‘You can’t stay in here,’ she said.

      ‘You would not turn me out, would you?’

      ‘But it is unseemly.’

      ‘You should have thought of that before you stowed away.’

      ‘Yes, but I did not think…’

      ‘That is your trouble, Miss Giradet, you do not think. I recall you promised to be good if I brought you.’

      ‘Good, yes. Wanton, no.’

      ‘Touché!’ He laughed.

      ‘You could have told him I was not your wife.’

      ‘I could, but then he would have drawn his own conclusions, to your detriment. Besides, I could see the advantages…’

      ‘I’ll wager you could.’

      ‘Do not be so waspish. Let me finish. If we pretend to be man and wife you will, as a British citizen by way of marriage, be safe from arrest even if it is discovered who you really are—or were before you married me. You will be able to go out and about openly. Otherwise you will have to stay in hiding. You may not care for your reputation, but I certainly care for mine.’

      ‘So what happens tonight?’ she asked.

       AUTHOR NOTE

      If you have been following the fortunes of The Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club series you will recognise the name Drymore. Captain James Drymore, later Lord Drymore, was the instigator of the club in THE CAPTAIN’S MYSTERIOUS LADY, the first book of the series (short-listed for the Romantic Novelists’ Association Love Story of the Year award). The Commodore in this story is his son, carrying on the tradition of the Gentlemen and rescuing damsels in distress—this time the daughter of a French count in Revolutionary France, where the Gentlemen are a thorn in the side of Robespierre. Naturally, she doesn’t make it easy for him. Sir John Challon, Lady Drymore’s father, appeared in the first book as a follower of the Young Pretender, who was forced into exile in France, but here he plays a part in the rescue and is reunited with his daughter.

      I hope you enjoy reading it.

      About the Author

      Born in Singapore, MARY NICHOLS came to England when she was three, and has spent most of her life in different parts of East Anglia. She has been a radiographer, school secretary, information officer and industrial editor, as well as a writer. She has three grown-up children, and four grandchildren.

       Previous novels by the same author:

*The Piccadilly Gentlemen’s Club mini-series

       And available through Mills & Boon ^® Historical eBooks:

      Did you know that some of these novels are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk

      In the Commodore’s Hands

      Mary Nichols

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Chapter One

       Early summer, 1792

      Lisette could see the crowd from her bedroom window, marching towards the château, pulling a tumbril containing a tree decorated with flowers and ribbons in red, white and blue, and although they were singing and laughing and banging drums, she did not think they were coming in a spirit of friendship. Since the King had been forced by the National Assembly to accept the new constitution, the peasantry seemed to think they were no longer required to pay taxes and they were insisting that the seigneurs, among them her own father the Comte, should remit those already paid, not only for this year, nor even for the period since the beginning of the Revolution, but for many years previously. Naturally her father had refused. He had his own taxes to pay and many of the privileges he had enjoyed before the Revolution had been abolished. Times were hard for everyone.

      She left the window and hurried downstairs to alert her father, who was working on papers in his library, though he could not have failed to hear the noise. ‘Go out of the back way and fetch help from the maréchaussée,’ she urged him. ‘I’ll try to delay them.’

      ‘I will not be driven from my home by a mob,’ he said and set his jaw in a rigid line of obstinacy. ‘And I will not give in to demands.’

      Comte Gervais Giradet was a third-generation aristocrat. His grandfather had become very rich through colonial trade and bought his title and lands in the village of Villarive close by Honfleur in Normandy for 60,000 livres, an enormous sum, enough to keep two hundred working families alive for a whole year. The village was part of the Giradet estate. It had a village green with a fountain from which the women drew their water, one church, two inns, a leather worker who made the harnesses for the horses and the shoes for the villagers, a blacksmith and a vendor of comestibles and candles, although most of the shopping was done in Honfleur. The village showed no sign of prosperity—except, perhaps, the surrounding apple orchards which provided most of the inhabitants with their living and the Comte with his wealth, though that was declining.

      Until the Revolution Gervais had lived quietly in his château, an autocratic but benign seigneur, minding his own business farming and growing apples to be made into cider and Calvados, and not interfering in anyone else’s. Now everything was in turmoil. The aristocrats were the people’s enemy. Hundreds of them had already fled the country, mainly to go to England.

      ‘But you cannot stand up to a mob like that, Papa,’ Lisette protested. ‘They will lynch you.’

      ‘Do not be so foolish, Lisette; they will not harm me. I shall speak to them. After all, we are all equal now—or so they say.’

      The crowd had reached the courtyard and had set up the tree in the middle of it. There was a traditional belief that if a May Tree was put up in the lord’s courtyard and hung with small sacks of grain and chicken feathers, the peasants were telling their seigneur they thought his dues excessive and if it was kept standing for a year and a day, they would be free of their dues to him. Lately the May Tree had become the Liberty Tree and now it symbolised the freedom given to the people by the new Constitution and their contempt of the lords of the manor.

      They