Desgas, his gruff assistant, was on hand to greet him as the carriage drew to a halt outside his London lodgings. Chauvelin felt the other man's small, dark eyes trying to read his features as the door was opened and he stepped down.
"You were gone a while," the grudging lackey observed, slamming the carriage door and then darting ahead to admit Chauvelin into the entrance of the grand townhouse. "I thought you were only going to deliver your message?"
Sliding a warning look at Desgas, Chauvelin passed through into the building. He would neither defend his actions or attempt to prove himself to this base individual assigned as his secretary and unofficial bodyguard. "Diplomatic relations, Desgas. Although I anticipate imminent war between our own fair land and this sceptered isle, I would never abandon my sense of decorum by stalking out of a minister's home."
"Right, citizen," followed Desgas' automatic response. "And your good friend, La St Just?"
"What about her?" Chauvelin snapped. "You are asking a lot of questions, what is my business to you?"
Desgas shrugged, a loathsome smirk twitching at his mouth. Chauvelin huffed an impatient sigh, and quickened his pace up the marble staircase. He hated that the common man, of which this uneducated, wind-up soldier stumping along behind him was a prime example, could now dare to claim equality; rights were one thing – every human being should at least be given the chance to prove his worth – but of course the general rabble of France had taken it all too far. Man was not equal, and never would be. Chauvelin only had respect for those who measured well against his own standards: not breeding, but civility; not education, but intelligence; not strength, but endurance.
"Forgive my insolence, citoyen," Desgas bowed, scuffing along the landing to admit Chauvelin into his apartments. "Do we still start for Calais tomorrow?"
Blocking the doorway with one hand upon the latch, Chauvelin turned to his subordinate. "We leave early for Dover, as planned," he confirmed, struggling to maintain his usual composure before Desgas. It was too early in the game, and there were too many variables to yet be guaranteed of success: his quarry, though now known to him by name, was still an unfamiliar quantity.
Chauvelin had sat in Grenville's supper-room, feigning sleep and waiting – anticipating, thinking – until only one answer had been left to him. The solution had been a baffling one, and Chauvelin's ego had not quite wanted to admit to it at first; but he would bank on his instincts, which had not failed him yet, and if Marguerite St. Just's over-tall and indolent spouse should journey to France this day or the next, he would act accordingly.
With the shadow of a smile flitting over his lips, Chauvelin entered his rooms and made to close the door in Desgas' face, but the other man was stronger if not faster.
"She was willing, then?" A lamp mounted on the wall twisted his features into a leer. "Your words, not mine."
Chauvelin narrowed his eyes, and a shudder of disgust tensed the muscles in his neck and shoulders. He had known the very minute his angry words had left his mouth that he would regret sharing his thoughts with such a man, but the need to vent his spleen had made him quite irrational.
"She had little choice," he admitted, "if she were to save her brother."
"And has she?" Desgas asked quickly. "Saved him?"
"Ah!" Chauvelin gave a mirthless laugh, clapping a hand on the other man's shoulder. "Has she paid the price? I asked of her a small service in the name of her country – the land and the republic that she forfeit so readily at the merest hint of toil, of sacrifice. She said no. But everybody has their weaknesses, Desgas."
"He's pathetic, that brother of hers," Desgas growled, moving back over the threshold with Chauvelin still gripping his arm. The cold glint in those sharp eyes could serve as a goad to the belligerent factotum, himself keen to lay hands on the young lawyer should his sister fail, but also make him slightly anxious for his own safety. He knew how to handle men who used muscle and arrogance to get their way, but the subtle tricks and vicious tempers of gentlemen bullies made men like Chauvelin dangerous in their unpredictability. Desgas let himself be steered back into the hallway. "Nothing to him – no conviction, no backbone. He wouldn't fight for his country. Look at him now, hiding like a rat in a hole!"
"But we know which hole, don't we?" Chauvelin replied archly.
Desgas snorted. "Goodnight, citizen!"
"Citizen!"
After closing and bolting the door, Armand Chauvelin dusted his hands together, wiping fingers against palms as if something objectionable remained. The shifting of his reflection in an oval mirror hung by the doorway caught his eye, and he raised his light-eyed stare to take in the crease of disgust on his face. Neat, dark brown hair with the first dusting of grey at the temples; pale, pinched features which would once have suggested a man of breeding; thin, cold lips quick to blanch with the torment of suppressed emotion; and eyes – Chauvelin broke contact with his own reverse image, ashamed that he had even noticed himself. Men like Armand St Just appreciated their own appearance; men like Sir Percy Blakeney, Bt.
In the mirror, Chauvelin's dark brows pulled in, his high forehead tightening with concentration: exactly what type of man was Blakeney? The affected baronet had come to matter in increasing degrees to the accredited agent: an English aristocrat on French soil, unaware or disregarding of the social upheaval about him; an unexpected suitor paying court to one of the city's brightest talents; and then their impulsive marriage, making of Marguerite St Just a traitor and émigré, as well as robbing the fledgling republic of its mascot. And still the man's continued interference upon Chauvelin's arrival in England, not to mention his incredible role in the treasonous activities of the Scarlet Pimpernel. Everywhere and every time, he encountered the Englishman, with his insolent, lazy manner, fashionable attire and drawling speech. Chauvelin resented his very existence – what right did he have to meddle in French affairs, aiding émigrés and marrying a daughter of the nation?
Blakeney's marriage to Marguerite was now symbolic to Chauvelin of more recent revelations: he had lied to her, stealing her from a more suitable match with a Republican patriot, just as, Chauvelin had to admit, he had so ably hidden his intentions from the French government and its agencies. And she was still blind to her husband's duplicity, locked out of his deepest secret as well as his heart. Chauvelin remembered her words on the cliff tops of Dover, as they had stood together outside that provincial watering hole: "Idyllic follies never last," she had confessed. How like her, to fall in love with a dream too easily disturbed by reality; he realised now that she had embraced republicanism in much the same way, cleaving to the theories of Rousseau and Mirabeau, only to blanch at the methods put into action by men such as Danton, Marat and Robespierre. Chauvelin had believed that she had felt her devotion wholeheartedly, as had her brother and all the young disciples, but she could not match word with deed when it mattered. St Cyr had been a promising gesture, but her desperate scramble to save his family at the last minute belied her true intentions.
He dropped down onto the edge of the couch, with its creaking frame and faint odour of mildew, and heaved a frustrated sigh; he was so near triumph, a victory for himself and his country, yet he could not feel wholly satisfied. A ridiculous young woman and her estranged husband still worried him; he wanted to save her, 'restore' her to France – and hurt, perhaps kill, him for his interference.
Pushing hands against knees, Chauvelin rose to his feet again, unable to sit and rest. Long, bony fingers reaching into his waistcoat pocket, he stepped confidently through the gloom towards a polished escritoire by the window. In the dim light from a streetlamp outside, he produced a small key on a tricolour ribbon and unlocked a document drawer beneath the desk. His hands stirred and lifted numerous official papers bearing the stamp and seal of the Republican government of France, before settling with tender reverence upon a slim glass frame. Had Desgas been present to witness his fellow citoyen at this moment, Chauvelin's reputation of ruthless obsession, of cold-hearted devotion to a singular cause, would have been dashed forever, and his stranglehold of fear broken. Smaller still in stature as he stooped over the drawer, Armand Chauvelin gave another sigh, this of infinite sorrow and longing, and lifted the frame in the cradle of his hands towards the window.
