Evil in a Mask Read Free Page B

and taught some trade that would later enable them to earn a wage in civil life sufficient to support them.
    Roger had heartily applauded her idea, for in those days Britain’s treatment of men invalided from the Services on account of serious wounds was a scandal that cried to heaven. No sooner were they able to walk on crutches or, still half-blind, able to make their way about, than they were put out of the hospitals near-penniless, to fend for themselves. Thousands of them now roamed the streets of the cities, begging their bread.
    Georgina’s great wealth enabled her without delay to carry out her project. Roger helped her find a suitable mansion, assisted in furnishing it suitably and engaging staff. By February, the first inmates were installed and Georgina, relinquishing the fortune in jewels, unadorned by which she was normally never to be seen abroad, and exchanging her gay furbelows for more sober attire, had entered enthusiastically on her new role as ministering angel.
    So far, so good. But, as far as Roger was concerned, not for long. Gone were the happy days at Stillwaters when Georgina had entertained big house parties and Roger had delighted in conversing with her other guests: statesmen, ambassadors, painters and playwrights; the dinners for fifty with dancing or gambling afterwards until the small hours. Gone, too, were those halcyon midweeks that they had spent alone, dallying in her great bed until nearly midday, and later picnicking in a boat on the lovely lake.
    At the convalescent home, life was earnest; the state of its inmates depressing. In vain Roger had endeavoured to reconcile himself to the role of comforter and adviser as he listenedpatiently to the stories of the stricken seamen. And Georgina had thrown herself into her part so determinedly that often when night came she was too tired to make love.
    To break the monotony of his wearisome round Roger had made several trips to London. But they, too, proved unsatisfactory. He was a member of White’s, but he had lived for so long abroad that he had few friends. More and more he had begun to long for the companionship of those gay paladins with whom he had shared many dangers in Italy, Egypt and across the Rhine.
    In England he was a nobody: just the son of the late Admiral Sir Christopher Brook. In France he was ‘
le brave Breuc
’, and A.D.C. to the Emperor, an intimate friend of the Empress Josephine and of all the members of the Bonaparte family. He was one of the very few Colonels to whom, for personal services, Napoleon had given the second rank in his new order of chivalry. Roger ranked as a Commander of the Legion of Honour, and, as a Knight in the new Napoleonic aristocracy, again ranked as
le Chevalier de Breuc
.
    By May, acute boredom with Georgina’s Home and a London that offered no advancement to him had decided him to return to France.
    In 1800 Roger, sent by Talleyrand as Plenipotentiary Extraordinary to England with an offer of peace, had quarrelled bitterly with his master, Pitt, for refusing it. Thenceforth, he had no longer been employed by the British Government, although he had undertaken certain missions for the Prime Minister and aided Britain’s cause whenever possible.
    In May 1806 he would have at least gone to Pitt and enquired if there was any special information about the plans of Britain’s enemy that he might secure for him. But in January of that year, broken-hearted by the news of Austerlitz and the collapse of the Third Coalition, the great and courageous man who, for over twenty years had been the mainstay of resistance to the terrorists of the French Revolution becoming dominant over all Europe, had died.
    His regime had been succeeded by a so-called ‘Ministry of All the Talents’—a coalition led by Charles Fox. The greatWhig was one of Georgina’s friends, so Roger had often met him at Stillwaters, and found it difficult to resist his personal charm. But the