Another Scandal in Bohemia by Carole Nelson Douglas

if I fail to produce an heir!” Emotion animated those frail, pallid features for the first time. “That is my calling. My obligation. And then, the King is not... unpleasant in countenance or demeanor. Perhaps he finds me so. Perhaps he resents my being forced upon him by my royal blood. I feel despised in what should be my own palace. As if the servants—the very walls!—knew and were laughing at me.”
    Irene sat in abstraction. She idly stroked the small channel above her lip, that was not too short, nor too long, but just right... for a queen.
    “You say, Your Majesty, that Wilhelm von Ormstein has not consummated the marriage.”
    At this bald repetition, Queen Clotilde nodded and swallowed simultaneously.
    “Wilhelm von Ormstein?” Irene repeated in disbelief that was far more personal than the Queen would credit. Then she shook her head as if to clear it. “Could he be ill?”
    “He appears to be in the finest of health,”
    “Could he be sparing you? Waiting for you to settle into the duties of queenship?”
    “It is possible, but before we wed he led me to believe that he anticipated our union in more than ceremony. I cannot say he was overattentive, and he did often seem brusque and involved in his own affairs. Yet every so often he would turn to me as if remembering that I was there and offer some gallant phrase or gesture. He said that his father’s death had reminded him of his own mortality, that he had delayed too long in waiting until he was past thirty to marry, that he desired children.”
    Irene sighed so slowly that her escaping breath seemed to be thought incarnate. “He sounds a man ready to meet his obligations and go forth and multiply according to divine providence and the bloodlines of Europe.”
    “So I thought! I admit that I was nervous, and oddly excited, about my first encounters with these duties, but now I find myself far more nervous about their lack. What have I done wrong?”
    ‘The King of Bohemia weds, but goes no further,” Irene mused. “That does not sound like the King I know.” I saw a pleased gleam grow in her eyes, and could guess in which direction her speculations wandered.
    “You know the King?” the Queen was asking incredulously.
    “What? Oh, only by reputation. The newspapers are filled with the exploits of royalty, which breeds a sense of false familiarity among the reading public. I would agree with you: by all repute, the King is a handsome, healthy, virile man. One would expect him to do his duty, and even find pleasure in it.”
    Queen Clotilde blushed in awkward blotches. “Then it is I. I am so... ugly, so stupid, so ignorant that he cannot bear to be with me!”
    Sweet words to one who had been asked to make way for this very woman by becoming the King’s secret mistress. Irene let them wash over her for a long moment, then she sat taller, as a flash of anger lit her dark eyes like bright, summer lightning.
    “You are nothing of the sort,” she said in the tone often used to goad me to some enterprise beyond my habits or inclination. “Obviously, there is nothing wrong with you, so there must be something wrong with the King.”
    “But what, Madame? Can you find it out? Can you fix it?”
    The Queen’s heartsick pleas, laden with imminent sobs, gave even Irene Adler Norton pause.
    “I don’t know. I should have to think about it. How long do you remain in Paris? May I reach you somewhere?”
    The Queen seemed grateful for the opportunity to lower her face while she probed the gray Persian wool muff at her side.
    “My card, Madame. I leave in two weeks. The King insisted I come to Paris for a new wardrobe. Most women would be ecstatic. I felt myself... banished. Gotten rid of.” She bit her mangled lip again. “You are a woman of courage, Madame, and an American. No doubt you have never contemplated such silly problems as I face. You know nothing of the obligations of royal houses; perhaps they seem cold-blooded to you. I envy your