The Scarlet Pimpernel

Summary

Bloodied cobblestones glisten beneath the guillotine’s impatient blade while, across the Channel, a lace-cuffed Englishman yawns through another soirée, his quizzing glass catching candlelight like a wink from a co-conspirator. Sir Percy Blakeney—fop, fool, unrivalled puppet-master—has stitched a second skin from silk and vapidity, letting the ton laugh at his empty head while he yokes starlight, smuggled passports, and the last hopes of doomed nobles into a crimson sigil: a pimpernel that blooms only in moonlit escape routes. Marguerite, his once-beloved, now drifts through marriage like a ghost shackled to her own caustic verdict—until a single drop of truth splinters her mirrors and she sees the man she mocked orchestrating entire lifelines with the flick of a quizzing glass. Chauvelin, revolutionary zealotry incarnate, slithers through Calais taverns, brandishing her brother’s life as currency; yet every syllable of blackmail ricochets off Percy’s powdered façade, rearranging itself into an aria of traps within traps. The final embarkation—a skiff slipping through fog toward Albion—feels less like rescue than transmutation: two lovers reborn inside a secret kept so exquisitely it finally kept itself.

Synopsis

During the French Revolution, Englishman Sir Percy Blakeney is considered to be a terrible fop, completely unaware of the seriousness of the political situation abroad. In reality, Sir Percy is a hero to the French aristocrats and is known as "The Scarlet Pimpernel." His wife, Lady Marguerite, shares the opinion of most that Sir Percy is useless, until his heroism is proven when she discovers his secret identity. In Calais, Sir Percy is able to elude Chauvelin, a member of the new French government, even though Chauvelin threatens the safety of Lady Marguerite's brother, Armand St. Just. Lady Marguerite goes to Calais to aid her husband, and they finally are able to escape on a ship bound for England, assured of their love for each other.