Another Scandal in Bohemia (60 page)

“Thank you, Allegra,” I said with dignity. “Of that I am sure.”

Then Godfrey’s arm on my elbow was guiding me into the narrow passage that led to my compartment. He eyed it expertly, then sat my carpet bag on one of the facing seats.

“A first-class compartment, as ticketed,” he noted with approval. “At least you will be undisturbed on your long journey.” He doffed his hat to lean forward and enfold me in yet another embrace! One would think I was bound for the Black Hole of Calcutta.

“Thank you for your usual invaluable assistance in Prague,” he said softly. “We are lucky to have whisked Irene away from that muddle. And thank you for understanding that Irene and I require a recreational escape to Vienna.”

What could I say? Very little, as I was consumed by a fit of choking for some reason. I merely nodded bravely. That seemed to satisfy Godfrey, who grinned at me, clapping my shoulders in a most comradely way, and left me to my large compartment.

I immediately sat and arranged myself at the window. Through boas of steam I saw Irene and Allegra standing side by side, waving and making all the idiotic motions one does to departing travelers who can see but cannot hear one. I pantomimed back. Soon Godfrey’s tall form joined them. They looked a happy family there—he and she and young Allegra, almost like father, mother, and daughter— though Irene would not have thanked me for that thought.

I felt—and likely looked—like the departing governess being granted a fond farewell while her erstwhile family goes on to new and separate adventures.

The comparison was unworthy of me. No doubt I was feeling some self-pity, for watching my friends slide away with the train’s first jerking motions was like watching the pages of a photo album being irrevocably turned. We three would never be here again, in the same place and time, in the same fashion, in the same selves.

I watched until I could see only stream and strangers, all drawing behind me, then glanced around the compartment: green velvet upholstered seats with a net above each one to hold baggage. I glanced beyond the sliding door to the narrow passage. I would never get used to these modem foreign trains, whose compartments did not open on either side to the station itself. I disliked the fact that other passengers could glide along that passage and stare in at one.

I stared out to avoid that possibility. Despite the veil, I doubted that my face was in good order to be seen at the moment. And I certainly had no desire to see any of the other passengers on the train.

Prague, city of one hundred towers, was sliding away into the peaceful green Bohemian countryside. Our adventures here were over at last, once and for all. We left a grateful King and Queen behind—who would have thought that a mere eighteen months ago!

If Irene had not specifically solved the murder of the Paris bead-girls, she had seen the Bohemian maid and duped assassin freed from illicit incarceration. And she had sung her last encore in Bohemia, under her terms and in her own inimitable if imperious style. Mr. Dvořák, the orchestra, and cast would not soon forget her performance. Nor would we three.

Nor would the woman who called herself Tatyana. She would not forget Irene and she would not forget Godfrey.

I rubbed my gloved hands together, for the empty compartment was chill. No. I would not dwell on the future fears for the entire four days. No sooner had I made this resolution than a noise at the compartment door made me turn.

The door was being drawn shut again, behind an intimidating figure in what I can only describe as Cossack dress: full trousers, high boots, a gilt-swagged jacket, short cape edged in astrakhan fur; the face ruddy and bristling with brows and mustache and sideburns, everything topped by a cap of Persian lamb. All that was lacking was a curved sword.

This figure from an operetta braced himself against the motion, then stomped to the opposite seat and sat, pulling off heavy leather gloves with Persian lamb cuffs as though to stay for tea.

“Sir! This is a private compartment. You must leave.”

His hearty smile bespoke utter incomprehension.

“Go!” I said, pointing like a villain in a melodrama. “This is
MY
compartment” The fact that the moving train made my arm jerk up and down like a rail signal did not lend authority to the gesture.

He frowned and leaned toward me, bracing his hands on his knees, smiling and nodding idiotically. Who knows what rude variety of language he spoke, perhaps even Russian, of which I knew no more than
“nyet.”

Not even beyond the outskirts of Prague, and already confronted with an importunate gentleman! What would Irene have done? I had no dagger, no pistol, and a carpet bag did not make a very portable weapon.

I relied on my commanding tones again, drawing myself up as Irene would. “I demand that you leave.” This time I glowered as I pointed.   .

Alas, if I had mastered Irene’s lines, I did not possess her convincing delivery, for the man just shook his shaggy head.

“This is not,” he said—in English!—“the greeting that I expected.”

While I digested these remarkable words from such a wildly unlikely source, he leaned back in his swaying seat to remove his hat and place his gloves in it, to remove his... sideburns, his eyebrows—

I looked into the remarkable hazel eyes emerging from the shrubbery of his false face, and knew them.

I stood without being aware of having moved, at one with the gently shuddering train. “Que-Quentin!”

The white scimitar of his smile emerged from the shadow of the false mustache as it peeled away. The revealed face was familiar, was alive, was smiling.

The train plunged into a tunnel. Motes of darkness swirled like bats at the edges of my eyes. A horrible vibrating buzz sounded in my brain. Everything was narrowing to a tiny dot of light at the end of a pitch-black tunnel. Then the light winked out

I awoke as from a dream, swaying and rocking, like a babe in arms. I
was
in arms. Or arm, at least, for such an encircling limb supported my back and shoulders.

I was in my seat again, or nearly so, for I was not quite upright

Quentin’s face hung over me, bare of disguise and quite... beautiful, looking very concerned and rewardingly contrite.

“My dear Nell,” he was saying, “it was most inconsiderate of me to spring such a surprise on you, after all you have been through. But I must still go disguised. The Nortons and I felt this would allow us the best reunion. Are you quite all right?”

I nodded, slowly. Doing so made his face seem to mirror my gesture. It was so near that I could see each tiny line the desert had etched around his wonderful hazel eyes. I could see every eyelash, every grain of hazy sand within the shifting hourglass of those eyes.

“I have taken the liberty of lifting your veil,” he said. No wonder I saw him so clearly. “Would you like me to find your pince-nez?”

Pince-nez. I seemed to remember some article of that name from a distant day. “No. I can see perfectly well... at this distance,” I said in some wonder.

He smiled, and I watched his face fracture into yet another fascinating expression. I had never seen anyone so closely, nor so clearly.

“Are you still faint?” he asked. “I have some brandy.” Brandy. I did not require intoxicants now!

“It is only... a bit hard to... breathe.”

He glanced down and the sight of his lowered eyelids almost undid me. “I also took the liberty of loosening the neck of your blouse. These Western clothes are unhealthily constricting.”

I nodded. I did feel an uncustomary... lightness at my throat, and even as he spoke felt a stir of wind over my bare skin, warm wind. Oh. His breath.

“You look very pale,” he said with a frown. “These confounded corsets you women squeeze your innards into... were we not on a public train I would wrest them apart.”

“Oh,” I said, unaccountably thrilled at the idea, or at least by the definitive tone in which he had uttered it. “I am used to such constriction but... I do have a Liberty silk dress in the... Eastern style that does not require corsets.”

“Do you?” he said, looking amused. “Where on earth did you get that?”

“Irene.”

His eyes narrowed. “I fear that she is a very bad influence on you, Miss Huxleigh.”

“But I am such a good one on her.”

He laughed so heartily then that I felt it. He raised his left hand to—I can put it no other way—caress the edge of my loosened high collar.

“I am so very glad to see you again, Nell,” he said softly but with such intensity that I blinked. He smiled. “And I should very much like to see you in your Liberty silk gown.”

At that most interesting moment, the train plunged into a genuine tunnel. We were doused in instant black, like a conjoined candle that burns too hot, and I was very glad that he could not see my face.

Ten days later I was sitting in the parlor at Neuilly rolling up balls of yarn that Lucifer had clawed into a rainbow of entwined snarls.

The sound of a carriage outside brought my head up, but I waited for Sophie to open the door. I heard warm voices, eager greetings, the progress of two people who felt very much at home through the cottage to the threshold of my chamber.

Irene and Godfrey stood there, looking as polished as marble, beaming health and wealth and as much wisdom as two extremely handsome people can do.

“Nell! You are the picture of domesticity,” Irene said, rushing to kiss me. Her cheek was still chill from the cold, but glowed as if touched by rubies.

“Apparently Vienna has a few dressmakers,” I observed.

Irene turned in a gay laughing circle to display her latest gown: a traveling dress of sky-blue wool with dark blue velvet bodice and sleeves. Under a midnight-blue velvet bonnet shaded by silver ostrich plumes, Irene’s rich, mahogany-colored hair was gathered into a low-braided queue at her nape, a girlish style that suited her as grapes suited Casanova.

“Monsieur Worth will disapprove, but I am not his exclusive mannequin yet. I must have him make up something splendid for when I sing at Alice’s wedding next autumn. I owe her at least that for introducing me to the master of Maison Worth.”

Godfrey handed hat and stick to Sophie, then came to sit on the stool beside me and roll yam.

“How were your charges while we were gone?” he inquired.

“Terrible. Casanova has been molting—feathers everywhere.”

“Oh, I hope you saved them!” Irene put in. “They would look divine on a bonnet.”

“Would Monsieur Worth approve?”

“He will probably want an entire gown of them.”

“I have just the bird to recommend as his prime source,” said I.

From his nearby cage, the bird in question raised a bit of Wagner’s “Pilgrim’s Chorus,” which apt choice of a welcome home anthem for Irene and Godfrey made me forgive his mottled head.

“And Lucifer has been shedding dreadfully.”

“Ah,” said Godfrey. “We can spin his unwanted fur into a shawl for Irene.”

She shrugged at him good-humoredly and sat in the bergère. “And what of your wild Messalina?”

I paused in my mechanical yarn-winding. “That is Quentin’s Messalina. I am a mere foster-mother. She is as mischievous was ever, but is leaving tufts of fur around the garden.”

Godfrey eyed Irene. “You wish to claim that?”

“No, I leave fur to foreign women. So, Nell.” She watched me as narrowly as Lucifer stalked Casanova. “How was your return journey?”

I sighed and lay the yarns on my lap. “As you expected and assured me. Long, but uneventful, even dull.”

“Uneventful?” Irene sat fully upright in her most queenly interrogating posture. “Nothing happened?”

“Of course not. Nothing happened.”

I did not often have the pleasure of seeing Irene stupefied at my wit.

“Nothing,” she repeated, her eyes going wildly to Godfrey. “Did no one—?”

“Of course,” I added idly, “I was most surprised and gratified to see Quentin Stanhope again, and appreciate your thoughtfulness in arranging an escort for me, after all. I completely understand the need for discretion, for Quentin told me that he is working as a spy again, for the Foreign Office. Being presumed dead is a great advantage in such work, he told me.”

“Did he—tell you nothing else?”

“What else is there to tell, Irene? I was pleased to be informed of his involvement in the entire affair.” I glanced at Godfrey. “Quentin was the man in the tinted glasses who left us the guidebook, can you imagine that?” I eyed Irene again. “And I was not
too
angry that you and Allegra had seen Quentin first and didn’t tell me of his presence, or even confirm that the poor man was truly alive.”

Irene was speechless. Godfrey took that rare opportunity to excuse himself and leave the parlor.

“How was your and Godfrey’s holiday?” I asked.

“Sublime! Vienna is as enchanting as it is reputed to be. We drove, we walked, we ate, we talked, we waltzed, we went out to the theater, we stayed in—everything was sublime.”

Her eyes rested knowingly on me. “Much truth pertains to the fact that one most treasures what one most is in danger of losing, or fears that one is.”