“I most certainly do not! If I did, I would hardly tell any gentleman forward enough to inquire.”
He bent a suddenly intent gaze upon me. “We English abroad must take care of each other, Miss Huxleigh. The ordinary rules of parlor behavior do not apply.”
“Ordinary rules of behavior apply everywhere, to everyone who is properly brought up,” I answered with as much hauteur as I could command.
My uninvited questioner backed away, bowing, his disconcerting monocle giving a last blue-white glint. “Then accept my apologies, and farewells.”
“Gladly, sir,” I replied with indignant courtesy.
He moved into the crowd, becoming one with the many other men wearing cutaway coat and striped trousers.
I unfurled my ornamental fan—an exceedingly silly affair of tiny white plumes punctuated here and there with silk rosebuds and cerise satin bows—and fanned my heated cheeks.
Moments later another man was at my side: Godfrey, slightly flushed from the dance floor.
“Irene is a cruel mistress,” he announced, looking winded.
“She is your wife,” I admonished. “I do not wish to hear talk of mistresses with that awful Tatyana about. How is Clotilde doing?”
"Well. No one has asked her to dance since her wedding and coronation months ago. Irene's scheme seems to be working; once I deserted the Queen, a Moravian Count made so bold as to invite her to the next waltz. If the King has a particle of sense, he will pay more attention to his Queen.”
“Then Clotilde is doomed to being ignored,” I said tartly, “although I admit that the King’s gaze followed your course around the ballroom.”
“You see! Jealousy does wonders for the complacent spouse. Speaking of which, where is Irene?”
"Talking to a strange man near the supper table.”
“The Devil she is!”
“Now who has been complacent?”
Godfrey laughed with delighted surprise. “You are becoming quite the social critic, Nell; it becomes you.”
“Better than this cherry-velvet gown.”
“The gown is most attractive.”
“But hardly subtle. If I am to be an efficient observer, I must not be too conspicuous.”
“That has never stopped Irene.”
“True,” I said, my eyes wandering the room again in search of the various principals.
How many I needed to keep an eye on tonight: Tatyana, the King, Irene, Godfrey, the Queen, not to mention such minor figures as the gentleman who had spoken to me, and the one with the tinted spectacles to whom Irene had spoken, who was now standing alone by the wall, Dr. Watson by the punch bowl and—and... Dr. Watson by the punch bowl!
“Nell, that is not ordinary wool broadcloth you are crushing on my sleeve, but a silk-weave coat made up by Baron de Rothschild’s tailor; it is worth a small fortune.”
“Now is no time to be vain!” I retorted in a whisper, loosening my clutch on his coat sleeve nevertheless. “I have just seen Dr. Watson by the punch bowl.”
"Punch bowl? Dr. Watson? What Dr. Watson?” Godfrey turned in the most annoyingly blatant way to peer here and there, looking for the object of my alarm.
I was forced to resort to his coat sleeve again, and a generous pinch of skin beneath. “Our Dr. Watson. Don’t look! Not in that obvious way for which Irene always berates me.”
Godfrey rubbed his injured sleeve, or arm, rather. I had not been a governess for several years for nothing. “Really, Nell. We have more pressing problems than Dr. Watson, if it is indeed he.”
The irritating man—Dr. Watson, I mean, not Godfrey— had ambled away from the supper table. Godfrey managed, by maneuvering around me as we spoke, to view the general area in a casual manner.
He froze for a moment, then turned to me to keep his back to Dr. Watson, who was now inspecting the crowd as if searching for someone.
“The very man indeed, Nell. He stands by the musicians now. Why is he here?”
“Why does it matter! Do you see what this means? If Dr. Watson is present, the man must be on the premises as well.”
“Not necessarily. Dr. Watson may have a private life.”
“Not if he resides—or used to—with an inveterate puzzle solver and busybody like Sherlock Holmes. Trust me, Godfrey; such a person has no private life, and certainly does not travel across all of Europe without there being deeds of a nefarious nature to investigate. What are we to do? He has seen us before, if not yet tonight.”
Godfrey nodded, donning the thoughtful expression that so became him. I have never seen a man think with such flattering effect, but, then, I have never seen many men think.
“When we interviewed him in Paddington,” Godfrey said, “you used your right name, though I didn’t. We can tell Dr. Watson—if he should approach us—that we visit Prague on further business involving your fiancé’s affairs, I as barrister, you as loyal little woman.”
“Oh, please, Godfrey. Explaining ourselves to Dr. Watson, should the occasion arise, is only half the problem. Where is Sherlock Holmes?!”
“London?” Godfrey asked in vain hope. Then he shook his head. “You are right; he must be here. Why?”
“Barristers are obsessed with the interrogative in the motivational mood. The question is more direct: who? I’ve searched the chamber several times. Surely, I would recognize Sherlock Holmes were he in a recognizable state. I have seen no one resembling him. Therefore, he is in disguise and could be anyone.”
“Excellently argued, Nell. What can we do about it?”
“Nothing. We are both in our own guises, and helpless against him.”
“Irene has never been helpless against him.”
“Who is he?” I demanded again, wringing my gloved hands, which caused my fan and reticule, each suspended from a separate wrist, to sway around each other into a tangled knot. “The tinted spectacles are highly suspicious, but they were also worn by the Rothschild agent who passed you the travel guide,” I muttered. “Then there was the rude man who spoke to me—his monocle was an obvious piece of disguise, and he was most interested in Irene’s pseudo-title—”
Godfrey, I regret to say, was not paying my speculations proper attention, but was smiling to himself and unspinning my tangled accouterments so I could move my hands again.
While we were involved in this minor enterprise, we neglected to note the arrival of a third party. Suddenly aware of a presence, I looked up, braced for forthright English eyes and a demand for an explanation.
Tatyana stood beside us. I wondered how she had approached so softly on the hard marble floor.
She observed the end of Godfrey’s rescue operation with amusement. “I had come to see if you were available for a turn around the room, Mr. Norton, but I see that you are occupied in more knotty matters.”
He glanced up at her unmistakable voice, only I seeing how her presence had caused his hands to tighten momentarily. They fell away from my things just as the cords untwined.
Godfrey nodded slightly. “Madame Tatyana.”
“You have not answered my proposal for a dance.”
“The gentleman is usually the one who requests such things.”
“I do not wait for gentlemen to request. Well?”
“I cannot desert Miss Huxleigh.”
“Of course you can, and have already done so this evening. I saw you dancing with the Queen and found myself most eager for such an engagement with you.”
She stood in a stance of court repose: head high, elbows in, her hands in their black lace gloves held before her waist with the fingers slightly steepled.
“You are a dancer, I understand, by profession,” he said politely. “I do not care to dance unless politeness dictates, and the Queen is our hostess. I fear I would disappoint you as a partner.”
He bowed slightly again to put a period to the discussion.
“Then that would be interesting, Mr. Norton, for you have never disappointed me yet.”
Godfrey’s glance crosse
d mine. Would this woman refuse to take no for an answer?
We had our answer in an instant. Tatyana lifted a cynical blond eyebrow and looked at me. “Perhaps, Mr. Norton, you are more fearful of disappointing another lady of your acquaintance if you dance with me.”
“Who?” he demanded recklessly. He obviously thought she was implying Irene, and betraying her knowledge of their true connection.
Her glance never left me, but her smile grew cruel. “Perhaps your so-called secretary....”
Godfrey stiffened, and I opened my mouth to voice loud objection, but the shameless hussy moved her knowing glance to Godfrey, and added, “Perhaps another... ‘lady.’ ”
We both weighed the implication of that comment. She must know Irene was masquerading as Lady Sherlock.
“You need not fear any disappointed ladies, Mr. Norton,” Tatyana purred. “Except for myself.”
“If I feared anyone,” he answered her implicit threat, “I should be a poor partner for a dance, or anything else.”
“I find our deepest fears are not for ourselves, but for others close to us,” she said. “So I wish to reassure you. I travel nowhere without bodyguards—an essential precaution in St. Petersburg.”
“Bodyguards!” I burst out in disbelief.
She lifted a graceful arm. A lace-swathed forefinger indicated the directions of the compass.
“There. A broad man in striped coat.” Near Queen Clotilde. “There—” A man by the windows... near Irene. “There”—the supper table. “And there.” Her last gesture was behind us.
We turned to see an impassive-faced young man in peasant tunic watching us with bored but brutal eyes.
“A wise precaution,” Tatyana added, “even in a city as safe as Prague, especially for the traveler far from home. Danger waits everywhere abroad.”
She smiled at us, and ran her fingers down the long, single strand of black pearls that anchored her filmy laces to her bosom like a chain. “You must take my word for it, dear friends. I knew a man once who sojourned in Paris and was bitten by a cobra outside of Notre Dame Cathedral.”
Bitter, bitter was the knowledge of how she taunted us with her lethal role in our own past, virtually admitting to trying to poison Quentin in Paris for Colonel Moran. Irene had been correct. The woman had recognized us from the first, and had played with us ever since. What was her bewildering game with Godfrey?
“One dance, Mr. Norton, will not undo you,” she said in her odiously suggestive voice. “Next you will be telling me that you cannot dance with me because you are married. That state can be altered, you know, by many means.”
Godfrey had been a man of stone during all her blandishments. Some might mistake that poise for indecision, but I knew it hid a deep capacity for righteous anger. She had not noticed the white lines around his mouth, nor the tension in his entire frame; she was too busy toying with him, with us.
His eyes flicked to her indicated agents once again, perhaps gauging if she deceived us; perhaps deciding if they posed the threat she claimed.
Tatyana decided to cast a last insult my way.
“You mustn’t worry about deserting Miss Huxleigh. I am sure that she is used to playing second fiddle in your life.”
I gasped, staring at the woman’s carnelian-colored eyes. She believed her absurd charges; she saw all women as rivals.
Godfrey, suddenly decided, held out his right arm. “Shall we dance?”
He whisked her away, partly because his decision, once made, was swift; partly because he knew the lecture I was capable of giving the hussy. Although, in this instance, I found myself oddly incapable of motion or speech.
For all the times during my travels with Irene and Godfrey when I had worried about creating the wrong impression because of his escort, this was the first occasion that someone had actually accused me of impropriety. And, though I was innocent, the charge was so severe that I stood mired in shame, expecting every eye in the ballroom, every ear, every mouth, to be absorbing or passing on the slander.
How well I remembered the lessons of my youth: it is not enough for the decent woman to be free of blame; she must appear free of all blame, always, in all things.
Now I had been accused of vile misconduct, a disloyalty to my dearest friend as well as behavior of the most humiliating and immoral sort, and I stood paralyzed. I hardly could muster the attention to watch Godfrey and the hateful woman take the dance floor.
How could she even think such a thing? That Godfrey and Irene would tolerate such a situation? How could she—but she could, and would. And had.
After what seemed minutes, I dragged my attention back to the dancers, a swirl of soft pastels among the sober black-and-white evening dress of the men.
How easily visible Tatyana was in her mock-widow’s weeds. She and Godfrey sailed over the polished marble as one to the lilting rhythm of a waltz. I glanced quickly to find the supposed bodyguards still in place.
The one near Irene had moved, for the simple reason that Irene had noticed Godfrey’s new dancing partner, and had edged nearer, along with the odd elderly gentleman in the tinted spectacles. If only this improbable person were our own bodyguard, for we sorely needed help of an outside nature!
I found myself wondering what Godfrey always did: why. Why did Tatyana want so badly to dance with him? To insult Irene and myself? To control us all, taunt us? Or was it simpler than that? Was it something so simple and basic that I seldom thought of such things? I recalled an adage of my dear departed father when I was child and had trouble at school: children, he told me, oft accuse others of the very wrongs they commit.
Hadn’t Lizzie Cheek, the wicked thief at Whiteley’s, my first employment in London, tried to point false suspicion at me, a total innocent? If Tatyana accused me of coveting—of... wrongdoing with Godfrey, could not she herself be guilty of such a wish?
Now I had a reason to watch this dreadful charade for signs that supported my theory. My first observation was relief that Godfrey held her at a conventional social distance, a very proper twelve inches away. Although he did not claim to be a gifted dancer, he was at least skillful. I noticed a new stiffness in his posture, and deduced that Godfrey was exerting considerable force to keep Tatyana at arm’s length, that this was more of a duel than a dance.
In that case, I trusted his superior strength to keep the upper hand. They curved in a sweeping turn, and Tatyana suddenly hesitated. This ploy drew Godfrey past her and allowed her to push close to him to continue the dance.
I am sure not only I noticed her triumphant smile as she whirled close on the turn. She took her hand from his left shoulder and fumbled at her gown. A moment later she had drawn up the long strand of pearls and looped them over his head, yoking them in artificial closeness.
Godfrey’s steps stuttered, but she matched the roughness with perfect skill, laughing wildly as he swung her into a series of turns as if to whirl himself away from her odious vicinity.
They were not so much dancing now, as embracing. The music seemed to accelerate, reaching fever pitch. I realized that the piece was one of those novelty waltzes whose tempo goes faster and faster.
I glanced at the conductor, who was looking over his shoulder at Tatyana, nodding and smiling. No doubt Madame had requested—and paid for—this particular piece of music for this very particular partner.
Despite keeping up with the time and the wild woman in his arms, Godfrey’s eyes darted around the room, no doubt seeking a plausible excuse for rescue.
But the other dancers, noticing the drama in their midst, now gave way. They drew back to the fringes of the dance floor, leaving the yoked couple in center stage.
How diabolical that woman was! Godfrey was caught in a whirlpool of music and motion. Though his feet never faltered, he was like a mechanical man, like a Golem in evening dress, put through his unwilling paces.
Tatyana’s right hand lifted from his shoulder again, despite the quickened turns, and thrust into her hair. She flung her hand
back. Something small and bejeweled spun across the empty floor. A length of her fire-blond hair toppled, poured onto her shoulder like bleeding honey. Another turn, and it whipped loose behind her. Again and again her arm lifted, drawing out and discarding pins until her hair flew around in an ungovemed veil. Like Salome, she had more conventional veils to loose as well. The airy scarves upon her bodice drifted away one by one with the accelerating tempo.
I shall never forget that sight, a shocking symphony in black and white: Godfrey in his evening dress; Tatyana in her sober black gown except for her bare white arms, one lying along the black of Godfrey’s guiding arm, the other snaking over his shoulder, behind his neck. The music, frantic by now, had them spinning in dizzying circles. Tatyana’s blond hair whipped the air, her face, and Godfrey’s, and she was laughing, laughing wildly, with utter exultation in the dance.
Her arm twisted tighter around his neck, forcing Godfrey’s head toward hers. Her demonically laughing face drew nearer to his—she will kiss him... right here, before us all, before Irene. Oh, I cannot look—or... will she kill him?
Just when I thought that I must scream from sheer helplessness and horror, the music stopped. Godfrey, his face white though his cheeks were flushed, pulled the hateful pearls over his head and set Tatyana away from him. He did not push her, which would have been an act of violence that even such a woman did not merit of a gentleman.
He put his hands under her elbows, lifted her bodily, and set her a foot away from him, as one might move a mere mannequin.
I wanted to cheer. I had already seen Godfrey’s unexpected strength. One night I had stayed late in his and Irene’s rooms; he lifted both myself and the chair I sat in from the table to indicate that I should leave. I still am not sure why, although I begin to glimpse such imperative motivations.
Then I held my breath, as did all in the vast chamber. No gesture of renunciation could be more plain. What would the prideful woman do now?
Another Scandal in Bohemia (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) Page 34