Spoilers for Lord Tony's Wife. These are snippets (mostly from Yvonne's point of view, but a few from Tony's) that take place throughout the course of the novel, so they won't make any sense unless you've read the book (which I highly recommend to any Pimpernel fan - one of the best in the series!). The story is rated M as some snippets deal with sexual content.
~ Belfast
I. – The Birth of Fear
It was dreadfully difficult to overcome strong emotions.
Such as fear.
Oui. Crainte was exceptionally difficult to move beyond.
After all, ever since Yvonne de Kernogan had been but a girl on the threshold of womanhood, an inexplicable fear had consumed her.
A fear regarding the opposite sex.
It had been Pierre Adet's fault, and she knew it as well as she knew that God was holy. She had only been twelve years of age, unaware of the budding changes occurring within her. She had been innocent, untainted, petted, and adored. And within seconds, a miserable, filthy peasant had changed all of that. For he had seen in her what she had not yet seen in herself, and he had used it to his advantage and her disadvantage, defiling her in a way that she had never dreamed of hitherto.
And for four long years, Yvonne had harbored this black secret in the depths of her soul, struggling as she might to step outside of the diamond-hard shell she had built about her heart to protect anything innocent within it that remained…if such wholesome things even existed inside of her anymore.
Occasionally she would attempt to peek from beneath the blackness, but she would always panic at her feeble attempts to do so, for the truth of the matter was simple: Adet had stolen something precious from her, ruined her ideals, and in the end she tearfully felt that he had indeed won after all.
Of course he had won; he had created this fear.