An Adventure in Hearts
Summary
In the iridescent twilight of a crumbling Alpine principality, Captain Dieppe—laconic mercenary of fortune, keeper of state secrets—barters intelligence for gold, only to find himself hunted by Guilamo Sevier, an Italian secret-service bloodhound whose silhouette slices through the mountain fog like a stiletto. Their chase ricochets into the labyrinthine corridors of Castello Fieramondi, where a reclusive count begs the American to lure back his estranged wife, a phantom countess who has walled herself into the castle’s north wing with roulette debts and a bruised reputation. The lady, cannier than Medea, swaps identities with her guileless cousin Lucia—an operatic sleight-of-hand that sends the real aristocrat scurrying to Rome’s candlelit gaming dens to scrape together hush-money for blackmailer Paul Sharpe, a silk-gloved predator who traffics in IOUs and ruined virtue. Dieppe, hoodwinked by the masquerade, loses his jaded heart to the counterfeit countess; moonlight on the battlements becomes a gavotte of mistaken ardor. When Sharpe materializes to claim his pound of flesh, Dieppe’s fists write a thunderous sonnet across the extortionist’s jaw, then pry from his safe the parchment proof of the countess’s disgrace. Rather than pocket this leverage, the soldier of fortune stages a bittersweet coup de théâtre: he engineers the reconciliation of the fractured marriage, trading his own longing for the moral ledger of a clear conscience. In the candle’s last splutter, identities unravel like silk scarves—Sevier pays the promised bounty, Lucia’s true name rings out, and the castle’s bells clang a requiem for a love that never officially existed. Yet the curtain falls on two silhouettes slipping into the Alpine dawn: Dieppe and Lucia, their romance now unfettered by masks, while the count and countess retreat into the chiaroscuro of a marriage reborn.
Synopsis
When Captain Dieppe, an American agent of French descent, refuses to divulge confidential information he gathered for a small Italian principality until they pay him, he is pursued by secret service agent Guilamo Sevier to Fieramondi in Northern Italy. Dieppe agrees to help the lonely Count Fieramondi convince his wife to return from her isolated wing of their castle. The countess, after convincing her cousin Lucia to take her place in the castle, goes to Rome to raise money to pay Paul Sharpe, who is blackmailing her because of her gambling debts. Dieppe falls in love with Lucia, whom he thinks is the countess, and after he fights Sharpe and steals the evidence of the debts, he sacrifices his own love by preparing a reconciliation between the count and the countess. After Dieppe obtains his money from Sevier, the real identities are revealed. Finally the count and countess are reunited, while Dieppe and Lucia maintain their romance.
