for the length of time it took us to spin over the threshold into the hall, where he bowed again and left me.
In instants he was thumping up the stairs, undoing his tie, and whistling quite in tune.
I stood by the portal, my head spinning from the sudden turn of events this afternoon.
A Viennese waltz. I had never been to Vienna, but Irene and Godfrey had. After our second unfortunate adventure in Prague, they had packed me home to Paris on a train . . . and left for a second honeymoon in Vienna.
The incessant, thrilling chords of Strauss played on, while my memory waltzed back to that long train trip across most of Europe, with a dashing gentleman my unexpected escort. Quentin. Five days of utter sequestration. Stories, but not waltzes. Moments, not years.
And now . . . I recalled Quentin in a more recent light, part of a rescue party that had saved Godfrey and myself from vile hands in a godforsaken part of the world. Quentin, Irene’s trusty ally in finding and saving her husband and her dearest friend, both of them abetted by that American upstart, Nellie Bly!
Quentin, hand-in-glove with that bold young woman whodid not even go in the world under her own rightful name, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane.
And now this miserable girl wanted to draw Irene back to her mother country, all because of fancied danger to a maternal figure Irene had never known.
Nellie Bly.
She was impertinent and shameless. Everything that a proper woman should not be. Yet she had carved inroads into the hearts of everyone I held dear.
Irene pantomimed her carefree moments at the piano, but I was not deceived. Trouble had encroached upon her today . . . in the form of the man from Baker Street, in the wire from the girl from New York City.
We could not allow that, Godfrey and I. We had striven too hard to survive the unthinkable to cede our loved ones to the bold and the beautiful. Well, Nellie Bly was beautiful, somewhat. Sherlock Holmes was not.
Godfrey would know what to do. He had already turned Irene back to her satisfying recent past, from what I could gather had transpired in Vienna and could guess, perhaps a little, from what had happened, and not happened, during my closeting with Quentin for five days in a train compartment from Prague to Paris.
Godfrey and I had been fellow prisoners and now we were fellow conspirators. Our loved one would not succumb to foreign influences!
Our . . . loved ones.
Lucifer attacked my ball of crochet twine and drove it to surrender against the fireplace fender.
Exactly, my feline friend. It shall be tooth and claw to the end.
3.
Foreign Assignment
A fair young English girl of the past, who is neither bold in
bearing nor masculine in mind .
—MRS. LYNN LINTON, 1868
“She did not sleep a wink last night.”
Godfrey’s voice startled me while I was in the garden the next morning, intermittently throwing Messy the mongoose some grapes that had grown puckered in Casanova’s cage.
The evil bird himself was enjoying the late summer sunlight on the series of perches André, our coachman and carpenter par excellence, had made for him. The parrot’s multicolored feathers comprised a blooming garden on their own, though the real flora was fading as the autumn season advanced. Casanova was tethered by one leg to a long leather leash, so he could do everything but fly away.
“Off with her head!” he suggested, opening up a rainbow of wings and beating them on the air, and incidentally mixing up the snippet of “Royal Wives, Royal Lives” Irene had been playing with bits of Alice in Wonderland that I had read aloud in the past.
Godfrey sat beside me and glanced at the embroidery hoop in my hands. I stopped my busywork. I had not slept a wink last night myself.
“Nell.” He said no more.
“You have been thinking,” I accused with the accuracy of one who had once been his typewriter-girl.
“Alas, yes. I have been thinking, and I have been doing something even more difficult: endeavoring to
In instants he was thumping up the stairs, undoing his tie, and whistling quite in tune.
I stood by the portal, my head spinning from the sudden turn of events this afternoon.
A Viennese waltz. I had never been to Vienna, but Irene and Godfrey had. After our second unfortunate adventure in Prague, they had packed me home to Paris on a train . . . and left for a second honeymoon in Vienna.
The incessant, thrilling chords of Strauss played on, while my memory waltzed back to that long train trip across most of Europe, with a dashing gentleman my unexpected escort. Quentin. Five days of utter sequestration. Stories, but not waltzes. Moments, not years.
And now . . . I recalled Quentin in a more recent light, part of a rescue party that had saved Godfrey and myself from vile hands in a godforsaken part of the world. Quentin, Irene’s trusty ally in finding and saving her husband and her dearest friend, both of them abetted by that American upstart, Nellie Bly!
Quentin, hand-in-glove with that bold young woman whodid not even go in the world under her own rightful name, Elizabeth Jane Cochrane.
And now this miserable girl wanted to draw Irene back to her mother country, all because of fancied danger to a maternal figure Irene had never known.
Nellie Bly.
She was impertinent and shameless. Everything that a proper woman should not be. Yet she had carved inroads into the hearts of everyone I held dear.
Irene pantomimed her carefree moments at the piano, but I was not deceived. Trouble had encroached upon her today . . . in the form of the man from Baker Street, in the wire from the girl from New York City.
We could not allow that, Godfrey and I. We had striven too hard to survive the unthinkable to cede our loved ones to the bold and the beautiful. Well, Nellie Bly was beautiful, somewhat. Sherlock Holmes was not.
Godfrey would know what to do. He had already turned Irene back to her satisfying recent past, from what I could gather had transpired in Vienna and could guess, perhaps a little, from what had happened, and not happened, during my closeting with Quentin for five days in a train compartment from Prague to Paris.
Godfrey and I had been fellow prisoners and now we were fellow conspirators. Our loved one would not succumb to foreign influences!
Our . . . loved ones.
Lucifer attacked my ball of crochet twine and drove it to surrender against the fireplace fender.
Exactly, my feline friend. It shall be tooth and claw to the end.
3.
Foreign Assignment
A fair young English girl of the past, who is neither bold in
bearing nor masculine in mind .
—MRS. LYNN LINTON, 1868
“She did not sleep a wink last night.”
Godfrey’s voice startled me while I was in the garden the next morning, intermittently throwing Messy the mongoose some grapes that had grown puckered in Casanova’s cage.
The evil bird himself was enjoying the late summer sunlight on the series of perches André, our coachman and carpenter par excellence, had made for him. The parrot’s multicolored feathers comprised a blooming garden on their own, though the real flora was fading as the autumn season advanced. Casanova was tethered by one leg to a long leather leash, so he could do everything but fly away.
“Off with her head!” he suggested, opening up a rainbow of wings and beating them on the air, and incidentally mixing up the snippet of “Royal Wives, Royal Lives” Irene had been playing with bits of Alice in Wonderland that I had read aloud in the past.
Godfrey sat beside me and glanced at the embroidery hoop in my hands. I stopped my busywork. I had not slept a wink last night myself.
“Nell.” He said no more.
“You have been thinking,” I accused with the accuracy of one who had once been his typewriter-girl.
“Alas, yes. I have been thinking, and I have been doing something even more difficult: endeavoring to
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