Another Scandal in Bohemia (26 page)

The next pressing question was whether the King of Bohemia would approach the mysterious guest or she would pay her courtesies to him first.

I watched his golden head bobbing above other, less lofty heads, even topping the ladies’ wafting aigrettes. Its course, however circuitous, made for the Dark Lady who moved through that gay mélange of gowns as a black swan parts the pale water lilies with its stately, self-absorbed passage.

“We dare not go too near, lest we give away the game,” I warned myself as much as Godfrey.

He agreed in a soft murmur, but guided me closer nevertheless. He may have missed Irene’s operatic performances, but he was not about to miss her next encounter with the King of Bohemia!

Still, we kept to the fringes of the crowd, which gave way to Irene as it would to the Wicked Fairy Godmother at Sleeping Beauty’s christening, with a nervous respect.

She was, in fact, the uninvited one, but she had come despite it, on her own terms: back to Bohemia.

Allegra, who kept to Irene’s rear like a dutiful daughter, or niece or sister or handmaiden, saw us suddenly. Her face brightened, then she doused her natural excitement with a bushel of false disinterest. We four must not speak until we were alone. Yet seeing us had reassured Allegra, I noticed. New to Irene and her escapades, Allegra must have undergone a tremendous shock during this past week of travel and subterfuge.

I really cannot say who came round to whom at last. I only know that the rulers of Bohemia and my friend Irene Adler came face to face in a large circle of cleared marble floor, as might would-be dance partners or duelists. Allegra at Irene’s rear could have played a shy second, and the royal couple were backed by a glittering host of guests and subjects.

Both the King and Queen had seen Irene as Irene, the Queen most recently. I admired my friend’s theatrical talents—and she was a past mistress of disguise if not of Kings—but could even she hoodwink those who knew her?

Irene swept into a lavish, low curtsy, fit for Windsor and its Widow, but unnecessary for foreign monarchs. She said nothing. Her face betrayed no emotion. Yet I saw a subtle mockery in that supposed subservience. Irene could never look properly subdued.

She was upright as swiftly as she had bowed, so the curtsy seemed an illusion. The King and Queen were left looking as if they had neglected to offer her a fit counter courtesy.

“Lady Sherlock,” the King said slowly, as if tasting the foreign syllables. Not so foreign! He had employed Sherlock Holmes, after all. Oh, Irene, must you always cut risk so thin? “I am not familiar—” he began.

“I should hope not, Your Majesty,” Irene intoned in perfect upper-crust accents. She sounded more British than the Queen. “I have not been about much, until recently. I am, you see—” Her expansive gesture, hands and fan spreading, indicated her gorgeous yet dramatic attire. “—a recent widow.”

He nodded as slowly as he spoke, as a man in a dream or a nightmare, or one who dreamed that he might meet such a woman in a nightmare. “A widow, like your Queen Victoria. I am sorry.”

“Thank you, Your Majesty,” she said demurely, smiling as she turned to Queen Clotilde. “I am enchanted to meet Your Majesty, and to see your lovely city of Prague.”

Thank you,” the Queen parroted, unaware. She too spoke in slow syllables, as if tangled in the heavy black cloak of Irene’s presence. “Lady Sherlock, Prague welcomes you and your... sister?”

Allegra stepped forward like the good, well-spoken child I had briefly had a hand in rearing her to be. She curtsied most docilely. If Irene was the Red Queen gone black, Allegra made an adorable Alice in Wonderland.

“Yes, Your Majesty. I am Allegra Turnpenny.”

“How kind of you, child, to accompany your sister in her bereavement, and how fortunate she is to have a cheerful, young boon companion like yourself,” the Queen said in a wistful but stately monotone.

Irene and Allegra exchanged the kind of glance that Godfrey and I had employed before their arrival.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” Allegra said gravely.

Irene only inclined her head, as if signaling the royal couple to be on their way rather than accepting their taking leave of her.

King and Queen continued their progress around the room, while Irene made her own regal advance to the refreshments table, apparently at the behest of Allegra. Godfrey and I watched them go, bemused.

“You are English, is that not true?” an imperious accented voice suggested behind us.

We turned to find a tall, russet-haired woman attired in deep sapphire blue encrusted with gilt and silver thread.

Ordinarily I would have found her elegance overwhelming, but Irene’s entrance had put all other women in eclipse. A certain sour expression that marred this stranger’s otherwise lovely face suggested that she, too, realized this.

“English indeed,” Godfrey said with another elegant bow. There is nothing like arguing before the Bar to imbue a man with a courtly manner. In this Godfrey matched every actor on the London stage, and this stood him in splendid stead in elevated company. “I am Godfrey Norton, a banister who represents the Rothschild interests, and this is my secretary and colleague, Miss Penelope Huxleigh.”

“Miss Huxleigh, Mr. Norton,” the stranger murmured, although her eyes looked restlessly beyond us. “I am Tatyana,” she declared haughtily, as if the one name should suffice. “Do you know this Wilde woman?”

For a moment we were both nonplused into silence, not realizing that the woman was using Irene’s false surname, rather than an adjective.

“Lady Sherlock,” I supplied in the nick of time, to remind Godfrey of whom this Tatyana spoke.

“Yes,” our interrogator said. “This Lady Sherlock appears to enjoy the limelight. What do you know of her?”

“Nothing,” said I, too quickly.

“Very little,” Godfrey added smoothly. “I have only heard that she is quite wealthy, now that she is a widow.”

“Wealthy and a widow. A potent combination.” Tatyana did not look pleased. “She has certainly made a great impression on the King.”

"Perhaps,” I put in, “he is in an impressionable position.” The woman looked blood-brown daggers at me.

“All monarchs are in an impressionable position. It is in their interest that they know who seeks to impress them, that is all. Is she an adventuress, this Lady Sherlock?”

I was struck speechless at this bald attack on Irene’s character, even under a pseudonym, but Godfrey replied quickly.

“All beautiful women are adventuresses, are they not, Madame Tatyana?”

For an instant those restless maroon eyes paused on Godfrey, but I do not think they truly saw him. They really followed the distant form of the King. Or the Queen. Or Irene. “Perhaps. I am Russian,” she declared in a kind of non sequitur. “I am dangerous no matter what role I play. You will excuse me—”

She was gone in a flounce of flashing embroidery.

Godfrey smiled ruefully. “Irene has accomplished exactly what she intended. She has attracted all the wrong kind of attention. I would not be surprised if the Golem himself crashed through that window and asked her to waltz.”

“Oh, Godfrey, what a notion! The day that Irene and the Golem of Prague go for a gallop around the room, I shall... I shall—” I could think of no eventuality dire enough.

“Please do not do anything foolish, dear Nell,” Godfrey advised, taking my arm. “Irene has cornered that proclivity.”

He led me to the refreshment table, where he plied me with anonymous abominations. Despite his distracting maneuver, I saw what he saw that night: a subtle social gavotte of heads pale and vivid—of the blond King and Queen weaving in and out of the crowds; of Irene’s bold black in pursuit or evasion, and of the red-headed Russian woman’s advance and retreat; of the entire assembly fading to bland beige and only those signal colors active on the chessboard of this occasion.

And Godfrey and I? Were we bland, faceless pawns? Or bishops in disguise awaiting our chance to hopscotch across the playing field and make our mark?

I can only describe that entire evening as odious. The sole shaft of hope was the wholesome figure of young Allegra reveling in the entire sordid scene as if it were a mad tea party and she were the impromptu hostess.

Godfrey and I returned to the Europa in silence, both mulling over the disturbing implications of the evening.

He must of course weigh the worth of his wife’s charade in the Rothschild quest. I mused upon the many risks of recognition Irene and I faced that night, and of how we had sailed through them all in good order. Had I changed as much as Godfrey said? If so, I was an adventuress as well, because of my deceptive appearance.

Had Irene truly deceived both King and Queen? Were the royal pair so unobservant? Perhaps they were, if they thought they viewed inferior beings. Don’t all royalty possess myopia in that respect? That may be why they are the easiest of all to dupe.

At the hotel, Godfrey insisted that I join him in his sitting room, after he had paused below to order a magnum of champagne.

“I do not imbibe, Godfrey,” I reminded him when I arrived after freshening my toilette and saw the massive cloth-wrapped bottle reclining like a swaddled infant in its cradling stand.

“No,” he said, grinning, “but Irene expects a postperformance celebration, and I believe that Allegra is not averse to a bit of bubbly now that she is free of the family mansion.”

“You expect them to repair here?”

“I expect them to retreat here, boasting of their victories on the reception room floor. I arranged accommodation for them at the Europa, but not under Irene’s proper—” He regarded me and lilted a dark eyebrow “—improper name. I corrected that omission just now. No doubt you will wish to satisfy yourself that Miss Allegra has sustained no damage during her long journey with an adventuress.”

“Allegra, yes! Poor lamb... she looked quite bedazzled by the goings-on.”

‘Trust me, Nell. She will be doing the bedazzling before long. Well! What did you think of the King and Queen?”

“What I always thought of them. I am no fickle sail to flirt with every wind. He is... pompous. Insufferably self-sure and will run to fat in middle age. She... is... a sad creature, saddled with that arrogant man, but of course no rival to Irene in any real sense. Blue blood hardly can compete with—”

“Sheer gall. You are right, Nell. Irene has outfaced them all, and they none the wiser. Or are they? Has our Lady Sherlock deceived them as thoroughly as she thinks? Pride goeth before a fall, and Irene has much pride to tumble from.”

“She has earned it,” I said stoutly, or stiffly. “Still, I abhor seeing her back on this blasted ground. If the Rothschild commission were not so... generous—”

“And Irene not so curious—”

“Why do you say that?”

“It is obvious, Nell.” He flipped up his coat-tails to sit upon a side chair. “Irene does not give a fig for the Rothschild commission. She’s rather attached to the Tiffany corsage, but she could forgo even that in an instant. What she is insatiably curious about is the King and his new Queen. Even you could see that. A child could.”

“Godfrey. I resent your comparing me to a child.”

He smiled sadly. “Sometimes you are, you know. I loathe pricking your illusion, but it is likely—no, certain—that Irene is here in Bohemia on a quest into her past, not on Rothschild business.”

“Godfrey, you shock me!”

“I don’t mean to, but I must be a realist. You know little of the world, Nell. It is your greatest charm. Why do you think I come here, to this forsaken corner of the world, in my borrowed evening dress, with my crippled cane, which is also a sword, all at the boon of the Rothschilds? I must either come and play the game, or be left behind. I much prefer an active role in my own doom.”

“Godfrey! How can you say such things! Irene would never abandon you. Or me. She has her own peculiar morality, it is true, but I have never known her to hurt another soul who did not deserve it.”

“Who deserves the hurt of an imperious integrity?” he asked rhetorically. “Her integrity will be the death of us, mark my word. I understand that she would do nothing to hurt us, but neither will anything stop her in her pursuit of the truth. And thus can she hurt as indirectly.”

A discreet knock at the chamber door prevented me from replying.

I opened to admit a more fantastic figure than we had seen at the reception. Irene’s black evening cloak was swirling folds of damask velvet foaming at hem and throat with midnight ostrich feathers. A black net scarf sprinkled with jet, diamante, and tiny feathers covered her falsely raven hair, and became something of a redundancy. Behind her flickered the pale mothlike shadow of Allegra in a white mohair evening cape.

Irene swooped over the threshold, a hundred ostrich feathers trembling with every step.

“Brava!” Godfrey declaimed, greeting her with a brimming flute of champagne. “Even I barely recognized you.”

“Really!” she exclaimed in delight. “That is indeed the true test of disguise.”

I saw and heard no more, for impetuous Allegra had launched herself at me in a fit of girlish greeting that was as surprising as it was uncalled for.

“Oh, dear Miss Huxleigh! It is so nice to acknowledge you at last! We have had such a jolly journey from Paris. Most exciting. Is that really a Liberty silk? You are becoming quite, quite advanced in your dress. I did so long to speak to you and—” She turned to include Godfrey in her enthusiasm, and I looked for him as well.

He and Irene had twined arms to sip from each other’s champagne flutes and stood gazing into each other’s eyes with an exclusivity that left both Allegra and me feeling like an unwanted audience.

She had the wit to lower her voice on her next outburst. “Mr. Norton looks divinely dashing as well! Of course, he always did, as did dear Uncle Quentin, only distance and time do seem to make men more... interesting. Why is that so, Miss Huxleigh?”

“I believe that the change is in the observer, not the observed.”

“Not always! Look at Uncle Quentin. A foreign spy, fancy that. Or rather, a spy on foreign soil. There. But we are spies, too. Irene has made that plain. What a fascinating creature she is.”