Roger refilled their glasses with port and said, 'In fairness I can ask no more, and I pray that my return may be neither in a French uniform nor delayed beyond the summer. Let's drink to that.'
She raised her glass and they both drank. As she set it down, she sighed, '1 would to God I could be certain that you will return at all. Each time you leave me to set out upon these desperate ventures my stomach contracts with the horrid fear that I'll never see you more. You've been monstrous lucky, Roger; but every day you spend among your enemies is tempting Fate anew. Hardly a week passes but I think of you and am harrowed by the thought that you may make some slip, be caught out and denounced as an English spy.'
He shrugged. ' My sweet Georgina, you need have little fear of that. I have spent so long in France that my identity as a Frenchman is established there beyond all question. Anyone who challenged it would be laughed at for a fool.'
' How you have managed that I have never fully understood.'
' The fact that I lived there for four years in my youth formed a sound basis for the deception. To account for my foreign accent, before I rid myself of it, I gave out that my father was of German stock and my mother English, but that I was born in the French city of Strasbourg. I further muddied the waters of my origin by giving out that both my parents died when I was at a tender age; so I was sent to my English aunt, here in Lyming-ton, and brought up by her. My story continues that I hated England, so as soon as I was old enough ran away back to my native France. In that way I became known there as the Chevalier de Breuc.'
' But later, Roger, you became the trusted henchman of Danton, Robespierre and other sanguinary terrorists. Such men have since been guillotined, or at least proscribed. How did you succeed in escaping a similar fate? '
' In that, I am one of many. Tallien, who directed the Red Terror in Bordeaux; Freron, who was responsible for the massacres in Marseilles; and numerous others whose crimes cry to heaven have proved such subtle politicians that they rode out the storm, succeeded in whitewashing themselves and still lord it in Paris. There are, too, scores of ci-devant nobles who, until the Terror made things too hot for them, had, for one reason or another, found it expedient to collaborate with the Revolutionaries. Some were thrown into prison, others went into hiding. After the fall of Robespierre they all emerged with specious stories of how from the beginning they had worked in secret against the Revolution; so it has become the height of bad form to enquire closely of anyone about their doings previous to '9'.'
'Thus on my return from Martinique, in the spring of '96, I needed only to imply that I, too, had been playing a double game, to be welcomed into the most fashionable salons which have sprung up in the new Paris. Such terrorists as survived know that I had a hand in bringing about Robespierre's fall, so they naturally now accept it that I fooled them when they knew me as a sans~culottey and was all the time a young nobleman disguised. The aristocrats whose acquaintance I made earlier in the galleries of Versailles look on my as one of themselves—a clever enough schemer and liar to have saved my neck throughout the Revolution.'
' I should find it most repellent to have to move in such a dubious society.'
' But for a few exceptions they are indeed a despicable crew. At times it makes my gorge rise to learn that some woman of noble birth has become the mistress of a man well known to be a thief and a murderer, or that a Marquis is giving his daughter in marriage to some gutter-bred ex-terrorist who has climbed to influence and wealth over the bodies of that nobleman's relatives. Yet it is in the fact that the Revolution has brought to the surface a scum composed of the worst of both worlds that my security lies. To them, there is nothing the least surprising that a youth educated abroad by rich relatives should have returned to become a fervent patriot, having risen to the rank of Citizen Representative, have conspired against Robespierre and now be an aide-de-camp to General Bonaparte.'
'There are gaps in your career in Franch, of which you have made no mention: one of two years while you were first married to Amanda, another while you were Governor of Martinique and yet another while you were in India. If seriously questioned, surely you would have difficulty in accounting for them; and there must be at least a few Frenchmen who have seen you when you have been wearing your true colours, in England or elsewhere, as Admiral Brook's son, and would recognize you again.'
' No.' Roger shook his head. ' My absences from Paris are all accounted for. And to gu^rd against such chance recognition as you suggest I long ago invented two mythical cousins, both of whom strongly resemble me. One is myself, the English Admiral's son, Roger Brook; the other, on my mother's side, as a bearded fellow named Robert MacElfic. Should any Frenchman think that he has seen me where I should not have been I'd vow it was one or other of these cousins they saw and mistook him for myself.'
' Lud! One must admire you for a cunning devil,' Georgina laughed. 'Can there then be no single man in all France who knows you for an Englishman and can give chapter and verse to prove it? '
Roger's face became a little grave. 'There are two. Joseph Fouche, the terrorist who was responsible for mowing down with cannon the Liberal bourgeoisie of Lyons, is one. But when we last came into conflict he was without money or influence and on the point of quitting Paris as a result of an Order of Banishment forbidding him to reside within twenty leagues of the capital. Fortunately he is not among those terrorists who succeeded in whitewashing themselves; so from fear of the reactionaries seeking to be avenged on him he is most probably still living quietly in some remote country village.'
' Then your chances of coming face to face with him are, thank God, slender. Who is the other? '
' Monsieur de Talleyrand-Perigord. His name was struck from the list of emigres in '95, but he did not return from America until the autumn of '96; so he had not yet arrived in Paris when I was last there. He has since been made Foreign Minister, as 1 learned in Italy while assisting Fauvelet de Bourrienne with General Bonaparte's correspondence.'
' It is a certainty, then, that before you have been for long back in Paris you will run into him at some reception.'
' True, but I have little apprehension on that score.' Roger shrugged. ' He and I have long been firm friends. Moreover, he is greatly in my debt. It was I who saved him from the guillotine by providing him with forged papers that got him safely out of Paris. He is not the man to forget that; and, although he knows me to have been born an Englishman, it should not be difficult to persuade him that I have served France well and have for long been French at heart.'
Georgina slowly shook her head. ' You are the best judge of that. Yet I shall still fear that, through some accident, the fact that you are a secret agent sent from England will come to light.'
He frowned. 'Knowing so well your psychic gifts, it troubles me somewhat to hear you say so. I only pray that your foreboding may not be due to the capacity that you have oft displayed for seeing into the future. Yet I do assure you that such a risk gives me small concern compared with a far greater one that always plagues me when I set out upon my missions.'