An inescapable image

I'm being haunted by the memory of a pre-war novel I flicked through in a station waiting room on holiday a couple of weeks ago: I skim-read it pretty rapidly (exceedingly rapidly towards the end, partly because I was in a state of shock and partly because I was severely running out of time) and I don't remember in the least what it was called or who the author might have been. And I don't imagine there's another extant copy in the country, so I'm never likely to encounter it again...

Apparently it was the last volume in a trilogy (yes, they had them back then) and in the previous two books the heroine had progressed from being a 'fallen woman' out to ensnare a rich elderly husband to falling genuinely in love with his son and eloping with the young man. And they conduct a sort of tentative courtship during their honeymoon (which begins with her being horribly seasick for days on the trip up to Scotland on a slow tramp steamer!) while her husband tries to convince her that she is safe and he really does return her love, no matter who she was in the past and no matter what her original intentions towards him were. But all the time there is an unexplained trouble hinted at in the background.

And then just when they seem to have come together and be happy at last, a package arrives in the post from one of her old associates whom she now regards with hatred and fear. Her husband sees this as a sign of reconciliation to their marriage and insists on sending back a friendly letter, but she refuses even to open it. And when she finally does, late at night and some time later, it contains a loaded gun and a note saying 'You know what to do with this'.
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If I were Vicomte (ch3)

The chapters are still very short, but this one is actually longer than the previous one. (The fact that it's two scenes run together helps.)

Unfortunately, once we get Yann as far as Christine's dressing-room we start running into sections of the story that have already been described in greater detail in canon, so at this stage my version starts skipping wildly; in effect, the idea is that everything happens just as in canon from this point, Yann simply interprets it differently from his counterpart.

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3. L’Officier

La Royale was good to the young Breton sailor. Yann proved quick and obedient, and self-possessed and nimble aloft. He drew the approbation of his officers without incurring the enmity of the sous-officier set over him, and found himself promoted; first among the seamen, then — after completing his first voyage around the world — among the cadets.

No allowances were made for his lack of education, and he was expected to study alongside the rest. Yann set his teeth and puzzled out mathematics and navigation along with the duffers of the class, taking a fierce pride in the speed with which he overhauled these schoolboys. It was at this time that he began to cultivate a moustache.

In the winter that he turned twenty-one he was a slim, bright-haired young man with a boyish freckled face, confident in his profession but shy among women, with whom his lack of experience put him at a disadvantage. In his leisure hours he read voraciously, in an attempt to remedy the deficiencies in his education. When one of the senior lieutenants proposed a party of pleasure to Paris among the young officers in port, since Yann’s ship was laid up for repairs for the next several months he for one accepted eagerly.

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