'If there is anything I can do to help you, please command me—'

She had spoken in German. The little countess's huge eyes seemed to grow larger still.

'You speak my language? But who are you?'

Then she seemed to remember suddenly and the joy which had shone for a moment in her eyes went out like a snuffed candle flame.

'Oh! I know! You are reader to Madame de Talleyrand! I thank you for your solicitude, but I do not need anything.'

The cool voice reminded Marianne that she was scarcely more than a servant here, but she smiled without taking offence.

'You think that so humble a person as myself is not worthy to offer help to a princess of Courlande? You long to find someone here who will understand, yet in me you see a mere servant. What is a servant to you who have hundreds—'

'My only friend is a servant,' the girl burst out quickly as though in spite of herself. 'That is Anja, my nurse – she is the one person I trust. But you! Were you not recommended here by Madame Sainte Croix? A go between! She may have sent you to the princess but I think the prince was more in her mind!'

Marianne saw wearily that she would find this suspicion not easy to outlive, especially since she herself, after her first interview with Talleyrand, had been the first to leap to it. Suddenly she wanted more than anything else to clear herself, to take off the mask which Fouché had forced on her.

'Madame de Sainte Croix did recommend me but I am not really known to her. She does not even know who I am.'

'Who are you then?'

'An émigrée – hiding, trying to live—'

'If that is so, then why tell me? I could call someone and denounce you, have you dismissed, thrown into prison.'

Marianne smiled again and nodded.

'Denounce is not a word that comes well from your lips, madame. To gain someone's confidence, one must first give one's own. I am in your hands. Very well, denounce me—'

There was a pause while Dorothée de Périgord looked more intensely at this girl, scarcely older than herself. The chance to speak her native language gave her a childish pleasure which, with the softening of her glance, was not lost on Marianne. Lowering her voice instinctively, Dorothée asked in a much gentler tone: 'What is your name – your real name?'

Determined to win this odd child's friendship at all costs, Marianne was on the point of telling her when the door opened again. Glittering in the doorway was the splendid but uninspiring figure of the hussar officer who was the young countess's husband.

'Dorothée, what are you doing? Your mother is looking everywhere for you. She is tired and wishes to go home.'

'I felt unwell. It must have been the heat. Mam'zelle – Mallerousse very kindly came to my rescue—'

Marianne trembled to see how well her borrowed name had been noted. When Dorothée turned to her it was with a smile of real pleasure in her eyes. She held out her hand.

'Thank you,' she said, reverting once more to German. 'You have helped me more than you know. Come and visit me. I live at number two, rue de la Grange Bateliére and I am always at home in the mornings. Will you come?'

'I will come,' Marianne promised with the slight, respectful bow over the proffered hand, which her role demanded. It seemed to judge from his look of bored impatience, that Edmond de Périgord did not understand German.

'Come along now—'

Marianne followed them out of the room. She had no wish to be found there by the prince. She ran swiftly upstairs, slipped off her dress and, putting on her nightgown and nightcap, jumped into bed and put out her candle. In the light of the dying fire she could see the report she had written lying on the table and smiled. These precious beginnings of friendship were something of which the inquisitive Minister of Police should know nothing. Nor should he learn of the little countess's unhappiness. Marianne found herself thinking of her with an almost sisterly affection due to the discovery that she too, in spite of her princely birth, her brilliant marriage, her fortune and the honours with which she was surrounded, in spite of all that she possessed which Marianne had lost, she too was made miserable and unhappy by the ruthless world of men. The little princess of Courlande had been torn from her own land and life and dreams of love to be used as a pawn on the chess board of politics. She had been taken from the man she loved and forced to accept another, and that other an enemy whom she could not but dislike. And then, to crown all, she was obliged to sit by and witness a liaison between her own mother and another of her enemies! How cynically Talleyrand had informed her that she was merely a child of no importance, not yet wise enough to bow to wordly expediency.

Poor, angry little Dorothée, trying to fight with her bare hands the whole united force of men and their appetites. What were these people made of that the Emperor of the French and Talleyrand should join together with the Tsar himself to break the will of a fifteen year old child? Did they feel no shame? What were these policies that still demanded human sacrifice?

Thinking of her new friend, Marianne gradually forgot her own problems and experienced a certain lightening of her heart. She was discovering that she was by no means the only one to suffer and, in doing so, was realizing her own strength. More than ever now, she was determined to fight the overbearing power of men, their sordid passions and lying words of love. And at the same time she meant to do all she could to help her sisters in distress. And God knew they existed! For one Ivy St Albans, serving men and fighting on their side, she had seen a Dorothée de Courlande sold like so much merchandise, an Adelaide d'Asselnat flung into prison and exiled for daring to say what she thought, an Empress dethroned for failing to provide a tyrant with an heir, a princess of Benevento flouted and ignored in her own house and a countess Metternich abandoned as a hostage. Some day, she, Marianne would show that a woman could beat them at their own game!

That night, Marianne declared war on men.


***

When the servant whose duty it was to attend to her fire came into her room next morning, Marianne was sitting by the window reading. She did not look up from her book.

The man cleaned the hearth, piled up the new logs, and revived the still glowing embers with a large pair of bellows. When he had done, there was silence. Marianne could hear him breathing loudly and guessed that her air of indifference made him uncomfortable. Rather cruelly she decided to enjoy his discomfiture. Not for anything would she have spoken first. Either he would speak or he would go. At last, she heard him cough.

'I think this wood will burn well.'

Only then did she raise her eyes and saw a man neither young nor old, of average build and unremarkable features. In fact, he was a man who, but for his braided livery would have passed absolutely unnoticed anywhere, blended into any background. The perfect spy. She nodded to the report lying on the corner of the desk.

'The paper – there on the table,' was all she said.

The man took the letter and slipped it into his capacious pocket before glancing sideways at Marianne.

'My name's Floquet,' he said. 'Celestin Floquet. What's yours?'

'I am Mademoiselle Mallerousse,' Marianne said coldly, taking up her book once more. 'You should know that.'

'Oh yes, I know that! But that's not what I asked. What's your first name? Between colleagues—'

Marianne had vowed to keep quite calm but the impertinence of the man stung her to instant anger. If she were to be obliged to endure familiarities from this backstairs spy—

'I have no first name. And I am not your colleague.'

Her fingers tightened on the book's leather binding but she made herself keep her eyes firmly on the page rather than look at Floquet's commonplace features. But she could not shut out his mocking laugh.

'Hoity-toity! Proud, 'aint we! And what do you t'ink you are, my pretty? Just don't you forget that I'm the boss here, see! Who'll bring you your pickings from papa Fouché come pay-day?'

It was too much! Forgetting all caution, as well as all her good resolutions, Marianne sprang to her feet and pointed to the door.

'Do what you have to do but let that be all!' she exclaimed. 'We have nothing to say to one another and we never will have. Now go!'

Floquet shrugged but he picked up his wood basket and the pan of ashes.

'All right!' he muttered rudely. 'Have it your own way. There's no harm in old Floquet but he's not one to let folk tread on his toes!'

The moment he had gone, Marianne almost ran to the bedside table, poured herself a glass of water and drank it with one gulp. Her hands were shaking so violently that the glass knocked against the carafe as she poured. Never until that moment had she been so dearly aware of her degradation. That one tiny incident opened her eyes. That a lackey, a common informer should think himself entitled to address her as an equal! She could bear anything but not that – not that!

Tomorrow, in her report, she would demand, even at the risk of rousing his anger, that Fouché compelled this Floquet to keep his distance. If he did not she would never write another word—

She heard the distant rumble of a carriage in the street and once again the longing to escape swept over her, irritated as she was by this fresh encounter with the male sex. After all, what was there to prevent her slipping on her cloak, packing her few possessions and hurrying to the stage coach office? She could go back to Brest. Nicolas had returned to England but Madame de Guilvinec would be only too happy to look after her. Or she could go to Auvergne and find her turbulent cousin who might take her in.