Page 23 of A Fierce Wind

“Excellent!” said the Prime Minister. “My throat is as dry as the dust on your West Sussex roads. Port would do nicely.”

Freddie recalled Pitt drank only port and had from his youth when a doctor prescribed it for his health. It was reported he drank more than a bottle a day.

A footman escorted the Prime Minister’s valet above stairs as Freddie looked around the parlor, a room in which he’d spent much of his youth. In those days, his family had been larger with two older brothers, two sisters and both a father and mother. In a few short years, their mother had died. Then their father and eldest brother, Wills, were killed in the course of their duties as soldiers. The walls were graced with their portraits, the small painting of Wills in his Coldstream Guards uniform consigned to a place of honor almost like a shrine. Freddie would never object; he had idolized his brother.

So many deaths.

Freddie tore his gaze away from the portraits and the memories that went with them to see their guests taking seats on the cream-colored brocade chairs and settees. He drew comfort from the fact the room had changed little in the years he’d been gone. It still felt like home.

A footman added a log to the crackling fire, warming the room. The spring days could be chilly.

Two wing chairs in Prussian blue silk had been acquired since he’d last been here, no doubt owing to Annie’s good taste. Richard’s countess would also have been responsible for the pillows in the same silk placed at each end of the settees. He liked the change, just as he liked Annie.

The brass chandelier hanging from a medallion in the center of the scrolled ceiling was the same one he’d gazed up at during the long evenings when he was forced to act the adult while dreaming of adventures. The adventures had come to him, though not as he had expected, as a soldier. Rather, they began when he joined Jo in the dangerous business of smuggling, then continued when he decided to sail with her husband, Jean Donet, who was no ordinary merchant ship owner. And now he was a spy for England.

With Zoé in his life, he expected to have more adventures, desired or not. Keeping her safe might yet be the death of him, but he had no other choice, for he had loved her for a very long time and could not envision life without her. He had not told her all he had done for the spymasters in London, but in withholding the truth of it, he worried. She might continue to think of him as merely her childhood friend, an English dandy who knew nothing of war and, in cowardly fashion, had chosen not to follow his father and older brother into the British Army. Until she could come to respect him for the man he was and love him as he loved her, he would allow her to think what she would. It might be safer for her were she ever captured.

Freddie strode to the sideboard where decanters filled with brandy, sherry and port sat on a silver tray. He poured a glass of cognac for himself and a glass of sherry for Zoé while Annie directed the footman to serve the others.

He handed Zoé her sherry and took a seat across from her.

Once everyone was settled, Pitt sat back in the wing chair he had claimed and slowly sipped his port as if gathering his thoughts.

“So,” began Richard, “tell us what brings you this far south of London. We are all ears.”

Pitt turned to fix Donet with an intense look. “Before I speak, I must know, Monsieur Donet, are you with us this time?” The Prime Minister knew of Richard’s infamous brother-in-law, of course, who, with France’s approval, had served America in the last war. As a privateer, he’d seized a ship belonging to one of England’s privateers.

Donet raised his head, his dark eyes clear and his face without shadow. “You may count upon my full support, Prime Minister. I like not the revolutionary government, nor the Terror that has gripped France. Like you, I considered the execution of King Louis an atrocious act.” Lowering his gaze to his cognac, Donet said in a softer voice, “He was my friend.”

Raising his head, he let out a heavy sigh. “My estate in Saintonge is in the hands of others for the time being, as is my home in Lorient. I have moved to the Isle of Guernsey to continue my merchant shipping endeavors while serving the royalist cause. My wife, Torrington’s sister, should be returning shortly from taking the princesse d’Hénin for a tour of the countryside. The princesse is one of the émigrés we were recently able to help escape.”

Glancing at Zoé, Donet added, “My niece is my partner in rescuing those fleeing the Terror.”

Pitt gave Zoé an approving glance. “Good. Then you might be interested in my purpose in coming, though ’tis hardly a secret in London.” Addressing himself to Richard, Pitt said, “You are no doubt aware that after we seized Toulon, the French National Convention called for an amphibious assault upon England.”

Richard nodded. “Why, yes, I knew of France’s threat, all in England did. But I hardly thought anyone credited it.”

Pitt leaned forward in his chair. “Ridiculous though it might seem, we now believe the French government, or whoever is ruling the country these days, means to invade England.”

Richard returned Pitt a look of shock, his glass of brandy paused halfway to his mouth. “Are you telling us the threat is real?”

“I am,” replied Pitt. “That is one reason I have made public our commitment to the annihilation of le gouvernement révolutionnaire. I have harshly criticized France’s abolition of private property, the extinction of religion and the excesses of the Terror. It is hardly necessary to add that there can be no peace until the invasion of England is abandoned.”

Freddie did not put such an assault beyond Robespierre. He had done worse in an effort to persuade the French people they were winning the war. But to think of The Harrows being the subject of an attack by France seemed impossible.

Wide-eyed, Zoé stared at Freddie with a raised brow, her expression asking, would France do such a thing?

He gave her a nod.

Donet, who’d been silent until now, said, “A full-scale invasion is, to my way of thinking, inconceivable. France does not have the naval superiority to be successful in such an endeavor. Moreover, the leadership of the French Navy is, at the moment, in a state of disarray.”

“From all I hear, monsieur, you are correct,” said Pitt, “however, that large an invasion would not be their objective. Rather, they mean to terrify our people and distract the government from the war on the Continent. Recall that France did this in the Hundred Years’ War, burning Plymouth to the ground. It seems they plan to do it again but their purpose would not be conquest, as it was then. They mean to sow terror and panic. To do so, they will target small towns and major harbors, or perhaps a combination of both.”

“If Robespierre is serious,” said Donet in a contemplative manner, “I would think it would be a combination. ’Twould be more effective.”

“You are certain of France’s plans?” Richard asked Pitt.

The Prime Minister set his glass of port aside. “In addition to Dutch reports, we have information from other sources that suggest such an attack might be timed to coincide with French-inspired radicals rising in Britain. And then there are the troubling Admiralty reports of French naval activity in the Channel.”