Scarlet Pimpernel (Version 2)

Paris, 1792. The guillotine works overtime, and aristocrats die daily. But someone is beating the blade, a phantom who leaves only a scarlet pimpernel as proof of his interference. The English celebrate him; the Republic hunts him; no one knows his face. That is, except thenobles he rescues. And perhaps his own wife. Marguerite St. Just was once a star of the Parisian stage, now trapped in a loveless marriage to Sir Percy Blakeney, the richest, most foppish man in England, whose chief accomplishments include ruining suits and out-dancing everyone at the embassy. She despises his dullness until a dangerous suspicion takes root: that the man she married might be the legend everyone seeks. As she closes in on the truth, she must ask what she already knows, and whether she wants the answer. Orczy invented the superhero secret identity. This is the swashbuckling, romantic, bitingly funny novel that started it all: a tale of double lives, desperate courage, and the terrifying intimacy of loving someone whose secrets could save, or destroy, everything.