He pushed himself to a sitting position. "I'd finished my first year at Cambridge when the Treaty of Amiens went into effect, so I decided to take a year off and do the Grand Tour. As I traveled through France, it became obvious that it was only a matter of time until war broke out again. When I came across some information that I thought might interest the British government, I sent it to Lucien, because I knew that he had taken a position in Whitehall.

"Lucien immediately came to Paris to tell me that he was working in intelligence and to ask me if I would be willing to stay on the continent as a British agent." Andreville shrugged. "Being young and stupid, I thought it sounded like quite an adventure, so here I am."

Thinking out loud, Rafe said, "Why the devil didn't Lucien tell me about you before I came to Paris?"

"In this business, it becomes second nature never to say more than is absolutely necessary. Lucien sent you over to work with Maggie-there was no need for you to know that I was also an agent."

Rafe digested that for a bit. "Yet Lucien didn't know Margot well enough to be sure that she was English."

"That's because he knew her through me, and I said only that she was English-there was no need for him to know her real name and background."

Rafe made a face. "I can't help thinking that matters would have been greatly simplified if there had been less secretiveness."

"In this case, that's true." Andreville's expression darkened. "But there are times when men have died because their names were tortured out of imprisoned colleagues."

Deciding that it was time to return to the subject closest to his heart, Rafe said, "You were going to tell me about Margot's life in the years since you met her."

"If you're really sure you want to know. It's a hard story to hear."

"If it's difficult to listen to, it must have been a damned sight worse for Margot to live through," Rafe said grimly. "I want to know it all."

"As you wish." Restively Andreville pushed himself to his feet and went to lean against the wall under the window. "I believe you know how Maggie and her father and his servant were assaulted by a gang of former soldiers who were heading to Paris?"

"Yes, it was quite a scandal in England. However, no details were known, which is why Margot was thought to have died."

His voice flat, Andreville said, "Maggie and her father and Willis were eating in a country auberge when a half dozen or so ex-soldiers arrived, already drunk and bullying everyone in sight. Colonel Ashton tried to get his party away quietly, but someone recognized his accent as English, they were accused of being spies, and the soldiers attacked them.

"Ashton and his man fought, of course, but they never had a chance against so many. At the end, the colonel threw himself across his daughter to protect her, hoping that her life might be spared." Andreville's fair skin drew tightly over the fine bones of his face. "Maggie's father died sprawled on top of her, Candover, bleeding from a dozen knife and bullet wounds."

"Dear God," Rafe whispered. Margot had adored her father. To see him die like that… The thought made him ill. Well, Andreville had warned him. Steeling himself for what he feared was coming, he asked, "What then?"

"What the hell do you think happened, Candover?" Andreville said with barely controlled rage. "A girl who looks like Maggie, in the hands of a drunken gang of ex-soldiers?"

Rafe pushed himself to his feet and began pacing, no more able to sit quietly in die face of such an atrocity than Andreville was. With anguish, he thought of Margot's near-hysteria in the Place du Carrousel and after. Dear God, no wonder she had nightmares of clawing hands and beastly faces; no wonder she needed to be reminded that not all men were savages.

Andreville began speaking again, his face averted. "Since they had a beautiful girl and a cellar full of wine, they were in no hurry to move on, so they settled down and enjoyed themselves. For the next day and a half, they stayed continuously drunk, raping her whenever one of them was in the mood.

"Then I happened by, traveling in the uniform of a French grenadier captain. When the villagers saw me, the mayor came out and begged me to get the soldier-pigs to move on before they destroyed the whole village.

"I was going to pass on by. After all, I was alone, and not even a genuine officer. But when the mayor said they had an English girl…" The fingers of Andreville's right hand splayed flat out on the wall beside him. "I had to see if I could help. So I went into the inn, praised the soldiers for their patriotism and cleverness in catching spies, chided them for overzealousness, and inspired them to get moving to Paris because the emperor needed them."

Rafe imagined that slight, elegant figure facing down a gang of armed drunks, and understood why Margot had fallen in love with him. Lord Robert would have been hardly more than a boy himself. "How did you get them to release Margot instead of taking her with them?"

"Sheer force of personality." Andreville said with even greater dryness. "I said that I would take the English spy to Paris for questioning myself. Her horse and luggage were in the stable, so I got her mounted and both of us the hell away from there.

"It didn't take long to realize what kind of girl I'd rescued. She was half dead from what they'd done to her, and wearing a ragged dress covered with her father's blood. Any other woman would have been raving mad or unconscious. But Maggie…" His drawn face eased a little.

"When I stopped the horses a mile down the road to introduce myself and assure her that she was safe, she pulled a pistol on me. It had been hidden in her saddlebag. I'll never forget the sight: her hands were shaking, her face was so bruised that her own mother wouldn't have recognized her, and she'd been through an ordeal that I wouldn't have wished on Napoleon himself. Yet she was unbroken." After a long silence, he added softly, "She's the strongest person I've ever know."

Rafe realized that he was pacing around his end of the cell, hands clenched, his eyes unseeing. Never in his life had he had a stronger desire to be alone, to assimilate the horror of what had happened to Margot.

To see her father murdered in front of her eyes; to have had her sexual initiation as the victim of a gang of brutes… How had she kept her sanity? Yet she had not only survived, but developed into an extraordinary woman. The thought of the strength and resilience that required staggered him.

On top of the helpless pain he felt on her behalf was the crushing knowledge of his own guilt. If he hadn't hurt Margot so badly, she would not have been in France. No wonder she had accused him of being responsible for her father's death. It was true, and there was no way on God's earth that he could ever make amends for the catastrophe which he had indirectly caused.

The frantic energy churning inside him was unbearable. Rafe, the quintessential civilized man, burned with the need to do something physically violent- preferably kill Margot's assailants with his bare hands.

Accurately reading Rafe's expression, Andreville said, "If it's any comfort, most of the men who joined the Grand Armee that long ago are probably long since dead. One can only hope that each of them died slowly and painfully."

"One can only hope," Rafe said thickly. He pictured one of those anonymous men being flayed alive by Spanish partisans; another dying of gangrene after ten days with a bullet in his belly; a third slowly freezing to death on the plains of Russia.

The visions didn't help much.

Muscle by muscle, he forced himself to relax. If he didn't, he'd go mad.

Andreville had returned to his corner and sunken into the straw. The emotions of his story were etched on his face and shadows showed under the blue eyes. Since he also loved Margot, this must be harrowing for him to speak of.

When he had reestablished a fragile control, Rafe said, "I suppose that after that, things had to get better."

"Yes, though it was a bit of a quandary for me. I could hardly abandon Maggie in the middle of France, but I was engaged in some vital business. When I explained, she said that she had no reason to return to England, so why didn't I take her with me? So I did.

"I took a flat in Paris. Because of our similar coloring, we claimed to be a brother and his widowed sister. She became Marguerite to the world in general, and Maggie to me, because she no longer wanted to be Margot Ashton." Forgetting his injured arm, Andreville started to make a gesture with his left hand, then winced. "Even before we reached Paris, I asked her to marry me so that she would have the protection of my name. Also, of course, if something happened to me she would be a considerable heiress."

Rafe swallowed, then said woodenly, "So you are actually husband and wife."

"No, she refused, saying that we shouldn't marry merely because of some unlucky circumstances. Instead, she offered to become my mistress if I wished."

So that was how it had begun. Rafe said, "I'm amazed that she could bear to let a man touch her."

"I was amazed, too, but she said that she wanted some happier memories to replace the bad ones," Andreville explained. "I had some doubts about the arrangement-remnants of a proper upbringing, no doubt-but I agreed. I was only twenty years old myself and didn't really want to be married, yet only an absolute fool would reject such an offer from a woman like her."

Though Andreville was glossing over what he had done, Rafe knew that it must have taken infinite kindness and patience to help Margot overcome such a shattering experience and become the passionate woman she was now. Rafe was profoundly grateful that she had had such a man to help her. With equal intensity, he resented the fact that he himself had not been the one; when she had needed him most, he had not been there.