Adventures of the Scarlet Pimpernel successfully pleaded with her husband not to take the traitorous Lord Kulmsted (see 'The Traitor' in The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel) on his latest mission. Several members of the league would have liked to extend the prohibition to young Lord Fanshawe, who, despite a keen start, is wilful & obstinate – an inveterate gambler who is apt to turn very nasty if matters don't go the way he desires. Fanshawe has, for several years, been in love with Aline, the daughter of The Comte d'Ercourt, whom he first met before the revolution when she was a child of sixteen.
The League of the Scarlet Pimpernel he was supposed to have concealed. Esther is now living in one of the poorer parts of Paris while a number of astute jailbirds are plotting to obtain her money and wealth by forcing her to choose between marrying one of their gang, Citizen Merri, or face death. The Pimpernel takes on the guise of Citizen Rateau, a tall, cadaverous-looking creature, with sunken eyes and broad, hunched up shoulders and a dry rasping cough that proclaimed the ravages of some mortal disease. Can he rescue Esther and her English lover Jack Kennard from the evil plot? Lucile Clamette and her