In the carriage Alex looked broodingly at the package he held. He hated the cursed thing by now. He had arrived in Paris only to find the house that he was looking for had been torched a few weeks before. Rather than show any undue interest, he had been forced to leave Paris immediately and hire a dingy French spy to go back and find out what had happened and where the inhabitants had gone. That took a blasted two months, over two months.

And all Alex himself could do was go through the motions of being an Italian merchant interested in exporting French wines. He was careful, however, not to enter France again until the day he casually crossed the border, drove his horse straight to a certain milliner’s house, and left three minutes later with a very frightened French girl, Lucien’s sister Brigitte. The recovery of Brigitte was as smooth as cream. They weren’t even stopped at the border into Italy, just waved through by a couple of bored soldiers.

Hearing the story of how the mob came to Lucien’s house, how his wife and son died, and how Brigitte escaped capture only by hiding in a pile of laundry made Alex itch to go home. Of course, Pippa and Charlotte were happy and healthy in England. Yet something about Lucien’s still white face and the way he clutched his little sister to his chest made Alex feel precariously mortal.

He found himself thinking about Charlotte all the time: not even imagining sex as much as Charlotte’s laughing face in the morning when Pippa clambered into the bed and spilled chocolate on the sheets. The way she would bite her lower lip as she concentrated on painting. The fierce manner with which she would counter his arguments when they disagreed over decisions made in Parliament. The consummate pride he felt as he gave a speech in the House of Lords that was not exactly as it would have been had he not discussed it with his wife the night before. Discussed it, ha! Battled over it was more accurate.