Had I not been the wife of the Scarlet Pimpernel, I would be free from all worry and all desire. I would sit and knit in a richly furnished mansion or on a dirty street, without a care in the world that my husband would die. I would love whomever it was I was wed to, yet he would have a safety to him that I would not drown, should he cease to exist. I would be attached, yet not so that the binds cannot be cut in the dire hour. Had I not been Marguerite St. Juste then, when Sir Percy came to court me, I would have breathed easy with every step I took. Had I not wed the man, I would have watched the guillotines flow with noble blood, and I would have wept with the sorrow of my forced inaction. I would remain captured upon the stage, living in those brief moments, brief sparks of talent in love.
I would have been the richest woman in all of France, in all the world. They would have known me, and loved me. I would be held in thousands of arms at every trip upon the smallest pebble, and the scarlet pimpernels that grew within my hands would wilt and die, and I wouldn't care. I wouldn't care at all. I would walk about the streets of Paris, the gray and green, and dream of a better future. And when it came, when the red stopped flowing from the platforms of Madame's hunger, I would be free.
I would fly in the arms of a man who adored me, travel the world, remain naïve and young forever. I would not know love, but I would not know defeat, or fear, or hatred. I would remain as I was, as I am, and as I could have been, forever in love without a doubt in my mind. I would feel it, the scraping of that sole 'love,' and I would giggle with the other women of the mysterious Pimpernel. And at the burning of the flag, I would cheer with the rest, lock up the despair in my heart.
I would not know the cold of a dark cell, nor the light of my beloved's face. I would not know the happiness of seeing him again, not would I feel eternity flow around me in a minute, a second, or a dream. There would be no clocks in my head, no cuckoo birds ticking away until their final snap. I would sit at home, an actress on the stage, a housewife with unhappy children, or a beggar on the bleeding streets, but I would be safe and content with discomfort. I would live. I would breathe.
Yet I choose not to.
Had I not been the wife the Scarlet Pimpernel, I would have been happy. Yet joy surpasses all doubt when I see his face. Had I not been the wife of my Percy, I would have drowned in the red, the gray, and the green.