The Sultan's Daughter Read Free Page A

Anyone who challenged it would be laughed at for a fool.’
    â€˜How you have managed that I have never fully understood.’
    â€˜The fact that I lived there for four years in my youth formed a sound basis for the deception. To account for my foreign accent, before I rid myself of it, I gave out that my father was of German stock and my mother English, but that I was born in the French city of Strasbourg. I further muddied the waters of my origin by giving out that both my parents died when I was at a tender age; so I was sent to my English aunt, here in Lymington, and brought up by her. My story continues that I hated England, so as soon as I was old enough ran away back to my native France. In that way I became known there as the Chevalier de Breuc.’
    â€˜But later, Roger, you became the trusted henchman of Danton, Robespierre and other sanguinary terrorists. Such men have since been guillotined, or at least proscribed. How did you succeed in escaping a similar fate?’
    â€˜In that, I am one of many. Tallien, who directed the Red Terror in Bordeaux; Fréron, who was responsible for the massacres in Marseilles; and numerous others whose crimes cry to heaven have proved such subtle politicians that they rode out the storm, succeeded in whitewashing themselves and still lord it in Paris. There are, too, scores of
ci-devant
nobles who, until the Terror made things too hot for them, had, for one reason or another, found it expedient to collaborate with the Revolutionaries. Some were thrown into prison, others went into hiding. After the fall of Robespierre they all emerged with specious stories of how from the beginning they had worked in secret against the Revolution; so it has become the height of bad form to enquire closely of anyone about their doings previous to ’94.
    â€˜Thus on my return from Martinique, in the spring of ’96, I needed only to imply that I, too, had been playing a double game, to be welcomed into the most fashionable salonswhich have sprung up in the new Paris. Such terrorists as survived know that I had a hand in bringing about Robespierre’s fall, so they naturally now accept it that I fooled them when they knew me as a
sans-culotte
, and was all the time a young nobleman disguised. The aristocrats whose acquaintance I made earlier in the galleries of Versailles look on me as one of themselves—a clever enough schemer and liar to have saved my neck throughout the Revolution.’
    â€˜I should find it most repellent to have to move in such a dubious society.’
    â€˜But for a few exceptions they are indeed a despicable crew. At times it makes my gorge rise to learn that some woman of noble birth has become the mistress of a man well known to be a thief and a murderer, or that a Marquis is giving his daughter in marriage to some gutter-bred ex-terrorist who has climbed to influence and wealth over the bodies of that nobleman’s relatives. Yet it is in the fact that the Revolution has brought to the surface a scum composed of the worst of both worlds that my security lies. To them, there is nothing the least surprising that a youth educated abroad by rich relatives should have returned to become a fervent patriot, have risen to the rank of Citizen Representative, have conspired against Robespierre and now be an aide-de-camp to General Bonaparte.’
    â€˜There are gaps in your career in France, of which you have made no mention: one of two years while you were first married to Amanda, another while you were Governor of Martinique and yet another while you were in India. If seriously questioned, surely you would have difficulty in accounting for them; and there must be at least a few Frenchmen who have seen you when you have been wearing your true colours, in England or elsewhere, as Admiral Brook’s son, and would recognise you again.’
    â€˜No.’ Roger shook his head. ‘My absences from Paris are all accounted for. And to guard