Ebb tide

are the Baroness de Sarrasin and her two children, aged nine and ten. The Baroness was born into a liberal but impoverished noble family. She was very young during the worst excesses of the Revolution and, being a woman living in the remote countryside, escaped the worst. Later she married an officer in the army. He too was of noble blood, an émigré who returned when Napoleon invited the nobility back to France to join the army. He served Bonaparte with distinction and was created a Baron of the Empire, but last year he was on Marshal Marmont's staff and...' Edward shrugged.

'And?' Drinkwater prompted.

'You do not know what Marmont did?'

'Should I?'

'Marmont surrendered his entire Army Corps before Paris, precipitating the fall of Napoleon. The Baroness's husband was implicated in the capitulation and she is consequentially tainted as a result of his involvement. The loyalties of all members of the family have, as I believe you know, been confused and inconstant.'

'As I know?' Drinkwater queried with a frown. 'How should I know about this Baroness de Sarrasin and her family?'

'Since her husband's disgrace she has reverted to using her maiden name. The officer she married was named Montholon...'

Drinkwater frowned. 'Montholon! But that was Hortense's maiden name. So, he is Hortense's brother?'

'Was her brother. He was mysteriously killed while out riding soon after Napoleon reached Paris. The Baroness and her children were hidden by friends. You have to help her!'

'Have to? Is she your lifeline now?'

Edward shook his head. 'For God's sake,' he said, dropping his voice still further, 'I am neither an ingrate nor a monster. I have the chance to make some sort of reparation for the past. I need your help. If you cannot do it for me, pray do it for Hortense's sake. She said you were fond of her, that you had duelled with each other for years...'

'Did she?' Drinkwater said flatly. 'Duelled, eh? Is that how she put it? Well, I suppose 'tis as good a metaphor as any. Tell me how you met her. That strikes me as the oddest coincidence of all.'

'It is easily explained. Hortense was a friend of Madame Ney's. The Marshal had made something of a reputation in Russia and Prince Vorontzoff wished to meet him. I was on the Prince's staff and we attended one of Madame Ney's soirées...'

'Where you met Hortense, and thereafter matters took their natural course.' Drinkwater's tone was rueful.

'Quite so.'

'But how', Drinkwater went on, 'did you make the connection with me?'

'It was our intention to marry...'

'You and Hortense proposed to marry!'

Edward nodded. 'Yes. Does that surprise you?'

Drinkwater shook his head. 'No,' he said, giving a low, ironic laugh, 'no, not in the least. Pray continue.'

Edward shrugged. 'The war was over and I obtained my discharge from the Russian army. Paris was most congenial, and my long acquaintanceship and service with the Russian ton had taught me French. I thought in French and now hardly ever utter a word in English, though Prince Vorontozoff knew me to speak it and, as I was in his confidence, he occasionally conversed in it with me.'

'Did he know you to be an Englishman?'

Edward nodded. 'Yes, there are many foreign officers in the Russian service, though most are Germans. I gave out that I came from a family of merchants who had lived abroad for some time.'

'And by the time you met Hortense, you had proved yourself to the Russians.'

'It was difficult after Tilsit, but Prince Vorontzoff was wholly opposed to the alliance with Napoleon. He retired to the country and I went with him. He had Arab bloodstock and you will recall my interest in horses.'

Drinkwater nodded. 'But you have not told me how you linked Hortense with me.'

'Well, I wished to marry her and settle in Paris. I had provided for myself quite well.' Edward grinned. 'There were some rich pickings between Moscow and Paris, but that is by the by. Hortense struck me as being alone, despite her intimacy with Madame Ney. Baroness de Sarrasin was suspicious of her, due to the disgrace of her first husband, and it was clear she was the recipient of charity. The fall of Napoleon did not divide France, it fragmented the country. Many of the Marshals accepted the restoration of the Bourbons in return for the retention of their positions, titles and fortunes. Be that as it may, Hortense accepted me. In confidence, she told me she received a small competence from a source in England for services to the British government. I assumed this was to prove to me that her loyalties were sound. I also assumed she meant a pension and she might have lied, but she didn't, she said no, it was from a man she held in the highest esteem, though fate had made him an enemy. I thought, of course, that she had been this mysterious benefactor's mistress and that the enmity had grown up after some intimacy, but she denied this vehemently. Sheer curiosity led me to ask the name of her benefactor and sheer innocence led her to reply with our ... your surname.'

'God's bones, I had no idea...'

'You see, the fact that she was an intimate of the Neys, and I knew she was the widow of a disgraced officer, Edouard Santhonax, yet had a pension for services to Great Britain, led me to conclude that her past was as complex as my own, beset by divided loyalties and so forth.' Edward rubbed a hand over his sweating chin. 'I suppose it gave us something in common; we were both what used to be called, with disparagement, 'adventurers'.'

'So you told her you were my brother?' Drinkwater asked, frowning.

'Yes, eventually. When Napoleon escaped from Elba and Paris was in an uproar. Friendships that seemed to cement the new order of the restored Bourbons dissolved overnight. Everyone seemed compromised, some more than others. There will have been no shortage of informers to jostle the petitioners at Napoleon's new court. Ney rode south to bring back Bonaparte in an iron cage and promptly went over to his old master. As for me, I was now a Russian living in a city which was set fair to turn hostile, and Hortense was among the tainted. In addition the Baroness arrived, her husband dead, her own fortunes overturned. She was now in the same position as her once despised sister-in-law. Hortense was fond of her brother's children. She had had none of her own...'

'I never thought of her as a matron ...'

'She was not all ambition, you know, but she was brave and resourceful.'

'She suggested you contacted me, I suppose.'

Edward nodded. 'Yes. She regarded you as a person of some influence. I had no idea whether you were an admiral, but from our last meeting I recalled you were engaged in matters usually outside the competence of a common captain in the Royal Navy. Hortense knew that you and a certain peer were involved in clandestine activities, so naturally you seemed the only person we could turn to. This was as clear to me as to her, but over this fortuitous circumstance lay the foolish actions of my youth. I had compromised you fatally. I had to tell her we were related, and why I could not come directly. She was astonished, of course,' he said with a wan smile, 'and at first refused to believe that I could possibly be your brother. I think she thought the claim an extravagant attempt on my part to impress her, but she eventually saw the folly of that and I was able to persuade her by revealing the few facts I knew about you.' He sighed, then added, 'She knew you a long time ago, I gather.'

'I rescued her from the revolutionaries — oh, years ago — just as it appears I must do again with this Baroness of yours.'

'Nat...' Edward leaned forward, his face earnest, his voice very low. Grasping his brother's wrist he said, 'I have not forgotten the great debt I owe you for helping me escape the gallows...'

'You escaped justice, by God!'

'Maybe. But the rescue of the Baroness and her children is something in reparation.'

'A noble expiation', Drinkwater said with heavy irony, 'which you have already alluded to, but somewhat dependent upon the charity of your over-burdened kin.'

'And I have lost Hortense ...'

'Perhaps we have both lost her.'

Edward frowned. 'You were never her lover...'

'Is that a question or a statement? But no, I never was,' Drinkwater said hurriedly. He paused a moment,