“And it will unfold new visions of dangers from old foes. Do you think the Baron sends us to Bohemia as a kind of lark solely for your entertainment and enrichment? If he says the political situation there teeters, it is worse than before, when a King was killed, as you should well remember: you solved the murder of the present King’s father, after all.
“Do you also forget how two lone women fled Prague Castle by night, yourself disguised as a man, and evaded pursuing agents in the train stations of Dresden, Nuremberg, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Brussels? Even St. John’s Wood in London was not safe from the incursions of King Wilhelm’s agents. Why do you think you can dare the streets of Prague now, only eighteen months after you fled them?”
“I know the city. I know how to avoid attracting attention there, unless I desire it. I know the political climate; how restive Bohemia’s native population is under the Austrian thumb.” She paused, resuming in persuasive haste. “And I... know the King. I will better be able to put my finger on what unrest is afoot.”
“And he will better be able to put his hands upon you, as he has always wanted!”
“Godfrey, are you—jealous?”
“No—only worried, and mystified that you are not. But... should I be, Irene? This blithe determination to return to Bohemia is most unlike you.”
She set the heavy box on the sofa seat beside her and stood.
“It makes perfect sense, Godfrey, if only you would listen to your barrister’s logic instead of your foggy, old-fogey, London-town misgivings. We are all of us out of place and profession here in France. While our money from the Zone of Diamonds lasts, we are in no danger of starving, but we also have no challenging work!
“You say I dare not venture west to London because of Sherlock Holmes. Now you say that I dare not dance east to Prague because of the King of Bohemia. I cannot sing, I cannot go here or there. Where then may I go, pray? How may I earn my keep, and you and Nell yours, if we are to be chained to Paris, which is pretty and urbane, but hardly a center of much excitement.”
“I would think you had enough excitement on our last venture to London, with Stanhope gone.”
She blanched, even as I winced at Godfrey’s reference to Quentin’s apparently dire fate. Yet only tonight the Baron had hinted... and the strange box containing Quentin’s medal had arrived for me last summer.
Irene’s fists clenched against her midnight-blue velvet skirts. “You do not seem to see the same opportunity that I do in the Baron’s offer,” she said in low, deep tones.
“Oh, I see it, and I welcome more lucrative and challenging work as much as you. But why Prague, Irene?”
‘‘Because it is there! Because that is where the Baron asks us to go. How many would even know the legend of the Golem, as I do? I actually suggested it as an operatic subject to Mr. Dvořák. And... I have unfinished business there.”
“As I feared.” Godfrey said grimly.
Her head came up, eyes burning with emotion. “Not with the King! In other areas. It is my city, that I knew and grew fond of, as I did its people.”
“You once thought to be its queen,” Godfrey said quietly. “Do you feel a noblesse oblige, then, to rescue it, Your Royal Highness?”
His angry taunt revived the humiliation of Irene’s last days in Prague. The pride she had been forced to hide from the King broke free in a rush of long-repressed fury, though now only Godfrey stood before her, not Wilhelm von Ormstein.
“No,” she said flatly and unconvincingly, her cheeks coloring at last “But when I fled Prague, I believed that I escaped a man who would curtail my freedom.” Her face flamed even as she choked on her last bitter words. “I never dreamed that I would find another man who would do the same.”
She wheeled, sweeping from the room like a blue-black velvet storm-cloud, Godfrey fast behind her hissing, swaying hems.
“Irene, freedom has nothing to do with it!” he shouted up the stairs at the swift pounding of diminishing footsteps. A slamming upstairs door punctuated his sentence.
Godfrey’s steps bounded halfway up the stairs, two at a time, then stopped. After a long and utter silence, they clattered down again and grated against the hall slate. I glimpsed his dark form passing like thunder in the softly lit hall, then heard the front door open and bang shut I sat as quiet as Casanova under his demure chintz cozy, and devoutly wished that I could be as invisible. My fingers gripped the Bible’s plush covers, seeking to hold onto something, seeking warmth and solidity in a home that suddenly was bereft of both. The cottage clocks tolled the half hour, and still I sat.
When the front door opened softly a bit later, I jumped guiltily. (And I had done nothing!) I looked up to see Godfrey, hands in his trouser pockets and bare head lowered, looking at me.
“I fear that we have scandalized you, Nell,” he said.
I was not sure whether I was relieved or upset that he had remembered my presence at last.
“I have seen Irene’s explosions before.”
“But you have not seen mine.” He came slowly into the room. “She has been this... excitable before?”
“On occasion. Perhaps not so intemperate, but nearly so. It is the operatic inclination to overact. I’m sure that she doesn’t really mean it.”
He walked back to the passage to stare up the stairs. The subdued light formed a halo for the fineness of his profile, but shone enough to illuminate the fresh, sharp strokes of strain on his familiar features.
Abruptly, he started up the stairs, his steps sounding like the house’s heartbeat made audible. My own heart leaped into a Highland fling of anxiety. When Godfrey’s steps stopped suddenly, I was left marooned in the private blood-storm in my head.
Don’t be such a mouse, I told myself. It is only a quarrel. Yet I had never before seen Irene and Godfrey quarrel in any serious sense, and the sight both embarrassed and terrified me.
I crept out into the hall, unable to resist that ominous silence.
Godfrey sat on the uncarpeted wooden stairs, his elbows braced upon his spread knees. The lantern at the newel post painted his comely features with a medieval devil’s shadows and gloom. I came to the foot of the stairs, and he looked up.
“Why are you sitting here?” I asked. “It can’t be comfortable and the bare wood is icy at night.”
“If I go up,” he said, “I will find out whether the door is locked or not.”
“Oh. And if it is?”
His mouth tightened. “It is better that I don’t know. So I will stay here for a while.” His expression softened despite the harsh light. “Go on to bed, Nell. It’s late and our follies are no concern of yours.”
“But they are! I suppose that they oughtn’t to be, that it is none of my business, but—”
“I cannot for the life of me understand why Irene is so set on returning to a place where she was so wounded, where she was ejected from a singing role in mid-rehearsal, and forced by a one-time suitor to flee.”
I eased up one step. “Sometimes Irene is like a child denied Christmas; her heart becomes set on something impossible, and even dangerous to her, because it is forbidden.”
My explanation stopped. How could I tell Godfrey of the Queen’s revelation at Maison Worth? How could I explain that her insatiable curiosity had been roused about the one man who had caused her to overleap herself, to miscalculate, to send her pride plummeting in flight and a humiliating banishment?
“Bohemia,” I added, “happened before she truly knew you,” I said in what I meant to be consolation.
“Exactly!” He pounced upon my humble defense like a barrister before the bar. “What happened in Bohemia that I may not know about? And with whom?”
“Nothing,” I whispered, coming another step closer.
“Can you be certain?’ he asked in a low, fierce whisper that made my own fade.
“Irene could never dishonor you without dishonoring herself.”
“You mean that there is nothing she will not tell me?”
&nbs
p; I paused. Already she had “spared” Godfrey and myself news of some minuscule matters in the course of our adventures. Like all clever people with a gift for stage-managing others in plays of their own making, Irene relished the element of surprise. And certainly she had not mentioned the plea of Queen Clotilde; in fact, she had expressly forbidden me to breathe a hint of it to Godfrey. What was a God-fearing woman to do? My misery must have shown on my face, for Godfrey patted the bare tread beside him.
“Sit down, Nell, before you swoon. It’s not so bad as it looks. I am as likely to be out of temper as the next man, and Irene, as you say, must be allowed her artistic eruptions. I won’t bite, I promise. Sit down and keep me company before I become bitter. I’m told my late father had a black temper, and I have no wish to emulate him at this tardy date.”
I did as he suggested, drawing my skirts close to my knees. We sat there like two naughty children banished to some dark quarter: silent, troubled, yet taking quiet comfort in having a partner in exile.
“We are a flamboyant pair for you, Nell. We shall worry you into an early grave if you take our contretemps so seriously,” he cajoled.
I recognized that his concern for me was distracting him from his puzzlement and anger toward Irene. I may not be a particularly imaginative or dramatic person, but at times I can be useful.
“The devil of it is, Irene’s right. Work for the Rothschilds would enhance our situation. I myself would be the most public beneficiary, for doing their legal and diplomatic groundwork would raise my stock considerably. Irene does require challenging work; I can’t argue with that. And you, Nell, especially, thrive on industry. No doubt we have lounged on the windfall of the Queen’s diamonds long enough.” His palms slapped his knees. “But why Bohemia? I could countenance anywhere on earth except Bohemia!”
“Except also perhaps London and the vicinity of Baker Street,” I suggested.
He nodded. “I could do with less of London—and of Baker Street, as well.”
“And of Monte Carlo, where that odious marquis fenced with Irene."
“I was not enamored of her escapade with the villain, no.”
“And think of Paris, where that vicious Colonel Moran first met us under a pseudonym a child could have seen through, had we only known of his real persona.”
“Ah, Nell, you are too devious for a simple barrister, especially one whose mind is muddled by emotion.” He smiled and took my hand. “Your litany only serves to point out that Bohemias lurk everywhere for the faint of heart and frail of faith. I trust Irene. I admire her. I love her. But sometimes, I could—” He sighed and released my hand.
“It frightens me to see you quarrel so violently,” I confessed of a sudden.
He quieted at once. “I know. It frightens me. This has never happened before. Yet I cannot agree with Irene merely because her force of conviction is so strong. She would lose all respect for me.”
“Then you mean that quarreling is beneficial?"
“Perhaps, in its contrary way, dear Nell, it clears the air.”
I sighed in my turn. “The relations between men and women are most confusing.”
“No, only complex.”
“Godfrey, you are a man—”
“I should hope so.”
“I mean to say, you would be expected to know what another man might think, or feel.”
“It depends upon the identity of the man.”
“Quentin Stanhope, for instance.”
“Oh.”
“You intoned that just like Irene does when she thinks she knows better than everyone.”
“I simply said ‘Oh.’ You mustn’t read anything into that. It’s a lawyerly time-passing device while I endeavor to think without appearing dull.”
“Oh.”
“You see, you do the same thing, and mean nothing by it.”
“I suppose so.”
“What of Quentin?”
“Is it possible that a man... that a gentleman of such fine upbringing and yet unimaginable misfortune in foreign lands, could he possibly... take a liking to someone as beneath him as myself? And why?”
“First of all, you are beneath no one, and Quentin Stanhope knows that better than most.”
“If I am beneath no one, it is because I am no one.”
He snorted in my defense. “I am no one. Sherlock Holmes is no one. The Rothschilds were no one until recently, and so with Charles Tiffany and Charles Frederick Worth and Alice Heine and Sarah Bernhardt. Even Irene is no one, and would be the first to admit it”
“We don’t know, do we, of her antecedents, though. She might be someone. Wouldn’t it be ironic if she were royalty and didn’t know it and the King rejected her wrongly?”
“Don’t recall my immediate irritations, Nell; your job is to distract me, remember?”
I smiled slightly at this mock-stern reminder. “You are wrong about Irene; she would never admit to being no one. She would say we were all Some Ones.”
“The same thing, from a more self-certain angle! And as for Stanhope, Nell, you must understand that he rejected the society life in which you first met him. He has lived as an exile, in wild climes and among strange peoples. He has experienced things you and I cannot imagine—”
“Women,” I said. “Exotic women. I heard reference to these. Why would such a man pretend to a liking for someone as home-bound as myself? Does he mean to mock me?”
“No, no... he means you no harm, Nell. He would be appalled if charged with such intentions.” Godfrey’s expression grew abstracted. “That doesn’t mean that he may not do you harm, unintentionally.”
“But why would he even care, even involve himself to the point where he might unintentionally harm me? I do not understand that, as deeply as you do not understand Irene’s need to duel the past. Quentin Stanhope cannot truly like me!”
“He does, Nell, as we do. Do you doubt us?”
“Not you and Irene. But, if I were to allow myself to think that Quentin’s liking went so far as... fondness. If it was of the sort a man might feel for a woman—why? It cannot be.”
He smiled again. “It is unlikely perhaps. You do not invite men to bear a tender regard for you, but you cannot stop one if he insists upon it.”
“And you think that Quentin... does?”
“I don’t know, Nell. We saw so little of him, and you only know what passed between you. But to answer your first and most pertinent question: yes, Nell, a man of Stanhope’s strange and unconventional life experiences could very well admire a woman who represented the restricted and secure background denied to him.”
“You mean an ignorant and silly woman of no importance, past her prime. But why, Godfrey, why?”
His forefinger tilted up my chin until I was looking directly into his amused gray eyes. “Because she represents a challenge he knows that he can find nowhere else on earth.”
Before I could ask another question, and I had several after this bewildering response, an upstairs door creaked.
We both turned, startled.
Irene’s figure gleamed ghostlike in one dark doorway. She was clad in creamy satin and lace, and her dark hair snaked over her shoulders.
“There you are,” she said as if nothing had happened. “I need help brushing my hair.”.
Despite her nonchalant air, hesitation touched her voice and its characteristic clarity was slightly clogged.
Godfrey and I exchanged a look that said: shall it be you or I?
Still he hesitated, and she waited. I didn’t move, but crouched on the stair like a scullery maid.
“It’s cold on the stair,” Irene noted, the silver-backed brush flashing through the long tendrils curling over her shoulder. “Come to bed.”
Suddenly he was striding upstairs. I expected that to be that, but just before the door closed I heard Irene’s voice again: “Come up, too, Nell, or you shall catch your death.”
I rose stiffly, sighed, then fetched the lamp from the newel post and made my way to my o
wn chamber, where a heated brick set there by Sophie hours before awaited my chronically cold feet.
Chapter Ten
TRIFLING CONDITIONS
The late and trying night so upset my equilibrium that I woke unforgivably late the next morning, my feet as icy cold as the brick within my bed.
I dressed and hurried downstairs, impeded only by Sophie dusting the passage. Irene was in the breakfast room, slathering goose-liver pȃté on thick slabs of crusty French bread with such gusto that she seemed to be conducting an invisible orchestra.
I admired the flourish of her lace-flounced sleeves, then eyed her face. Other than an infinitesimal puffing around the eyes, I could detect no sign of the previous evening’s histrionics.
I decided to beard the lioness in her den directly.
“Where is Godfrey?” I enquired, sitting and snapping the folds from my linen napkin.
“Where he always is this late in the morning,” Irene said, yawning. “Out.”
“Out?”
“In town, of course.”
“Of course.”
“He has business to attend to.”
“Naturally,” said I. “What sort of business?”
“Business... business.”
A platter of French breads and rolls shared the center of the homely wooden table with a crock of butter and an array of jams. I helped myself.
Irene yawned again. As an opera singer, she could accomplish quite awesome yawns.
“Baron Rothschild,” I said, “is inconsiderate of guests who dwell near town.”
“Had Ferrières been open for the Season, we would have stayed the night,” Irene said. “Still, we were rather generously rewarded for keeping such late hours.” Thoughts of the Tiffany corsage glittered in her topaz eyes, like diamonds viewed through a bronze mirror.
“How unfortunate that we shall have to return the lot.” I poured intertwining streams of milk and tea into my country-size cup.
“We shall do nothing of the sort!”
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 11
