Another Scandal in Bohemia by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

he left the Serpentine Mews after finding the photograph gone and that you had eloped with Godfrey.”
    Irene shook herself out of her foggy reverie, and leaned forward to crush her dying cigarette’s ember under her boot-heel on the carriage’s wooden floor.
    “Broken men mend, especially when they are pampered royal personages with a high opinion of themselves,” she said. “And I did not elope with Godfrey. We married in haste and left England in even greater haste. Speaking of Godfrey, you must mention nothing of this to him.”
    “I cannot lie!”
    “He isn’t likely to ask anything that requires a lie. Simply don’t blurt out any mention of this.”
    “I never ‘blurt.’ That sounds quite vulgar.”
    “What I will do to you should you tell Godfrey anything of our interview with the Queen will be more vulgar still,” Irene promised.
    “That sounds like a threat.”
    “Only a warning, dear Nell. Men are too high-strung to deal with certain matters.”
    “Such as their wives’ former suitors?”
    “Such as their wives’ former suitors, especially if they are kings, and certainly if they are showing an inexplicable reluctance to consort with their own wives.”
    “She is not beautiful,” I said then.
    “Nor is she that unattractive. She merely lacks finishing. Besides, the Willie I knew did not show such nicety in these matters that any reasonably presentable woman would fail to interest him.”
    “He had not been spoiled by knowing you then.”
    “You are too partisan, Nell. I possess certain assets, but none that can surmount blue blood and a fat dowry, as I learned to my sorrow in Bohemia. The women in the salon are right, no matter how I berate them. I do not play fair with the world on its own unfair terms, and I have been— and will continue to be—punished for that. But Clotilde Lothman did play fair, so far as she was given leave to know, and I do not like to hear that Willie has treated her so badly. I do not like it at all.”
    “Does that mean that you will assist the Queen? Irene, how can you?”
    “I don’t know what I will do, but whatever it is, it will be interesting.”
    I repressed a chill of presentiment. What Irene and I considered “interesting” differed dramatically.
     

Chapter Five
    SPLENDOR IN THE GLASS
     
    I awoke that night in Neuilly to the faint sounds of Antonin Dvořák’s lively Bohemian folk songs.
    In fact, I did not awake at all, having lain for some time in an abstracted yet restless state. Like any keeper of someone else’s secret, I found that hidden knowledge narrowed and darkened my view of the world around me.
    Irene’s normal dinnertime gaiety—she always rose to an audience, no matter how small or how familiar—took on a forced air in my eyes.
    Godfrey’s ordinary yet courtly attentions to us both made me feel the worst sort of hypocrite. In the parlor after dinner, while Irene demonstrated to vivid comic affect our introduction to the great Worth, Godfrey frequently turned to ask my opinion.
    “What do you think this man-milliner of Paris will put on Irene, if peacock feathers are not grand enough?” he inquired in his way of teasing her by consulting me.
    “Something daring beyond belief, no doubt,” I answered in the same spirit. Godfrey always bestirred me to mild rebellion. “Perhaps sackcloth,” I went on despite her gasp— “trimmed with diamante.”
    “A Cinderella in diamonds.” He laughed at my word picture. “How I wish I had seen and heard Irene sing that role while wearing Tiffany’s diamond corsage.”
    Irene threw herself into an easy chair, her theatrics over for the moment. “You have seen the newspaper sketch of me in that role and wearing those jewels.”
    “A sketch is not sufficient,” Godfrey said. “You are always far more affecting in person. In the flesh,” he added rather wickedly.
    “So are diamonds. In the flash,” she retorted. “Ah, me. I wonder where that magnificent Tiffany corsage is