Irene’s eyes had taken fire from the duchess’s ambitions. “Why not within the casino? Convert a grand salle to the purpose, or use the theater. Everyone will know where the opera house is, at least.”
“The casino? Art installed within a temple of Champagne and Chance?”
“Is not Art the greatest creation of Chance? And vice versa? And Chance merely another form of Opportunity?”
Alice laughed until her remarkable blue eyes were lost in pleats of wrinkles. “Like Sarah, you let nothing stop you. I cannot even decide whether or not to change the course of Albert’s explorations—quite literally—for no reason, save that it is forced upon me.”
“You must.” Irene had grown still. “And you must also discover more about the Grimaldi sealing wax—its history, manufacture and who might have access to it.”
“Sealing wax, Irene? You are serious? I tremble to ask what Godfrey is up to this evening.”
“He is dealing with ships,” Irene answered with impish promptitude, “while I dispense with sealing wax. Nell may have cabbages, and I will leave kings to you and Sarah.”
“Thank you very much,” said I, “for assigning me a common vegetable.”
“At least it is not rutabaga.” Louise wrinkled her upturned nose.
A knock indicated that the concert was imminent. Louise and I rose to wish Irene luck, although her performing skills were far too formidable to require such haphazard assistance. We followed Alice to a splendid chamber, where a gilded grand piano crouched like a Chinese lion bristling with a curling mane of ormolu. Under the high, painted ceiling was assembled a gay and glittering crowd.
“I am so looking forward to hearing Madame Norton sing,” Louise confided.
“So,” said I, sitting down, “am I.”
It was only when the final applause was fading that my mind drifted to the very different songs that Caleb Winter and Godfrey must be hearing in the smoky waterfront bistros.
Lost in my speculations, I remained seated long after the audience had dispersed. When I shook myself out of my brown study and visited the refreshment table, I found myself utterly redundant. All introductions had been made, all compliments tendered, and all the evening’s clusterings begun.
I drifted by groups speaking rapid French, then surrendered and searched for Louise and Irene. Louise was easy to locate, even with her hair shining under a new halo of henna and her eyelashes blackened with burnt cork. She was a shy moon in Alice’s scintillating social orbit, which circled always around the prince’s dignified figure.
“Where is Irene?” I hissed as I joined Louise.
Surprised, she inventoried the room. “How odd. I last saw her accepting the ardent admiration of a distinguished-looking gentleman. Perhaps in the dressing room?”
I doubted it, but made my way there. The room was empty except for our cloaks and the suffocating scent of roses. Disturbed, I rustled discreetly down halls and peered through open doors. Grand, empty rooms stretched in every direction. I should need a footman to guide me through them.
Yet servants were nowhere to be seen, not even to direct me back to the recital chamber, now hopelessly distant. What if I blundered into some private area of the palace? My cheeks felt feverish. I moved down an uncarpeted hall, my footfalls echoing against the double line of mirrors that reflected my confusion.
A steady murmur reached my ears, and I rushed toward it. Beyond another pair of gilded double doors I found another empty receiving room, and beyond that, another echoing hall accoutered with paintings, mirrors and chandeliers.
The voices still lured like sirens of the Rhine from far away. I fluttered after them, and finally found the sound’s source in a pillar-bracketed niche, wherein rested a massive portrait of the naked Venus dismounting from her clamshell, which was pulled by an odd hybrid of dolphin and horse.
“Irene!”
She turned with a start. “Nell, you have found us.”
Irene was seldom one to state the obvious. I stood blinking, wishing I had worn my pince-nez so that I could put the indiscreet painting quite effectively out of focus, for I can see either far or near, but never both at once.
“Nell, this is Viscount D’Enrique, a cousin of the prince. Miss Huxleigh, a dear friend.”
“A step-cousin of the prince,” this gentleman corrected, bowing deeply.
The viscount was as sleek and animated as the prince was stolid and wooden. Save for the heavy-lidded dark eyes and the beard, they had little in common, and the viscount’s piercing yet veiled regard instilled in me a deep distrust.
“Viscount D’Enrique was showing me the palace art collection,” Irene said.
He lifted her hand for a prolonged kiss upon the wrist. “Madame Norton is the most fabled artwork of all.”
“She is an artist, and thus works very hard and must be off early to bed,” said I tartly, then turned to Irene and added, “Louise is also weary, as am I.”
“The night is but a playful kitten,” the viscount remonstrated, his dark, hidden eyes speaking dark, hidden things. “It will soon stretch its long, black back and become a cat—a panther on the prowl, with the moon for its plaything. Surely you do not propose to take Madame Norton away from me.”
“That is exactly what I suggest. She has obligations.”
“No.” Again his eyes clung to Irene. “No, the world is obligated to her. She owes nothing to anyone but the pleasure of her company.”
Irene was strangely silent, strangely complacent, in the face of this fulsome flattery. Could her recent obscurity have instilled an appetite for recognition that outweighed her ordinary good sense? If so, I must protect her from herself.
“Please, Irene, I have the headache, and Louise is most worried about her fiancé, who may be out late tonight and in who knows what difficulty,” I said pointedly. “We must return to the hotel.”
“The hotel—?” the odious viscount prompted.
“—de Paris,” Irene answered without a qualm. “Where your husband awaits,” said I. “Poor Godfrey.” I turned to the viscount. “As a barrister, he has much taxing work in Monaco, else he would have attended the recital. Godfrey never leaves Irene’s side if he can help it.”
“Apparently none of her friends do either.” His suave comment carried a sting in its tail. “I quite appreciate the sentiment. Adieu then, until—”
“Good night,” said I, sharply, taking Irene’s arm and leading her down the hall. I was still utterly lost but determined to manage a confident retreat, if such a thing is possible.
At the long hall’s end, Irene paused, then turned to the right. “This way, Nell.”
We went through a room, then right again, then left, down a hall, left, right... I can no longer recall the sequence of directions. In short order we had returned to the dressing room, where Louise was waiting with our cloaks.
“Whyever did you waste so much time with that odious man?” I admonished Irene.
She regarded me with amusement. “He is not odious at all, but a gentleman of the old school and cousin to the prince.”
“Step-cousin,” I corrected her, as he had corrected me not long before. “There must be a reason.”
Irene smiled dreamily, reminding me of the empty-headed serenity I had observed in Lillie Langtry as she acknowledged the excessive admiration of her circle of gentlemen. I had never expected Irene to tolerate, much less welcome, such superficial tribute. Perhaps Godfrey was spending too much time in the bistros as Black Otto. I would find some subtle way to warn him that he should keep closer to home. So I resolved as we three made our way back to the hotel by foot.
Alas, I failed to mention to Godfrey the odious attentions of the Viscount D’Enrique, with dire results. This confession, however, is an addendum to my diaries, made from hindsight.
I forgot the viscount for excellent reason: our return to the hotel found a fellow plotter already there, with such shocking news that unseemly palace incidents and the apparently minor issue of the royal se
aling wax simply melted away for the moment.
Chapter Twenty-four
DEAD SAILORS THREE
“Dead?” Irene repeated on the threshold. Her jet-spangled net evening scarf drifted around her face like cloud shadows around a highwayman’s moon. “And Godfrey?”
“Gone,” Caleb Winter muttered, his usually frank eyes cast down.
He, too, had donned seaman’s garb for the expedition. Such rough clothing suited his blunt American features, a mélange of many offshoots of the Anglo-Saxon race. Now, however, his face was ghastly and drawn. His hair dripped mist, or worse, and his pea coat reeked of wet wool and an odd piscine perfume.
“Caleb,” Louise cried, going to him despite his redolent state.
His raised hand stopped her. “No, Louise. No time to waste on me. All I can tell you, Mrs. Norton, is that we found the Indian fellow, Singh, all right, but when we followed him out of The Smoking Pig, we lost him—until Mr. Norton tripped over a mess of wet rags by the strand, only to discover that it was what was left of this Singh.”
“Dead? How?”
Caleb Winter indulged a racking cough before speaking. “Too dark to tell, especially by the sole light of a damp lucifer. Mr. Norton lit many lucifers to permit me to record this—” He pulled a wrinkled paper from inside his pea coat. “I’m a bit of a sketch artist; have to be in my line. He insisted I copy this down. And when some drunkards wheeled past singing ‘Farewell to Liverpool,’ Mr. Norton was up in a flash to join ’em and steer ’em away from me and my morbid work. That’s what I got, that little drawing there, and it’s not the fair piece of work I’d do with decent light and any time on my hands.”
Another cough overtook him. Irene brought the fragile scrap to the table, where she smoothed it out under the glare of a paraffin lamp.
“Another tattoo! And a new design,” she breathed. “That much I can tell at a glance. But what of Godfrey?”
“Off with the sailors. He went willingly, that’s all I can say. I finished my sketch moments later and returned, expecting to find him arrived here before me.”
“How long ago was that, Mr. Winter?”
“Half an hour. When I heard the door, I thought for sure it was he.”
“Not by the door. Black Otto enters by the bedchamber window.” Even as Irene spoke, she hastened to the aperture in question. She returned instantly, shaking her head. “Nothing yet. Nell, some brandy from the sideboard for Mr. Winter. I shall be back in a thrice.” She slipped quickly into the bedchamber.
I was annoyed that my dislike of spirits had caused me to overlook Mr. Winter’s medicinal need for the bracing warmth of brandy. He tossed the liquid down through chattering teeth.
“Did you... encounter some body of water?” I asked. “No, Miss Huxleigh, but when the day’s sun-warmed water meets the night chill, a fog rises from the waves and weaves through every byway, especially near the water. A seaport’s an eerie place, no doubt, threaded through with rogues, foreign folk and wanderers. There’s small elbow room for pistols in those narrow streets, but a knife comes in handy. I wager that’s what did in Singh.”
Louise and I stood rapt at his evocation of the waterfront. When Caleb Winter waxed descriptive, one realized why he followed the newsman’s trade. The brandy had stopped his ague, but suddenly his eyes fixed behind us, as if he’d seen a ghost. I wheeled around.
A silhouette in dark trousers and a pea coat hovered in the bedroom doorway.
“Mr. Norton!” A pulse of relief throbbed in the American’s voice.
“No, Mrs. Norton,” said I, sorry to disappoint him.
Irene briskly strode in, the full lamplight revealing her male-clad figure’s delicacy as compared to Godfrey’s more substantial presence.
“Ready, Mr. Winter? You must show me where you last saw Godfrey.”
He rose, letting the blanket Louise had draped over his shoulders slide to the floor. “You’d pass for a lad in the shadows, but I won’t be responsible for what transpires if a sailor laddie spots a woman in that getup.”
“I don’t expect you to be responsible, Mr. Winter.” Irene produced the smuggled revolver from a side pocket, expertly checking its readiness. “Simply show me where Godfrey left you. I will proceed from there.”
“But that’s where that poor devil Singh lies dead!”
“All the better. I’d prefer to see the body where it fell. And I must examine the tattoo for myself as well. Shall we go?”
He was speechless, a rare condition in an American, I have observed.
“I will go also,” I burst out before they could take a step.
“In a watered-silk gown, Nell?”
“I will change clothes.”
“Mr. Winter is right; women are not welcome in that quarter.”
“I will dress as you do.”
That halted Irene. “An interesting offer, but there is no time to implement it. We must be off immediately. Mr. Winter, are you composed enough to climb down the trellis below the bedroom balcony?”
“I have not had that much brandy.”
“I meant the depredations of the evening.” Irene smiled and led him into the bedchamber.
I followed, Louise trailing me as speechlessly as her American suitor.
“Irene! What if Godfrey returns and you are gone?” I asked as she leaned over the balcony to verify a clear coast below.
“Then he will wait until we return also.”
“What if he insists on going after you two?”
She swung a leg over the stone balustrade as casually as a man swings astride a horse. “Then we shall chase each other all night until dawn comes, when we cannot fail to find one another.”
Her cap-covered head slipped below the railing. I rushed to the window, seeing only her gloved hands clutching the bottom of the balustrade. “What if Godfrey does not return?” I demanded in a hoarse whisper.
“Then we shall not, until we have him,” came the diminishing answer. Mr. Winter catapulted over the railing as soon as Irene had vanished. I heard much agitation among the flowering vines below, and then silence.
“Oh, Nell,” Louise whispered at my back, “are they all mad? I should kill myself if my muddled affairs were to cause Caleb’s death! Or Mr. Norton’s death, or Mrs. Norton’s, of course.”
“Nonsense,” said I, turning. “They also serve who only stand and wait upon the weaker among us. You’ve tried to kill yourself once and for less reason, and it did not go well. Now sit down and have some brandy, and do not bestir your mind or your body until they have all returned safe and sound.”
Louise knew my uncompromising tone by now and went meekly to an armchair. She accepted the glass of brandy I brought and sipped it as if it were milk, but then these French introduce their children to wine at a shockingly early age.
“It is so awful to wait, Nell,” said she. “What will you do?”
I sat at the table. “First, I will copy over this unsightly drawing onto a fresh sheet of paper. Your Mr. Winter shows a talented hand, but I fear he was forced to use his knee as a sketch pad.”
“What... what is the tattoo like?” she asked tremulously.
“Come and see,” said I, knowing that curiosity is the first sign of a reviving morale. She did so.
“It is a whole, brand-new letter that your fiancé has discovered. No wonder that Godfrey wished to ensure that he worked undisturbed. You see, under all these wriggling curlicues there lurks the noble ‘N’.”
“Oh,” wailed Louise, sinking onto a chair beside me in tears.
“What is it now?”
“ ‘N’ as in N-N-Norton.”
“ ‘N’ as in ‘no, not likely.’ They will be all right. They have always been all right. It is you and I who are in danger, my dear girl, in danger of being ninnies. I must enter this latest episode into my diary. Perhaps you could compare this new tattoo to the others I keep here, between the pages. Some people store pressed flowers within their diary pages, but, no, I must harbor tattoos. It
is quite a topsy-turvy world, Louise, as you will discover when you have been in it longer. Now, we must try to make some sense of this new clue, so that we have something to show for our time when the others return.”
Chapter Twenty-five
A CONSPIRACY OF CRETANS
Within an hour, time proved me to be not only a model of sensible decorum, but a prophet, although we had failed utterly to make any sense of the “N.”
A veritable sirocco in the greenery brought Louise and myself rushing to the bedchamber window. Up they came, scaling the trellis like long-lost monkeys: Irene first, then Mr. Winter and, at last, Godfrey!
Louise embraced me with a happy gratitude as pleasant as it was misplaced. I had done nothing to ensure the prodigals’ return; I had only occupied her mind during their absence. To the young, that can seem miraculous.
Godfrey and Irene closeted themselves in the bedchamber to change clothes while we three waited impatiently in the parlor. Irene emerged first, wearing a voluminous violet taffeta wrapper. Shortly afterward came Godfrey in his emerald brocade smoking jacket. With Black Otto’s features rinsed away at the washstand, he looked as if he had risen from a sound sleep instead of from a chill, roistering night on the wharves. He pronounced himself no worse for wear, save for too many toasts with cheap rum among his sailor friends.
“My first object was to lead them away from Singh’s body, but then I couldn’t escape. Convivial, custodial arms thrown around shoulders, toasts shouted to the wickedest captains of the seven seas and all that. I did learn where our Gerry lifts his tankard. We can seek him out tomorrow if our heads will stand it.”
Caleb Winter groaned but took another tot of brandy anyway. Cold had painted his nose a cherry-red, or perhaps the brandy had. “I’ve never before seen a dead man; no, not in all my reporting years.”
The Adventuress (v5) Page 22
