"But it is barbarous, what is happening, is it not?" Andrew Ffoulkes asked his companion, genuine concern writ across his smooth young face.

"To be honest, my dear young man, I haven't given the matter much thought. I'm surrounded, you see, by demands on my attention that are much more pressing than a few angry peasants. I'm surprised that you find as much time as you do to concern yourself with them."

"But it's you that I'm concerned for, don't you see? They're thirsty for blood, for aristocratic blood."

"I'm sure, dear boy, that my blue blood will be spilt before the bad men and their haggard wives make their way into Paris from the godforsaken countryside where they've been worrying you so awfully much. Here, these are your breeches, put them on."

"Are you quite well?"

The Vicomte's pale face was entirely unreadable to the young Englishman, his voice was low and flat, "I am perfectly happy, Sir Andrew. I have one more letter to write before I send you on your way."

Andrew thought better than to speak and merely sighed as he obediently stretched out again across the rumpled bedclothes and cradled his chin on his folded arms. The paper and quill were rough against his bare back. He felt the cool hard circle of the inkbottle balance on the flat plane of his lower back and the smooth crispness of the paper sweep across his shoulders. The quill bit as Valmont began to compose his next masterpiece.

He knew that he shouldn't interrupt the maestro at work, but Andrew couldn't restrain himself from finally asking the question that had been nagging at him all day. "Shall I be seeing you again before I depart for England or is this to be our goodbye?"

The scribbling of the quill stopped abruptly and Andrew could hear the Vicomte give a ragged sigh. "Unless I'm mistaken, my English friend, your ship sails in three days? No, no, excuse me. Two days, is that correct?"

"Correct." Andrew tried in vain to decipher the edge in the Vicomte's voice, the words should have sounded kind from anyone else, but they sounded dead and rehearsed from the man whose bed he was lying in. There was always an element of the theatrical about the Vicomte, he spoke like an actor who knew his lines by heart and had played the role too many times to speak them with any real emotion. It frightened Andrew sometimes.

"Then yes, this will be the last time we meet. I have a number of appointments that I'm afraid I simply cannot break."

"But surely, not even tomorrow...?" Andrew was well aware that his voice was pleading and he was almost ashamed of himself, but the older man had been his closest friend during his stay in Paris and he had devoted himself to the Vicomte madly and without any hesitation. It had always been Andrew's shortcoming to devote himself too passionately to the men that he admired.

The Vicomte's response was cold and curt. "Impossible."

He scrawled his signature on the page violently and Andrew fell into sulking silence while he felt the letter being carefully folded and addressed across his left shoulder. The sealing wax dripped hot and carelessly across his skin as the Vicomte pressed his signet ring hard against the back of the letter. Andrew dreaded his return to England, which seemed so dreary and gray after this sojourn in Paris. Yet there was a feeling of foreboding that seemed to be creeping about the streets of Paris, a fierce hungry look in eyes of strangers that he saw through fogged carriage windows, there were things that no one was talking about and yet that Andrew felt acutely aware of. He would not yet allow himself to believe that he was becoming frightened of this beautiful city, no more than he would allow himself to admit that he was beginning to miss his mother back in London, who would be absolutely delighted to hear how well her son had taken to the French tongue (after all, that had been the primary purpose of his visit and a task with which the Vicomte had helped him most obligingly.)

The Vicomte, having finished the letter, dropped it on the pillow beside Andrew and swept out of the bedroom in the direction of his dressing room, his parting words were spoken over his shoulder, in delicately accented English.

"Azolan will show you out. Goodbye, Sir Andrew."

Before the hem of the Vicomte's dressing gown had disappeared through the doorframe, Andrew had snatched the letter off of the pillow and was quite surprised to find his own name written in the Vicomte's elegant hand across the front. Instead of breaking the seal, Andrew returned it to the pillow reverentially while he finished dressing and with great ceremony, placed it inside his waistcoat for safekeeping.

Sir Andrew did not read the Vicomte's letter until he was back on English soil, sitting in the coffee-room of The Fisherman's Rest on a cold Dover day shortly after his return. The letter was straightforward, a trait that he'd only known the Vicomte to possess when in a temper, the prose was stark and devoid of the usual epigrams and stylistic flourishes that the Frenchman had been so fond of making. Had he not been present at the writing of the letter, Andrew would most certainly have doubted its authenticity. But the truth was told, plainly and unapologetically and by the time he read it, Sir Andrew knew that the first French blood in his life had been spilt. He would often think of his days spent in Paris, but he would not allow himself to think of the Vicomte de Valmont again for some years yet, when he would chance to meet a certain Mr. Danceny, as the English would call him, during a stormy crossing of the Channel after a daring rescue by the League of the Scarlet Pimpernel.