The Adventuress (21 page)

“There were no untoward incidents?” I pressed. “None.” Irene produced a strange smile. “Except for a gentleman who made a rather shocking proposal in passing.”

“You see!” I waited until both Godfrey and Irene gave me their full attention. “Someone
did
see through your male disguise! A woman is not safe alone at night, or at any other time, in any guise.”

“He did
not
see through my disguise, dear Nell. Indeed, he would have been most disappointed if he had,” Irene said. Her odd half smile was both amused and indulgent, I fear at my expense.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand, Irene. And you needn’t hide behind the newspaper, Godfrey; I can tell you’re laughing. At any rate, I still hold that these solo expeditions are likely to catch up with you one day, Irene, and then there will be a terrible scandal.”

“I forever seem to flirt with one scandal or another,” she answered lightly. “But that is the advantage in being dead to the world. Who can harm me now?”

“You are still mortal,” I warned.

“My dear Nell,” Godfrey said, “our cautions fall on deaf ears. Irene has been doing as she will since long before I—or even you—met her.”

“Yes. And given her predilections now, one must wonder what she was about before we knew her.”

I detected a hint of confusion on my friend’s features and was about to pounce upon the issue of her past while she was still feeling guilty about her lone midnight lark. But a waiter swooped between us like a crow, presenting a silver salver to Irene.

“A message, Madame Norton. The bearer said it was urgent.”

Irene lifted the thick parchment envelope from the tray, all other topics forgotten. I should not forget, of course, but would obtain no answer now to any of my questions. With an unknown item before her, Irene was like Lucifer about to pounce upon a dust mote: feral concentration embodied.

She drew a hat pin from the tangle of lace and silk flowers dressing her hair and, with its six-inch steel barb, slit the envelope as neatly as a surgeon might. Before she withdrew the contents, her miniature rapier pricked the thick puddle of scarlet sealing wax upon the flap.

“The paper alone costs a pound a sheaf. The sealing wax is crimson... and scented,” she declared after lifting it to her nose.

“Not—?” I began.

“Not sandalwood-scented, no. And the insignia is so ornate that it is unreadable.”

“Then it must be French,” said I.

“Are you going to analyze the envelope, or open it?” Godfrey asked.

Irene smiled at our eager curiosity. Her fingertip traced the impetuous scrawl across the envelope’s face. “A woman, I think, in a hurry now, but quick to act even when there is no reason to. The loops are smudged, she was writing so speedily. The handwriting itself is conventional, save that the letters are cramped and angular. She will appear to obey the letter of the law, this woman, but her heart will always flout convention.”

“Another actress!” I complained. “Say it is not true that Sarah Bernhardt is visiting Monaco.”

“Not Sarah.” Irene drew out a piece of ivory parchment folded once in half. “There is not enough scent upon it.”

Godfrey had risen to lean over Irene’s chair as she read the letter. Her eyebrows raised, then she reread it.

“Interesting,” Godfrey commented.

“Very,” said she, sitting back to read it yet again.

“Well?” I demanded.

Irene passed the letter across the table to me. “It is from Alice, Duchess of Richelieu,
nee
Alice Heine of New Orleans. Sarah’s friend.”

“I should have known!” I pulled the pince-nez from my reticule to begin translating the ungoverned handwriting. The French was perfect but the writing outraced the meaning; letters were dropped, and even the occasional word, so that I found it hard going.

“She wishes to see you!” I said at last.

“Naturally. It was only a matter of time.”

“And Godfrey also.”

“Possibly because he is a barrister as well as my husband.”

“And your... your
sister!”

Irene beamed at my incredulity. “Alice, Duchess of Richelieu, is a discerning woman. Her Paris salon in the Rue de Faubourg St-Honoré attracts the leading wits, politicians, writers and artists of Paris, although she somehow overlooked inviting myself; living incognito can be an inconvenience.”

“What does the woman have to do with
me,
pray? Would she invite your entire family if she knew any more of them than Godfrey and I do?”

“I merely point out that Her Grace is not unintelligent and that she has included you in the invitation; apparently she recognizes you as a key member of our... association.”

“But this is not a social invitation!” I said, exasperated.

Irene smiled with extreme self-satisfaction. “No, is it not. It is a business invitation. My first... case... as Madame Irene Norton. And I owe it all to Sarah Bernhardt.”

“The world owes much that is unfortunate to Sarah Bernhardt,” said I darkly, “including the notion that women may go about doing as they wish with no consequences.”

“Oh, there are consequences,” Godfrey said, draining the last of his coffee with a thoughtful expression. The imbibing of that disgusting brew was a habit he had acquired from Irene. “And it is consequences that cause crime, which in turn provokes more consequences. I had best begin inquiring after poor Montpensier; I must return by three for this command appearance before the duchess. Perhaps I shall know more of the suicide of Louise’s father’s then.”

“That would be nice.” Irene smiled as if Godfrey were promising her some tasty bon-bon, her hand pausing on his.

“Someone must tell this woman that I am not your sister,” I said when he had left. “First I am taken for

Godfrey’s wife, and now for your sister, which is equally ludicrous.”

“Godfrey’s wife? But, Nell, who would—? Not the ruffians on the train! Poor darling, you seem to be forever miscast by both the highest and the lowest elements of society. Being my sister is not so awful a role, is it?”

“I would that I were; I could probably sing on key and I might even be pretty.”

“You’re pretty as you are; you simply don’t dress for it.”

“Oh, Irene, you always think clothes make the woman.”

A wicked gleam enhanced her already bright eyes. “Let me prove it. I will attire you this afternoon as my mythical sister. We will see what the duchess thinks of you then.”

“I am more concerned with what I think of the duchess.”

“You are always thinking of others, and never of yourself, Nell. We will take one small step toward correcting that today. You will see; you will not know yourself. Besides, it will divert my mind from the excitement of my appointment with the duchess, will it not? And you do wish to be useful, don’t you?”

I was, as always with Irene, trapped by my own credo.

We walked to the duchess’s home that afternoon. Irene said she knew the way. In Monte Carlo, walking was not a sign of poverty but, rather, a display of ease and idleness and the means to afford it. Here it was called “taking the air,” or “strolling,” never a “necessity.”

Yet walking any distance from the public promenades was hazardous, for the streets were steep and winding. Godfrey offered each of us an arm, delighted, he claimed, to squire two such beauties about the town.

Irene had indulged in two happy hours devoted to my reconstruction, trilling snippets of arias as she snipped off frills of my hair. She became so enraptured by her vocalizing that she waved the hot curling iron as if it were a conductor’s baton. Such play, she said, reminded her of her performing days.

If at any point I objected to a particularly frivolous placement of a curl, or to such enhancements as rouge delivered on a rabbit’s foot or soot pooled around my eyes, I was instructed not to be silly; she was using only the lightest of subterfuges.

I was curious to see how she would transform me into her “sister.” I had not forgotten the aged housekeeper she had created on my features before she and Godfrey fled England, the King of Bohemia and Mr. Sherlock Holmes in London. .

“A pity you would not permit the henna rinse,” Irene said as her fingers poked my frizzled locks into a final semblance of disorder. “Your hair is unremittingly brown otherwise. Now the bonnet.”

She lowered a beribboned concoction atop my plain brown head. A pale-blue ostrich plume trembled above the felt bonnet in time with the matching flutter of the curls fringing my face.

The gown was of brown grosgrain silk, with broad, blue satin skirt reveres and sleeves on which a brown cut-velvet pattern provided rich shadings. Pleated blue canton crepe circled my neck and cascaded down my bodice, emphasized here and there with blue satin bows.

Irene led me to the pier glass and while I confronted myself, gave me one last examination.

“Well?”

I studied myself, who indeed did not resemble myself, and next I studied Irene. Then I laughed.

“You do not like it? Nell, you ingrate!”

“I do not look like your sister—I look like you! And you look like a laundry girl! Irene, the price of making me into a silk purse has transformed you into a... I do not wish to be explicit.”

“I know the adage, Nell.”

Irene frowned at herself in the looking glass. Her long labors over my coiffure had caused her own hair to fall from grace. Her face was pale, her brows knitted, her expression distracted.

“We have less than half an hour before we must meet Godfrey in the lobby,” I reminded her gently. I stepped to the room’s center and turned slowly. “Of course, I am ready.”

“And I will be in a moment.” Irene seated herself at the dressing table. In mere minutes she had worked the same transformation upon herself that it had taken her an hour to achieve with me.

Irene spurned personal maids; her long experience with theatrical paint and hairdressing made her more skilled at her own toilette than any servant would be. And indeed, she moved with a magician’s swift surety, her fingers darting to the precise powder puff or rouge pot she required. Her hair bowed to the admonishment of a boar-bristle brush and was quickly piled and gleaming auburn again, without benefit of henna. She soon rose to doff her combing gown. I helped her don a handsome visiting costume of pink lace and corded satin.

We shortly stood before the mirror again. Now there was nothing laughable about her appearance, save that mine suffered by comparison.

“You look divine,” Irene said, bracing me. “How unfortunate that your nature takes so little delight in feminine frivolities.”

“It’s a pity that feminine frivolities take so much time! Your beauty is inborn, Irene. That’s why you can enhance it in a moment. Mine must be erected brick by brick from a dull foundation.”

“Nonsense. It is a matter of motivation. We must find you a charming gentleman to dazzle.”

“You were beautiful before you met Godfrey.”

“And you have your own virtues, both inner and outer, Nell. Neither need be skimped upon.”

Irene thrust toward me a blue silk parasol decorated with an exceedingly silly array of bows. I backed away. “Not another parasol, I beg you!”

“A parasol will not kill you, and it is ever so elegant in Monte. We must not let the sun darken our porcelain complexions.”

“And how could it, with all this powder we have pressed upon them?”

But Irene would not be denied. I took the idiotic thing. Thus we rustled downstairs to greet Godfrey, whose surprised attention and complimentary opinion greatly embarrassed me and brought many unwanted glances to our party and myself.

Now I was bemoaning my fragile apparel as my thin-soled kidskin slippers skidded on the rough cobblestones while the soft, constant sea zephyrs blew curls and furbelows into my eyes.

“The very house, as I thought!” Irene said, stopping before a villa that crouched in the shadow of the palace. The wind had tousled the curls around her face into a rich russet furl; on her, disarray seemed neither an impediment nor a detraction.

“This is where the bearded man escorted the woman from the palace?” Godfrey sounded doubtful.

“Exactly. I stood there—” Irene pointed to a narrow side alley “—and smoked a cigarette while waiting for him to come out.”

We were expected—and urgently—for a houseman opened the duchess’s door before Godfrey could ring. He bowed us down a short hall to a side parlor.

Although the house’s pale stucco exterior was in need of paint and some of the shutters had broken struts, within all was elegant in that French manner that makes wicker stools and flowers in pitchers seem the careless height of fashion. Oscar Wilde would have adored it... and probably did.

Sunny yellow silk covered the parlor walls; gray velvet pussy willows studded bare stalks arching from vases set around the chamber. Bowls of blue Japanese porcelain bloomed against this temperate background like Holland tulips.

The duchess rustled in unannounced, clad in a striped house gown of hyacinth and mint-green taffeta bearing multitudes of heliotrope ribbons.

My long association with Irene had given me an opportunity to study the day’s most acclaimed beauties: in London, Lillie Langtry and Florence Stoker; in Paris, Sarah Bernhardt. I was always struck upon first meeting them by how their reputations had not only preceded them, but exceeded them.

It is perhaps testimony to my partiality, or to the cruel obscurity in which the most deserving almost always languish, that none of them could hold so much as a beeswax taper to Irene’s incandescent loveliness.

Alice, Duchess of Richelieu, was another disappointment, although some would find her enormous blue eyes piquant. Certainly her blond hair was striking, but her nose and chin were excessively long and would coarsen with age. Now, of course, like Irene, Alice Heine was but thirty. Unlike Irene, she was already a mother—of a boy, Marie Odeon, and a girl, Odile—and a widow for longer than she had been wed.

Such facts had Godfrey produced from his inquiries with those who record us all for posterity: journalists and lawyers.

“My dear Mr. and Mrs. Norton,” the duchess said in English. “And Miss—?” Bright blue eyes as unblinking as buttons were fixed upon me.