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family connections to buy the de Revers family properties, and on their wedding day, with Marmion’s frail father there to give her away, presented her with the family lands as a wedding present. Père Jean was in space at the time, but Maman Dominique was invited, at her real father’s suggestion, to serve as mother of the bride.
    Marmie’s protests that she did not wish to be disloyal were dismissed by her father. “You and I know who your mother was,” he told her.
    “But when they took me, it broke her heart,” Marmie said. “She did not survive long afterward.”
    “Perhaps, but your mother would have seen your adoption as your only hope to grow up in freedom and with some privilege. We both hated for you to be taken by strangers who were our enemies, but you have not fared badly. From all that you’ve told me, Madame LeClerc saw that you were cared for and when the time came, protected you in such a way that it led to your marriage to Gabriel. For this she deserves our thanks and respect.” When Marmion still looked doubtful, her father smiled a wry broken-toothed smile. “Also,
ma chérie,
one must consider that although your good fiancé has freed me, I am still not a popular man with our leaders, and must depend upon the goodwill of my adversaries to remain alive and free to see my grandchildren.”
    And so Dominique LeClerc and Marmion’s beloved father presided at her wedding. Madelaine Algemeine was the maid of honor; other classmates were bridesmaids. And the LeClerc servants and employees were all invited to the wedding feast. Also present, though less conspicuously, were the contacts, go-betweens, and messengers, including two prison guards, whom Marmie and Gabriel had used to free her father.
    Oddly enough, her father and Gabriel’s passed away within weeks of each other, leaving Gabriel as the head of his family and its business concerns. Madelaine married his closest friend, who entered into the Algemeine family business as well.
    With her respectability assured, Marmion often returned with baskets of food, toiletries, and books for the prisoners in both the men’s and women’s sections of the Bastille. She was careful to always bring similar dainties for the guards and prison employees, and asked after their health and their families. This was not because, as she let the prisoners old enough to remember her know, she was grateful for the care given her as a child, but so they would permit the prisoners to keep and use her gifts. Many of these people were no more criminal than her parents, and had in fact been friends and comrades of her parents, but were not fortunate enough to have someone to see to their release.
    Oh, yes, she was familiar with prisons, with guards and matrons and inmates alike, but once her own business acumen and the enterprises she had inherited from her husband made her wealthier than anyone had ever imagined possible, those who spoke of her origins mentioned only the original luster of the de Revers name. She thought it unnecessary to disillusion them about the less-than-glamorous aspects of her past.
    So, although Marmion dreaded going back into captivity, she did not experience the fear or the humiliation Colonel Zachariah Cally no doubt hoped she would. Her main concern was for her crew and passengers.
    When they arrived at what was euphemistically referred to as the reception area of the prison, they were separated by gender, but the initial order was the same. “Shave ’em, strip ’em, hose ’em down, and suit ’em up.”
    The Kanaka women accepted this mistreatment stoically, their misery showing only in their eyes, but some of Marmion’s women crew members tried to fight. “Tell them to cooperate,” Marmion whispered to Adrienne. “Accept it as the local style. The shave seems brutal now, but it’s that or involuntary dreadlocks and lice later. Don’t fight, no matter what. You cannot win, and they will do you real damage if you resist.”
    “Shut