Louis

"HANDSOME? I SHOULD SAY HE IS NOT!"

"His hair is a mess. He has a nose like a bird and a tyrannical jaw. His eyes are full of calculations..."

Not had Alice encouraged him. Yet somehow this infuriating, mysterious man had managed to turn her life upside-down. He dressed as absurdly as the proprietor of a parrot show...or as elegantly as a Count.

He disappeared on strange missions, leered at her, ordered her about. He was intolerable! And yet, though she refused his advances, he insisted on loving her.

And now she found herself living as a "lady" in a magnificent London house, mistress of a staff of servants, waiting for a letter from Napoleon himself. A letter which Louis said would confirm that she was not Alice at all -- not an opera-dancer, not a hat-maker -- but the lost duchesse de Viaur!