Disclaimer - none of the characters mentioned herein belong to me and are the property of the estate of Baroness Orczy.
Author's note - A one-shot based on the musical. I imagine that Percy must be jealous to some extent if, as in the musical, Marguerite has been with Chauvelin and even at that, he must be jealous to some extent of their previous relationship in general.
I like to think of Percy as someone who is in quite a lot of strife generally and this implies a darker side to him which, I do think, has the potential to exist.
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He is a dandy, a fop, an inanity with little more to concern him than fashion and the latest ditties. At least, that is what he is supposed to be to all who consider themselves to have intimate knowledge of him. Those who do have intimate knowledge, of course, see him quite differently. He is clear in his understanding that they do not know how to see him at all. More's the pity to this end but it brings relief because, quite frankly, he does not know himself at all.
He used to think he did but now he cannot be sure.
Before him there is a map of Paris and his head reels with all that he must do. First he must plot the perilous trail of his next mission to see the Baron de Martins and his family brought safely to England but his desire to concentrate on the task at hand is defeated by his inability to do so. Instead he wonders if the Comte de Vernier has settled in his decidedly smaller lodgings in London and if Armand's broken heart has recovered from yet another romantic blow. He knows that the Prince of Wales notices their absence even more and this concerns him and he must find a way to belie the Prince's suspicions. Suzanne has commenced her lying-in so Andrew cannot join them on their next jaunt across the channel and this leaves him feeling nervous. He is accustomed to the logical, calming presence of Ffoulkes in a way that he had not realised until now. He puzzles over the fact that Chauvelin has come yet again to England, and after their last fracas, Percy cannot help but feel concern over the citoyen's willingness to come back. He cannot turn his mind to one task and instead he gives just a snippet of attention to all his anxieties at once.
And there is, he must acknowledge, something else. It agonises him to acknowledge it but he must.
He glides his fingers along the intricately carved ebony which runs the length of the desk and his fingers alight on a brass pimpernel that is embedded into the wood. Deftly he pushes it in until there is a little snapping noise and the drawer bounces open, revealing maps and compasses, an extra signet ring, hand written notes and pleas and various other witnesses to his sport. He folds the map of Paris up, feeling demmed fatigued by his attempts to find a relatively safe way in to the city and out of it, and pushes it back into the clandestine drawer. His fingers graze across a piece of leather that at first appears to be a book. Where the covers meet there is leather cue, worn of colour and fraying into cracks and tendrils, which is tied tightly to bind either side together. He lifts it out reverently, even though it is filthy.
It is his one concession in this double life that could possibly betray him and yet he is adamant that he will never relinquish it. It has been pressed to the breast of a braggart and nestled in the pocket of a soldier of the Republic. It has been carried in the skirts of an old hag. It had once gone missing aboard the Daydream on a return leg and he made aristo and bounder alike scour the decks until it was found wedged between two barrels aside the foremast. He does not know even to this day how it found itself there.
She does not know about it. She knows of its larger sibling that hangs in the gallery but not about this and she never will. There are some secrets he has to have from her, even though he has sworn an oath that he never will.
There is one thing he can never tell her.
He lays it out on the surface of the desk and pulls the ties apart to reveal an enamel portrait of her. When first he commissioned it, he was ashamed to realise that no matter how beautiful he found it to be, he was disappointed by it because it was not a true reflection of her. How could it be? How could any piece of work forged by man recreate such spectacularly honest beauty? Yes, the likeness' cheeks were tinted rosy and the auburn of her hair had been embellished with a glint of gold but it did her no justice. What it did do was warm him on many cold nights in France; those nights when he forced a body of water and a world of political difference between them. He was at fault there, at least he knew. One thing you do know about yourself Percy, he thinks.
He traces his fingers across the likeness and though he despises it, though he loathes it, he feels a camaraderie with his most paramount of enemies. They have both wanted her on cold nights and they both have been deprived.
Born into a house that paid little or no attention spare to feed and clothe and educate him, he had led a loveless life. A life free of constraints, gilded by a fortune, finely educated but loveless nonetheless.
He had found his love in other pursuits; his horses and cricket and yachting round the coast of this fine island, the gaming tables and the tailors of London. Then when he grew bored of such simple pleasures he turned his attentions to the Revolution as a little boy does to an adventure story. It had seemed so entirely simple to become two men in the one body, two men occupying one place in space and time.
And it would have been, had it not been for her. And the love he so suddenly bore her as she bewitched him from the stage of the Comedie Francais.
And it would have been with simple with her too, if it had not been for Chauvelin.
For the man who had known her love.
Percy tries, using all of his cunning and his logic and his goodness to ignore this. He has tried so desperately to ignore that she once took that man to her bed and that he, Sir Percival Blakeney, has been the runner-up in that sport. Her love, everything noble and logical and loving in him knows, is more important. And one thing he is assured of is that Marguerite did not love Chauvelin, even if she engaged him as if she did. Yet, loveless and now so loved, he has grown jealousy and fostered it as a patron would with a ward. Percival Blakeney, the man he though he knew, he does not know at all. Percival Blakeney feels jealousy acutely, like a twisting and hot knife. He is saddened by this more than anything in their year of icy estrangement or of what he has witnessed in France. He is aggrieved that he knows nothing of himself at all.
Mostly and to his surprise, he suppresses his jealousy as he suppresses who he truly is. He manages to forget it most of the time. He swallows it as if he wears a garrotte in place of a cravat. It jams in his throat every time he must look upon the man from the better end of a rapier or down the barrel of a pistol and know that it is not a justifiable reason to kill him simply because he has known Marguerite. The bounders have questioned why, on so many occasions, he has failed to simply end Chauvelin's life. They do not understand that he cannot because he does not know how to.
No, for Chauvelin, Percy will forge a much longer atonement.
And it will not be an atonement born out of nobles oblige, or engineered by the Scarlet Pimpernel, but by a jealous husband who does not, cannot, know himself in this regard. For the man who has known her love he will execute a punishment that he never thought himself capable of. He knows nothing of himself at all.
And because of that she must never know.
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