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me.’
    ‘Perhaps not, but he will do anything for my parents.’
    ‘Your parents, they are happy together, are they?’
    ‘Very. Mama is one in a million and my father adores her.’
    ‘It has not been an easy exile,’ Sir John went on. ‘I settled here in Honfleur because so many English merchants used to use the port and I could learn a little of what was happening at home. Now, with the blockade, that doesn’t happen and I grow more homesick.’
    Jay detected a wistful note in the older man’s voice and realised how hard life must have been in France when everyone he loved was in England. No wonder he had been glad of Lisette’s friendship. ‘Mademoiselle Giradet told me her mother was English.’
    ‘Yes. She was a Wentworth, daughter of Earl Wentworth.’ He looked up as a startled gasp escaped from Jay’s lips. ‘You know the family?’
    ‘I know of them.’ Jay pulled himself together. ‘Go on.’
    ‘The Earl was furious when she told him she wanted to marry Gervais and live in France. They cut her off without a penny, hoping it would make her change her mind, but Louise was made of sterner stuff.’ He chuckled. ‘In any case, money was not a problem because Gervais was as rich as Croesus. What he found so hardto bear, and he told me this many, many times, was that she was cut off from a family she had loved, particularly her mother, and though she never complained he knew she felt it deeply. We had that in common.’
    ‘And what about her daughter? Does she feel it too?’ The revelation that the woman he had come to rescue was related to the Wentworths had shocked him to the core. He felt again the fury that had engulfed him on coming home from a long voyage to find his wife absent and children alone with their governess. Miss Corton had said her mistress had been gone some days, but she did not know where she was.
    ‘The children have been told she is taking a little holiday with friends,’ she had said. It had been left to his mother to tell him the truth.
    ‘I believe she has gone to live with Gerald Wentworth at his home in Hertfordshire,’ she had said. ‘They seem not to mind the scandal.’
    How Wentworth had seduced his wife he did not know, but the man could not be allowed to go unchallenged. His mother had advised against it, telling him to let sleeping dogs lie, but he had been so furious, he would not listen. The duel had been fought in the grounds of Wentworth Castle, the choice of his opponent and a poor one for him because his adversary’sfriends and family were there. Nevertheless he was the better swordsman and no one interfered until he was standing over the disarmed Wentworth, sword raised to deliver the fatal blow. He found he could not do it and had walked away in disgust, with the man’s threats ringing in his ears.
    The gossip had raged for months; a man did not fight a duel and then refuse to deliver the
coup de grâce
when it was within his power. Many laughed at him, others said he was in hiding, fearing Wentworth’s revenge for the humiliation, for it was humiliating to lose and be spared simply because one’s opponent did not have the stomach to finish it.
    None of that was Mademoiselle Giradet’s fault, he scolded himself, and ought to have no bearing on the task he had been set. Once he had accomplished it, they need never meet again.
    ‘Lisette?’ his grandfather said, in answer to his question. ‘A little, perhaps. I can only guess. Like her mother, she does not complain.’
    ‘What about her brother? What can you tell me of him?’
    ‘He is Lisette’s twin and has been in the service of King Louis ever since he finished his education, first as a page and then a gentlemanof the bedchamber. I believe it took money and influence on Gervais’s part to obtain the post for him. After all, they are not the old nobility. It was an unselfish act on the Comte’s part; he was devoted to his son and hated parting from him, but he wanted him to make his way at