Another Scandal in Bohemia by Carole Nelson Douglas Page A

certainty and your freedom, but I know only the life I was bred to live. If I am wife in name only to the King of Bohemia, I am an utter failure. I dare not tell anyone of any significance of my dilemma. It would cause a scandal of the highest order, that would shake the thrones of several nations—not because I am important, but because international familial and territorial pride is at stake.
    “Bohemia is no great nation, but a modest bauble stitched to the hem of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Only maintaining its royal line will keep Bohemia sovereign, and from becoming a prize contested for by larger, encroaching countries whose names I dare not breathe. If I bear no children—no son and heir—I will be sent home disgraced. My name would go down in history as Clotilde the Unloved, Clotilde the Unlovely, and who knows what the fate of Bohemia and all Europe will be? If you can help in any way, and I throw myself upon your mercy, I beg you, do so!”
    She rose and fumbled for the veiling on her bonnet, until its dark folds fell past her face like the shadow of a guillotine blade. The result made her seem headless, faceless, a well-dressed animated dressmaker’s dummy bereft of a soul.
    Irene rose with her. “I cannot promise anything.”
    “Promise nothing,” the muffled voice begged, “but try something, anything, if you can. I will pay whatever you wish.”
    We watched her go, both of us wrapped in invisible veils of silence neither was eager to lift.
    Irene gathered her reticule and glanced my way at last.
    “Notes were not necessary,” she observed, “yet I rather imagine that your diary will have some rigorous use tonight”
    Our coachman grumbled copiously to himself when he assisted us into the carriage at the door of Maison Worth. Apparently he judged that we had taken overmuch time within.
    Irene, usually ever-ready to cajole the grumpy into good humor, ignored Andre’s ill temper.
    Even before he cracked his whip over the horse’s cognac-colored backs, she was huddled in the carriage corner, excavating the depths of her reticule for the familiar mother-of-pearl case. A tiny lucifer was struck and then sparked in the dim interior, and Irene had soon wreathed herself in a defensive moat of smoke.
    I sat back and said nothing, not even about the annoying smoke, aware of the great shocks she had sustained this day.
    “Well. Wednesday,” she said at last. “What wonders will Monsieur Worth show us then?” she ruminated. “A showman born. And the Queen. What is your diagnosis, Nell?”
    “That her problem is no difficulty at all. I cannot see that the absence of a man from her bed would trouble most women, especially those in an arranged marriage.”
    I deduced Irene’s smile rather than saw it through the smoke.
    “No, of course you would not see that, Nell, but Clotilde Lothman von Saxe-Meningen von Ormstein is not most women. She may be a symbol, but she is human still, and she has been treated most shamefully.”
    "You almost sound her defender.”
    “Do I?”
    “Has it occurred to you, Irene, that the King may not be undertaking his husbandly role—whatever that is, exactly; I am sure it is uncomfortable, rather unpleasant, and possibly undignified—because he has not yet recovered from the loss of yourself?”
    " Hmm,” Irene purred in the self-indulgent way of black Lucifer when partaking of a bowl of fresh cream. She wriggled deeper into the tufted leather upholstery, as if settling into a velvet cradle.
    “I confess that is the very first thing that occurred to me. It does salve the savage soul: Willie bereft beyond duty. Willie unable to even approach his blue-blooded young wife, haunted by my memory, by my loss, by tardy repentance. Of course I would like to think it was true, but often the most satisfying explanation for such things is also the most self-deluding.”
    “Much as I abhor stressing it, Irene, for your self-regard is already too strong, the King was a broken man when