The tangled thread / Cynthia Harrod-Eagles.

Henri Maria Fitzjames Stuart, Comte de Strathord, the Morland's bastard offshoot, had long trod a precarious path between the ancien regime and the radical groups who sought to overthrow it. As the storm-clouds of revolt gathered over France he strove ever more desperately to trim his sails to the prevailing political wind to protect his daughter Heloise, his mistress Marie-France and their bastard son Morland. To this end he bound Heloise to a loveless marriage with the rising young Revolutionary Olivier Vendenoir, and allied himself ever more closely with the great Danton. But in the bloodbath that followed the execution of the royal family and the fall of Danton, he himself was swept away, while Heloise fled to England and refuge with her English cousins -- only to bring cruel ill-fortune on herself and her loved ones by a tragic act of timing.