I WILL REPAY: Scarlet Pimpernel Saga. Emma Orczy

I WILL REPAY: Scarlet Pimpernel Saga - Emma Orczy


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       Emma Orczy

      I WILL REPAY: Scarlet Pimpernel Saga

      Scarlet Pimpernel Series

      Published by

      Books

      - Advanced Digital Solutions & High-Quality eBook Formatting -

       [email protected]

      2018 OK Publishing

      ISBN 978-80-272-4465-2

       PROLOGUE

       CHAPTER I Paris: 1793 The outrage

       CHAPTER II Citizen-Deputy

       CHAPTER III Hospitality

       CHAPTER IV The faithful house-dog

       CHAPTER V A day in the woods

       CHAPTER VI The Scarlet Pimpernel

       CHAPTER VII A warning

       CHAPTER VIII Anne Mie

       CHAPTER IX Jealousy

       CHAPTER X Denunciation

       CHAPTER XI "Vengeance is mine"

       CHAPTER XII The sword of Damocles

       CHAPTER XIII Tangled meshes

       CHAPTER XIV A happy moment

       CHAPTER XV Detected

       CHAPTER XVI Under arrest

       CHAPTER XVII Atonement

       CHAPTER XVIII In the Luxembourg prison

       CHAPTER XIX Complexities

       CHAPTER XX The Cheval Borgne

       CHAPTER XXI A Jacobin orator

       CHAPTER XXII The close of day

       CHAPTER XXIII Justice

       CHAPTER XXIV The trial of Juliette

       CHAPTER XXV The defence

       CHAPTER XXVI Sentence of death

       CHAPTER XXVII The Fructidor Riots

       CHAPTER XXVIII The unexpected

       CHAPTER XXIX Père Lachaise

       CHAPTER XXX Conclusion

      PROLOGUE

       Table of Contents

      I

       Paris: 1783.

      "Coward! Coward! Coward!"

      The words rang out, clear, strident, passionate, in a crescendo of agonised humiliation.

      The boy, quivering with rage, had sprung to his feet, and, losing his balance, he fell forward clutching at the table, whilst with a convulsive movement of the lids, he tried in vain to suppress the tears of shame which were blinding him.

      "Coward!" He tried to shout the insult so that all might hear, but his parched throat refused him service, his trembling hand sought the scattered cards upon the table, he collected them together, quickly, nervously, fingering them with feverish energy, then he hurled them at the man opposite, whilst with a final effort he still contrived to mutter: "Coward!"

      The older men tried to interpose, but the young ones only laughed, quite prepared for the adventure which must inevitably ensue, the only possible ending to a quarrel such as this.

      Conciliation or arbitration was out of the question. Déroulède should have known better than to speak disrespectfully of Adèle de Montchéri, when the little Vicomte de Marny's infatuation for the notorious beauty had been the talk of Paris and Versailles these many months past.

      Adèle was very lovely and a veritable tower of greed and egotism. The Marnys were rich and the little Vicomte very young, and just now the brightly-plumaged hawk was busy plucking the latest pigeon, newly arrived from its ancestral cote.

      The boy was still in the initial stage of his infatuation. To him Adèle was a paragon of all the virtues, and he would have done battle on her behalf against the entire aristocracy of France, in a vain endeavour to justify his own exalted opinion of one of the most dissolute women of the epoch. He was a first-rate swordsman too, and his friends had already learned that it was best to avoid all allusions to Adèle's beauty and weaknesses.

      But Déroulède was a noted blunderer. He was little versed in the manners and tones of that high society in which, somehow, he still seemed an intruder. But for his great wealth, no doubt, he never would have been admitted within the intimate circle of aristocratic France. His ancestry was somewhat doubtful and his coat-of-arms unadorned with quarterings.

      But little was known of his family or the origin of its wealth; it was only known that his father had suddenly become the late King's dearest friend, and commonly surmised that Déroulède gold had on more than one occasion filled the emptied coffers of the First Gentleman of France.

      Déroulède had not sought the present quarrel. He had merely blundered in that clumsy way of his, which was no doubt a part of the inheritance bequeathed to him by his bourgeois


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