She took her friend's arm and they followed the footman, who had appeared suddenly as guide, out into the Fountain Court where their horses were waiting.

As they rode back to La Madeleine together, side by side in the gathering dusk, Marianne's mind was already busy with the days ahead. The first thing was to get back to Paris as fast as possible. She was eager now to be at home again, now that she knew that Adelaide and Jolival were waiting for her there. All her trust was in Jolival and in him alone, in his ingenuity and profound knowledge of people of the world, to devise a plan of escape for Jason. Ever since she had been sure that Jason was not to die, she had been looking at things through a rose-coloured haze. Thinking that she was being rather too optimistic, Fortunée set herself to keep her within bounds. Marianne seemed to think that everything would be easy from now on, and that was a dangerous attitude.

'You must not think escape will be a simple matter, Marianne,' she said gently. 'Men sentenced as he is are kept under strong guard. It will need long and careful preparation if the plan is to have the greatest possible chance of success.'

'That man I saw in La Force, François Vidocq, has escaped I don't know how many times. It can't be so very difficult.'

'He escaped, certainly, but he has been recaptured each time, hasn't he? Beaufort's only chance, if you should manage to get him away from his guards, is to embark instantly for his own country. The law officers will have little chance at sea. You must have everything ready, beginning with a boat…'

'We can arrange such details as that at the last minute. I am sure anything Vidocq has done, Jason can do too.'

'Marianne! Marianne!' Fortunée sighed. 'You are talking just like a child. I grant that his life is what matters most but take care, remember that the least slip could prove fatal. Vidocq is familiar with the insides of prisons, he knows what he is doing – Jason's situation will be very different. Take care you do nothing foolish.'

Too happy to be cast down by any such dismal forebodings, Marianne simply shrugged lightly, convinced that a rosy future lay before her and Jason. She was now picturing the penal settlement as a kind of seaside prison where the convicts worked all day outside in the fresh air and where, with the aid of a little money, it would always be possible to obtain special favours from the guards. She had ceased to be greatly concerned even about money. Her far-off husband might cut off supplies but she still had fabulous jewels which she would part from without a pang to win the freedom of the man she loved.

However, the following evening when, after the first joyful greetings were over, she heard Arcadius saying very much the same things, she did begin to feel the faintest suspicion of uneasiness. Arcadius was truly glad to know that Jason was no longer in danger but he did not conceal from Marianne that a sentence of hard labour in a penal colony was very nearly as serious and meant little more than a death sentence somewhat delayed.

'It is hell, Marianne,' he said gravely, 'and the way there a hideous ordeal. Death can strike in a hundred different ways: exhaustion, disease, the ill-will of the other prisoners, punishments, dangerous employment. There is very little mercy in commuting a sentence of death into one of imprisonment and if we mean to attempt an escape we shall have to proceed with infinite caution, and the greatest patience. A prisoner of his kidney will be under stricter guard even than the rest, and failure on our part could lead to his death. You must let me take charge of everything.'

Marianne had noted with amazement how these last weeks had aged Jolival. His usually cheerful face was sunken and silver threads were beginning to show among the black around his temples. He had returned from his journey to Aix with a disappointed heart and a more bitter knowledge of men for, against all his hopes, the Duke of Otranto had refused, stubbornly and categorically, to have anything to do with the Beaufort affair. He had said in coarse but unequivocal terms that it was no longer any concern of his and the Emperor's staff must get along as best they might with his successor. He had even delivered himself of sentiments referring to Marianne which Jolival was careful to keep to himself.

'Princess or no, that woman has a face and a body no man could tire of easily,' he had said. 'While she can make Napoleon want her, she'll get whatever she wants out of him, even now he's shackled himself to a wife. I'll do myself no good by getting mixed up in the business…'

And Arcadius had returned to Paris, stricken and grieving, to find Marianne had disappeared. Day after day, with Talleyrand and Eleonora Crawfurd, he had searched every avenue for news of what had become of her and her aged companion. Their inquiries had led them as far as La Force but there they stopped. The people at the prison had seen the supposed Norman and his daughter walk away comfortably arm-in-arm down the rue des Ballets and turn the corner – after which they had vanished as completely as if they had melted into thin air. All that had been found was the body of the cab driver, floating in the Seine with his throat cut.

'We thought you were dead,' Adelaide said, the traces of her grief still visible in her reddened eyes. 'It seemed impossible that you had not been dealt with in the same way. We were afraid – oh, so afraid! Until the day, last Tuesday it was, when Mr Crawfurd came back at last and told us you had been carried off by a woman and a whole lot of Spaniards, all wearing masks. He knew they did not mean to kill you – or not straight away at least – because he heard them say so. They were waiting for the outcome of the trial.'

'After the sentence was delivered we were nearly mad,' Jolival went on. 'I went to Mortefontaine, thinking Pilar might have had the audacity to take you there, and searched, but I found nothing. In fact, of course, you were already gone because all this happened this week.'

Shocked to read on their faces the agonies they had endured on her account, Marianne blamed herself bitterly for having to some extent neglected them. When she reached Paris after her escape she could have, indeed she ought to have, sent word to Adelaide at least, but when she heard that Jason had been condemned it had driven every thought out of her head except the one idea of how to snatch him from death. The rest of the world had simply ceased to exist for her.

There was such sweetness and real affection in her attempts to explain all this, that neither Adelaide nor Jolival would allow her to continue. Arcadius summed up their feelings in a few words:

'You are here, in one piece, and we are sure that Beaufort's head is safe. And that is that. After that, any complaints would be base ingratitude! We are going to drink to your return, Marianne!' Smiling, he rang the bell for Jeremy to bring them some champagne.

'Do you think we can start celebrating today?' Marianne said, with some asperity. 'When you told me yourself that Jason's life is still not wholly out of danger?'

'Not celebrate, no, merely enjoy a little respite before plunging back head-first into the fray. I may as well tell you at once. Another letter has arrived from Lucca. Your husband demands your instant return and threatens to complain to the Emperor and appeal to him as a vassal to his suzerain to have you sent back to Lucca.'

Marianne felt the colour drain from her face. She had not been expecting such a brutal set-down and Eleonora Crawfurd's stories came back to her mind, giving to this ultimatum an oddly menacing note. Clearly, the prince took her for an adventuress and meant to make her pay for having taken him in, pay with her blood, perhaps.

'He can do as he likes, I shall not go! The Emperor himself cannot compel me to. Besides, I shall probably have left Paris in a little while.'

'Again?' wailed Mademoiselle d'Asselnat. 'But, Marianne, where are you going? And I thought we were going to settle down to a nice quiet life here, in this house, with all it stands for.'

Marianne smiled, a fond and very understanding smile, and held out her hand to her cousin with impulsive tenderness. That elderly spinster seemed to have changed a little as a result of her little adventure, which had surely cost her some degree of heartache. The irrepressible energy which had seen her through more than forty years of an eventful and far from easy life seemed to be dead, or at least sleeping. What she must want now above all was quiet and peace. Her expression as she looked round the elegant salon with its fine furniture and ornaments, was almost greedily possessive and acquired a hint of an appeal whenever her eye came to rest on the big portrait of the Marquis d'Asselnat over the fireplace.

'You need not come with me, Adelaide. You need rest and tranquillity, and this house needs a mistress who is here rather more permanently than I have been. I am going away again, and you know I am. Jason's prison will not be in Paris, and I want to go with him now wherever he goes.' She turned to Arcadius. 'Is it known yet where he will be taken?'

'Brest, for sure.'

'That is good news. I know the town well. I lived there for several weeks with poor Nicolas Mallerousse, in his little house at Recouvrance. If I cannot manage to arrange his escape on the way, I am sure I shall have a better chance in Brest than at Toulon or Rochefort where I have never been.'

'We shall have a better chance,' Jolival corrected her. 'I have already asked you to allow me to take charge of everything.'

'Will you leave me all alone?' wailed Adelaide, sounding like a hurt child. 'What shall I do when all these messengers start arriving from the prince, your husband? What shall I say to them?'

'Anything you please! Say I am away, that will be best. Besides, I am going to write to him myself and say that – that I have to go away – a long way away – on the Emperor's service, let us say, but that on my return I shall not fail to comply with my husband's — er — request,' Marianne said, thinking out her letter aloud as she spoke.

'That is madness! You yourself said not a moment ago that you did not wish to return to Lucca—'

'Nor shall I. You must understand, Adelaide, that I am simply trying to gain time… time to rescue Jason. Afterwards, I shall go away with him, away to his own country and live there with him, at his side, in a log cabin if needs must, in poverty, but I will never leave him, never, never again.'

Jolival was swift to intervene. His little black eyes held Marianne's huge ones steadily.

'You are deserting us, then?' he asked softly.

'No, no! The choice is yours. Stay here, in this house – I will give it to you – or come with me over there, with all the risks that involves…'

'Have you remembered that Beaufort is still married to that harpy? What do you intend doing with her?'

'Arcadius,' Marianne said, with sudden gravity, 'when that woman dared to use me as her footstool, and when, most of all, I heard her tell me coolly and implacably that she was determined to send her husband to his death, I swore that one day I would make her pay for it. If she dares to approach Jason again, I shall get rid of her without a second thought. There is nothing,' her voice shook with the intensity of her feelings, 'nothing I would not do to keep him for myself. I would not even shrink from a murder which, all told, would be no more than a just execution. I fought a duel with one man who debased me, I killed the woman who insulted me… I shall not let a wicked wife destroy the one love of my life!'

'You have turned into a terrifying woman, Marianne!' Mademoiselle d'Asselnat exclaimed, with a horror not entirely devoid of admiration.

'I am your cousin, my dear. Can you have forgotten that the night we met you were trying to set fire to this house to punish it for belonging to a creature you had decided was unworthy of it?'

The entrance of Jeremy bearing lighted candles forced them to break off the conversation. Absorbed in their discussion, not one of the three had observed that it was growing dark. Shadows had crept into the farthest corners of the room and crowded thickly about the curtains and hangings and under the lofty ceiling. The only light came from the fire blazing in the hearth.

They sat in silence while the butler disposed branches of candles about the room, clothing everything in it in a golden radiance. When he had departed, with a gloomy pronouncement that dinner would be served shortly, Adelaide, who was sitting bundled up in a vast, white woollen shawl in the armchair by the fire, stretched out her thin hands to the dancing flames and remained for a moment staring into them. Locked each in their own thoughts, Marianne and Arcadius, one seated on a cushion before the fire, the other leaning against the chimney piece, were also silent, as though waiting for the familiar sounds of the house to give them an answer to the questions which filled their hearts but which they dared not utter for fear of influencing, however little, the steps which would decide the others' futures.