A Soul of Steel (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) (13 page)

“Yes, that does resemble Christian denial,” he murmured, sounding alarmingly as Irene does at times.

“At least she was not consorting with some sorceress who enjoyed turning men into pigs!”

“Ulysses was a bounder to leave the lady languishing for so long,” he admitted soothingly. “But if I have no true Christian name, and neither do you, is there any impropriety in using them between us?”

“I am certain that there is, but you have talked me out of it in that silver-tongued way that Irene puts to such good use. You are both too much for me.”

“I doubt that, Nell. And would it be too much for you to assist me to rise? I wish to see the fabled garden that I am now forbidden to visit because of my usefulness as an apparent target. Sophie said the window overlooks it.”

“Is it safe?” I looked uneasily to the window.

“Perhaps not, but it would be a shame to live in total safety. Besides, how can I sleep certain that nobody lurks unless I look?”

“You and Irene are two of a kind,” I muttered as he shifted on the bed.

I really had serious qualms about serving as his support. What if I could not bear up to the weight? I did not relish another humiliating tangle on the floor, this time without the excuse of an assassin’s shot. But the ill often take odd notions, and I was not one to refuse them small comforts.

As he stood and lay an arm along my back and shoulder, my heart sank at the impress of alien weight. I should buckle like an overburdened banister, I feared. But then no more pressure came, and we made an awkward progress to the window, where he leaned a hand on the broad elbowboard and pushed the shutters carefully open.

It was as if a clumsy wooden curtain had been dragged away from the fairyland scene in a play. I confess I had never observed our formal French garden by moonlight, had never thought to enjoy it then. By daylight it displayed a rainbow row of hollyhock and heliotrope, larkspur and snapdragons.

Now night’s cool silver hand soothed the garden’s fevered daytime brow, creating a pale landscape of subtle shape and shimmer and shadow. Utterly beautiful. Its perfume drifted up in a delicate, sheer curtain that was almost tangible.

We stood in silence.

He finally spoke. “When I thought of England in the ice house of an Afghanistan winter, in the sweltering swamp of India, I pictured such serene, uncrowded beauty. I thought of Berkeley Square, teacups and crumpets, my rosy-cheeked nieces in organdy pinafores. I also thought of you, Nell, and the certainty that however the Empire sizzled abroad under brutally blue skies amid dirt and dust and a dozen vicious not-quite-wars, somewhere London fog danced a saraband on the paving stones and among hidden rosebushes in the back garden, and somewhere Miss Huxleigh was putting her charges through their gentle paces.”

“And so I should have been,” I burst out in frenzied self-incrimination, “save for the war which drove you from that vision! When your sister’s husband, Colonel Turnpenny, was posted to India again, the family went, too, as did many such. I found myself unemployable, with governesses a glut on the market. I was forced to become a drapery clerk, and not very successfully. Had it not been for Irene, no doubt I would have starved on the streets. I am sorry to have disappointed you, but it was quite impossible for me to remain a governess. I was fortunate to become a lowly typewriter-girl, and actually became rather proficient at it, though it is a common enough skill now—”

He had grasped me by the shoulders partway through this speech, still leaning upon me somewhat and also, in an odd way, supporting me. A flutter like a caged bird beat within my breast as he spoke with rapid, even joyous conviction.

“But I am not disappointed! That is the point, Nell. I am astounded. The England I painted, that I painted myself into a far corner of the world to avoid, no longer exists except in the musty trunk of my memories. People have changed, even as I have. Times have, manners have. I have felt an outcast incapable of returning. And you, Nell, have shown me just how foolish I have been.”

“Well.” I could hardly take exception to serving as a model for seeing the error of one’s ways. “That is quite... reassuring—” I decided to plunge into the deep waters I had so clearly been invited to enter “—Quentin.” I would never call him “Stan” and that was that.

“You see,” he said with a quite irresistible smile, “the old barriers crumble. You are not the governess Huxleigh anymore and I am not—”

I interrupted before he could finish. “—the dashing young uncle.”

“Is that what you thought?” he asked.

I blushed in the dark and hoped the molten moonlight did not betray me. “That’s what we all thought in the schoolroom. The girls adored you, as girls that age will.”

He sighed, and his hands loosened on my shoulders. I swayed a little, surprised to discover that I had been relying upon his grip to stay upright, to find that I had willingly surrendered some of the usual effort of standing on my own two feet.

“You were hardly much older than they. That is why I will not hear talk of your disappointing me,” he said, “when I have disappointed so many.”

“You have not even given them an opportunity to be disappointed; you have deprived them of yourself. You must let them see you anew and judge for themselves. You have condemned yourself unheard, unseen.”

“And you, Nell? How do you judge me?”

“I—I have no right.”

“Forget our once-separate classes! You have opinions, that was always clear.”

“I cannot say! You are so... different, and I have never known you, besides. You’ve lived a life I cannot even imagine; perhaps some of it would shock me. I would say, judge yourself. Go home. See your sisters, your old friends, your nieces.”

“It would raise a hornet’s nest—about the war, about wounds long healed. I fear the bad opinion of those I love more than bullets.”

“Bad opinion can hurt more,” I admitted, “but one thing I can tell you: whatever you have done, you do not have mine.”

His hands tightened again on my shoulders, so swiftly it quite took my breath away. “Bless you,” he said in a low, intense tone that induced further threats of self-asphyxiation. “If
you
can say that, is there anyone I cannot face?”

He released one of my shoulders but I remained frozen, gazing up at his bronze face bathed in a sickle of icy moonlight. He seemed utterly familiar and utterly foreign at one and the same instant, and I felt that way myself.

In a daze, I felt his fingers pause at the point of my chin, and he tilted my face up as if to study a sculpture in better light. And then his face filled my vision. I felt a teasing tickle that reminded me of a boar’s-bristle brush, his beard... and then his lips touched mine as lightly as moonshine. The faint flowery scent burst into full bloom around me as my closed eyes suspended me in a place with no bottom or top and no time.

How that moment—moments? minutes? eternity?—ended I cannot say. I felt myself drowning in a fragrant sea of alien yet not unpleasant sensations, so that my fingers curled into the soft folds of his nightshirt to keep myself from sinking. I was one adrift in a maelstrom, embracing the strange, tender wave that sucked the very air from my soul, lost again in a suddenly adult game of blindman’s buff. I recall that odd internal flutter in my chest bubbling over into breathless if belated retreat, and then a babble of parting inanities.

I next came to myself outside the bedchamber door, in the passage softly lit by the moonlike globe of the paraffin lamp. Its painted roses glowed as if alive and for a moment I held my trembling fingertips, suddenly cold, over its warmth. By its illumination I stumbled to my bedchamber, but though it was pleasant and familiar, it seemed confining. I wanted to burst outdoors, to run into the garden, but that was impractical and would cause comment, and I most of all wished to be alone, as alone as I had ever been. I rushed back into the passage. No, I must speak to someone—to Irene! I must hurry to Irene and tell her, ask her... but I could not rouse Irene and Godfrey at such a time, for such a matter.

I quivered in the hall like a hare frozen in the bright, silent blare of a full moon with no place to run. Then a long-ago refuge crossed my mind. I opened the door to what served as our linen closet. The space was cramped under an angled ceiling; it resembled my notion of a priest’s hole from a distant century. I darted in and drew the door shut behind me. In pristine dark and quiet, I embraced a bolster smelling vaguely of camphor, and thought.

Time was irrelevant to my state of suspended confusion. The utter dark suited my mood, and so it remained for a long time, until light suddenly sliced into my surroundings—not the mellow bar of daylight dawning under the door that one would expect, but a vertical slash of lurid lamplight.

I had not thought so far ahead as to dread discovery. Its actuality stirred a mortification more profound than when I had been found raiding the parsonage tea tray at the age of four. I quailed before the questing shadow that bore the lamp, whoever it was.

“Nell!”

Irene’s voice. I suppose it could have been worse, but not much.

“Nell, you were not in your bedchamber. You were not in our guest’s bedchamber. You were not—”

“Why should I be in Mr. Stanhope’s bedchamber?!”

“That is where I left you last,” she answered reasonably. “What on earth are you doing here? And why—?”

“Must you shine that miserable light in my face?”

“No.” Irene lowered it, then stepped fully into the crowded space. She closed the door behind her, taking care to sweep the lace-flounced train of her nightgown into the closet with her first. My hidey-hole glowed in all its homely clutter, lamplight reflecting from the white linens stacked around us.

Irene herself seemed a shining though girlish ghost, her burnt-honey hair backlit into an auburn aura that curled loosely over her shoulders, her snowy nightdress afoam with a phosphorescence of lace and satin ribbons.

She crouched beside me in a spindrift of silk and shook my wrist cautiously. “Are you quite all right?”

I still blinked in the sudden dazzle. “Did you need me for something?”

“No—”

“Then why bother looking?”

“I merely wanted to ensure that you had gotten safely to bed.”

“Then you thought I was in some danger!”

“Well... a shot was fired into this house not a day ago.”

“Yet you encouraged me to remain in Mr. Stanhope’s chamber.”

“Another attempt did not seem imminent. Was there trouble?”

“Nothing... of that kind.”

“Ah.” Irene placed the lamp on a vacant shelf and settled against a stack of coverlets, tucking her lacy hem over her bare feet.

“And you have gone roaming without your slippers!” I admonished.

“You have gone roving without your night clothes,” she observed, eyeing my fully dressed state.

I suppose I did appear ridiculous, but then the look matched how I felt.

“I wanted to think,” I explained in a rush, “but the garden is not safe, and I would not leave the house at night in any case. My room was too... familiar, and I did not want to rouse the household by going downstairs and being mistaken for a housebreaker. Besides, Casanova would no doubt squawk, and Godfrey might shoot me.”

Irene received my confused recital with commendable sobriety. “Now that you explain your reasoning, I can see that the linen closet is a most ideal place to think. I am only amazed that I have not thought of it before. I have sorely wished a retreat myself from time to time.”

“Oh, do not be so understanding! You know that I am in a perfectly inane position. You would never back yourself into such a ridiculous comer!” I clutched my bolster closer.

“My dear Nell, we are three unrelated adults sharing one household, along with the servants. What is so ridiculous about seeking solitude? Even Lucifer wanders off and cannot be found at times.”

“That’s true. And Casanova has his cage cover to hide under, I suppose. At least he is quiet then. Usually.”

“Indeed. Isolation is a rarity in modern life, yet we all need it. If nothing you wish to share is troubling you, I will leave you to your solitude.” She began to struggle upright in her voluminous gown.

“That piece of frivolity is utterly impractical,” I noted. She paused to gaze at me with naked bemusement. “I did not don it in hopes of being practical.”

“I can see not. You should have stayed in your bedchamber instead of hunting me down.”

“Hunting you down? My dear Nell, I was merely looking—you are always exactly where you are supposed to be. Can you not see that I was mildly alarmed—?”

“No! You were merely curious. There is a difference.” She had reached her knees and was about to retrieve the lamp, but froze to regard me. “You
are
upset. You are annoyed with me.”

“Not with you.”

“Who then?” She settled down again, a look on her face that would not be satisfied without answers.

“With myself.”

“You have annoyed yourself? How original, Nell. Most people confine their annoyance to others.”

“You will quickly encourage me to reconsider,” I snapped, then clapped my hands over my mouth. “Forgive me, Irene. I am frightfully out of temper. But I do think it was most... wicked of you to insist that I remain to talk with Mr. Stanhope.”

“Why?”

“The hour was late and the circumstances most improper.”

“You know that my notions of late hours and improper circumstances do not concur with yours. So how could I lead you into wickedness where I saw none?”

“You placed... an occasion... I would not have encountered by myself in my path.”

“Which was—?”

“Irene, I have never in my life been alone with a man unless he was a relation, or an employer, or a member of the clergy, and it was absolutely necessary.”

“Well, Mr. Stanhope is not an employer, and I doubt he will ever be a member of the clergy. But he did ask us to call him ‘Stan.’ “

“I have it on good authority—his—that he prefers being addressed by his middle name.”

“Which is?”

“Q-Quentin,” I whispered like a guilty child.

“Quentin it shall be then,” she said, “and could we not consider Quentin a quasi-relation, since he is the uncle of former charges of yours?”