I Will Repay

Paris, 1793. Ten years earlier Juliette de Marny's brother was killed in a duel by Paul Déroulède, and her father made her swear to avenge him. Now Déroulède is a popular deputy of the Convention who has taken her into his own house to save her from the mob, and she has only to denounce him — until she finds that she loves the man she has sworn to destroy, and only the Scarlet Pimpernel can undo what she has set in motion. Orczy came to London from Hungary at fifteen with no English; this is the second Pimpernel book, and the oath at its centre is the best thing she invented after the Pimpernel himself. Fifty-eight plates of French Revolutionary portraiture by Prud'hon and David, from grief-stricken families to young women at the iron, catch the private faces of the Terror that Orczy's oath-bound heroine moves among.