Fortune's Lady (35 page)

One night, sleepless as usual, Cass crept downstairs to the library to look for something to read. The light under Riordan's door was out, so she knew he was asleep and safely out of the way. She found the book she wanted by moonlight— Montesquieu's
De l'Esprit des Lois
—and reached up for it.

“Can't sleep either, Cass?”

She jumped a foot in the air and clutched the lapels of her robe as if a mad rapist had leapt out at her from a dark alley.

Riordan had to laugh. “I'm sorry, I thought you saw me.”

She ought to have seen him—he was sitting behind his desk with his bare feet resting on top of it, wearing his dressing gown. She held her book to her bosom and stared at him owlishly, not speaking.

“I've been thinking of what you told me about Wade and wondering who he has in mind to eliminate these days. I was thinking it might be Pitt.”

“Pitt!” she scoffed, taken unawares and forgetting she wasn't speaking to him unless absolutely necessary. “Why Pitt? He's the essence of neutrality. Except for Fox and his crowd, he's the best friend France has in England.”

A slow smile spread across his face. “You have been studying, haven't you? Soon you'll be giving me lessons in politics.”

She blushed, trying to ignore the pleasure his words gave her. She didn't care two straws for his opinion, she reminded herself. “One thing I have learned,” she said stiffly, “is that there were enough injustices committed during the
ancien régime
to justify this Revolution.”

“Is that a fact? Such as what, I wonder.” This was the longest conversation they'd had in days. He kept his voice mild, his posture unaggressive.

“Such as what? Such as the corrupt and bungling administration of laws, justice, and taxes. Such as the idle luxury of the nobility and the priests while the peasants were taxed, tithed, conscripted, and starved. Such as the fact that the aristocracy had all the privileges and did nothing to earn them, and that the Estates General hadn't been convened since 1614.” She drew a breath. “I can go on.”

How beautiful she looked, standing so straight and tall in her old robe, the white of her nightgown showing beneath the hem. Her hair was down and soft-looking around her shoulders. He found himself wondering if her feet were cold; if they were, he wanted to warm them for her. “You've no sympathy at all, then, for the aristocrats who've been driven from their homes, all their possessions confiscated? They say the Comte de Vieuville shines shoes in the Place d'Erlanger and the Comtesse de Virieu darns stockings on the pavements, like some street vendor on the Pont-Neuf.”

“Yes, but it's the
émigrés
who've brought on the reprisals against the ones who stayed. The
émigrés
are no better than traitors when they call on foreigners to declare war on their own country.”

He raised his brows. “But do the scapegoats deserve to die? Batches of them, trundled down the Rue Saint-Honoré in their tumbrils to the guillotine?”

“Colin says it's wrong to watch the Revolution merely through the narrow window of the guillotine.”

Riordan's face darkened. “Does he? What does he think of watching it through the window of a spontaneous bloodbath?”

“What do you mean?” She pulled her robe more tightly about her.

“Early this month, Cass, the mob—your harmless crowd of drapers and soap-makers—killed eleven hundred men, women, and children. The gutters were piled with mutilated corpses, and no one tried to stop them. It began as an attack on a group of priests and ended with the murder of all the prisoners in Paris. Only four hundred were even political prisoners; the rest were common criminals, pulled out of their cells and cold-bloodedly massacred.”

Cass was shuddering, her shoulders hunched. “I don't believe you. It's impossible. Colin says—”

“The hell with what Colin says!” His feet slammed to the floor and he stood up. “Ask
Colin
how the Princesse de Lamballe was murdered. Her crime was that she supervised the queen's household. She was stabbed to death on the corner of the Rue des Ballets. They sawed her head off with a knife and tore out her heart and genitals. One brave revolutionary put her head on the end of a pike, another ran her heart through with his saber, and a third made himself a mustache from her pubic hair.” Cass had turned her back. He couldn't make himself stop. “Then four men harnessed themselves to the body and set off for the Temple to show the severed head to the queen.”

“Stop it, stop!” She put her hands over her ears and squeezed her eyes shut, every muscle tensed, desperately trying to block out the lurid picture his words painted. Suddenly he was behind her; she felt his gentle touch on her back, and a long tremor went through her. Minutes passed. As soon as she could speak normally, she said, “Please take your hands off me.”

His fingers on her shoulders tightened. He drew a ragged breath. “I'm sorry, Cass. But I don't seem to be able to go on like this.”

She went rigid, still staring at the blank wall in front of her. “Then let me go.”

“I can't. I wish I could.” An endless silent moment, and then his hands fell away.

She could feel her heart thudding in her chest. She reached out to the wall with one stiff arm, like a blind woman. Without letting go, she negotiated the space between Riordan and the door, careful not to touch him. Her bare feet were silent on the hall floor, and then the staircase.

Riordan picked up the brandy decanter from the table beside him and poured some into a small glass. The first sip was like a bitter explosion in his mouth, but the second tasted almost mellow. How quickly the body adjusts to its poisons, he mused. Calmly, cold-bloodedly, he considered getting drunk. It didn't matter much to him one way or the other. He set the glass down without finishing it and after a moment he left the room, following his wife upstairs to bed.

C
LARA STOOD BACK,
hands on hips, surveying her mistress's reflection in the dressing table mirror. “Lord, miss, if you ain't as pretty as a bloomin' picture. I never saw a dress like that in my life. Never knew I had such a hand at ladies' hair, either. Now if you'd only use that rouge like I told you, yer beauty would be raverging.”

Cass's lips quivered with the ghost of a smile, but she shook her head. “I don't want it, Clara. You've put too much powder on me already.” She picked up the cotton daub and began to blot it under her eyes.

“Lord, there she goes, after I just got them blue circles hid! Why can't you leave well enough alone? I had you all perfect, and now yer ruinin' it. I swear, I don't know why I bother.”

Cass stared blankly into the mirror, the smile fading, and mentally echoed Clara's sentiment. She'd never prepared so carefully for an evening she looked forward to with less eagerness. But she'd been bathed, dressed, brushed, powdered, and perfumed within an inch of her life, and despite her half-hysterical vow to Riordan that she wasn't going, it appeared that she was.

What could he possibly be thinking of? she wondered yet again, absently pulling at one of Clara's careful but artless-looking curls at the back of her neck. What was in his mind that he would flaunt this obscene joke of a marriage before a hundred of his friends and family at a reception in a hired room at Almack's? And what did he propose to tell them when this was all over—that she had
died
! Did he really imagine she would disappear that thoroughly, that—conveniently? She shut her eyes, feeling the familiar burn of tears in the back of her throat. Well, perhaps she would. She was so tired, so very tired, and yet it seemed she never slept. She wept at nothing these days, and in the mornings she could scarcely think of a reason to get out of bed. She found it physically painful to be in Riordan's company, and she couldn't say two words to him without wanting to cry or scream. When he'd told her of this ludicrous “wedding reception,” she'd been too aghast at first to utter a sound. Then she'd found her voice and told him he was mad, that the only way she'd attend would be in her coffin.

But he'd won again. He'd simply carried on with his plans as if she'd consented, and in the end it was her own inertia that had beaten her. She hadn't the strength to fight him anymore. Her pride had been trampled so thoroughly already that another public humiliation hardly seemed to matter.

“Leave us alone for a minute, will you, Clara?”

Her hand tightened around her white gloves; she hadn't heard him enter. She turned, affecting a nonchalant attitude. He'd never come into her room before. He made it seem smaller. She took in his plain blue coat of fine, light wool and his closely fitted gray breeches, acknowledging with dry-mouthed reluctance that she still found him the handsomest of men. His unpowdered hair was brushed straight back from his high, intelligent forehead. He'd just shaved; his cheeks glowed a healthy pink. Her eyes flickered over his long, handsome legs, observing the elegantly casual way he held himself, and came to rest on his dark-blue, frankly admiring gaze. She colored and looked away.

“You look like some exotic white bird,” he said quietly, his voice a caress. “You have the most beautiful neck, the loveliest skin—”

“Please! Please, don't.”

He gave a short, harsh laugh and came closer. “No, of course not. It would never do to tell my wife she's beautiful. I don't know what got into me.” He reached for her hand, but she jerked it away without thinking. He went still, his face as impassive as a wood carving. “I have something I would like to give you. Would you please stand?”

Flushing again, she rose and turned her body toward him, though she kept her face averted.

“Relax, Cass, I don't intend to stab you.” He reached into the inside pocket of his coat and pulled out an object. She looked down into his open palm and saw a locket on a gold chain. “This was my grandmother's. She left it to me, to give to my wife.”

Cass's eyes swam. “Don't do this to me, I'm begging you—”

But he carried the two ends of the chain around her neck and fastened them in back, hardening his lips in determination. The metal was still warm from his body. She breathed softly and suffered his touch as he settled the locket in the cleft between her breasts with his fingers.

“She took out the miniatures of her and my grandfather so they could be buried with her. She said to put new portraits of my wife and me inside. That's what I intend to do.”

“Why, Philip? Why are you doing this?”

He placed the palms of his hands on her bare chest and held them there. “Your heart is beating so fast.” Spellbound, he watched the blood beneath her skin gradually suffuse her neck, her cheeks. “Do you know how much I want you? I think I'm dying for you. I want to take you here, Cass, now, in your bed.”

Her flesh was burning, every nerve in her body tingling. She had to wet her lips before she could speak. “Then it would be rape.”

He shook his head. “I think not.” Both hands moved softly down to cover her breasts, making the slippery sound of flesh on silk, and his eyes darkened. He whispered. “I don't think so.”

Out of the chaos in her brain she seized on her only defense. “Colin came into my room once at Ladymere, like this. While I was dressing. He gave me a gift, too. It was a p-piece of the Bastille.” She looked over her shoulder, as if it might be on the bureau. “I still have it, you might—”

His choked curse cut her off. Breathing hard, Riordan dropped his arms and stepped back. He knew she invoked Wade's name to infuriate him; what galled him was that it always worked.

“Are you ready?” he asked in a voice he could hardly recognize. She nodded once. “Good. We wouldn't want our guests to arrive before we do. But I have something to tell you first, Cass, and I want you to listen closely. You've spent your last night in this room. From now on you'll sleep with me in our bed, our room. Don't shake your head— you'll do it.”

“No!”

“Yes. I want my wife. And by God, I'm going to have her.”

She was stiff-lipped with fear and agitation and something else. “You're a lying son of a bitch, Philip Riordan—”

“We don't have time for that, love.” He took her rigid arm and urged her to the door. His sorrowful smile was patently false. “I'm afraid we won't have time for it later, either. Clara?” he called to the maid, who was loitering in the hall by the stairs. “Bring Cass's coat, will you? And whatever else she needs.” The maid passed them with an uncertain smile, eyeing her mistress's face.

“I think you'll like my cousin Edward,” he told her as he led her down the steps, his hand lightly supporting her elbow. “He's the only decent member of the family, really, aside from me. My brother George will try to compromise you, I shouldn't wonder. Both of my sisters have decided to snub you, at least for the time being, which I assure you is a great blessing. And my father can't come—he's ill—but you'll have the dubious honor of meeting my mother.” He continued to chat amiably about the people she would meet and how she could expect them to treat her, but she heard none of it. The focus of her anxiety had shifted. She no longer dreaded her wedding reception. She dreaded what would come after it.

They stood side by side inside the door to the spacious, candlelit assembly room, holding hands as if they liked each other, greeting guest after guest until Cass began to see people as vaguely smiling, featureless blurs. Her own smile felt painted on. She could hardly breathe in the unaccustomed corset the seamstress insisted she must wear with this dress. “To
poosh
up za
boosum,
madame, is
necessary,
yes?” Yes, if the object was to push it into her throat, she thought wanly, smiling and offering her hand to yet another curious, frankly staring arrival. In another mood, she might have been amused by some of the greetings she received. Everyone knew her unique history and the circumstances of her so-called marriage, and their resultant self-consciousness made for some interesting first lines. But in general she was treated with more courtesy and respect than she would have dreamt possible, and she knew it was because of Riordan's exalted position in the world. Money and power, could purchase respectability for anyone, it seemed—even her. But she wondered more than once as she stood there, holding Riordan's arm and saying grateful, appropriate things to his friends, what they would do if she suddenly called them all to attention and announced the truth. She didn't think even his influence would be strong enough to secure respectability for either of them after that.