Fortune's Lady

by Patricia Gaffney

  “Another man will be at Clarion’s tonight. If all goes well, he will act as liaison between you and me once our scheme is afoot. Wear white; over the course of the evening he will make himself known to you.

  “Good luck, Miss Merlin. Only be yourself, and you cannot fail. I will be in contact with you at the appropriate time.”

  The letter was unsigned, presumably to protect Mr. Quinn’s identity.

  Tight-lipped, Cass folded it and tore it into shreds. Was he being deliberately insulting? “Be yourself,” he advised, directly after telling her to be a foolish ingénue without scruples. She knew she should laugh, but somehow she couldn’t manage it.

  There was a rap at the door. “Cassie, the hackney’s come! I’ll wait for you in the hall, shall I?”

  “Thank you, Freddy, I’ll be right there.”

  She carried the shredded letter to the wastebasket, picked up her reticule with all the money she was prepared to gamble—three pounds and seven pence, a pitiful stake—and went out.

  Freddy was wearing a taffeta frock coat in the fashionable boue de Paris, or Paris mud, shade. He whistled when he saw her. “Lord, Cassie, you’re a game one, ain’t you? Lucky it’s a warm night or you’d catch your death in that, I’m bound. You look as pretty as a pheasant from a brush blind.”

  Heartened by this tribute, Cass put her head in the sitting room door to wish her aunt good night.

  Lady Sinclair looked up from her fashion magazine. “Come in, Cassandra, let me see you.” She regarded her niece for a long moment in silence.

  Cass found her expression of knowing satisfaction almost too much to bear. “Will it serve?” she asked, with more impudence in her tone than she’d ever used before.

  Lady Sinclair’s brows went up, but she chose to ignore the question’s unpleasant implication. “You look lovely, as always. Enjoy your evening, my dear.”

  “I’m sure I shall,” she shot back, anger spoiling the cool exit she’d meant to make.

  As Freddy handed her into the coach and settled himself heavily beside her, she thought of Aunt Beth’s words yesterday, after Edward Frane had gone.

  “You refused him?” she’d asked calmly, when Cass had informed her of the precise nature of his offer.

  Her mouth had dropped, then she’d recovered herself. “Yes, Aunt, I refused him.”

  “I see.” A long fingernail tapped against her lips. “What will you do now, do you think?”

  The question had chilled her; it was so patently her aunt’s way of washing her hands of her. Would she actually go so far as to put her out of the house? Cass thought it entirely possible. “I’ll think of something,” she’d promised.

  Then she’d written her letter to Oliver Quinn.

  Damn Edward Frane, she thought again, shutting out Freddy’s amiable chatter as the carriage moved west, away from Holborn toward Piccadilly. But no—that was in the past; she wouldn’t think about it again. She had to concentrate on the here and now. She had to concentrate on Colin Wade.

  What would he be like? she wondered for the tenth time. Cruel and villainous, or only a dedicated revolutionary who believed any means justified his end? Either way, would she be able to win his trust and discover the secrets Quinn wanted her to learn? It seemed an impossible task even if she became the man’s lover—and she had no idea whether she could or would do that. How could she, apart from any other considerations, if he had really betrayed her father and caused his execution? Was she making a bargain with Quinn under false pretenses? If she admitted her reservations, would he find someone else for the job? And if he did, would she be glad or sorry?

  “Hullo, we’re here! I feel lucky tonight, Cassie; I’ll lay you five-to-one odds I break even or better.”

  Freddy threw open the carriage door with a flourish. They had arrived at the Clarion Club.

  Riordan stopped massaging the pair of dice in his fingers long enough to check his pocket watch for the third time in ten minutes. Half-past twelve. The chit was late. He pushed away from the wall he’d been lounging against and moved nonchalantly into a dimmer area of the crowded gaming room, where he would be less conspicuous. He’d chosen Clarion’s because he never gambled there and his well-known face was less likely to be recognized, but even more because Colin Wade never gambled here and wouldn’t come strolling in at any moment to scotch his little plan.

  There was nothing actually wrong with the club; its clientele was a reasonable mix of the respectable and the debauched, the play was passably fair, the wines good—or so he’d been told. It just wasn’t fashionable. And Philip Riordan, the newest and, some said, most dissolute Member of the House of Commons never went anywhere that wasn’t in the vanguard of fashion. It might be a cock fight, a fancy masked ball, or a brothel—but by God it would be fashionable.

  Grimacing, Riordan took a miniscule sip from his glass of claret and rubbed the back of his neck. Lord, he was tired. What he wouldn’t give to be at home with a good book, or better, sleeping. Even better, sleeping with Claudia. Slim chance of that, he thought with a faint, self-mocking smile; the woman was a walking suit of chain mail. He stifled a yawn. He had an early meeting tomorrow with a committee drafting the enclosure bill he would sponsor next term. He’d grown adept at impersonating a man with a blinding hangover, and he supposed he would reenact the role tomorrow with his usual aplomb. But what a blasted bore it all was. If he never saw another dawn through the smoky haze of a gaming hall or pretended a lewd interest in another silly, brainless demimondaine intent on showering him with her oft-sampled favors, it would be too soon for Riordan. What the masquerade was accomplishing was beyond him. Oliver said to be patient, but his patience was wearing wafer-thin.

  For God’s sake, wouldn’t he serve the government far better by being the best Commons man he could be, rather than by posing as a drunken wastrel with a taste for light women? Oliver thought not, so he had no choice. He’d promised his old tutor two years of his life, and there were still fifteen months left of his sentence, or penance, or whatever the bloody hell it was.

  But he had to agree with Quinn that the unexpected appearance of Cassandra Merlin offered the opportunity they’d been waiting for. Oliver, having met her, claimed she was exactly what she seemed—a foolish girl without a protector, whose indiscreet past made her ripe for their purposes. Riordan wasn’t so sure. And since it was he who stood to lose the most if she proved as treacherous as her father, it fell to him to discover a few things about her before he allowed her entry into the tiny circle of persons who knew his secret.

  He looked up from contemplating the buckles on his shoes, his attention nudged by a subtle change in the room’s atmosphere. A woman was standing in the arched entrance to the gaming room, quietly surveying the restive crowd of gamblers, drinkers, and idlers. Riordan set his glass down with unusual care and clasped his hands behind his back. He took a deep breath, willing his face to abandon the stunned look he could feel on it. Gradually he became aware that he wasn’t the only one observing the girl with more than passing interest. Gentlemen and ladies stared, openly and covertly, at Cassandra Merlin—for surely it could be no one but she. Black hair and a white dress, Quinn had told him. Riordan’s appreciation for his friend’s gift of understatement deepened. He moved closer.

  Attractive, he’d called her. The old mossback was as blind to women as Riordan had always suspected. Calling her “attractive” was like—he shook his head, unable to think of a sufficiently preposterous analogy. But Lord God, what was she wearing? Fragments of conversation began to penetrate his strangely fogged-in brain. “Who is she?” was the question most often asked at first, but soon the speculation took a more personal, less respectful turn. A man playing whist expressed, crudely and succinctly, a desire to know her better. For no reason he could fathom, the vulgarity made Riordan angry. He was frowning when the girl’s seemingly idle gaze came to rest on his, and for a moment their eyes locked. He saw color of the palest pink stain the impossible whiteness of her neck,
her cheeks. She didn’t seem to be breathing; he knew he wasn’t. Then her gaze swiveled away, her expression unchanging, so that he found it impossible to put a name to what had just passed. He unclenched his hands and reached for his drink.

  A portly, somewhat vacant-looking fellow joined her then. Spotting friends across the way, he waved and nodded, took the girl by the arm, and moved with her toward the hazard table. Riordan followed automatically, until he was standing among a circle of onlookers whose attention was unequally divided between the game and the woman in the astonishing white dress. “How I should love to play Adonis to her Aphrodite,” sighed someone at his elbow. Riordan scowled down at a foppish fellow in a black wig. “Imagine her rising from her bath….”

  The analogy irritated him, though he couldn’t deny its aptness. She did look like a goddess in that—dress, he supposed it was, though it really seemed more of an arrangement of draperies. Her arms were bare, her shoulders almost so, and her bosom was more than generously displayed above an artful twisting of white muslin worn in a sort of tunic fashion. The question of the moment, it appeared from the searing scrutiny of the bystanders, was whether she was wearing anything under it. Riordan’s annoyance increased when he realized he’d have given a good deal to know the answer himself. He had a sudden vision of her jumping naked into a fountain, drunk and laughing, surrounded by cheering young men. When Quinn had told him the story, he’d only laughed cynically, already weary at the thought of having to conduct business with a jaded Parisienne who was practically a whore at eighteen. Now he was ready to revise his opinion, and he wasn’t sure why. Perhaps it was because, despite all he’d heard, she didn’t look particularly decadent. She looked young, and a little sad. If she were to strip and jump into a fountain tonight, he could imagine himself leaping in after her and wrapping her up in his coat.

  She was laughing at something some puce-coated roué was muttering in her ear when once again her gaze chanced to meet his. Her eyes were gray, he saw, the lashes long and black. He watched the humor leave them, her smile slowly fade, before she looked away and started to fiddle with her purse. He glanced around for an empty chair, grabbed one, and ruthlessly pushed his way through the tight knot of gawkers until he was standing at Cassandra Merlin’s elbow. Rather pointedly, he thought, she didn’t look up. He stationed his chair behind her and a little to the side, and sat down.

  “Bets, please.”

  “Are you playing, Cassie?” Freddy’s normally pasty face was rosy with anticipation. “I’ll stake you if you like.”

  With difficulty Cass concentrated on what her cousin was saying. She’d already forgotten the names of the people he’d introduced her to less than a minute ago. “No, thank you,” she said softly, almost whispering. But she knew the man could hear, he was sitting so close. She opened and closed the clasp of her reticule, keeping her eyes on the dice in the little wicker hamper the banker overturned with each new bet. She didn’t have to look, though, to know, that he was leaning forward, wrists crossed over one black-clad knee, long-fingered hands cradling a full glass of wine, and that he was staring at her.

  He spoke, and she nearly jumped out of her seat. Belatedly, she realized he was answering a question of Freddy’s. “They say the Chambertin is drinkable. At six shillings a bottle, I suppose it ought to be.”

  “All right with you, Cassie?”

  What? Oh, the wine. “Fine. Perfect.”

  Freddy turned away to speak to the waiter and Cassandra devoted her attention to the game, or pretended to. The man in the puce coat was saying something vaguely obscene in her ear; his lavender scent was so strong she had to will herself not to wrinkle her nose at him. But she heard none of what he said because the man on her other side was speaking to Freddy again. His words were commonplace, ordinary—how had they started such a vibrating in her chest? She felt like a harp or a lute, some stringed instrument his voice could play on at will. When the waiter placed a glass by her hand, she drank half of it down without a pause. She heard the man chuckle. As she inhaled, she turned to look at him.

  Her frown and his smile evaporated and it was happening again, the same wordless, breathless exchange. Impossibly, it was even stronger now because he was so close. So close she could reach her hand out and touch the harsh, elegant bones of his face, or smooth her thumbs over his straight black brows. Or push her fingers, like a comb, through his extraordinary black-and-silver hair….

  “D’you think it’s a love of antiquity or old-fashioned Christian charity that makes her show so much skin?”

  The words, uttered by some wag behind her, might have passed Cass by unheard if she hadn’t been looking into the man’s eyes. She reacted with a start to the violence that leapt into their dark-blue depths and then was gone, leaving her wondering if she’d imagined it. The sense of the overheard words assaulted her all at once and she felt herself flush, overcome with embarrassment. In the swift, humiliating space of an instant, she understood perfectly what was wrong with her gown and how she must look to these people.

  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.