Author's Note: This is immediately following Eldorado. First person seemed necessary for this part. Reviews and commentary always welcome. Also, title suggestions. I fail at titles always. -ReynardBleu
The few months Percy promised before we would be able to get Jeanne Lange out of France dwindled to scarcely two as news from Paris grew increasingly dire. The revolution had begun to eat its own parents. From our first day back in England I admit I pestered him about it. I didn't want my precious flower there any longer than she had to be. Being a well-liked actress wasn't going to protect her forever, especially when such great names as Fabre d'Églantine and Camille Desmoulins were suspect. Every day that passed added to my anxiety. Toward the end of February, Percy set a date.
He also set a number of rules. If I were to go myself, it would not be as a member of the League. I would slip into Paris and out again, however long it took, with only the support of knowing that I could quit France again by reaching the coast on certain days that the Daydream would be nearby. Armand St. Just was a marked man in Paris, and under no circumstances could he be used as bait for the Scarlet Pimpernel again. I begged for that, and Percy agreed. Did he agree a little too readily? I don't know. I only knew that if I failed, only the papers would bring news of my condemnation and likely execution to Blakeney Manor, if word reached it at all. If the League had other business in France during that time, I was not to know. And none of them, especially Percy, were to concern themselves with me.
But he noted my determination and helped in every other way that he could. I was to go back to France at the end of March. The remainder of February and most of March were devoted to study and preparation. He helped me prepare three cover identities in full detail, with forged papers and histories so complete each was like memorizing the whole of one of Master Shakespeare's plays. I struggled to commit every last detail to memory.
As I progressed from letter-perfect to instinctive, I lost weight, enough that Percy remarked on it as it if were planned and Marguerite, who knew it wasn't, worried. Yet she said nothing. I wondered what she thought of me during those weeks. Our lie kept her ignorant of the true depth of my folly in January, yet I had lost her to it after all. Now the silence was a barrier I'd built, and she would not cross. I could barely eat once a day, and fear gnawed at my stomach at all hours.
She helped me bleach the pure black from my hair, until the stubborn dark mess was almost rusty. She instructed me in how to walk in a manner that gave the illusion of greater height. If someone stood me against a wall or back to back to Chauvelin my true stature would be obvious, but most observers would note a man who was too tall to be Armand St. Just, too much the greyhound to be confused with the collie pup I'd been. She refused my gratitude, saying that it was only what any good sister would do for her only brother.
Percy drilled me remorselessly. In the last week before I left, he woke me several times a night, his large hand shaking me roughly out of my dreams to ask me my name. Only that last night did I answer correctly, instinctively. "Girard, vous gredin, Gaspard-Louise Girard. Eh bien! Laissez-moi coucher!"
At breakfast that morning he called "Girard!" from across the room as soon as I entered, and threw an apple at me. As I peeled it and cut it up, a poor withered thing from last year's harvest, he told Marguerite that I was leaving that day. The Daydream was to leave on the evening tide. My sister's eyes went to me, but she said nothing. Not even to wish me a safe trip. Perhaps she was afraid to jinx it.
