“Name of a name, yet another petulant grande dame!” But the Frenchman turned his horse and rode beside her coach.
“Did Her Majesty pout, then?” inquired the lady within.
“Almost as superbly as Mademoiselle la Marquise.”
“Thank you well, but I have a superb reason for it.”
“Because you return to Paris, surely not? Yet, if that is the reason, you need not quite despair.”
“Why, what–what do you mean?”
“Only brigands, mademoiselle. When everyone is looking for abdication, a cortège mysteriously leaving the City must be the Emperor who goes back to Austria. The news travels like wildfire. The Indito runners go as fast as when they brought Moctezuma fresh fish from the Gulf. I rather think they have carried the news to an old friend of ours. It’s my chance to catch him.”
“Not my Fra Diavolo–Rodrigo Galán?”
“None other. But Rodrigo is stirred by more than patriotism these days. Upon it he has grafted a deep wrong, and he swears lofty vengeance by a little ivory cross such as these Mexican girls wear. The conceited cut-throat imagines there is a blood feud between himself and His Majesty. So if he hears that Prince Max comes this way––”
“He will find Charlotte instead? But he must not detain her.”