He moaned and I leaped back, my skirts brushing against my shoes like a swiftly drawn theatrical curtain swaying over the boards. My heart beat in the same breathless rhythm.
“He will not bite, Nell. Quite the contrary. Sophie was unable to get even a leek gruel down him.”
“Leek gruel! I can hardly blame the man. An invalid should have barley soup and custards, not some foreign fluid made from disgusting bulbs.”
My indignation must have stirred the sick man. I heard another moan from the bed, and then—to my chagrin—my own name was intoned, or slurred, rather.
“Miss... Huxleigh.”
I leaped backward like a scalded cat, despite Irene’s promise that he would not bite. Who was this man? How dare he know me when I did not know him? Was it some kind of dreadful trick?
Irene’s warm hand took my icy one in a firm grip, the only grip she ever used. “He cannot hurt you, Nell, but obviously you have inspired some powerful memory. Think! If he has been poisoned and should die, you may be the clue to his past, and to the poisoner. Is there anyone you have not seen in some years?”
“M-my late father.”
“Someone alive, or presumed dead, perhaps. Someone from Shropshire?”
I had not thought of the county of my upbringing for many years. “No one from Shropshire would come to such a condition as this.”
Irene’s grip loosened in disappointment. “Oh, come now. As I remember, you yourself had come to a sorry state in London when I met you, only—what?—three years from Shropshire’s genteel safety. You had been wrongly dismissed from your position, had no lodgings, no food... indeed, had I not intervened you might have become as hungry and ill as this man.”
Her words prodded me closer to the bed. Was there truly someone I knew beyond this intimidating appearance? Someone from Shropshire? Or who had left Shropshire before I did?
My heart stopped. At least my hand, which had come to rest over that organ, could feel no flutter in the general vicinity.
“Yes, Nell?” Irene urged, her voice the intense hiss of a demonic barrister conducting a cross-examination. “What have you remembered?”
“Not... what. Who.” I whispered, as she did, not because it was a sickroom, but because I hardly dared credit the notion that invaded my mind.
I leaned nearer the semiconscious man. Could this be what had become of my once-attentive curate, the sole man ever to have courted me in any manner, however tentative? Could this be Jasper Higgenbottom, returned from converting the heathens of Africa, himself converted to sun and turbans and the scent of alien spices?
“Nell?” Irene shook my hand, which she still clutched.
“Er, no. This is no one I remember. The ears are wrong.”
She leaned over me to inspect these organs.
“What is wrong with them?”
“N-nothing. These are quite well shaped and discreet. The person of whom I was thinking had far more prominent—and unfortunate—ears.”
“Oh. A shame. And did this large-eared person of your acquaintance abandon Shropshire for a foreign land?”
“Yes.”
“And why have you never mentioned this interesting globe-trotter from your past?”
“Because he was not! Interesting. I am sorry, Irene, but he was my father’s curate for a time, and rather tedious, I fear. I am certain that he is still being tedious in Africa. But he is not here.”
The patient reached up a hand of bronze. “Miss Huxleigh,” he murmured.
I blushed.
“Most intriguing.” Irene sat on the edge of the bed, her brow furrowed in concentration. “Whenever you go on one of your governess tirades he calls your name. Obviously, the sound of your voice as well as your appearance rings a bell with him. Could it be the schoolroom bell? Could this be a former charge?”
“Irene! I may be past thirty, and some of my erstwhile charges may be twenty or so, but I assure you that this man is not one of them.”
“No.” She regarded him cold-bloodedly. “It is hard to tell, of course, but I would guess him to be our age.” She quirked a brow in my direction.
“Perhaps.”
The sick man lashed his head from side to side, as fever victims do when trying to elude the heat and pain of their malady. I unthinkingly picked up the damp cloth Sophie had left in a Sèvres basin and dabbed at his forehead.
“Mary,” he said suddenly.
I gave Irene a triumphant look and wrung the cloth out over the basin. “You see. Huxleigh is not a unique name. It is Mary Huxley, poor woman, who chafes his mind.”
“Hmm.” Irene looked unconvinced. She rose with a sigh. “Since you are doing nurse duty, you might as well tend him until dinner. Godfrey can stand watch then, and I shall take the first part of the night.”
“You have given yourself the bitterest hours. He will be most restless then.”
Irene grinned impishly. “He will also be most talkative. Call me if his condition should worsen.”
She was gone, leaving me with a cloth dripping onto my sleeve cuff and a delirious stranger on my hands.
“I see her game, of course,” I told my indifferent charge as I swabbed his face again. I was getting quite used to the sun-darkened skin, despite the man’s obvious English origin. No wonder Irene was curious; this man must have quite a tale to tell should he live to murmur more than a few ambiguous names.
“She hopes that I will meditate upon your features and recognize you from mere proximity. But I shan’t.”
I sat back in the straight chair by the bedside to watch and wait. His face had turned toward my voice, although his eyes had remained shut, an arrangement I much preferred.
“Mary,” he murmured again.
A name infinitely more common than Penelope, I reflected smugly. For once Irene the Female Pinkerton was utterly on the wrong track.
“Little Mary,” he repeated, stirring my sympathy, for the man obviously spoke of a child. “And Allegra.”
This name caused me to sit up straighter. Allegra Turnpenny had been one of my charges during my last position of governess a decade before, at the end of the ’Seventies... and a Mary Forsythe was one of her little friends who had come to the house on Berkeley Square!
“And Miss Huxleigh,” he went on in a mumble that I was thankful Irene was not present to hear. “Berkeley Square.” Suddenly I knew! I leaned forward, studying these altered features for any trace of their original expansive merriment. There was none. Yet, oh, I was grateful for Irene’s pragmatic “privacy.”
For somewhere beneath this weather-worn mask lay the face of my charges’ young uncle, Mr. Emerson Stanhope, who had gone so gaily off to war in a dazzling red uniform. Who had once played a surprise game of blindman’s buff with me in the schoolroom and touched my naive heart with a deathless and most inappropriate hope for one who was far above my station.
The door to the chamber swung slightly ajar. I started as if caught filching handkerchiefs. A shadow tumbled in from the passage. Lucifer swaggered over to the sickbed, then bounded onto my lap.
For once I felt no urge to instantly unseat the beast, but let him curl into my skirts and proceed to purr and rhythmically dig his claws against the grain of my plaid wool skirt. I drove my fingers into his long hair as into a muff and finally felt warmth tinge my fingertips as shock eased into a kind of stupor.
And so I was when Godfrey entered the chamber an hour and a half later.
“All well?” asked he.
“He has not stirred,” said I, picking up the sleeping cat and slipping from the room.
If Godfrey noticed anything odd in my manner and gazed after me, I did not look back to see.
Chapter Seven
DELIBERATE DEATH
“How did your vigil go last night?” Godfrey asked in his most persuasive baritone at breakfast the next morning. He lifted a small crystal jar. “Would you care for some marmalade!”
“Quite peacefully,” I replied, taking the marmalade jar. “And how
are the sausages this morning?”
“Excellent,” said he. “So there was no disturbance to your patient?”
“None at all. Slept like a lamb. Would you care for some ham?”
“No, thank you.”
“And did the patient have an episode during your watch?”
Godfrey shook his dark, handsome head almost regretfully. “Nothing. He did not even call out your name.”
“How disappointing. Is there any honey? Ah, thank you. And, Irene... did she mention anything significant occurring when she returned from her time on duty?”
Godfrey paused in dosing a croissant with a dollop of pale, sweet country butter. “Ah... it was rather late. We had other matters than your mysterious gentleman to, er, discuss.”
“Truly? I cannot imagine Irene being distracted from a mystery so near at hand for anything.”
Godfrey shrugged with masculine modesty. “She was fatigued, no doubt, from her late hours sitting up with the sick man.”
“And she did not report any delirious revelations?”
“She reported delirium, but no revelations,” Godfrey said at last with the hesitant air of a man conveying the exact truth in an utterly different context from the one under discussion.
“Then it has been a most unproductive night,” I summed up, biting as daintily as possible into my condiment-laden roll. I dislike the taste of French baking, which is much overrated by the easily led, and have been forced to resort to disguising the dough with sweets.
“I would not say that the night was unproductive.” Irene swept into the small breakfast chamber in a blonde lace combing mantle, her russet hair rippling over her shoulders.
It occurs to me that during the years I have recorded Irene’s adventures, or rather, recorded my adventures while living with Irene, that my descriptions of her coloring have varied. For some annoying reason, the exact shade of Irene’s hair, even her eye color, shifts with the hour of the day, the hues of her clothing and the range of her moods.
Beyond being a gifted actress, she is a human chameleon upon whom the light plays tricks, sometimes painting her hair auburn, at other times brunette. Her eyes have that fascinating tiger’s-eye quality of mellowing to orbs of honeyed amber and darkening to coffee-dark brown when her pupils swell with agitation.
That gay, green June morning in Neuilly Irene was nevertheless a walking palette of autumnal hues, as warming as well-steeped tea.
She accepted the coffee cup that Sophie instantly brought her and poured several dollops of clotted cream into it, carelessly stirring the mess with the nearest utensil, a fork. Could the Beauties of Europe watch Irene eat whatever pleased her, there would be more than ground glass in her rouge pot, as happened once in the dressing rooms of La Scala.
“Well, my dears.” Irene looked brightly from Godfrey to me, unaware of the current day’s aura. “And have you been comparing notes on our patient’s progress? What do you think?”
“That you hardly look as if you had sat up half the night,” I answered tartly.
I had slept barely at all after the strain of fleeing the sickroom and then toying with the dinner that had followed under Irene’s formidable scrutiny.
Irene smiled. “Oh, I was up more than half the night at that, Nell, but I haven’t worried about confessions I must make in the morning, as you have.”
“What confessions?”
“You might start,” she suggested, sipping the scalding coffee with true American bravado, “by telling us the identity of the sunburnt hero upstairs.”
“What makes you think that Nell knows?” Godfrey asked.
“Why do you call him a hero?” I demanded simultaneously.
She blinked and stared from one of us to the other.
“My, but we are testy this lovely morning. To answer your questions: Nell has always known the man, Godfrey; she simply did not recognize him until last evening.” Irene addressed me next. “As for his being a hero, I found a medal concealed in his shoe. What do you say to that?”
I sipped my tea, which had cooled to tepid peppermint consommé. “That I am relieved to learn that the fellow actually wore shoes.”
Irene laughed delightedly. “You are doing a splendid job of pretending ignorance, but I could tell from your manner last evening that something troubled you. Surely only knowing the identity of the sick man could deaden your palette to Veal Malmaison.”
“I suppose he revealed that while you were sequestered with him later?”
“Alas, no. He was as irritatingly mum on the subject then as you are now.”
“Perhaps it’s a conspiracy,” Godfrey suggested, “between our Nell and the mysterious stranger from the East.”
“You are a cold-blooded pair,” I put in, “to show such curiosity about a man who may be dying from some subtly administered poison.”
“A hatpin is hardly subtle, Nell,” Irene corrected me. “And I think that the poison it bore is not fatal to this particular victim. Besides,” she added blithely, shaking her napkin free of pastry flakes, “his fever broke in the night. I expect him to be perfectly intelligible this morning.”
I could not keep from jumping in my chair. “Why did you not say so the first thing? We must let the poor man know where he is, so he does not panic.”
Irene’s warm hand covered my icy fist like a tea cozy. “He will not panic. He knows he is among friends.”
I was about to ask how this could be, but feared I would not like the answer. So we finished breakfast—or my friends did. I had suddenly lost my appetite, as I had last night at dinner.
“I do believe I know him,” I admitted at last, “but he has changed so much...”
“Perhaps you have as well,” Irene said almost consolingly.
“I? Not in the least, I’m sure. After all, he recognized me, not vice versa.”
“Do you wish to tell us of him?” Godfrey inquired.
“I would rather let him speak for himself,” I said firmly. “He has changed so greatly that I dare not speculate on why or how.”
“What a shame!” Irene smiled tigerishly. “Speculation is one of the few truly creative entertainments left to our modern times. I have been concocting plots on an operatic scale. I would hate to have our guest destroy them with the simple, dull truth.”
We finished breakfast, each in our way, and repaired upstairs to confront the invalid. There he lay, brown upon the bed linens but pale in an inner, spiritual sense. Perhaps the breaking fever had also washed away his resolve.
Sophie made a self-important to-do about fluffing pillows and propping him up against them so he could speak with us. Despite the snowy nightshirt he wore, or because of it, his skin seemed strikingly dark, though his eyes no longer held the unnatural luster of illness.
He spoke in that disconcertingly perfect English while the rest of us studied his remarkable appearance in silence.
“I apologize for inflicting myself upon your household. The maid tells me that you plucked me from collapse upon the cobblestones of Notre Dame.”
Irene pounced. “Then you speak French, for our servant speaks no English.”
He looked taken aback at this challenging response to his apologetic beginning, but added in the language of this land, “Yes, Madame, I speak French. Yet in any language I must apologize for casting myself upon the mercy of strangers. I cannot imagine what weakness came over me.”
“Can you not?” Irene did not sound even slightly merciful at the moment. “Come, come, sir. You dissemble.”
“D-dissemble?”
“Or, as the plain folk put it, you lie. At the least you mean to mislead us. You have suffered from fever for some time.”
“But not in this climate, not so far north. Is this what you mean by deception, Madame?” He was more bewildered than defensive.
“Not at all. There is also your insistence that we are strangers to you.”
“But—” He eyed Godfrey and Irene with rather pitiful confusion. “You are.”
“And Miss Huxleigh—whose name you have called out not once but several times in your delirium?” Irene pointed to me at a moment when I most would have liked to sift through the floorboards into safe invisibility downstairs. “What is she to think of you now calling her a mere ‘stranger’?”
“Really, Irene,” I murmured. “The gentleman is quite correct.”
The man’s gaunt face had stiffened like a soldier’s on parade. “I may have said a great deal of nonsense in my delirium. They do not call it ‘senselessness’ for nothing.”
“On the contrary.” Irene drew a side chair to the bed the better to interrogate her victim. “You have not forgotten an iota of what you said while raving. It is merely that with a cool head again, you are prepared to deny it.”
“I cannot blame you for thinking me a liar and rogue, considering the circumstances in which you found me. Give me my robes and I’ll be gone.”
“Oh, I cannot in good conscience do that,” Irene murmured. “You are too ill.”
“And this is how you treat an ill man, Madame?”
“This is how I treat a prevaricator, sir, well or ill. If you will not answer my questions frankly, I will be forced to bully the answers out of Miss Huxleigh.”
The patient’s eyes gleamed with fresh spirit. “I do not know what position this unfortunate lady occupies in your establishment, but she does not have to suffer such mistreatment.”
“As I thought. You seek to protect her—now, and by your continuing silence about yourself.”
A silence ruled the room. Godfrey had watched the exchange with the same sharp attention he would give to a rival barrister’s cross-examination, as if more were going on than was evident. I myself was embarrassed by Irene’s rough accusations. Yet she had hit a nerve. For the first time I saw color flush that dusky visage.
The man sighed. “You overestimate the chivalry that I am capable of at this point in my life,” he said wearily. “It is far more likely that I seek to protect myself.”
“And your identity,” Irene prodded. She smiled and leaned back in the chair. “My dear sir, you have in the past few hours escaped a horrible and intentional death. Can the truth of your identity be worse than that fate?”
A Soul of Steel (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 5
