A expression of wild exhilaration suffused her dissolute face. She had liked his swift assertion of independence. I realized why in an instant: as a former ballerina, she expected partners to handle her.
Tatyana threw back her disordered head and laughed ecstatically, backing away from Godfrey, her hand fumbling at her breast. In an opera, she would have seized a concealed dagger from her garb and stabbed herself, or him. But Tatyana was a dancer, not a diva, and she had recently enjoyed a most exhilarating romp.
She seized the glorious pearls with which she had bound Godfrey so briefly, and ripped them from her neck.
A shocked silence struck the room and everyone in it. Every eye fixed on the scattering black beads. Even Tatyana’s laughter died, and all that could be heard was the brittle click of falling pearls.
Only when the last one had stopped rolling did gentlemen rush to recover them, pecking about the floor like penguins turned into little red hens.
Godfrey and Tatyana stood frozen in the center of the floor, too fatigued to move, too exhausted and willful to end their dance-to-the-death. I finally thought to look for Irene, and found her, for once in her life, in the same state as I: too shocked to move.
We would not soon forget the evening’s public and private humiliations at Tatyana’s hands: Godfrey forced to dance to another woman’s will... Irene seeing that even her nearest and dearest may suffer for the reckless life she leads.
I facing the wrong assumption that I have always most feared, that, no matter what I do, I will be suspected of being what I am not, a wicked woman.
Chapter Thirty-one
A SLAP IN THE FACE
Into the awful, awesome silence, came the sound of footsteps.
Measured, inexorable, the fall of heavy feet upon marble echoed. The entire company heard, and still did not move, did not turn to stare.
Here, all was bright, yet frozen into a tableau, as if we were all Worth fashion mannequins posed in an elegant setting. Yet I recalled the ponderous advance of the Golem down the darkest streets of Prague.
These oncoming footsteps were as rhythmic as a clock’s ticking, as mortality’s dread tread through the Masque of the Red Death. I was also reminded of Mr. Poe’s heedless aristocrats making merry, while all around them the poor, the old, and the ill succumbed to the plague that raged outside the castle, until Death joined their noble, yet ignoble, company in person.
As the steps drew nearer, drew even with me until I winced involuntarily at each firm footfall, I anticipated a tall, cadaverous figure bearing a scythe.
I was correct on one count only: the form that moved onto the deserted dance floor was tall, though far from emaciated, and wore a red military coat blazing with decorations.
I had been so caught up in this closet drama that I had forgotten the fourth person whose pride Tatyana had recently cast to the ground, like pearls hurled before swine, for the onlookers to judge and find wanting.
Wilhelm von Ormstein, his face the dull scarlet of utter rage, strode into the center of the floor, where Godfrey and Tatyana still stood.
He ignored the Russian woman (though one would think her disordered dress and hair would invite closer inspection), to pause before Godfrey. With the cessation of his steps, time resumed. The stirring of silks, satins, and stiff shirt fronts agitated the air. I see the scene in normal proportion again. We stand in Prague Castle, and its King is about to speak. What he says nearly unwinds time again and impresses new silence on the watchers.
“You, sir... banker.” He addressed Godfrey with curled lip. “You have overstepped the bounds of even a King’s hospitality. I would not ordinarily lower myself to deal with your ilk, but the offense is too deep to ignore. You have insulted my House; I will call you to account personally upon the field of honor.”
“How have I offended, Your Majesty?” Godfrey inquired, quite reasonably.
“Your... dancing offends me.”
Godfrey raised one eyebrow. “Isn’t that a trifling cause for a duel?”
“Not in this case.” The King whirled impetuously to face his guests, swaying on his feet. “Witnesses abound. You have violated my hospitality by your overfamiliar attentions to—to...” He whirled back again, to glance at Tatyana, but his fury was for the man before him. “—the Queen.” A gasp shook the crowd, not because of the nature of the charge, but because of its incongruity.
“I danced a set or two with Her Majesty early in the evening,” Godfrey pointed out. “Surely this is not what has angered Your Majesty.”
“That is exactly it! I take exception to your behavior. You have presumed beyond the limits of my endurance and I will have your h-h-hide for it.”
King Willie swayed again after this pronouncement, a victim of two green and poisonous potions: jealousy and the evening’s punch.
Or course the King’s challenge was transparent: what had maddened him was not Godfrey’s impeccable behavior toward Clotilde and even Tatyana, but the sight of his mistress’s wanton public seduction of another. However, he could hardly challenge Tatyana to a duel, so poor Godfrey must pay the price.
“No!” cried a woman’s voice.
I had no illusion that it was Irene’s, for the timbre was all wrong.
Queen Clotilde came rushing over to the trio, her slippers pattering over the burnished floor.
“No, Your Majesty! I assure you that Mr. Norton’s attentions were not only innocent, but most kind. There is no wrong to right.”
“I am the King,” Willie roared. “I know when my honor has been besmirched. Would I dirty my own hands with such a nonentity were the matter not serious?”
Clotilde was not to be intimidated. She drew herself up, looking quite regal for once. “Sire, that is true, but I am your Queen. If you do not trust my assessment, you taint my own honor.”
The King shook his head as if ridding himself of gnats. “Your honor will be restored when I have revenged it, as I will on the morrow.” He turned to Godfrey again, all righteous outrage, this King who could not trouble himself to court his own wife. “My seconds will call upon you at dawn with news of the site for our meeting. The choice of weapon is yours.”
“I cannot persuade Your Majesty that I have done nothing that merits offense?”
“No.”
“I cannot convince Your Majesty that the dignity of your title will suffer from a duel with a commoner—?”
“No. That is true, but I don’t care. All you can do is prove yourself the coward you are by leaving Prague before tomorrow’s sun comes up.”
Godfrey, as pale and composed as the King was florid and irate, nodded once. “Your seconds may call upon me at the Europa.”
“And what is to be the weapon of your destruction?” the King demanded with a sneer that did not become him.
Godfrey hesitated. I could guess his quandary. The King’s greater height and longer limbs would be to Godfrey’s disadvantage with a sword, not to mention the likelihood of the King’s having studied this art since childhood. On the other hand, the King’s heavier frame and thicker head from the night’s drinking would benefit Godfrey in such a contest.
Before the King could cast another charge of cowardice at Godfrey, a new voice entered the fray, and this one I recognized instantly despite its uncustomary accents of the Queen’s English.
“My fellow countryman,” the bogus Lady Sherlock suggested smoothly, stepping into the vacant space around the three, “is not accustomed to fighting duels. He must have until morning to decide on his weapon.”
“There is little to consider, Lady Sherlock.” The King barely honored Irene with a second glance. (This alone spoke to his sad deterioration since our last encounter; he should have least of sensed some past connection between them, or been struck by her present beauty.) “It must be pistol or sword. I assure you that I am accomplished at both.”
“Well, then—” Irene turned to Godfrey with a shrug. “—make it pistols, Mr. Norton, and the bad business will be soon done.”
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I gasped, uncaring who heard me. Even a parson’s daughter like myself knows that pistols are far more deadly in such meetings. True, a sword has many more chances to mutilate an opponent before the affair is done, while a single pistol shot may pass by, but a bullet that flies home is more often fatal than a cut or a stab.
Godfrey hesitated for an instant longer, no doubt thinking the same thing. Irene’s expression was serene, calm, certain. She had spoken.
“Pistols,” he said, the choice causing a ripple of consternation to shake the previously silent onlookers. This duel would risk the deaths of both men.
Clotilde wailed and fled the scene, but Tatyana stood her ground as she had the entire time, watching the two men with the hungry eyes of a cat eyeing quarreling mice. One way or the other, her bloodlust or her ordinary lust would be satisfied.
“Will any stand up for you?” the King inquired in a tone that expected Godfrey to confess himself friendless.
I held my breath in anxiety that Irene would offer herself for the post, but she remained silent, for once.
“I, Your Majesty,” said a man who stepped forward, “am not personally acquainted with Mr. Norton, but we are fellow Englishmen. I can do no less than serve as his second.”
Worse and worse! This was the vile fellow who had queried me about Lady Sherlock. If he had an interest in Irene, could he be trusted to assist Godfrey in such a crucial role? Of course, he may be ignorant of their connection—unless he was a spy or the King’s agent.
Or Sherlock Holmes!
“And I, Your Majesty,” said another male voice, “am a physician and an Englishman. I will serve as both second to Mr. Norton and doctor, should anyone require the latter services.”
Of course the second second was that ubiquitous Dr. Watson! What a snarl.
“I have my own physicians,” the King announced with a distasteful glance at Dr. Watson’s honest face. He turned to Godfrey. “I suggest that you, sir, consult a physician of the soul before morning.”
He spun on his heel, caught himself from reeling, and stalked away.
Godfrey took advantage of the King’s exit to approach his volunteers, leaving Tatyana bereft of both the men with whom she had toyed so heartlessly.
She did not look in the least annoyed, especially when the hovering gentlemen who had retrieved her broken pearls came rushing over to return what they had recovered. No matter what happened to the men who currently caught her fancy, there would always be a fresh supply of new victims.
Tatyana opened her jet-covered reticule and, one by one, the eager gentlemen tumbled her lost pearls into it like heads into a basket. Madame DeFarge would have found a sister soul had Tatyana been alive in time for the Reign of Terror.
Godfrey, meanwhile, seemed relieved to escape this siren and be dealing with ordinary matters between men of good will, even if they were dangerous.
“Thank you, sirs,” he said to his new friends, shaking their hands heartily.
I could hear no more, for the people around me began to chatter of the events of the evening. I searched for Irene, but could not find her, which I thought rather odd. After a few more exchanges, the sinister stranger parted company with the other men, but Godfrey came toward me, bringing Dr. Watson with him!
“Is this not a fine coincidence?” Godfrey asked before they had quite arrived at my side, pretending we knew nothing of Dr. Watson. “An English doctor in Prague at just the right time to aid me in an affair of honor. May I present Dr. John H. Watson of Paddington. My secretary, Miss Huxleigh.”
“Indeed,” Dr. Watson said. “I’m happy to assist a fellow citizen. How did you get into such a muddle, my dear sir? Your dances with the Queen were the soul of propriety, and you could hardly be blamed for the actions of that brazen hussy in black, though she is—” He glanced over to Tatyana accepting tribute from her pearl-diving gentlemen “—a fine figure of a woman, and no doubt. I have seen only one finer....”
“Of course Mr. Norton was not at fault!” I interrupted the doctor’s rather tiresome reminiscence before it strayed too close for comfort, for only I knew of his and his associate’s secret admiration for Mrs. Godfrey Norton, thanks to rifling his desk and finding the draft of an account of our first encounter with Sherlock Holmes.
Nortons were common enough, but Dr. Watson would have good reason to remember “Godfrey Norton,” though he had never knowingly met him. Luckily, evening dress is a kind of disguise. No doubt the good doctor would not recall our odd interview in his Paddington consulting rooms.
I continued my defense of Godfrey. “Everything makes perfect sense when you understand that this Tatyana woman is the King’s mistress. He could not publicly punish her unseemly behavior, so poor Mr. Norton must pay for it.”
“You are most loyal, Miss Huxleigh,” he said, smiling, “and that is a most fetching and ladylike gown that you wear. My wife Mary would be quite taken with it. I’m sure that you would not under any circumstances engage in unseemly behavior. Indeed, I see that you can hardly bear to describe it. If I am not too bold, may I ask, have we met before? You and Mr. Norton strike me as vaguely familiar, yet I am embarrassed to say I cannot say why.”
“All English people strike each other as familiar in a foreign clime,” I said airily. “I was just thinking to myself that you do not seem a complete stranger. The effect is no doubt the sight of a good English face, especially when trouble has struck out of nowhere.”
Dr. Watson frowned. “Who was that handsome lady who advised you to use pistols, Norton? Another of these bloodthirsty femme fatales? Her coloring was Spanish, and a bit harsh to my taste, but her intonation was pure St. James.”
“A new acquaintance,” I put in again, as eager as Irene to direct the conversation for once. “Her name is Sarah—” There was no hope for it; I had to continue the charade Irene had begun. “—Lady... Sherlock.”
“Sherlock?! You are certain?”
Godfrey and I exchanged a glance that could have been innocent inquiry, but was not.
“So she told us,” Godfrey said. “Do you know her?”
“No, but I know the name.” The good doctor laughed. “As a simple surname, not a title, however. I was unaware of such a title. Still, I am unaware of most titles; my former chamber-mate finds food for much thought in titles, though he is a bohemian fellow who bows before nobody, not even yonder King there. I shall have to ask him.”
“Oh, he is with you?” I asked.
“Not here,” Dr. Watson said shortly, oddly annoyed by my trite social inquiry.
I cannot blame him. I loath small talk as well, but it works wonderfully well to disguise an interrogation.
“Mr. Norton,” he added seriously. “I would advise you to leave Prague and forget this silly affair into which you have been drawn so unfairly, but you do not look a man who would do so. I’ll do all I can to assure fair play on the morrow. Now I must leave to get my rest. I recommend the same to you, with perhaps a tot of brandy before bed, but no more.
“The King has overdrunk tonight and will feel it in the morning. That is not much of an edge when one duels a member of a royal house, who has no doubt been schooled in such skills and shenanigans all his life, but it is something. Good night; and good night, Miss Huxleigh.”
“A fine gentleman by nature,” I commented as he walked away. “A pity that his association with Mr. Sherlock Holmes has led him so astray. Do not trust him, Godfrey. He must know that his friend is indeed here, and in what guise. I suspect your first second.”
“My first second? Of what?”
“Of being Sherlock Holmes in disguise.”
Godfrey’s eyes widened and blinked. “Then I’m done for,” he proclaimed, melodrama in his voice. “No doubt that gentlemen has cast a covetous eye on Irene and will endeavor to see me dead on the morrow. Be honest, Nell: you don’t truly think that we are caught up in such amazing machinations as in a French farce?”
“We are caught up in machinations,” I told him st
ernly, “but I don’t for a moment think that there is anything farcical about them, and, unfortunately in this case, nothing French.”
“A duel?”
Allegra clasped her hands to the beruffled bodice of her combing gown and regarded my friends and myself with star-dusted eyes. She had expected us to regale her with tales of our evening at the castle, but she had not expected anything this exhilarating.
“How utterly thrilling! A duel is something I would expect Uncle Quentin to engage in at least weekly, but now you tell me that Mr. Norton—how many duels have you fought, Mr. Norton?”
Godfrey was at the sideboard of Irene and Allegra’s suite, pouring Dr. Watson’s prescribed tot of brandy—and then some.
“None,” he said.
“None?” Allegra’s elation turned to apprehension. She turned on Irene and myself. “How could you let him do this?”
“No one asked us.” Irene sounded a bit sharp. She sat on the sofa in her crimson gown, inhaling one cigarette after another until she resembled a smudgepot.
“Are you proficient with the pistol, Mr. Norton?” Allegra asked delicately.
Godfrey took a long sip of a libation the color of dried blood. “More than I was a fortnight ago, but not as much as one would hope. I am not worried, however,” he added. “After all, not a single barrister in the Temple could claim that he has been challenged to a duel by a King. I wish I had brought the dueling pistols given me by Baron de Rothschild, though.”
Irene suddenly spoke. “It is not your duel with the King that worries me.”
“No?” I demanded indignantly. “And what should a proper wife worry about, if not her husband’s very life and limb?”
“Not to mention his honor,” Godfrey put in.
Irene struck another lucifer, then shook the small flame out “I worry about our joint duel with Tatyana more.” She eyed her husband. “And that has taken a very nasty and unforeseen turn.”
“Speaking of such nasty and unforeseen events,” I added, eager to follow such a splendid opening, “what of the presence of Dr. Watson? Are you not worried that Mr. Holmes may be lurking about?”
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 35
