The Flaming Corsage Read Online Free

parasol and held it aloft over her yellow bonnet as the parade approached. The band played and the
marchers yelled in left-right cadence: “Blaine, Blaine, James G. Blaine, the continental liar from the state of Maine,” and Edward recognized the woman with the yellow bonnet as
Katrina. He went down the stoop and stood behind her and parted her shoulder. When she turned to him he saw a Katrina (she was “Katch” to him as a child) he’d never known.
    “My God, how lovely you look, Katch,” he said. “What have you done to yourself? You’re positively beautiful.”
    “I suppose I’ve grown up. But so have you. You look very much a man of the world, Edward.”
    “And so I like to think that I am. But even as a man of the world I don’t understand why you open your parasol when it is neither sunny nor raining.”
    “It well might rain oil on my new bonnet from those dreadful torches. And I would not like that at all.”
    The marchers broke into a new chant: “Ma, Ma, where’s my Pa?” a Blaine campaign slogan about Cleveland’s bastard son. But the electorate shrugged off this scandal, and
the marchers now voiced the new, answering gibe: “Gone to the White House, ha, ha, ha!”
    “That is so funny, and so just,” Katrina said.
    “Didn’t his fathering a child out of wedlock scandalize you?”
    “He never denied the boy, and he took care of him. He’s a courageous man, Mr. Cleveland.”
    “You have a modern outlook on the matter, for a woman.”
    “I am a modern woman.”
    “So you say. And so you may be.”
    Katrina spotted Giles Fitzroy riding with a dozen men from the Jacksonians. She called his name and waved to him.
    “It’s Giles,” she said. “He’s riding Phantom Guest. What a beautiful horse. This is all so wonderful. We really, really, really won. It’s staggering,
isn’t it?”
    “Cleveland owes his election to me, did you know that?”
    “No, you must tell me. Did you vote a thousand times?”
    “Not quite. Are you going to Lyman’s party?”
    “Of course.”
    “Then I’ll tell you there.”
    They watched the paraders: all the Democratic clubs, many carrying brooms for a clean sweep, and the Irish-American Association (with which Emmett Daugherty marched), and the German Democratic
Business Men, the Dry Goods Cleveland Club stepping to the rhythms of the Tenth Infantry Band, and the Flynn Fife and Drum Corps, and so many more, moving up to Capitol Park, where the
President-elect waved down from his executive chamber.
    When all paraders had passed, Edward and Katrina went into Lyman’s house, where bustling servants were setting out punch bowls and placing vases of flowers on tables and mantels.
    “We’re early,” Edward said, and he greeted the servants and steered Katrina by the arm into the conservatory. She sat on a bench with her parasol in her lap, and Edward looked
long at her and studied the phenomenal change in her face, the way she combed her hair, the way she held herself with such poise, such an air of certainty about who and what she was.
    “You are dazzling tonight, Katch,” he said. “How old are you now?”
    “I’m about to be nineteen, thank you.”
    “Is anybody paying court to your radiant self?”
    “I have my admirers.”
    “Permit me to join their number. Where have I been?”
    “You should control yourself and tell me how you elected the President.”
    He leaned on the back of her bench and put his eyes in line with hers. Looking at her face silenced him.
    “Well?” she said.
    “Yes, the election. I’d much rather look at you. I went to a dinner party at the Fort Orange Club to meet the Governor, and Lyman introduced me as ‘the talented son of a fine
Irishman whose vote you need.’ Mr. Cleveland agreed the Irish vote was important and asked who my father might be.
    “ ‘Emmett Daugherty, foreman at Lyman’s foundry,’ I told him, ‘but I doubt he’ll vote for you, Governor. He’s very angry with all politicians, and so