Page 41 of Two Wars and a Wedding

Betsy cringed at the memory of her own ignorance on the boat to Nauplion, when she’d asked Monsieur de Robecourt about the soldiers, and he’d looked at her in such surprise, that she should know so little—all right, nothing—about the recent history of her adoptive country. Just another naive American gadding about Europe.

She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. She pored over the papers and tagged along after Aikaterini to the ladies’ gallery at Parliament.

“The Great Powers all side with the sultan,” complained Aikaterini’s friend, the minister of war. “All of them: the British, the French, the Russians . . .”

“Not the Americans,” protested Betsy, although she wasn’t actually sure where America stood on the matter. “You’re the birthplace of democracy. We wouldn’t exist without you. Greece can’t bow to tyranny! We can’t let it!”

Poky old Britain and France, hidebound and decadent, might side with the sultan for the sake of world order, but she was American and she knew better.

The world was kindling just waiting to be lit, and Betsy wanted nothing more than to wave the torch.

It wasn’t just Crete that was up in arms. In Athens, the medical students went on strike, furious at their professors delaying conferring their degrees. They were forced, they complained, to twiddle their thumbs in idleness for a year or more after finishing their requirements because their professors couldn’t be bothered to read their theses. For days Aikaterini’s salon could talk of nothing else, some siding with the students, others with the professors.

“Silly children.” Aikaterini dismissed them, but Betsy’s blood was boiling.

“They’ve done the work, why shouldn’t they have the degree?”

“They would, if they’d wait for it.”

Waiting. Betsy was sick of waiting. Sick of pounding on the door of Dr. Richardson’s office, knowing he was in there and hiding from her. She’d done all the work; she’d done more than had been asked of her. And where was she? Twiddling her thumbs in Aikaterini’s drawing room because no matter what she did, Professor Richardson was never, ever going to let her get closer to an excavation than the reports in the library.

Ethel was right. The most she could do was make coffee for the boys and hope to be allowed to publish under an initial.

It made her feel sick. It made her furious. At least the medical students were doing something about it. When the word arrived that the students had stormed the university, occupying it by force of arms, Betsy took her freshly polished bicycle and set off to wave her flag at the barricades.

She could hear the shouting before she got there. The university looked very different with armed students standing guard at the entrances and a cordon of police blocking them on all sides. Betsy swung down from her bicycle, wheeling it toward the fray. She checked as a stone hit the cobbles, sending up a dash of pebbles and spooking a horse. The police in front of her ducked and shouted as more projectiles came at them.

A hand closed over Betsy’s shoulder, pulling her back. She dropped her bicycle, an angry exclamation in Greek on her lips—that stilled as she saw who it was.

“You should not be here,” said Monsieur de Robecourt.

He was in his town clothes, a high starched collar, a dark morning coat over narrow gray trousers. Betsy tried very hard to pretend to herself that she didn’t remember the way his body felt beneath those sophisticated layers, the play of his muscles against the palms of her hands.

Betsy shook his hand off her shoulder, thrusting her bicycle between them like a chastity belt. “That’s none of your concern.”

“It isn’t safe for you here.” He leaned toward her, his voice low and urgent. “Didn’t you hear the students shot a schoolboy earlier today? It was an accident—but I should prefer such an accident not happen to you.”

Why did he have to act like he cared? It just made it all so much harder. “I should prefer such an accident not happen to me either. But that’s no concern of yours.”

“Isn’t it?” There was a wistful expression on his face that made Betsy’s insides do strange things. “If I could cure myself of caring for you, I would. Even if I am not . . . eligible . . . your happiness, your well-being, your safety, they matter to me.”

Behind them, stones were being thrown and insults were being shouted, but it was all curiously muted. This was what always happened; whenever Monsieur de Robecourt was near it was as though everything else faded away; there was nothing but him in the world.

Betsy looked at him despairingly. “What am I to do with you?”

“Forgive me?” he suggested. “Allow me to begin again—as your friend?”

Betsy’s hands clenched on the handles of her bicycle. She wasn’t sure that was possible. On the other hand, trying to cast him out of her life hadn’t worked very well either. She was damned if he was there and damned if he wasn’t. It was so tempting, the prospect of beginning again—knowing it would go nowhere, she reminded herself firmly.

“If I do, there’s to be no romantic nonsense,” she said, as much for her own sake as his. “I know you can’t help flirting, but do try not to get carried away.”

“I shall guard my heart as best I can.” But the way he was looking at her made Betsy worry about her own.

Her heart was made of sterner stuff, Betsy told herself. Iron. Or granite. Or something of the sort. Science hadn’t been one of her better subjects.

“All right, then,” she said gruffly. “You can stop avoiding Aikaterini’s salons and everything can be normal again.”

“In that case . . .” With a glance behind them at the rioters, Monsieur de Robecourt offered her his arm. “May I escort you back to Academy Street?”