Lord Tony’s Wife

Yvonne de Kernogan

Yvonne de Kernogan moves through Bath society as the beautiful daughter of an exiled Breton duke, courted openly by the English Lord Tony Dewhurst while her father quietly favors a compatriot suitor. Her devotion to her father pulls her away from her new husband's protective care, and that very loyalty becomes the lever by which others pry her loose from safety. Her grave sweetness and unguarded trust make her both deeply sympathetic and terribly vulnerable as the story's central peril takes shape.

Sir Percy Blakeney

In Bath drawing rooms Sir Percy Blakeney plays the elegant, indolent man of fashion, but behind the closed library door he becomes the decisive leader his comrades depend on. When Lord Tony arrives drenched and shattered, Blakeney's calm competence snaps into a colder, more commanding register, revealing the cost of a life pledged to others. His quiet anguish over leaving Marguerite shows a hero whose sacrifices are not abstract, and whose choices drive the rescue that anchors the novel.

Citizen Chauvelin

Once a man of the old regime, Chauvelin now serves the Revolutionary government as its most dogged pursuer of the elusive Englishman. His obsession is intellectual as much as political: he studies his quarry's methods, waits for the single misstep, and treats each failure as a wound to his pride. In this story his scheming reaches into the private lives of Blakeney's friends, turning affection and family loyalty into instruments of entrapment.

Martin-Roget

Martin-Roget circulates among the exiled royalists as a respectable compatriot, favored by the duc de Kernogan as a match for Yvonne and trusted where Lord Tony is merely tolerated. His eagle-eyed watchfulness and smooth manners mask a purpose that has nothing to do with courtship, and his willingness to use a father's authority as a weapon makes him far more dangerous than a rival lover. He is the quiet engine of the novel's central crisis, the man whose revenge gives the pursuit its cruel shape.

Lord Tony Dewhurst

Lord Tony Dewhurst is a well-bred, tongue-tied Englishman who worships Yvonne with an openness that borders on helplessness, unable to refuse her anything, least of all a visit to her ailing father. His trusting nature and reluctance to suspect the worst make him easy prey for those who mean to use his wife against Blakeney's circle. When the blow falls, his stunned grief and quiet resolve carry the story into its rescue, and his devotion becomes the measure of what is at stake.

Jean Baptiste Carrier

Carrier rules Nantes as the Revolution's most feared representative, dispensing death by fusillade and by the packed barges he sends into the Loire. His power is absolute and his methods theatrical in their cruelty, making him the human face of the Terror that the Scarlet Pimpernel exists to defy. In this story he is the looming threat behind the pursuit of Yvonne, the man whose city waits to swallow anyone the conspirators deliver into his hands.