Prudence dictated that she should not disabuse him. On the contrary, she favored the governor with her dewiest smile.

"To my dear godfather, whose vigilance and tenderness toward me have never failed, and who gave me one more striking proof of that last night when he cleared up that frightful mistake."

"It is good of you to call it a mistake. Myself, I would rather describe it as stupidity without precedent and unpardonable brutality. When I think that those ruffians actually dared to strike you—Does it still hurt?"

He let his gaze dwell on her shoulders in a lingering way that suggested something rather more than simple Christian charity. Marianne gave a light laugh and pirouetted so that he could see her back.

"It's nothing. You see, it is almost gone already." Then, her voice changing suddenly, she added on a note of real anxiety: "But you spoke of an important mission, Your Excellency, and of… peril?"

She looked up at him with the beginnings of a tear in her eye and he uttered a distressed exclamation, then bent and took her hand in his and held it.

"What a fool I am! Why, you are really upset! I ought never to have said that. Come, let us go out and sit on the terrace for a while. It is a warm night and the fresh air will do you good. You look quite pale."

"Yes," she admitted, letting him lead her out through the tall french windows. "I was frightened suddenly. My godfather—"

"Is one of the noblest and bravest and most generous-hearted men I have ever met. He is worthy in every respect of the deep affection I can see you have for him. But you also know him well enough to know that he would not like you to fear for him when he is serving the cause."

"I do know. He is too strong himself ever to understand such fears, or that others may be a little oversensitive—"

With something between a sigh and a tiny sob, she sat down on a sofa upholstered in pale silk which, with a number of chairs, had been placed out on the small terrace. It was a charming place with a view extending out over the leafy gardens to the bay beyond, illumined faintly in the light of a crescent moon. It was also an ideal spot for the exchange of confidences and for the kind of private conversations in which the surroundings may be conducive to leading people on to say more than they mean…

Suddenly Marianne wanted very much to know more about this mysterious mission of the cardinal's. If he were endangering his life in the service of "the cause," then it was almost certainly Napoleon and his army who were going to suffer for it.

She leaned back on the sofa, drawing aside her skirt to let the duke sit beside her, and sat for a moment letting the scented silence of the garden lap around them. Then, after a little while, she spoke hesitantly, as though exerting a painful control over herself.

"Your Excellency," she said. "I know I ought not to ask you this, but it is so long since I have heard anything of my godfather… And now I have found him again only to lose him almost at once. He has vanished, just like that, without seeing me again, without even a kiss… and I may never see him again—ever! Oh, tell me, at least, I implore you, that he is not going to—the places where the fighting is, that he is not going to meet—the invaders?"

With a fine show of agitation, she had placed both hands in the governor's and was leaning toward him, enveloping him in the sweet cool scent of her perfume.

He laughed gently, clasping her two slim hands in his, and moved a little closer, so close that his eyes were able to look down into the disturbing hollow between her breasts.

"Come, come, my child," he said indulgently. "You really must not worry. The cardinal is a churchman. He is not going to attack Bonaparte, you know. I don't see that it can do any harm if I tell you that he is going to Moscow, where there is a great task awaiting him if by any chance the Corsican ogre should get that far. But you may be sure he will be stopped long before that… Dear me, what a nervous little thing you are. Wait here, I am going to find you a drop more champagne."

But she clung to him firmly, having no desire to fall once more into the same sparkling snare as at Le Butard.

"No, please, don't go! You are very kind. You make me feel much better. See, I am quite all right now. Not nearly so frightened." She smiled at him, hoping inwardly that her smile was as seductive as she meant it to be. At all events, he sat down again promptly.

"Really? You are not so worried now?"

"Not nearly. Forgive me. I am a little foolish about him, I know, but I owe him my life, you see. He was the one who found me in my parents' house after it had been sacked by the revolutionaries, who hid me under his cloak and carried me to England at the risk of his own life. He is all the family I have."

"But—your husband?"

Marianne did not hesitate. "The prince died last year," she declared boldly. "He had property in Greece and also in Constantinople. That was the reason I made this long journey. You see, I am not the guilty creature you imagined."

"I have already told you I was a fool. And so you are a widow? So young, so beautiful—and all alone!"

He moved a little closer and Marianne, who was already feeling slightly uneasy thinking that she had perhaps led him on a little too much, made haste to change the subject.

"That is enough about me. It isn't really very interesting. Do you know, I never even found out what lucky chance it was that brought my dear cardinal here? Was he expecting me? He must have second sight if that was so."

"No. Your meeting was one of those accidents that come about God alone knows how. The cardinal only arrived here two days before yourself. He came from St. Petersburg with important news for me."

"From St. Petersburg? News from the tsar, then? Is it true what they say of him?"

"What do they say?"

"That he is as handsome as a Greek god! Altogether charming and attractive."

"Quite true," said the duke, with a note in his voice that set Marianne's teeth on edge. "He is the most remarkable man I have ever met. Men ought to kiss the ground he walks on. He is the crowned archangel who will save us all from Bonaparte…"

He had turned his head away and was gazing up to heaven as though expecting this Muscovite archangel of his to descend with flapping wings. At the same time he embarked on a panegyric of Alexander I, who was clearly his great hero, which Marianne found tedious in the extreme. She was beginning to think it must be growing very late and she had found out very little. Jason's fate, in particular, had not even been mentioned.

She let him run on for a little longer and then, when he paused for breath, she murmured quickly: "A remarkable man, indeed! But I begin to fear I am trespassing on Your Excellency's time. Surely it must be very late?"

"Late? Not in the least—besides, we've the whole night ahead of us. No, no, I'll not hear of it! Very soon now, tomorrow probably, I shall be leaving myself to take the tsar some reinforcements in the shape of the regiments I've mustered here. This is the last evening of peace I shall have for a long time to come. Don't shorten it for me!"

"Very well. But aren't you forgetting, Your Excellency, that I came here with a favor to ask you?"

He was so close that she could feel him stiffen and draw away. She guessed that she had brought him back to earth a little too abruptly for his liking. But she decided that if he had a mind to forget his promise she would bring him to the point once and for all, even at the risk of putting him in an ill humor.

"A favor?" he said irritably. "What then? Ah, yes—that American privateer. Almost certainly a spy, a spy in the pay of Bonaparte. Can't think what he could be doing here otherwise."

"You don't often find spies going about with a brig of that size, Your Excellency. It would be a rather obvious way of entering a country, surely? Up to now, Mr. Beaufort's business has been chiefly in the wine trade. As to being in the service of Bonaparte"—Lord, this was going badly!—"I can assure you he is nothing of the sort. It is not long since he saw the inside of a Paris prison—and the convict barracks at Brest as well!"

Richelieu said nothing. He had got to his feet and was pacing agitatedly up and down the little terrace, his arms folded across his chest and his fingers plucking at the folds of lace about his throat. Marianne watched him anxiously, thinking what a strange character he was. His reactions were wholly unpredictable and the least thing seemed to catch his nerves on the raw.

As abruptly as Napoleon himself could have done, he came to a sudden halt in front of her and shot out: "This man? What is he to you? Your lover?"

Marianne took a deep breath and forced herself to keep calm. She could see that he was studying her face closely. He was evidently expecting her to lose her temper, to make one of those calculated outbursts of indignation that came so easily to women in love and deceived nobody. Easily, she sidestepped the trap and leaned back in her seat, laughing gently.

"That is not very imaginative of you, Your Excellency. Do you think there is only one reason that a woman might wish to help a man when he's in trouble?"

"Of course not. But this Mr. Beaufort is not your brother, is he? And you have undertaken a long and dangerous voyage to come and plead for him."

"Long and dangerous? Crossing the Black Sea? Really, my lord Duke, let us be serious." She stood up suddenly, her face growing very serious indeed, and said austerely: "I have known Jason Beaufort a very long time. The first time I met him was at my aunt's house, Selton Hall, where he was a guest, received there as he was everywhere in England. He was acquainted there with the Prince of Wales. To me, he is a very dear friend, as I said, a childhood friend."