whose body they were now taking away, or for the one whom she loved with her whole being and who now stood unjustly accused of a base crime. In her mind, Cranmere's guilt was beyond all doubt. It was he who had engineered all this, he who had woven each of the fine, sticky threads of this deadly spider's web, and he who had murdered Nicolas Mallerousse, killing two birds with one stone, for at the same time he had rid himself of his pursuer and made a bloodbath of the lives of both Marianne and Jason. How could she have been so stupid, so blind as ever for one instant to believe that what he said was true? Her love had made her the tool of a villain and brought about the death of those whom she loved best in the whole world.

She got up slowly, like a sleep-walker, and began to follow the stretcher, a frail ghost in her white dress, its hem still marked with the dreadful traces of the crime. From time to time, a sob burst from her and the sound died away in the quiet, sweet-smelling darkness which had succeeded the storm. After her, a little way behind, not altogether insensitive, perhaps, to the grief of a woman who, only the night before, had had Paris at her feet envying her wealth and beauty, and who now followed this travesty of a funeral procession like a lost and hopeless orphan, Inspector Pâques, too, made his silent way back to the house.

The big white house, a house built for pleasures and happiness, yet where Marianne had seemed to hear the sobbing of a desolate, unhappy shade, emerged through the trees illumined as though for a ball, but Marianne saw nothing but the bloodstained cloth borne before her, heard nothing but the voices of her own grief and despair. At the same mechanical pace she passed the dark groups of policemen on the terraces. She climbed the shallow steps, as though mounting the scaffold, walked through the room where she had known such brief, miraculous happiness and out into the hall, automatically obeying the inspector's voice which came to her from a great distance, telling her that her carriage was waiting at the door.

She was so far away that she did not even flinch when a black figure – another, there had been so many in that last hour! – barred her way. There was no emotion in her eyes as they encountered the burning hatred in Pilar's, she did not even ask herself what Jason's Spanish wife was doing there, and scarcely heard the words which the other woman hissed at her in a passionate fury of denunciation:

'My husband killed for you! But it is not for that he will die! It is for you! Because of you, and the curse of loving you!'

Marianne did not even look at her. She gave a little, weary shrug and moved her arm to put away the importunate figure. The woman was insane! Jason was not going to die. He could not die… not without Marianne. From now on, what meaning could there be to that word death which they kept waving in front of her, like flowers at a funeral?

Through the crowd of policemen, servants and curious onlookers, Marianne caught sight of Gracchus, his round face pinched with worry, and behind him the roof of her chaise. Instinct made her reach out to that one friendly face and that familiar refuge.

'Gracchus!' she called weakly.

Instantly Gracchus leapt forward, forging his way ruthlessly through all that separated him from his mistress.

'I'm coming, Mademoiselle Marianne!'

She clung to his arm, whispering: 'Take me away, Gracchus… take me home.'

Then the whole world spun round, the white house wheeled above her, leaving her in a lurching maelstrom of faces, trees and turning lights. Driven to the last pitch of nervous exhaustion, Marianne slid mercifully into unconsciousness. She did not hear Gracchus, before he lifted her from the ground, turn, cursing and sobbing at once, and let fly at the stunned Inspector Pâques in the argot of his native slums: 'You bleeding snuffer! If you've killed 'er I'll make sure the Little Corporal 'as the guts out of your stinking carcass, you jest see if I don't…'

CHAPTER SIX The Screw Turns

Beneath a remarkably forbidding exterior, the effect of consorting daily with rogues, thieves, murderers and malefactors of all kinds, Inspector Pâques concealed a considerable degree of subtlety. Jason Beaufort's arrest caused none of the stir which might have been expected. The only witnesses had been a handful of villagers from Passy, attracted by the commotion, and the four newspapers of the day, duly muzzled by the police and by a rigorous censorship, breathed not a word. Moreover, society was for the most part in the process of leaving Paris for its country estates or for a variety of fashionable watering places and consequently did not learn of the affair until a long time afterwards. Apart from the Minister of Police, the Queen of Spain, with whom Pilar found an immediate refuge, Talleyrand, who was told of it by a distraught Marianne first thing the next morning, and, of course, the Emperor, no one was told what had happened.

As far as Marianne herself was concerned, the order for silence had been immediate and categorical. The very next evening, Savary came hurrying round to inform that his department had received stringent orders from Napoleon that the Princess Sant'Anna's name was in no circumstances to be mentioned in connection with the affair. Marianne found it difficult to be grateful for the favour.

'How can I be kept out of it when there is a horrid anonymous note accusing Mr Beaufort of killing Mallerousse for my sake?'

The Duke of Rovigo coughed discreetly and shifted in his chair, clearly ill-at-ease. He had endured a characteristically unpleasant interview with Napoleon and he could still hear the biting accents of the imperial displeasure ringing in his ears:

'His Majesty is of the opinion that the accused would be quite capable of killing for your sake, Princess, but he has condescended to inform me of the – er – ties of friendship which subsisted between yourself and the deceased and stated his conviction that it would be absurd to associate you in any way with his death.'

Napoleon's actual words had been a good deal more forceful than this but they appeared to Savary, in spite of their august source, to be more suited to the camp than to the drawing-room. Marianne, however, expressed some surprise.

'To inform you? But, my Lord Duke, are you not the Minister of Police? Is it possible that you, as Fouché's successor, can be unaware that when I first came to Paris I occupied the post of lectrice to Madame de Talleyrand-Périgord and that the name I went by was Marianne Mallerousse, although my code name in the files at the Quai Malaquais was the Star?'

'Unfortunately, Madame, both you and the Emperor would appear to have forgotten that the Duke of Otranto left me very little of any importance on which to build, that for three days he burned all his papers and files-three days!' he added sighing. 'And the Emperor blames me – as if I could have foreseen it! I have had to start from scratch, patiently finding out who was working for us and on whom I could still count.'

'Not on me, at all events,' Marianne cut him short. She was not in the least interested in the minister's troubles but she knew Fouché well enough to imagine the perverse pleasure he would have taken in making a clean sweep before his successor took over. 'But all this is beside the point. I must see the Emperor, Duke. It is of the utmost importance. I cannot let him do anything so dreadfully unjust as to allow Mr Beaufort to stand trial. To suspect him of so sordid a crime when he has always behaved as a sincere friend to our country would be a monstrous thing to do! Monsieur de Talleyrand knows him as well as I do, he can tell you…'

'No, Madame,' Savary said, shaking his head gloomily. 'His Majesty guessed that you would wish to see him. He charged me to tell you that it is quite out of the question.'

At this blow, delivered in a firm, though not unsympathetic voice, Marianne's colour drained away:

'The Emperor – refuses to see me?'

'Yes, Madame. He told me that he would send for you when he judged that the time was ripe, which it is not at present. There are certain circumstances which make it appear that Monsieur Beaufort may have been less our friend than you imagine.'

'And even if that were true,' Marianne cried passionately, 'even if he hated us, would that be sufficient reason to leave him to face an unjust and ridiculous charge?'

'My dear Princess, this is a serious matter and it is essential that it be cleared up. Leave it to the law to uncover the whole truth about what happened at Passy.'

'Yes indeed – and the law can only benefit from hearing what I have to say. I was with Monsieur Beaufort when the crime was committed and, what is more to the point, I know who is, or rather are, the real murderers of Nicolas Mallerousse. If the Emperor refuses to listen to me, then you, Duke, must hear what I have to say. The man who did this murder and carefully covered up his crime in order to throw the blame for it on to another was—'

But Marianne was not fated to find anyone willing to listen to her. Savary cut her short, laying a hand soothingly on her arm:

'My dear Princess, I have told you the Emperor does not wish to have you involved in the matter. Trust my department to discover the real murderer – if, that is, we have not already discovered him.'

'But won't you listen to me, at least! I was there, I know all about it, you must admit that I am a valuable witness! Even if what I tell you must remain between ourselves, surely it will save you from making a mistake?'

'Valuable, perhaps – but certainly not impartial. No,' Savary went on quickly, forestalling a further protest from Marianne, 'I have not yet done with the Emperor's orders concerning you.'

'Orders?' she echoed, with some alarm.

Ignoring the question in her voice, which might have led him into invidious explanations, the Duke of Rovigo confined himself to expounding the nature of his instructions, taking the trouble to soften them slightly in the process:

'His Majesty desires you to leave Paris within the next few days for some other locality which may be agreeable to you.'

Marianne rose at this, oblivious of the pains the minister had taken to wrap up the harshness of the command, for command it was.

'Let us be frank, Duke. The Emperor is exiling me? Then tell me so plainly, if you please.'

'By no means, Madame,' Savary said, with a suggestion of a sigh which spoke volumes for his longing to be anywhere but where he was. 'It is merely that His Majesty wishes you to spend the summer away from Paris. Anywhere you like – so long as it is at least fifty leagues distant… the summer and also possibly the autumn, no more. What could be more natural, indeed, for nearly all our beauties have left Paris for some watering place – my own wife is leaving shortly for the waters at Plombiëres… You will merely be following the general fashion. There could be nothing more natural, after all, when one recalls that you are barely recovered from your illness after the tragedy at the Austrian ambassador's ball. You will return to us fully restored in health and more beautiful than ever, Princess, and no one will be more happy to see you than your humble servant.'

Marianne listened to her visitor's words with an attentive frown. She did not understand this sudden determination to send her off somewhere to take the waters for what was after all, considering that she had incurred the imperial wrath, a comparatively short spell of time. When Napoleon ordered the retirement of one of his subjects who had displeased him it was generally for a much longer period. Because she liked to have an answer to her questions if it were at all possible, she framed this thought aloud:

'I should like the truth, Minister, if you please. Tell me why His Majesty is so anxious for me to take the waters.'

There was authority as well as pleading in the green eyes and with another sigh Savary capitulated.

'The truth is that the Emperor, as I have told you, is anxious to keep your name out of this affair. Now according to the way things go, Monsieur Beaufort may or may not be brought to trial. If it should come to this, the trial will probably take place in October or November… The Emperor does not wish to hear that you are in Paris until it is all over.'

'The Emperor wants me to abandon my best friend – more than that – and this is a truth which you may tell him I think, Duke? – the man I love!'

'His Majesty was not unprepared for this reaction. That is why it is a command – and why he will not see you.'

'And suppose I will not obey?' Marianne exclaimed, quivering. 'Suppose I am determined to stay in spite of everything?'

Savary's voice, which had so far been calm and gently resigned, acquired suddenly a new touch of hardness. He was discreetly threatening:

'I should not advise it. It can do you no good to force the Emperor to acknowledge your involvement. Remember that by imposing on you what is, after all, you must admit, a very slight penance, he is moved chiefly by the wish to shield you from a scandal which would bring discredit on the name you bear. Must I remind you that, quite apart from Monsieur Beaufort, there is already one man in prison on your account? When a woman of noble family lives apart from her husband, it is bound to cause comment when in the space of forty-eight hours two men find themselves in prison because of her, one for murder, the other for a scandalous duel with an officer of a foreign country who, as it happens, had that very evening called out the first man. Moreover,' the minister concluded, 'any action on your part which compelled us to take sterner steps would not bring you any closer to your friend. It is a long way from St Lazare, the women's prison, to La Force where Monsieur Beaufort is being held. Surely it is better to be free, even fifty leagues away, for both your sakes? Believe me, Madame, by obeying you will be doing the best for yourself and your friend.'

Defeated, Marianne bowed her head. Napoleon was treating her for the first time as a subject, and a recalcitrant subject at that. She would have to obey and go away, just when she longed with all her heart to remain in Paris, as near as possible to the blackened walls of the old prison behind which Jason must lie stifling for so many weeks. She was to be sent into the country, like a troublesome child who must be given a change of air, when the mere idea of Jason as a prisoner made her ill and took away any wish she might have had to enjoy the fine July sunshine. Jason of the seven seas, of the four horizons, as she called him to herself in the warm, tender pride of her love for him, Jason, whom the mighty albatross and the darting swallow could claim as their brother, Jason pining in a filthy prison cell at the mercy of ignorant turnkeys and unspeakable riff-raff of all kinds. To Marianne, it was like mud thrown at the clear blue sky, like blasphemy in the midst of a prayer, like spitting at a star.

'Well?' Savary asked.

'I shall obey,' she said reluctantly.

'Good. You will be gone in – shall we say, two days?'

What good would it do to plead when the master commanded? It might be that the Emperor meant his heavy hand to fall lightly and protectively, but for all that, Marianne felt its grip grinding her bones and crushing the fibres of her being quite as painfully as any medieval instrument of torture. No longer able to endure the minister's solemn face and crocodile sympathy, she gave him a slight bow and left the room, leaving it to the gloomy butler, Jeremy, to escort him to his carriage. She wanted, above all, to be alone to think things out.

Savary was right. It would do no good to rebel openly. Better to seem to bow, even though no force on earth should make her give up the fight!

Two days later Marianne left Paris, accompanied by Agathe and Gracchus, bound for Bourbon-l'Archambault. It had been her first intention to join Arcadius de Jolival at Aix-la-Chapelle, but that great Rhineland spa was very much in fashion that summer and Marianne felt little inclination for society after all that she had been through, and would go through, until Jason Beaufort was proved innocent and finally exonerated. Moreover, Talleyrand, who had arrived at her house on the heels of Savary, had advised her strongly against the historic capital of Charlemagne:

'There is certainly plenty of company to be met with there, but it is company of a very doubtful kind. Every exile and troublemaker is flocking there to the king of Holland now that the Emperor has to some extent set him aside by annexing his kingdom. Louis Bonaparte is the most lachrymose creature of my acquaintance and now he is behaving precisely as if he had been driven from his ancestral acres by some remorseless tyrant. Then there is our Lady Mother, also, with her endless prayers and still more endless economies. To be sure, my dear friend Casimir de Montrond has obtained permission to visit the place but, deeply devoted to him as I am, I cannot but feel he has a talent for courting disaster and God knows you have had enough of those… No, you had better come with me.'

For eight years past, it had been the Prince of Benevento's habit to depart each summer with unfailing regularity to drink the waters at Bourbon. His bad leg and his rheumatic pains were, if not greatly eased thereby, at least made no worse and no human strength, no cataclysm in Europe could have prevailed to stop him taking his cure when July came round. He had enumerated the charms of the quiet, pretty little town to his young friend in glowing terms, adding the further persuasions that it was not nearly so far from Paris, that seventy leagues was far more easily covered than a hundred and fifty, that it would be far better to write to Jolival to join her in Bourbon, that it was far easier to sink into a kind of obscurity, and the consequent freedom of action which resulted from it, in a small town than in a city full of people to whom one was known and, finally, that those in disgrace had a duty to stick together:

'You can make up my table at whist and I shall read to you the works of Madame du Deffand. We will reshape Europe between us and talk scandal about all those who talk scandal about us. That ought to keep us busy, eh?'

Marianne had agreed. While Agathe packed her clothes and Gracchus spring-cleaned the big travelling coach, she had sat down to write to her friend Jolival a long letter recounting all that had occurred. She finished by asking him to come back as soon as he was able, with or without Adelaide, and come to her at Bourbon. It made no difference to tell herself that there was certainly nothing the literary Vicomte could do to assist Jason, she was still convinced that, if only he were there, everything would at once seem better. She was perfectly well aware that if he had been there Cranmere's trap would not have worked nearly so well because, being less trusting and a good deal less emotional than Marianne, he would undoubtedly have smelled a rat and acted accordingly.

But the harm had been done and now they could only do everything possible to repair it and to bring the real murderers of Nicolas Mallerousse to justice. In any enterprise of that kind, Arcadius was a priceless ally because he knew far better than Marianne herself those sinister inhabitants of the Parisian underworld among whom the Englishman had found his confederates.

The letter had been entrusted to Fortunée Hamelin, who was even then on the point of setting out hot foot for Aix-la-Chapelle, for she, like her friend Talleyrand, had heard that the irresistible Count Casimir was to take the waters there and no power on earth could have kept her from the man who, with Fournier-Sarlovèze, shared her amorous and highly inflammable heart. The fact that Fournier was at that moment in prison in no way deterred her.

Well, at least he can't run off with anyone else while I'm away,' she had remarked, with her usual airy cynicism, regardless of the fact that she herself was preparing to fly to the arms of the handsome general's rival.

So Fortunée had gone the day before, promising to give the letter to Jolival before she so much as set eyes on Montrond, and reassured on that point, Marianne had set out sedately for the Allier, where she was to meet Talleyrand. It had been his intention, before going to Bourbon, to spend a few days on his estates at Valençay, partly to pay his respects to his permanent though unwilling guests, the Spanish princes, and partly to talk business with his agent, the Prince of Benevento's financial affairs having suffered a grievous blow through the failure of Simons Bank in Brussels.

Marianne left Paris on the fourteenth of July 1810, not without a good deal of regret. Quite apart from the thought that she was leaving Jason in the hands of the police, she found herself hating to leave her own dear house. In spite of Savary's reassuring words, she wondered how long it would be before she saw it again, for she knew in her heart that sooner or later she would disobey the Emperor and that if Jason were brought to trial, if all her own and Jolival's efforts proved vain, then no power on earth could keep her from him at that moment. Sooner or later, she would incur the wrath of Napoleon… and God alone could say how far that wrath might go. The Emperor was perfectly capable of ordering the Princess Sant'Anna bade to Tuscany and forbidding her to leave it. He might force her to remain shut up in the villa, so beautiful and yet so terrifying, from which she had fled once before after a night of nightmare horror.

The mere thought of it made Marianne's skin prickle with fear. Ever since losing her child, she had been unable to think without apprehension of the moment when the prince in the white mask should learn that the longed-for heir would not be forthcoming, indeed, would never be. She had put off from day to day the moment of writing the fatal letter, so great was her dread of what might be his reaction. Something told her that if the Emperor, in his anger, were to have her returned to the palace of Sant'Anna she would never be able to escape from it again. The memory of Matteo Damiani had not yet faded from her mind.

She had often wondered what had happened to him. Donna Lavinia had told her as she was leaving, that Prince Corrado had confined him in the cellars, that no doubt some form of punishment would follow. But how could he punish a man who all his life had served him, and served his family devotedly… and one moreover who certainly knew his secret! With death? Marianne could not believe that Matteo Damiani had been killed, for he himself had killed no one.

The horses trotted on towards Fontainebleau and the sun splashed gaily through the moving curtain of leaves, but Marianne paid no attention to the road slipping by outside the windows of her coach. Her mind remained curiously divorced from the present and divided in the strangest way, part of it dwelling on Germany and her friend Jolival, of whom she had such high hopes, and part, the greater and more vulnerable part, roving about the ancient prison of La Force which she knew so well.

There had been a day when Adelaide, in a mood of nostalgia, had taken her to the old quarter of the Marais to show her her old home, a beautiful building made of pink brick and white stone dating from the time of Louis XIII, a neighbour of the Hôtel de Sévigné, but horribly scarred and disfigured by the warehouses and rope-walks which had taken it over during the Revolution. La Force was not far away and Marianne had glanced with revulsion at the squat, blank shape, under the low mansard roof, the stout though leprous walls and the low, heavily barred gate with its two rusty lanterns. It was a sinister gate, indeed, a dirty rusty-red in colour as if it were still soaking up the blood which had washed about it during the massacres of September 1792.

Marianne's elderly cousin had told her about those massacres. She had seen them from her hiding place in a garret of her own house. She had told of the ghastly death of the gentle Princesse de Lamballe. The story returned to Marianne's mind now in all its hideous detail and she could not repress a shudder of superstitious horror at the fate which seemed to be drawing Jason Beaufort inexorably along the same path as that taken by the martyred princess. He had gone so quickly from her house to what had been her prison. And had not Marianne herself heard her ghost weeping in the house where Madame de Lamballe had sought oblivion from a king's ingratitude? To Marianne's impressionable and highly sensitive mind it seemed a warning of disaster. What if Jason, too, were to leave La Force only to go to his death?

Such thoughts as these, combined with her own utter powerlessness to aid her friend and what she thought of as the Emperor's cruelty, did nothing to improve her spirits. By the time she reached Bourbon two days later, Marianne had not slept since she left Paris and had eaten only a little bread sopped in milk. She was in such a state of depression that she had to be put to bed as soon as she arrived.

Bourbon-l'Archambault was, however, a very attractive little city. It stood at the heel of a large lake through which a bustling river ran and its pink and white houses were piled in the shade of a mighty spur of rock on which had once stood the seventeen proud towers – now reduced to three – of the dukes of Bourbon. The town had been rich, powerful and extremely busy in the day of the Grand Rot, Louis XIV, when the choice spirits of the court came there to nurse their rheumatic ailments. But here, too, the Terror had passed. The shades of the poet Scarron, of Madame de Sévigné and the Marquise de Montespan who had there made a good end to a dubious life had melted into the mists along the Allier, while the towers of the chateau fell and house and chapel along with them.

But Marianne had no eyes for the three surviving towers, mirrored so prettily in the shimmering waters of the lake, nor for the fair hills cradling the town, nor even for the country folk in their becoming, picturesque costumes who crowded curiously round the elegant berline with its steaming horses.

She was accommodated in the Pavilion Sévigné, in the room which had been that of the irresistible marquise, but neither Agathe's care nor the respectful and benevolent welcome accorded her by the proprietor of the establishment could rouse Marianne from the black mood into which she had allowed herself to sink. There was only one thing she wanted, and that was to sleep, to sleep for as long as humanly possible, until someone came to her with news of Jason. It was no use to talk to her of the charms of the countryside or of anything else: she was deaf, dumb and blind to everything around her. She simply waited.

A fortnight passed in this way. It was a strange period because it was one which in after days disappeared altogether from Marianne's memory, so intense was her determination to withdraw from life, to make one moment so like another that they would blend into a single unvarying stream. No one was admitted to her presence and the physicians of the place especially were hard put to it to know what to make of this strange visitor.

The spell was broken by the arrival of Talleyrand, which brought a new spate of activity to the little town and an unexpected annoyance to Marianne. She had been expecting the prince to bring with him only a small suite, consisting perhaps of a secretary and his valet, Courtiade. However, when the house next door began filling up with large numbers of people, she was obliged to admit that she and Talleyrand held widely differing ideas on the subject of what constituted a suitably princely retinue. Whereas the Princess Sant' Anna was content with her maid and her coachman, the Prince of Benevento brought with him an army of indoor and outdoor servants, his cook, his secretaries, his adopted daughter Charlotte with her tutor, Monsieur Fercoc, as short-sighted as ever, his brother Boson, ten years his junior but deaf as a post, and lastly his wife. From time to time, also, there were guests in addition.

It was the princess's arrival which gave Marianne the greatest astonishment. Although at the Hôtel Matignon, Talleyrand endeavoured to be as little as possible in his wife's company, and although with the arrival of fine weather he generally packed her off to rusticate in her own little château at Pont-de-Seine, in which he himself never set foot, greatly preferring the society of the Duchess of Courland and the pleasures of her summer residence at Saint-Germain, he regularly, without fail, brought his wife to Bourbon.

She was to learn that this was a tradition instituted by Talleyrand in the belief that the least he could do was to spend three weeks in the summer in the by no means exclusive company of his wife. Marianne was touched, also, by the welcome she received from her one-time employer, who kissed her warmly as soon as she set eyes on her and showed a genuine delight in seeing her again.

'I have heard of your troubles, child,' she told her, 'and I want to assure you that you have my full sympathy and support.'

'You are much too good, Princess, and this is not the first time I have had cause to know it. It is a great comfort to know that one has friends.'

'In this hole, of all places,' the princess agreed with a sigh. 'It is enough to make one die of boredom, but the prince insists that these three weeks do an immense amount of good to the whole household. Ah, when shall we be able to return to our summers at Valençay!' The last words were uttered in an undertone, to keep them from her husband's ears.

Residence at Valençay had in fact been strictly forbidden ever since the chateau and the romantic setting, having been made the enforced home of the Infants of Spain, had encouraged an idyllic affair between the mistress of the house and the good-looking Duke of San Carlos. Matters might have gone no further had Napoleon not seen fit to advise Talleyrand personally of his misfortune, and in terms of such coarseness that they had provided a gold mine for unkind tongues. Talleyrand had been obliged to act and the poor princess was inconsolable at the loss of her private paradise.

Leaving the princess to settle in, amid a great banging of doors, bumping of boxes, clattering of feet and calling for servants, all of which proceeded under the interested gaze of about fifty of the local inhabitants, who had assembled about the big travelling coaches, Talleyrand accompanied Marianne back to her own house on the excuse of assuring himself that she was comfortably installed there. But scarcely was the rustic door of her little sitting-room closed behind them than the carefree smile faded from the prince's face and Marianne noted with alarm the lines of worry on his forehead and the way his shoulders suddenly seemed to sag wearily.

'Is it – is it so bad?'

'Worse than you can imagine. That is what caused my delay in joining you here. I wanted to learn all I could and for that reason I barely stopped at Valençay. To tell you the truth, my dear, the news is so bad that I scarcely know where to begin.'

He dropped heavily into a chair with a tired sigh and stretched out his bad leg, which was still stiff from travelling. Then he laid his stick against his knee and passed one long, white hand over his grey face. To Marianne, watching in growing horror, it seemed that the hand trembled a little.

'For God's sake! Tell me! Tell me just as it comes! Do not spare me. Any torture is better than ignorance. I have been dying by inches here for two whole weeks, knowing nothing! Is it possible that Jason's innocence is still not proved?'

'His innocence?' Talleyrand said bitterly. 'Each day that passes only serves to plunge him deeper in guilt. If this goes on, we shall have only one course open to us if we are to save him from…' He hesitated.

'From what?'

'From the scaffold.'

Uttering a choking cry, Marianne leapt from her chair as if it had grown suddenly red-hot. Carrying both icy hands to her burning face, she walked up and down the room several times before returning to fall on her knees at the prince's side.

'There can be nothing worse to say,' she said dully. 'Tell me the whole, now, I beg of you, unless you want me to run mad.'

Talleyrand put out his hand and gently stroked the girl's smooth hair. He shook his head. The light eyes, in general so cold and mocking, held a look of deep compassion.:

'I know your courage, Marianne. I will tell you, but you must not stay there. Come, sit here, close by me, on this little sofa, eh?'

When they were seated side by side on the rush-bottomed sofa by the window looking out on to the gardens, hand in hand, like father and daughter, the Prince of Benevento began his tale.

The accusation of murder against Jason Beaufort, which had originally been based on the anonymous letter handed to the police and on the testimony of the seaman Perez, who persisted in his story that he had received orders from Jason to remove the body of Nicolas Mallerousse from the billiard-room and throw it into the Seine, was now reinforced by a good deal of further evidence. First, the seaman Jones, whom Perez asserted was to have assisted him in the removal of the murdered man, had been fished out of a backwater at St Cloud two days later. He had been drowned and as there were no marks of violence on his body the police had concluded that in making his escape from Passy Jones had slipped in the darkness on the river bank, rendered unusually greasy by the night's storm, and fallen into the Seine to his death.

'But that is absurd!' Marianne protested. 'No sailor who fell into the Seine, even in the middle of the night, could fail to swim to safety – especially in summer!'

'Perez says that his companion could not swim. Jason, on the other hand, insists that Jones was one of his best men and swam like a fish.'

'And this wretch Perez is believed?'

'It is apt to go hard with the accused,' Talleyrand said with a sigh, 'and it is all the more unfortunate because by contradicting Perez's lying statements, this Jones might have given the evidence which would have saved our friend. If you ask me, Jones was never in league with this man Perez, whom Beaufort states that he had discharged with a flogging. But whoever arranged our little death trap was not inclined to quibble over one corpse more or less. Besides, I have not come to the end of it. The excise men at Morlaix have searched the holds of the Sea Witch and the cargo they found there has helped to aggravate the case against Jason.'

Marianne made a little movement of irritation. 'A cargo of champagne and burgundy! There's wickedness for you! Enough to cost a man his head, I'm sure! As for their sacred blockade—'

'Enough to cost a man his head, indeed,' the diplomat continued quietly, 'when they also find counterfeit money.'

'C-counterfeit? No – it is not true!'

'That Jason put it there, no, I don't think that. But that it was discovered is, I am afraid, beyond any doubt. They found about a hundred thousand pounds sterling in Bank of England notes. The notes were, unfortunately, brand new. I tell you, the plot has been well thought out.'

'Well then, it must be shown up for what it is!' Marianne cried hotly. 'We know, you and I, we know for certain that the crime and everything that has followed is the work of a gang of people well known to the police. Surely, they are the only ones who possess the means to have manufactured these notes, and that is what we have to find: whoever made those notes! Oh, the police must be blind and stone deaf! When I tried to tell the truth to that Inspector Pâques he treated me as if I were practically an idiot, and the Duke of Rovigo refused to listen to me at all.'

'The Duke of Rovigo is the world's biggest and most obstinate blockhead,' Talleyrand remarked, 'with the possible exception of Monsieur Savary – eh?' However dire the circumstances, he could not, it seemed, resist a witticism, even one that was not altogether new, for he had already made the same comment on the Duke of Bassano. 'Our policeman lives in constant terror of displeasing his idol, the Emperor. But for once, I cannot altogether blame him. Think, my child, of all the weight of evidence against Beaufort, while on your side you have only your private convictions and your word – not the least shadow of proof.'

'What more have they?' Marianne asked bitterly. 'All their evidence is mere slander, uttered by creatures so wretched that they should be beneath contempt. Besides, I fail to understand why Lord Cranmere and his associates should have gone to all this trouble merely to be revenged on me for getting him arrested. Especially as I am not directed involved in this. The real victim is Jason Beaufort. But why?'

'Because he is an American.' Talleyrand gave a little sigh. 'My dear child, it desolates me to be obliged to shatter your illusions but your differences with Lord Cranmere are altogether minor matters in this business. They would not, as you so rightly say, have gone to all this trouble merely to be revenged on you. But to bring about a diplomatic incident involving the United States, to tip a situation which had been rendered delicate by the Continental Blockade but which had recently shown some signs of improvement, now that is something which an English spy might find extremely worth while, something which could justify a little trouble.'

This was the last thing Marianne had expected. It had not before occurred to her that her own affairs might have become involved with international politics. She turned on her companion a look of such total bewilderment and incomprehension that he smiled indulgently and continued: 'Let me explain. In spite of political differences, trade between England and the United States has been resumed since last year. The United States were deeply shocked by the decrees of Berlin and Milan, especially that of Milan by which Napoleon declared all foreign vessels calling at English ports, or even making contact with English vessels, to be lawful prizes. Lord Wellesley has taken advantage of American resentment and early this year huge quantities of English merchandise began entering the United States, greatly to the good of British trade, which had been suffering something of a recession. However President Madison is friendly to France and anxious to see the resumption of good relations with the country of La Fayette, and he would be glad to see the Milan decree repealed, at least so far as the United States is concerned. He has instructed his ambassador in Paris accordingly and John Armstrong has been working along these lines for some weeks past. I know for a fact that he has recently written to Champagny, who replaced me in Foreign Affairs, asking him to name the terms on which the Berlin and Milan decrees might be annulled in relation to the United States. This affair of murder and contraband is aimed much more at nullifying their efforts than at any idea of revenge for Francis Cranmere. You are an excuse, Marianne, and Beaufort a tool.'

Marianne bowed her head. Cranmere's web had been artistically woven. He had performed his function as a spy for England to admiration and at the same time exercised his remarkable criminal talents by actually extorting money from his victim. Marianne had paid to join Jason in the trap which the Englishman had dug before their feet. She understood now the scale of the means which had been employed and also the curious behaviour of the man Perez in allowing himself to be caught (having been amply paid for his services, no doubt, and given assurances of his personal safety) in order to make quite sure of his former captain's conviction. Now that international interests were involved, Jason's chances had grown very much slimmer.

'But you mentioned the American ambassador,' she said. 'Can he do nothing for Jason?'

'Be sure that John Armstrong has already done everything possible but if Beaufort is convicted of espionage and coining, as well as murder, then he can only seek the Emperor's clemency.'

'The Emperor!' Marianne broke out. 'Yes, what of the Emperor? Why will he not see me, at least? A few moments' audience and he should have known all and Jason would be free!'

'I am not altogether sure why, Marianne. In such a case as this, the Emperor cannot act until all has been made clear. The matters at stake are too grave. Moreover, he cannot be wholly sorry to teach you a lesson – punish you a little for finding consolation so easily – he is a man, after all, you know. Finally, there is one witness against Beaufort whom Napoleon is forced to consider seriously, if only in the name of common morality, and you know how he cherishes the respectability of his court. The author of the anonymous letter and the seaman Perez may well be scoundrels, but can you say the same of Señora Beaufort?'

There was a deathly silence in the little room. In her mind, Marianne was echoing Talleyrand's last words, seeking some sense in them other than the immediate, horrifying implication. She found none, and at last she found her voice to ask hoarsely, still trying not to believe what she had heard: 'Are you telling me that—'

'That Jason's wife has turned against him? Unfortunately, yes. The poor creature is crazed with jealousy and she believes unalterably that you are her husband's mistress. She admits no doubt of her husband's guilt. According to her, and no fury was ever more vehement, Beaufort would be capable of anything where you are concerned, even murder!'

'But – she is mad! Stark mad! Insane… this is the most criminal folly. After this, dare you look me in the face and tell me that she loves Jason?'

Talleyrand sighed again as he answered, in his old, cynical tone: 'Perhaps. You see, Marianne, she comes of a fierce and passionate race to whom a betrayal of love can be paid for only in blood, and an injured woman may deliver up her unfaithful lover unflinchingly to execution – and then wall herself up alive in some unrelenting nunnery to spend the remainder of her life in expiation. Yes, Pilar is a dangerous woman and, as ill luck will have it, she knows that Jason loves you. She knew you at the first glance.'

'Knew me? How could she? She had never seen me.'

'You think not? I gather the figurehead of the Sea Witch is more than a little like you. Some of these wood-carvers are very skilful, you know – and some husbands remarkably obtuse! But it may be that, knowing their stay was to be a brief one, Jason hoped that Pilar might never have occasion to meet you – or, if she did, might fail to recognize the resemblance.'

For a moment, Marianne stared at her old friend. She was wholly overcome by this unexpected proof of love and hardly knew whether to be glad or sorry, but in her heart she knew that she had never doubted Jason's love for her. She had always known that he loved her, even when she had driven him away from her that night at Selton, but this simple, almost childlike proof of it touched the deepest and most sensitive chord in her. To think that she had hated that ship, had thrown it at Jason's head continually that he had purchased it from the sale of Selton! And all the time he had made it, as it were, this unexpected extension of Marianne herself…

She rose quietly and Talleyrand made no move to stop her. He was not looking at her. He was sitting with his chin sunk in the immaculate folds of his neckcloth, absently tracing with the tip of his cane the primitive design of roses decorating the carpet.

A board creaked as Marianne moved to the window which opened on to a tiny balcony. She had picked up a blue shawl from a chair and hugged it round her shoulders. She felt chilled to the soul, despite the August heat of the sun, but when she leaned on the worn iron balcony rail she was not conscious of any warmth.

Outside, everything rejoiced in the tranquil beauty of a fine summer's day. From next door, young Charlotte's voice could be heard chanting in clear tones one of the rhyming games that children love. Farther off, by the pump, three women in blue skirts and flowered petticoats were chattering away to one another in the local patois, now and then bursting into shrieks of laughter. They wore the charming costume of the region with easy grace and their rosy faces glowed with happiness under their complicated double headdresses made up of a frilled cap surmounted by a coquettish little hat cocked up before and behind and known delightfully as 'à deux bonjours'. Some children were playing at quoits under a tree and the Prince of Benevento's grooms were leading the coach horses away to the stables, while in the distance could be seen a rather touchingly old-fashioned sedan chair with drawn curtains, conveying some invisible curiste to or from the baths. On all these things the sun poured down his golden beams. Only Marianne seemed excluded, and she wondered why, even in this scene of rural peace where everyone was happy, she should have to bear such a weight of grief and suffering. She had believed that she was pitted only against a handful of villains, the stupidity of the police and Napoleon's displeasure. Instead, she found herself at the centre of a vast and dangerous political intrigue in which neither she nor Jason counted for anything. It was rather as if she had been condemned to imprisonment for eternity and could look out at the world of the living only through the bars of a dungeon. Perhaps the truth was that she was not fashioned for such a world. The world to which she belonged was one of fury and violence that would not allow her to live in peace. It was to that world she must return.

She turned from the balcony and went quickly back to Talleyrand, who had been watching her attentively through half-closed eyes. She met his light blue gaze steadily:

'I am going back. I must see this woman, speak to her. I have to make her understand—'

'What? That you love her husband as much as he loves you? Do you really think that will make her change her mind? This Pilar is like a rock. Besides, you will not get near her. She has the whole of the Queen of Spain's guard to protect her, and if I know Julie Clary she will be only too delighted to play the queen for the benefit of the only one of her subjects who has ever asked for her assistance. At Mortefontaine, Pilar is surrounded, hemmed in by ladies- and gentlemen-in-waiting who are more effective than any castle walls. She has asked never to be left alone and her request has been granted. No visitors. No messages even, unless they are addressed to the queen. Do you think,' Talleyrand said wearily, 'do you think I have not tried? I was politely shown the door. What chance would you have? Your reputation is, to say the least, unlikely to recommend you to those pious ladies!'

'Never mind. I shall go just the same… at night, in disguise… I'll climb the walls if I have to. But I must see Pilar! It is unthinkable that no one should try and make her see reason, make her realize that her attitude is sheer wickedness.'

'I believe her to be quite aware of that. She simply does not care. When Jason has paid for his crime, then she will expiate her own, that is all.'

'To her, the worst crime is to betray herself.' It was a new voice, speaking from the doorway. Marianne and the prince both turned at once and for the first time for many days, Marianne uttered a cry of pure joy:

'Jolival! At last.'

In her delight at seeing her faithful friend once again, she ran to him impulsively and flung both her arms round his neck and kissed him resoundingly on both cheeks like a little girl, heedless of the fact that the said cheeks had not seen a razor for two days and that Arcadius himself was quite dreadfully dirty.

'Eh, well!' The prince extended a hand to the new arrival. 'You could certainly not have come at a better moment. I was very nearly out of arguments to dissuade this young lady from indulging in the most precipitate piece of foolishness. She wishes to go back to Paris.'

'I know. I heard,' Jolival said gloomily, flinging himself down without ceremony in a chair which groaned under the shock. 'But she must not go back to Paris, for two reasons. The first is that her house is being closely watched. The Emperor knows her very well and he would rather make it impossible for her to disobey him than be obliged to punish her. The second is that her absence is the one thing which might serve to calm that Spanish woman's temper a little. Queen Julie must have put it to her that by sending his former favourite away, Napoleon is paying tribute to the virtue of Beaufort's wronged spouse.'

'Nothing—!' Marianne muttered grittily.

'Possibly. But your return, my dear, would unleash a pack of troubles. Monsieur Beaufort may be in prison but even there he is under close watch by his wife's friends, and in particular by one Don Alonzo Vasquez who seems to have heard something of the estates in Florida and to have ambitions to restore them to the Spanish flag.'

'Good heavens, Arcadius!' Marianne exclaimed. 'Wherever did you learn all this?'

'At Mortefontaine, my love, at Mortefontaine where I have been spying quite unblushingly on your foe while ostensibly engaged in pruning Queen Julie's roses, after a fashion. Yes, for your sake I have been the Queen of Spain's gardener for three whole days!'

Talleyrand smiled slightly. 'I suppose it did not occur to you that one does not prune roses in July, eh?'

'That was why I stayed no more than three days. The head gardener tired of my efforts and suggested I take my talents elsewhere for employment. But if you want to hear any more, for pity's sake give me a bath and a meal! I'm choked with heat and dust, and half-dead of hunger and thirst as well. I can't decide which to die of first.'

'I'll leave you,' Talleyrand said, getting to his feet, while Marianne hurried from the room to give orders. 'In any case, I have said all I came to say and I must go home.' He paused and added in a lowered tone: 'Have you any further news?'

Arcadius de Jolival shook his head sadly:

'Not much. The real murderers seem to have vanished into thin air. Not that I'm surprised at that. Fanchon is an old hand. She and her people must have done their work and gone to earth somewhere. As for the Englishman, he has disappeared so completely, whether to become the Vicomte d'Aubécourt or to assume some other identity, that it is easy to believe – as unfortunately it is believed – that he never existed outside our friend's imagination.' He sighed. 'Things are going badly… very badly.'

'Quiet. Here she comes. She is sufficiently unhappy as it is. Until later, then…'

An hour later, adequately washed and refreshed, Jolival was answering Marianne's questions. He told her that he had left Aix-la-Chapelle the moment he had received the letter which Fortunée Hamelin had pledged herself to deliver. Before the hour was out, he and Adelaide d'Asselnat were posting back to Paris.

'Adelaide came back with you?' Marianne said in surprise. 'Then why isn't she here?'

Then Jolival explained how, hearing of the troubles which had beset her young cousin, that elderly spinster had not hesitated for a moment. 'She needs me,' she had declared generously. 'I will go to her.' It seemed, also, that the fascination with the life of the mountebank which had led her to share for a while the existence of the clown Bobèche, was beginning to wear off. Aside from the somewhat doubtful charms of a career as a street player combined with that of a secret agent, Adelaide had finally come to recognize that a difference in age of more than ten years between herself and the object of her affections was a considerable handicap. It may well have been that a budding romance between Bobèche and a blooming flower-girl in the spa gardens at Aix had something to do with her new-found wisdom.

'Naturally,' Jolival said, 'she has returned a little disappointed, rather disenchanted and inclined to melancholy, but at heart I think she is quite pleased to get back to her own life again… and to French cooking. She was very fond of Bobèche but she does dislike sauerkraut! Besides, when you are in trouble, she thinks her place is with you. She is vastly proud of the fact that you are now a princess, by the way, although she would be torn in pieces before she admitted it.'

'But then, why did she not come with you?'

'Because she thinks she will be more useful to you in Paris than coming here to sympathize. Your people know about your exile and it is just as well that someone should be there to mind the house. That is something Mademoiselle Adelaide can do perfectly and everything is running quite smoothly there.'

The two friends talked on far into the night. There was so much they had to tell. Arcadius did not mean to make a long stay at Bourbon. It was his intention to return to Paris the next day and his visit was chiefly to inform Marianne of his return and assure her of his practical help. At the same time, he wanted to hear from her own lips a complete account of all that had happened, so that he could draw his own conclusions.

'I gather then,' he said, settling himself with half-closed eyes to the enjoyment of a glass of the old Armagnac which Talleyrand had sent round in the course of the evening, 'that neither Inspector Pâques nor Savary would listen to you when you tried to put the blame on your – on Lord Cranmere?'

'No. One thought I was mad, the other simply refused to listen.'

'The fact that no trace of his presence has been discovered does rather strengthen their belief. The gentleman would appear remarkably adept at concealing his tracks. All the same, he is still in Paris. Somewhere, there must be someone who has seen him.'

'I've an idea,' Marianne said suddenly. 'Has anyone been to our neighbour, Mrs Atkins? Adelaide was very friendly with her and Francis stayed there. She should be able to tell us at least whether or not he is still there, and if he is not, how long he was in her house.'

'Wonderful!' Jolival exclaimed. 'This is just what I came for. You said nothing about Mrs Atkins in your letter. She once hid your cousin in her house, and Adelaide will easily persuade her to tell everything. Her evidence might be all the more valuable precisely because she is herself English.'

'We do not know yet,' Marianne said soberly, 'if she will agree to give evidence against a fellow countryman.'

'If Mademoiselle Adelaide cannot persuade her, then no one can. In any case, we can only try. Another thing is that Lord Cranmere was briefly at Vincennes, when Nicolas Mallerousse arrested him in the Boulevard du Temple. It may be possible to trace him from the prison records.'

'Do you think so? He escaped so easily. He may never have been entered at all.'

'Not entered? When Nicolas Mallerousse handed him over in person? I'll wager he was. And that entry in the register is incontrovertible proof of the connection between Lord Cranmere and your poor friend. If we can get the register examined, then we have a chance of getting first the police and then the court to listen to us. And if necessary we will go to the Emperor. You have been forbidden to seek an audience, my dear, but I have not! And I shall demand an audience, and he will hear me. And then we shall win!'

As he spoke, Arcadius became more and more carried away by the new hope which had risen in him with these two new suggestions, put forward by Marianne and himself. His little bright eyes sparkled and the funny crumpled face which a moment before had been drawn with worry wrinkled into something approaching a smile. To Marianne, his infectious enthusiasm was like a breath of joy and hope. She hugged him warmly, her whole being quite transformed.

'Arcadius! You are a marvel! I knew that as soon as you were here again I should be able to hope and to fight again! Thanks to you, I know now that all is not lost. We may save him yet!'

'May? What is all this may?' retorted Jolival, on whom the effects of the prince's brandy were working to increase his natural enthusiasm. 'You must say that we shall save him!'

'Yes, you are right. We shall save him. At all costs,' Marianne echoed, in a tone of such ferocious determination that Arcadius returned her hug, so delighted was he to find her showing a touch of her old spirit.

That night, for the first time since she had left Paris, Marianne went to bed free from the overriding feeling of hopeless impotence which had haunted her every night, growing sharper and more agonizing as darkness fell. She had recovered her confidence, at least, and she knew that even if she were exiled, far from Paris, she could still act through others and do something to help Jason. The thought was a comforting one.

When Jolival set out again for Paris the next morning, with a readiness which did honour both to his horsemanship and to his powers of endurance, he carried with him, besides a letter to Adelaide from Marianne, all his young friend's renewed hopes. He left behind him a woman who had rediscovered the will to live.

To Marianne, the next few days provided a much-needed period of relief. Trusting in Arcadius and Adelaide to do what was necessary, she allowed herself to be seduced by the charms of the little spa and the hours passed leisurely, marked by the clock in the Quinquengrogne Tower. She even found a certain amount of entertainment in watching Talleyrand's household relax in conditions of greater freedom than those it enjoyed in Paris.

All day long, she could hear little Charlotte laughing and singing. The child seemed to be making it her business to rejuvenate her staid preceptor, Monsieur Fercoc, and was succeeding for once in encouraging him in a regime in which expeditions into the surrounding countryside played a much larger part than Latin and mathematics.

Every morning, Marianne derived a good deal of amusement from watching from her window the prince's departure for the baths. Having first bundled himself up in such an incredible assortment of shawls, blankets, flannel waistcoats and woollies of every description that he resembled nothing so much as a huge and hilarious cocoon, he inserted himself, according to local custom, in a sedan chair with the blinds drawn down. None of this prevented him from dressing and behaving perfectly normally once the various stages of the ritual had been performed, nor was there any indication of a special diet when the whole company sat down to dinner (Marianne took all her meals with her friends) to do justice to the marvels which Carême managed to produce – from a kitchen of such modest resources that it threw him into a permanent state of nerves each summer until he was able to return to the splendidly appointed nether regions of Valençay or the Hôtel Matignon.

There was also the deaf brother, Boson, who paid shy court to Marianne in a manner both archaic and almost wholly incomprehensible, since he was unable to understand more than half of what was said to him. However, his advances were somewhat interrupted owing to the fact that he passed the greater part of his time with his head immersed in water in the hope, apparently, of achieving a cure for his deafness,

The afternoons were passed either out driving with the princess or reading with the prince. They went to Souvigny, the St Denis of the dukes of Bourbon, to admire the abbey church and its tombs, driving through the wooded Bourbonnais landscape of hedgerows and tree-shaded meadows dotted with big, white oxen. The warm, perfect weather showed the rich farmland in the full flush of peaceful beauty and even Madame de Talleyrand's aimless chatter seemed to Marianne sane and restful in this interlude from the dark plots which surrounded her.

With Talleyrand, Marianne read, as he had promised, Madame du Deffand's Letters which the prince enjoyed very much because they reminded him of 'his youth, his first entry into the world and all the people who mattered at the time'. And in his company Marianne found herself plunged to her surprise and delight into the charming, frivolous eighteenth century which had been the setting for her parents' courtship. Often, too, their reading would end in talk and the prince would find pleasure in reviving for his young friend his own recollections of 'the handsomest and most perfectly matched pair' that he had known, but of whom she, their daughter, knew so little. Through his words, which could be strikingly tender and affectionate, Marianne seemed to see her mother, a golden beauty in a white muslin dress, a tall, beribboned cane in her hand, moving about the alleys of the Trianon or seated in an armchair by the fire in her own drawing-room, graciously entertaining the guests who flocked to her house to drink 'English tea' and managing somehow to create an intimate and delightful occasion for as many as fifty people at once. Next, Talleyrand would momentarily bring to life again the idealistic Pierre d'Asselnat, his whole life devoted to his two great loves, the monarchy and his wife. Then it would be the big, military portrait in the rue de Lille which came to life in Marianne's imagination as she listened, dazzled and yet oddly envious.

Oh for a love like that! she thought, hearing her friend talk. To love and be loved like them… and then if need be, to die together as they did amid the blood and horror of the scaffold. But before that, a few years… a few months even, of irreclaimable happiness!

Oh, how readily she could understand her mother's gesture when, seeing her husband taken, she had proudly claimed her right to follow him to his death, rejecting all thoughts of the child she left behind her, in order to live out her love to the end. She herself had thought many times during the long nights through which she had suffered since that terrible night at Passy that she would not outlive Jason. She had pictured a hundred tragic ends to her own, unhappy story, had seen herself breaking from the crowd and casting herself in front of the guns of the firing squad as the command was given to fire or, if he were not given the right to a soldier's death, stabbing herself to the heart at the foot of the scaffold, supposing he were treated like a common criminal. But now that Jolival had given her fresh hope her whole will was directed towards the achievement, against all odds, of that happiness which still seemed so obstinately to elude her. Let her only live with Jason and then let the whole world perish, only so long as they had drunk the cup of happiness together to the last drop.

And so, all in all, the days passed not unpleasantly, yet with each new morning Marianne felt her fears returning. She took to watching for the post and studying Talleyrand's expression closely to see if, in the news which reached him from Paris, there might not have been some hint about the Beaufort affair.

One morning, Marianne and the prince walked out a little way along the tree-lined road beside the lake near the chateau. Talleyrand's walks were invariably brief, because of his lame leg, but the weather was so fine, the morning so clear and fresh that both had found the urge to take a turn on foot quite irresistible. The countryside was filled with the scents of hay and wild thyme, the sky was white with doves playing tag around the three grey towers of the chateau and the calm waters of the lake shimmered with iridescent blue and silver, fit to make a fairy's gown.

The man and girl were strolling peaceably along beside the water's edge, throwing bread to the ducks and laughing at the harassed quacking of a mother-duck in her efforts to control a particularly unruly brood of ducklings, when one of the prince's manservants came hurrying towards them holding something white in his gloved hand.

'Post, eh?' Talleyrand remarked with just the faintest shade of irritation. 'It must be urgent to set them running after us.'

There were two letters, one for Talleyrand, the other for Marianne. The prince raised his eyebrows at his own, which was sealed with the Emperor's arms, but Marianne fell on hers eagerly, recognizing the extravagant curlicues which passed for handwriting with Jolival. She tore open the wafer with Arcadius's martlets arrayed upon it and scanned the few lines within. A despairing cry broke from her. Arcadius wrote to tell her that Mrs Atkins had quitted her house in the rue de Lille 'for the country' but that there was no means of finding out whereabouts in the country she might be. This had happened on the very day Adelaide d'Asselnat had returned home. As for the records of the prison at Vincennes, they contained no reference to any political prisoner by the name of Francis Cranmere – only the traces where a page had been torn out of the book. Whoever they were who had dedicated themselves to the ruin of Jason Beaufort and the disruption of relations between France and America, they appeared to have left nothing to chance.

Marianne's eyes filled with tears as she crumpled Jolival's letter nervously between her fingers. At the same time, she heard her companion saying testily: 'Why does he need me to unveil his confounded column! This means that I shall be obliged to interrupt my treatment. And I have not the least desire to return to Paris, eh?'

But Marianne was conscious only of the last words. 'Return to Paris? You are returning?'

'I must. I have to be there for the Emperor's birthday on the fifteenth of August. This year, to add to the magnificence of the occasion, His Majesty has decided to hold the unveiling of the bronze column he has set up in the Place Vendôme in honour of the Grand Army, made from the metal of twelve hundred and fifty cannon captured at Austerlitz. I am not at all sure it is such a brilliant idea. It can scarcely be very agreeable to the new Empress, seeing that a good half of the cannon in question belonged to Austria. But the Emperor is so delighted with the figure of himself as a Roman emperor which is to surmount the column that I suppose he wants all Europe to have an opportunity of admiring it.'

But Marianne's thoughts were very far from the column in the Place Vendôme, so far indeed as to make her forget even her manners and break in on the prince unceremoniously:

'If you are going back to Paris, take me with you!'

Take you, eh? What for?'

By way of a reply, Marianne held out Jolival's letter. Talleyrand read it carefully and slowly. By the time he reached the end there was a deep furrow between his brows, but he returned the letter without comment.

'I must go back,' Marianne said again after a moment, in a choking voice. 'I cannot stay here, safe in the sunshine, while Jason is in this dreadful danger. I – I think I should go mad. Let me come with you.'

'You know that you are forbidden to go – or I to take you. Don't you think you will only make matters worse for Beaufort if the Emperor hears that you have disobeyed him?'

'He will not hear. I shall leave my baggage and my servants here with orders to admit no one to my room and to say that I am ill in bed and will see no one at all. It will cause no surprise. I did very much the same before you arrived. The people here probably think I am mad anyway. With Gracchus and Agathe here, I know that no one will enter my room and find out the deception. Meanwhile, I will go back to Paris disguised as – let me see – yes, disguised as a boy. I shall be one of your secretaries.'

'Where will you go to in Paris?' the prince objected, looking not at all relieved. 'Your house is being watched, you know that. If the police were to see you going in you would be arrested on the spot.'

'I thought…' Marianne began, sounding suddenly rather shy.

'That I would take you in? Yes, well, I thought of it myself for a moment, but it would not do. You are known to everyone in the rue de Varennes and I do not think everyone is to be trusted. There is a likelihood that you would be betrayed and that would not help matters, either for you or for myself. I am not, you will recall, on the best of terms with His Majesty… even if he has asked me to go and unveil his column!'

'Then it can't be helped. I will go somewhere else – to a hotel perhaps.'

'Where your disguise would be seen through in a moment. No, you are being altogether foolish, my child. But I believe I have a better idea. Go and make what arrangements you need. We are leaving Bourbon this evening. I will see that you have some man's clothes and you can pass as a young secretary of mine until we reach Paris. Once there, I will take you to – but you will see. No need to speak of that now. You are set on this piece of folly?'

'I am,' Marianne said firmly, flushed with joy at a degree of assistance she had scarcely dared to hope for. 'I feel that if I am near him, I shall find some way to help him.'

'He is a lucky man,' the prince said with a faint, rather wistful smile, 'to have such a love. Ah, well, I seem to be fated to refuse you nothing, Marianne! And perhaps, after all, it may be best to be within reach. An opportunity may occur, and if it should, you will be there to take advantage of it. For the present, let us go in. Good heavens, child! What are you doing?' The last words were accompanied by a vain attempt to draw back his hand which Marianne had carried gratefully to her lips. 'Haven't I chosen you for my daughter, after all? I am merely trying to prove myself a tolerable father, that is all. Though I can't help wondering what your own father would say to all this!'

Arm in arm, the lame prince and the young girl made their way slowly back to the village, leaving the lake to the company of the ducks.

Eleven o'clock was striking from the Quinquengrogne Tower when Talleyrand's coachman set his team bowling along the road to Paris. As the coach began to move, Marianne looked up to the window of her room and saw, behind the closed shutters, the glimmer of the lamplight showing through, just as it had done every night since her arrival. No one would ever think that it shone on an empty bed, in an empty room. Gracchus and Agathe had received strict orders, although Gracchus, especially, had proved hard to convince. He had been deeply shocked to think that his beloved mistress could consider setting out on such a perilous adventure without his stalwart support. Marianne had been obliged to promise that she would send for him as soon as possible, and certainly at the first hint of danger.

The darkened countryside sped past the windows of the coach and very soon the motion lulled her and she slept, with her head on Talleyrand's shoulder, and dreamed that she was going to fling wide the gates of Jason's prison all by herself with her bare hands.