musical voice, and her delightful, carefree laugh immediately captivated all the men, and her graceful charm and open friendliness held off the envy of the women who had not been so richly blessed by nature. Everyone admired Sir Percy Blakeney’s clever, witty wife and although they found Sir Percy to be a charming, outrageously stylish, and generally decent fellow, they wondered at the pairing of this bright, elegant French actress and the vague, inane, and dull-witted peacock who was all plumage and no substance. The women smiled knowing smiles and said that Marguerite had married Blakeney for his money, though not one of them faulted her for making a good match. The men, especially the younger ones, paid careful attention to the exaggerated, incroyable fashion of his Parisian suit, his droll, insouciant manner, and his fatuous laugh. In Blakeney, they saw a proper model to emulate: a man of studied elegance, good grace, and vapid wit; someone socially companionable, yet non-threatening; rich, yet unambitious; gregarious, yet unprepossessing; politic, yet apolitical. In short, a man perfectly suited to climb to the highest rung of the social ladder and remain there, comfortably perched.
The highlight of the evening, however, occurred when Andrew Ffoulkes arrived, along with Tony Dewhurst, just as dessert was being served, the timing of their arrival having been agreed upon between the three of them and prearranged. They brought with them, of course, the distinguished Duc de Chalis.
There had been, since the beginning of the French Revolution, a steady stream of French emigres arriving on the shores of England. It began, for the most part, in 1790, in the month of February, when the National Assembly introduced a new military constitution allowing for conscription and abolishing the purchase of commissions. When, in 1791, the Legislative Assembly replaced the oath of allegiance to the king with a new military oath, the aim being to prevent an army of Royalists that would be in opposition to the Revolution, military officers, most of them noblemen, left France in droves. They were soon followed by civilian aristocrats, who saw the writing on the wall; it thereafter became quite commonplace to hear the king’s English being mutilated in drawing rooms throughout all of London and its environs. However, in recent months, when the blood of the ci-devant oppressors was needed to fuel revolutionary fervor, the steady stream had become an almost nonexistent trickle and, as a result, the sudden appearance of the Duc de Chalis was an occasion for surprise and speculation.
A murmuring went through the crowd when de Chalis was announced. With all seated at the dining tables, Ffoulkes, Dewhurst and de Chalis at once became the focus of everyone’s attention. Surprising as the French aristocrat’s arrival was, even more surprising was his announcement that he had only narrowly escaped the guillotine, having received the death sentence from the Committee of Public Safety, and that he and his sons would have been headless corpses had they not been rescued by a daring Englishman.
“Who was this splendid fellow to whose courage we owe the pleasure of your company, good sir?” the Prince of Wales asked.
“I regret to say,” said the elderly de Chalis, in perfect although accented English, “that I cannot tell you his name, Your Highness.”
“What?” said the prince. “But see here, my dear fellow, we must know the name of this brave chap, so that we may single him out for the accolades which are justly his. This is no time for modesty. England needs her heroes. Tell the fellow to come forth!”
“I am afraid that I have been misunderstood, Your Highness,” said the duke. “I did not mean that I will not tell you his name, but that I cannot tell you his name. It is unknown to me. What is more, I can no more describe him to you and this fine assemblage than I can tell you his name. I have learned that I have never seen his true face.”
At this remark, another wave of murmuring swept through the crowd, but it was brought to a quick halt by the Prince of Wales rapping his hand upon the table for silence.
“But how is this possible, Monsieur le Duc? How can this man have rescued you from certain death and you have never seen his face?”
“I have never seen his true face, Your Highness,” replied de Chalis. “This Englishman is a consummate actor and a master of disguise. I know him only by a curious appellation imparted to me by certain individuals who are in league with him. This man prefers to do his work in secret and it seems that he has set himself the task of saving as many innocent lives from the guillotine as possible. Would that I knew his name and face so I could thank him, for I owe him everything, but all I know of this gallant gentleman is that he calls himself ‘the Scarlet Pimpernel.’ ”
“Say what?” slurred Sheridan, leaning forward drunkenly and fixing his bleary eyes upon the duke. “The Scarlet Pimple, did you say?”
“Oh, hush, Richard!” said his dinner partner, an aspiring actress well out of her depth in this society, whose knees had been tightly clamped together throughout all of dinner in order to frustrate Sheridan’s groping fingers. She gave him a shove with her elbow, not very hard, but hard enough, considering his state, to topple him from his chair and send him to the floor, where he remained.
A gentleman seated across from him turned to face a friend of his across the table and, indicating the seat vacated by the dramatist, quickly said, “That’s five pounds you owe me.”
“The Scarlet Pimpernel,” said Dewhurst, at the same time motioning the servants to prepare a place for the old Frenchman at the table. “A small, star-shaped red flower, I believe.”
“How very fascinating!” said Lord Grenville. “I say, Dewhurst, can you shed any light upon this situation?”
“Only a little, I’m afraid, milord. For the most part, I am as much in the dark about this singular gentleman as are the rest of you. As some of you may know, Percy and I are old acquaintances, having met abroad and spent much pleasurable time together on numerous occasions. Percy was the proud owner of an absolutely splendid yacht, a beauty of a schooner called the Day Dream. We had sojourned in the Bay of Biscay aboard that lovely craft and I had determined that I had to have her.”
“The Pimpernel, Dewhurst!” said the Prince of Wales. “What of this Scarlet Pimpernel?”
“I’m getting to that, Your Highness,” Dewhurst said, beginning to saunter round the table slowly, enjoying his role immensely. He came to the spot where Sheridan had fallen, stepped over him and paused a moment, then picked up the playwright’s glass, which was still three-quarters full. “Faith and I believe ole Richard’s finished with this glass. Well, waste not, want not.” He took a sip, then glanced down at the floor. “I say, Burke, I’ve heard that Sheridan could really hold the floor in Parliament and now I see that he’s adept at holding the floor here, as well.”
This sally was greeted with uproarious laughter and Edmund Burke, especially, laughed heartily, pounding on the table and shouting, “Well said, well said!”
“Tony, stop with this nonsense and get on with it!” said William Pitt. “What does Percy’s boat have to do with this mysterious Scarlet Pimpernel?”
“A great deal, Bill, a very great deal,” said Dewhurst, “and I might add that it is my boat, now.”
“What?” said Marguerite. “Percy, you sold the Day Dream to Tony Dewhurst?”
“Odd’s life, m’dear,” said Finn, “what do I need with such a boat in London? Sail her upon the Thames? Better employ a racing horse to pull a plough, I say.”
“Yes, well, Percy sold the Day Dream to me,” Dewhurst went on, “and I might add that he was very generous, doubtless anxious to stop my constant pestering of him on that account. Well, gentlemen and ladies, much as I am loath to admit it, I am not much of a sailor, I’m afraid. In fact, I’m not a sailor at all, being quite content to leave such matters in the very capable hands of the Day Dream’s Captain Briggs, who had agreed, with Percy’s urging, to stay on with his entire crew. However, I suddenly found myself in the situation of a child whose eyes were bigger than his mouth, for when I sat down with Briggs and became acquainted with the amount needed for the upkeep of the Day Dream, I was somewhat taken aback. I mean, what do I know of such things as hauling, painting, scraping, caulking, and so on? Though I am not known for being frugal, I could see that I had acquired a most expensive toy. Therefore, when Briggs informed me that he had been approached by an agent acting for some gentleman with regard to hiring the Day Dream for the purpose of bringing some goods over from France, I was quite agreeable. After all, a toy that pays for its own upkeep is considerably more attractive than one which slowly bleeds its owner dry.” He chuckled. “As Ffoulkes here, an experienced sailor, told me, a boat is nothing more than a hole in the water into which money is poured.”
There was some laughter at this, but clearly, the audience was growing impatient to hear about this Scarlet Pimpernel.
“And so I agreed to hire out the Day Dream, so long as I was not using her,” said Dewhurst. “Well, imagine my surprise when I discovered that the goods brought over from France were the Duc de Chalis and his family!
