'I love you… As God hears me, I swear to you I love you and I belong to no other man.'

'Get out!'

Opening her eyes, she saw that he was standing with his back to her and the whole length of the room between them. But she saw too that he was shaking and that the sweat was making his shirt stick to his brown skin. She stood up, shakily, but was forced to cling to the chair for support. She felt hot and feverish and the room seemed to be spinning around her but she could not go away without telling him what she had come to say, without warning him… Since he had not killed her, she did not want him to die either. He must live, live! Even if the rest of her days were one slow death because she had lost him. It was her own blind rage which had made her commit an ineffable blunder: it was right that she should pay for it.

At the cost of a violent effort of will, she made herself walk towards him, over the hundreds of miles of empty desert which the room seemed to have become.

'I can't,' she croaked. 'Not yet… I must tell you—'

'You can tell me nothing that I want to hear! I do not want to see you again – ever!'

The words were harsh, but the fury had gone out of Jason's voice. It was flat and heavy – strangely similar, all at once, to a voice Marianne had heard once before, one night, in a mirror…

'No – listen! You must not go out tonight. That is what I came to tell you. If you go to Quintin Crawfurd's house, you are lost… you will be dead by morning.'

Jason turned abruptly and regarded Marianne with genuine astonishment.

'To Crawfurd's? What are you talking about?'

'I knew you would deny it, but you are wasting your time. I know that he is expecting you at eleven o'clock, with some other men, for reasons which I do not wish to know, because that is your own business and because – because in my eyes you cannot be altogether wrong.'

'Who are these other men?'

Marianne hung her head, hating even to be forced to speak the names. 'The Baron de Vitrolles… the Chevalier de Bruslart.'

Against all probability, Jason had begun to laugh:

'I have never heard of Monsieur de Vitrolles, but the Chevalier de Bruslart I do know, and so do you, if I remember rightly. Are you seriously trying to tell me that I have anything to do with these conspirators? Do you expect me to believe that you are doing me the honour to count me one of them?'

'How can I help it? It is true, isn't it, that you are going to Crawfurd's house in the rue de Clichy?' Marianne insisted, a trifle disconcerted by this unalarmed, not to say hilarious, manner of receiving her news.

'Quite true. As it happens I am to visit Crawfurd in the rue de Clichy—tomorrow morning. I am to take a luncheon with him and inspect his very fine collection of pictures. But your idea seems to be that I am to go there tonight, to meet these very dubious-sounding gentlemen. Do you mind telling me the motive?'

'How should I know? All I know is that you are involved in a royalist plot aimed at bringing about peace with England at any cost, that there was to be a meeting at Crawfurd's house tonight, and incidentally that this Crawfurd is playing something of a double game, and that Savary is preparing to arrest you all on the spot and have you taken to Vincennes and shot out of hand. That was my reason for coming here – to beg you not to go… to keep you alive, even if your life belongs to another woman.'

Jason sank into a chair, where he sat with his elbows on his knees looking at Marianne. Amusement struggled with amazement in his face:

'I'd like to know where you got this cock and bull story? I can assure you that I am involved in no conspiracy. I, join with royalists, with the men who saved their own skins while they left their king to mount the scaffold and the child Louis XVII to waste away in the Temple? I, plot with the English?'

'Why not? It was in England that I met you first. Weren't you a friend of the Prince of Wales?'

Jason shrugged, got to his feet and wandered over to the bookcase. 'It is not hard to become one of Prinny's friends. All it takes is a certain originality, something a little out of the ordinary. He made me welcome, in fact, because I was a friend of Orlando Bridgeman, who is one of his intimate circle. It was Orlando who came to my rescue, dusted me down and put me back in the saddle, after my ship was wrecked off the Cornish coast. We have known each other for ever. Very well. I have one English friend. I imagine that does not mean that I must take all England to my bosom? More especially when, although my country is not yet at war with England, relations are becoming every day more strained and war cannot be all that far off.'

While he was talking, he had opened one of the cupboards at the bottom of the bookcase and extracted from it a decanter and a tray with two glasses, both of which he proceeded to fill. Outside, the noise of the storm was moving away. It was now only a distant mutter underlying the din of the torrential rain which had followed in its wake and which was now scourging the trees and battering furiously against the roofs and windows of the little town. Filled with an unutterable sense of relief, Marianne subsided on to the harpsichord stool and waited for the pounding of her heart to slow down a little. The only thing that made sense to her in the whole of that night's idiotic adventure was that Jason was not in danger, he had never been in danger – neither had he ever had any thoughts of plotting against Napoleon. It crossed her mind, also, that his attitude to herself had softened remarkably… Her throat felt stiff and tight and her head ached feverishly. She had never felt so tired in all her life. In quiet, obstinately, she was still trying to piece together the fragments of the ridiculous puzzle of all that had been happening to her, trying to understand.

'But,' she said at last, slowly, thinking aloud more than addressing herself directly to Jason, 'but you were at Mortefontaine with your – with Señora Pilar and you came back without her?'

'Correct. I was there and I returned this evening.'

'You returned… because someone was coming to see you – someone I saw leave this house…'

'Right again,' Jason said. 'Your information up to that point is quite correct but, I repeat, only up to that point. This Crawfurd business is the product of a brilliant imagination and I think it is my turn to ask some questions on that subject. Here, drink this. You must need it.'

'This' was one of the two glasses of sherry he had been pouring. Marianne accepted it automatically and drank a little. It burned her throat but it did her good.

'Thank you,' she said, putting the glass down on the corner of the harpsichord. 'Ask what you like. I will answer.'

Prepared for a fresh tirade when she mentioned the name of her informant, Marianne resigned herself with a little sigh and sat looking down at her clasped hands. A short silence followed during which Marianne dared not raise her eyes, thinking that Jason was choosing his questions. However, he merely gazed at her.

'Very well,' he said at last. 'In that case, I have only one thing to ask you, and that is the name of the person who told you this extraordinary story. I must try and get to the bottom of this nonsensical affair. You did not think it up for yourself. Who told you I was going to Crawfurd's to meet these conspirators?'

'Francis…'

'Francis? You mean Cranmere? Your husband?'

'My first husband,' Marianne corrected acidly.

'Never mind that now,' Jason said impatiently. 'Where the devil did he spring from? Where and when did you see him?'

'Last night, at my house. He was waiting for me in my room when I got back from the theatre. He had got in by climbing over the garden wall and up to my balcony.'

'This is fantastic! Insane! Go on. I want to know everything. Where he is concerned, all things are possible.'

All trace of amusement had vanished from Beaufort's expression. His face was very tense and he was leaning against the harpsichord, his tall figure dominating Marianne as she sat and his eyes fixed compellingly on her sweet, downcast features. His voice was stern as he added: 'And look at me, for a start. I must know if you are telling me the whole truth.'

Still that suggestion of contempt, the same hint of distrust. What must I do, Marianne asked herself despairingly, to make him understand that I love him, that he is the only person in the world for me? But she looked up as he bade her and her green eyes met those of the man leaning over her with a gaze that was wholly candid and direct.

'I will tell you everything,' she said simply. 'You shall judge…'

Few words were needed to describe the scene which had taken place on the previous night between herself and Francis Cranmere. As she spoke, Marianne was able to follow the swift succession of emotions reflected on the keen face before her: surprise, anger, indignation, contempt, even pity. But all the time the story took to tell Jason did not utter a single word, not even the smallest exclamation. Even so, when Marianne came to the end, she saw with joy that nearly all the hardness had vanished from the sea rover's blue eyes.

He remained where he was for a moment, watching her in silence, then, with a shrug and a sigh, he turned and walked away a little.

'And you paid!' he said roughly. 'Knowing him as you do, you paid, blindly! It did not occur to you that he could have been lying, that it was simply an excuse to get money out of you?'

And you, Marianne thought sadly, it does not occur to you that I love you so much I lost my head, that to save your life I would have given him everything I possess? But she did not utter these bitter thoughts aloud. Instead, she merely answered miserably: 'He had it all so pat that I was forced to believe him. It was he who told me that you would be at Mortefontaine all day today, and that you would be alone when you returned, and he told me, too, that you would have an important visitor this evening – and it was all quite true because I came straight here first thing this morning and had it all from the man at your gate. It was all true – except the one, most important thing, but how was I to guess?'