Fortune's Lady (6 page)

The impulse to bolt was strong, but she suppressed it. Instead she turned back to the gaming table, elaborately casual. Her fingers on her glass shook ever so slightly as she took a steadying sip of wine. She removed a pound note from her purse. “Even,” she said to the banker when next he called for bets.

“Three. Five. Five.”

She watched her note disappear and replaced it with another. “Five.”

“One. Three. And four.”

The second note went the way of the first. Cass took another sip of wine, fingering her last note.

“I propose a private wager.”

She thought she'd shut out every sound except the clack of the dice, but the low, rumbling intimacy of the man's voice penetrated her defenses effortlessly. She stared straight ahead, waiting.

“Bet this on the next throw. If you win, the money's yours. If you lose, you must contrive to get away from the amiable booby you came here with and go with me into the garden.” He nodded toward open French doors across the way. “There you must favor me with the pleasure of your company for—let's say thirty minutes. Not a second less.” Very slowly he moved a hundred-pound note across the table until it lay in front of her. Over the noise Cass thought she could hear it, the light rubbing of flesh on paper, paper on green baize. “Do we have a bet?”

Wonderingly, she watched her hand go out and capture the note, her fingers just missing his. “Six,” she told the banker. She had to repeat it before he heard her. She said a silent prayer of thanks that Freddy wasn't watching this outrageous transaction.

“Two. Three. And five.”

Her breath came out in a long sigh. That surprised her; she hadn't known she was holding it.

“Freddy.” She touched his shoulder.

“Eh? What?”

“I'm going outside now, into the garden. This gentleman is coming with me.”

“Oh, right-o.” He was hardly listening; he nodded and smiled jovially, then turned back to the betting.

Cass stood. “Shall we, Mr.—?”

“Wade. Colin Wade.”

The garden of the Clarion Club was small, but laid out in such a way that its one winding path seemed to traverse a much larger area. Each turn in the flagstone trail was lit with rush-lights, an unnecessary accommodation tonight since the moon was nearly full. The principal diversion here, after drinking, was seeing and being seen, although resourceful couples always contrived to find a bit of privacy among the verdant yews and hollies. The scattered benches were all occupied when Riordan guided Cass along the path toward a small fountain in the center of the garden. They stood for a moment and silently regarded the kneeling, all-but-naked figure of a nymph, perpetually pouring water from a stone ewer.

“Are you cold?” asked Riordan suddenly.

Cass searched his face for a leer, a swiftly hidden glimmer of lechery or amusement, but could see nothing except innocent concern. Still, the similarity between her gown and the kneeling nymph's was not lost on her—nor, she believed, on him. She shook her head and they continued their slow stroll. She was glad to be outside where it was dark, away from all the searching eyes. It made her feel slightly more in control, which was a good thing. Fortunately, Mr. Wade had been the aggressor and contrived their
tête-à-tête,
because up to now, mysteriously and unaccountably, she'd hardly been able to utter a word to him. She supposed it was because he was so handsome—“an exceptionally handsome man,” Quinn had written. And yet handsome men were common in the circles she frequented, and she was never tongue-tied among them. Her cheeks burned when she thought of the way she'd stared at him. Her conversation now was scarcely more eloquent than it had been inside, she realized suddenly, and cast about in her mind for a suitable topic.

They had come to the bottom of the garden, where a solitary iron stool was situated against a profusion of shrubbery. Riordan seated Cass and then stepped a few paces away, telling himself he didn't need his wits muddled now by the naked expanse of bosom her much-maligned gown exposed. There had been a moment by the fountain when he was sure she was remembering another fountain, one in the Tuileries a year or so ago. An image of her came to him, wet and naked, head thrown back, water running down her throat and her breasts….

He mentally shook himself. He was much too aware of this woman physically. Following her out of the club, his enjoyment of the unfettered view of her from behind had been tempered in an odd, sobering way by the knowledge that there wasn't a man in the house who wasn't entertaining the same lecherous thoughts about her that he was.

Enough. This was business. He was here to discover whether or not she could be trusted. To do that, he had to stop thinking like a randy schoolboy and start thinking like Colin Wade.

“You have a very slight, very charming hint of a French accent, mademoiselle,” he opened casually. “Have you spent time in that country?”

“Most of my life, although we spoke English at home. My family is English.”

“Ah. Allow me to say you wear the new French fashion most beautifully.”

Her chin came up. “Thank you.” She suspected he was baiting her.

“The English, of course, are quite backward in such things. They see these French styles as harbingers of atheism and social collapse. You mustn't pay them any mind. In a year's time, I daresay every woman in London will be wearing a Galatea gown or Diana dress.”

Cass felt absurdly comforted. “You're very kind. But if I've been embarrassed tonight, the fault is my own. I've only been in England a short time, not long enough to gauge the national tolerance for nudity, it would seem. I assure you, in Paris this dress is thought quite modest.”

“Indeed?”

His tone was friendly, but the frank, admiring glance he swept across her seated figure was anything but brotherly. “Oh, yes,” she rushed on. “Ever since Marie Antoinette was painted in her
robe du matin,
without evidence of stays or even a corset, Parisiennes have been disrobing with great enthusiasm.” She frowned; that hadn't come out quite right.

“I suppose it's amusing to enter into the skin of the ancients by showing as much as possible of one's own,” Riordan drawled, enjoying himself.

She let that pass. “It raised quite a furor, of course; people were shocked that the queen had let herself be painted in her chemise. Still, it set a style for liberating, egalitarian garments.” There, she thought with satisfaction. He could pursue that or not, but she'd made a beginning in the portrayal of herself as a woman of the people.

“Was it the violence in Paris that brought you to England, Miss—”

“Merlin. Cassandra Merlin.” She watched his face for a sign of recognition, but at that moment a waiter came out of the shadows with two glasses of wine on a tray. Riordan took them and handed one to Cass. This time their fingers made contact. She'd read in a dozen cheap novels about the stupefying effect a casual touch of hands could have, and had always dismissed the phenomenon as absurd, exaggerated. Until now. She took a hasty sip of claret and nearly choked. Eyes watering, cheeks blazing, she set the glass down on the grass beside her and folded her hands in her lap. A moment passed before she remembered his question. “No, Mr. Wade, it wasn't the violence that brought me. It was the arrest and execution of my father for treason.”

There was no sound but the distant din of gambling from inside the club. Riordan looked into the wide, guileless, slightly challenging gaze of the woman seated before him and gave her high marks for boldness. “I knew him,” he said slowly. “Slightly.” The last thing he'd expected to feel was a reluctance to lie. The next words he spoke from the heart, surprising himself. “I'm deeply sorry for your father's death. It must have been terrible for you.”

Cass heard genuine sympathy, and felt like a fool when tears sprang to her eyes. She blinked them back briskly. “Thank you. But he died in the service of a cause he believed in, as many others are doing today in France, sir. I expect there are worse ways to meet one's end.”

Riordan congratulated her again on her directness, and decided it was time for some of his own. “And do you share your father's…enthusiasms, Miss Merlin?”

She let a noticeable pause fall before she answered. “If I did, I would be very foolish to say so, wouldn't I, Mr. Wade?”

“I expect that depends on to whom you said it.”

Cass stared up at him, trying to think of a suitable response. Things were moving too fast. Mr. Wade was disconcertingly tall and broad, and his wide shoulders blocked the moon, making it difficult to see his face. His dress was conservative, yet the tailoring of his black breeches and rust-colored coat was immaculate and obviously expensive. He gave the impression of a man who paid tailors and valets a fortune to insure he made a proper turnout in society, then forgot all about it himself. She remembered with a queer feeling that he had a wife. An invalid, Quinn had said, living in Bath. Was that why he took mistresses? Did he have one now? She looked away, then started when she saw he was holding out a hand to her.

“Do you care to walk?”

She rose. He tucked her hand under his arm and they began to amble along a thin, hard-packed path beside a thorn hedge. There were no rush-lights here, but the moon illuminated the way sufficiently to see. Beyond some shrubbery to their right a woman's shrill laugh sounded, and the moment of apprehension Cass had felt at their seeming isolation vanished. They moved well together, she couldn't help noticing, in spite of the fact that he was probably six stone heavier and a foot taller. It was strange, she reflected, that she could think of him as an adversary, but not yet as an enemy. But Quinn said he'd betrayed her father and sent him to his death. For the first time, it occurred to her to wonder if Quinn was telling the whole truth.

“Why didn't your father send for you when living in Paris began to be dangerous?” Riordan wondered aloud. It wasn't a calculated question; it was something he was curious about.

Cass stared straight ahead. That still hurt, but it wouldn't do to let Mr. Wade know. “Because he knew I sympathized with his ideas and that I would want to join in whatever plans he was making in England,” she fabricated. “He did it to protect me.”

A bold stroke, thought Riordan; probably too bold. “And how do you like living here?”

“I hate it! I find the class system repulsive. You saw how I was treated tonight because I don't fit into their
bourgeois
mold. I tell you, Mr. Wade, they may have hanged my father, but they can never kill the ideals of
liberté
and
fraternité!
”

He admired the proud tilt of her chin, and especially the way the thrusting back of her shoulders made her breasts stand out against the material of her dress. But he had to hide a smile at her patriotic outburst. It was too melodramatic, and she'd gotten her terms mixed up. Revolutionaries glorified the
bourgeoisie
; it was the nobility who scorned it.

But he was ready to acquit her of being Patrick Merlin's henchwoman. After all, if she'd wanted to help Wade, she'd have told him by now of the plot against him—“Mr. Wade, you're in terrible danger!” or some such thing. Instead she had made skillful overtures and conversed carefully but naturally, exactly as he would coach her to do when the real time came. Now the question was whether she had the wit to pull off the long-term, elaborate masquerade he had in mind. If not, she could be in danger. It was important to him that she not be in danger.

They stopped walking under the low-hanging boughs of a beech tree. Cass leaned against the trunk, and Riordan reached both hands up to grasp a thick limb. “Were you among the women who marched to Versailles for the king's head, Miss Merlin?” he asked mildly, enjoying the stretch in his shoulder muscles.

“No. That was”—she calculated swiftly—“three years ago, Mr. Wade. I was only fifteen.”

“But I thought many in the crowd were children. With their mothers.”

“Y-es. I recollect now my aunt was ill at the time. Else I'm certain we'd have gone.” Her lips quivered as she tried to imagine Lady Sinclair marching to Versailles with the mob to demand bread. “ ‘We have the Baker, the Baker's wife, and the Baker's boy!' ” she recalled the slogan for his benefit. “It must have been a glorious day.”

“What
quartier
did you live in?”

“The Palais Royale.”

“Ah, you've lived through exciting times, then. Besides being the center of café life, I recall the Palais Royale being the meeting ground for all manner of political agitators and amateur orators. It must have been quite stimulating.”

Actually, Cass had found it quite tiresome. She hadn't a political bone in her body. From her narrow vantage point, all the Revolution had accomplished so far was an end to outdoor concerts, the necessity to pay twenty francs for a simple frock, and a tendency in her favorite cafes to water the wine. She murmured vaguely.

“You wear the tricolor, I see,” he went on after a moment. She hadn't pursued his last lead; he would try again with this one. “What was the mood of the city after the invasion of the Tuileries?”

She stared blankly. She'd heard of it—but what had she heard? It had happened in June, just before she'd left for England. Something about the mob holding the king and queen prisoner, but the rest of it eluded her. “Tense,” she hazarded, tensely. “Nothing like that had ever happened before.” She hoped. “But everything is back to normal now.” Was it? She hadn't the slightest idea. Oh, she was botching this! She sounded as much like a revolutionary as Freddy!

“Do you feel more politically compatible with the Jacobins or the Girondins, Miss Merlin? Or perhaps the Feuillants?'?

Cass raised her eyes to heaven, but no divine intervention was forthcoming. “Oh, the Jacobins,” she answered positively. Why was he smiling? “And you?”