Fortune's Lady by Patricia Gaffney Page B

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?”
    â€œI 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.
    â€œNo. That was”—she calculated swiftly—“three years ago, Mr. Wade. I was only fifteen.”
    â€œBut I thought many in the crowd were children. With their mothers.”
    â€œY-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.”
    â€œWhat quartier did you live in?”
    â€œThe Palais Royale.”
    â€œAh, 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.
    â€œYou 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!
    â€œDo you feel more politically compatible with the Jacobins or the Girondins, Miss