Lord Halsey’s Tempestuous Minx (Scarlett Affairs #6)

Prologue

Boulogne, Normandy

“Bonsoir, Monsieur Vernon,” the French army lieutenant welcomed Evan, Lord Halsey, into the chateau’s foyer, and returned the fine vellum invitation to the event to Halsey’s hands.

Nonchalant, Halsey divested himself of hat and gloves to the footman, who scurried close behind the nervous lieutenant.

Clearly anxious about his role tonight, the boyish infantryman wore his blue uniform with perfection, right down to the bright brass buttons on his chest. He was young, his mouth wincing, his brow twitching, and Halsey knew him at once to be untried in battle—and here.

He was at this duty, new and perhaps even foreign to the diplomacy required for the evening.

But the old chateau was more than up to snuff.

A sixteenth-century home built to lavish Rococo specifications, the house was empty of its former, now-deceased aristocratic owners and requisitioned by the French Admiralty here in Boulogne.

Bowing, the captain standing next to the lieutenant, was acting as butler.

This man, suaver than his younger officer, extended an arm toward the room where the diplomatic gathering occurred this evening.

“Merci beaucoup,” Halsey said in his finest French.

He’d been in Normandy only three weeks, all of it to reawaken his knowledge of the northern French coastline and the doings of Bonaparte’s forces on land and sea.

Of course, he was also here to perfect his childhood use of the French language.

For entrance to this distinguished group, Halsey relied on the tall, elegant man to his right, who tonight impersonated an Italian financier, but who was a gentleman from Tuscany with all the wiles of a Medici and the contacts of Scarlett Hawthorne’s espionage network back in the city of London.

“Come along, Monsieur Vernon.” Halsey’s Italian friend addressed him by his assumed name, that of a French financier of the Bourse who, unbeknownst to many, had quietly moved to Boston weeks ago.

Armand Vernon had been well respected among those of his kind because he was one of the few who did not charge Bonaparte’s government exorbitant interest rates.

Monsieur Vernon’s Florentine friend and confidant in this secret venture gave him a smile full of triumph at their mutual deception.

He too spoke Parisian French without a flaw.

The two of them had easily gotten past the gendarmes at the gate of the chateau and now through the first of the servants without mishap.

That gave justification to their impersonations of a French banker and an Italian one, both doing business here this evening.

The two acknowledged their success with a hard look at each other, then strode the long hall toward the reception.

Halsey rejoiced in their triumph. His associate had been but a referral to him three weeks ago.

Now the man was fast becoming his friend.

Tonight that dashing, black-haired fellow with the swarthy good looks of his famous Florentine cousins assumed the persona of Conte di San Remo.

However, the suave count was no aristo at all, but simply a man from a revolutionary family, Magnus Corsini.

Once majordom to Kane, Lord Ashley, when that man lived in Paris during the period of the Amiens Treaty two years ago, the Italian headed the Continental network Ashley had built in the time he served here.

Corsini, a man of many intrigues and abilities, had sent word to Halsey through their most notorious blockade runner, smuggler Jacques Durand, that he should come to Boulogne to see Bonaparte’s army and a small force of his navy.

Word had it that Bonaparte, who had visited his troops here in August, would come again to Boulogne soon.

Corsini had written a hasty note in code to Halsey in London, suggesting he arrive in France soon to witness the spectacle.

The two of them took the long hall toward the reception for the Admiral of Rochefort Arsenal in the south of France, Admiral Charles-René Magon de Médine.

The host was commander of the Boulogne army encampment of the “Ocean Coasts,” Marshal Anton de Gramont.

Halsey wished to meet both men to say he had looked each in the eye.

Knowing what his enemy looked like, he often thought, could build a bridge to understanding their character.

Halsey and his Italian colleague prided themselves on how well they were deluding the Frenchmen.

Corsini had received an invitation to this reception yesterday afternoon from a French vice admiral by the name of DeMoray.

This came to Corsini only after DeMoray and he met in the local café, quite, it seemed, by accident.

DeMoray had recognized only with some difficulty his old school friend, but San Remo had encouraged DeMoray in that perception with enthusiastic embraces and robust kisses.

That reacquaintance of old chums had secured Halsey and Corsini’s need to ingratiate themselves with the French Army and Navy command attending this party.

Both men needed information about the military buildup here, and the naval armament along the Continental coast of the Atlantic.

“Let me introduce you to DeMoray,” Corsini said to Halsey as they entered the room where one hundred or more French officers drank, laughed, and shared their latest news and gossip. “You’ll like him.”

DeMoray seemed to be one of those military officers promoted more for his attention to his toilette than to his men. “I daresay I do already.”

Corsini—or rather San Remo—nodded. He and “Vernon” had discussed exactly what they would do here this evening.

Understanding that acquiring useful numbers about the increase in troops and sailors might be too much to hope for, Halsey had told Corsini he wished to assess the confidence of both army and navy officer corps.

In London, word was that the French Grand Army had assembled a contingent of twenty thousand on the Boulogne shores facing the English southern coast. Numbers like that were meant to frighten the British.

But with the establishment of much of the French fleet there too, the French wished to show how well they protected their own shore, and that they had the power to invade English Channel coastal towns.

Halsey and Corsini had prepared extensively for this exposure to the high command.

Not only had they rehearsed their false backgrounds as French and Italian financiers officed in Bordeaux, they had quizzed each other to perfect their biographies.

They had also spent more than a week dressed as peasants, walking the shores near Boulogne and south to the rolling dunes d’écault.

There upon the sands they had gauged the strategic positioning of the growing French army.

They were alarmed by the French plan to add twice as many soldiers to the Boulogne encampment.

Since his arrival here, Halsey was now better informed, but he was also more worried.

He needed all of this firsthand, eyes-on research because he advised the British Prime Minister William Pitt on war plans.

He’d come here to put solid evidence to his advice.

He would not give anything less to Pitt than the raw truth, with as many details as he could discover.

That was why he’d risked his life weeks ago climbing aboard Jacques Durand’s sturdy sloop to storm through the blockade and brave the Channel storms to land in Cherbourg and masquerade as a French banker up from Bordeaux.

#

By ten o’clock, the milling crowd had stuffed themselves on fine cuisine and drunk enough good French spirits that they laughed far too loudly and spoke with indiscretion. That was just what Halsey had hoped for!

In the past half-hour, Halsey had learned a few useful facts.

The first was that the current commander of the French army, Gramont, had been assigned here because he was expert at inspiring morale.

The second was that the French army planned to expand their operations in Boulogne.

By Halsey’s estimates after watching them drilling on the plain, their total strength at the moment stood not at the rumored twenty thousand, but at twelve thousand.

However, Bonaparte—so boasted one army captain with more epaulettes than brains—wanted double or triple that.

The first consul, who aspired to be crowned emperor soon, had enough charisma that he easily recruited new soldiers from the peasantry with promises of easy victories.

Not a happy fact to learn. Halsey swallowed his wine with his fears and summoned his acting skills. The prime minister would want to improve defenses at Dover, Hastings, and perhaps in Brighton, too.

However, the most useful bit of news he’d overheard was that the French shipwrights in Rochefort designing new vessels had been chastised by Vice Admiral DeMoray for failure to draw a useful amphibious landing mechanism for a fleet capable of invading British coasts.

Wonderful. Halsey rejoiced, but he knew that, if they were struggling to design one, they might be struggling to build one, too.

I can hope.

But as the night wore on and the army captain who served as butler announced that supper would soon be served, the conversations drifted to less intriguing subjects.

At the end of the long black-and-white marble-tiled hall filled with medieval armor, the delightful notes of a fortepiano drifted toward the guests. The piece was gay, a lively bit that clearly lifted the mood among the guests. Many even hummed along with the pianist.

Whoever he is, he’s excellent.

Halsey—whose third youngest sister, Jessica, commandeered a piano with immense skill—smiled at the refreshing sounds.

“What soldier can play like that?” he asked San Remo-Corsini when he strode up to him.