Pimpernel and Rosemary

Rosemary Fowkes

Rosemary moves through Transylvanian drawing rooms as the admired wife of Jasper Tarkington, yet Peter Blakeney's sudden arrival at Kis-Imre strips away her practiced calm. She is caught between loyalty to a husband whose kindness she cannot repay and the pull of a youth she thought she had buried; Peter alone sees that she is thinner, feverish, unhappy. Her private ache drives the novel's central question of whether love or duty will govern her choices as political danger closes in.

Peter Blakeney

Peter reappears at Kis-Imre after years abroad, slipping into the garden to find Rosemary among the tiger lilies and instantly reading the strain she tries to hide. His lighthearted manner—hands in his flannel pockets, teasing about pixies—gives way to blunt honesty when he tells her she is not happy. He matters because his presence unsettles Rosemary's marriage and because his mysterious dealings with General Naniescu hint that he is playing a deeper game than anyone suspects.

Elza Imrey

Elza walks through the village with head held erect after devastating news, saving her collapse for the privacy of her own hall. Her first thought is how to break the news to her husband Maurus, and she refuses Rosemary's offer to do it for her, insisting she knows exactly what to say. She forgets nothing—baths, coffee, the guests, the chef's milk rolls—because busyness is her only defense against despair, and her stoic management of the household anchors the Imrey family through crisis.

General Naniescu

Naniescu wields power through soft-spoken arrangements, summoning Peter Blakeney by telephone and steering Jasper into the dining-room to keep him from overhearing. He offers Rosemary an abominable 'either-or' that trades her journalistic integrity for the liberty of Philip and Anna, presenting it as generosity. His watchful, calculating presence transforms personal loyalties into political stakes, and his interest in Rosemary's pen makes her a pawn in a game she never chose to play.

Jasper Tarkington

Jasper marries Rosemary knowing she does not love him, and his magnanimity—cushions, footstools, tears kissed away on a train to Budapest—only deepens her guilt. He is kind, sensible, and clear-thinking, yet his coolness toward the plight of Philip and Anna chills Rosemary and leaves her unable to ask his advice. His unselfish love is the moral counterweight to Peter's passion, and his blindness to what Rosemary truly feels shapes the quiet tragedy of her marriage.

Anna Heves

Anna is the child Rosemary remembers, now living alone at Kolozsvár for reasons Peter cannot fathom, and he asks Rosemary to look her up and give her a kiss from him. Her sweetness and enthusiasm make her easy to love and easy to endanger, and her involvement with Philip Imrey's political scheming turns her into one of Naniescu's leverage points. She matters because her fate becomes the test of whether Rosemary will compromise her principles to save the innocent.