The Adventuress (31 page)

Alice bent to brush cheeks with Irene, then fell back in admiration of Louise and myself, both of us transformed by Irene—Louise because she required disguising, I because I was near at hand.

“A pity all of you do not sing. We could introduce you as the Three Graces,” Alice said.

“Not after I had performed,” I put in.

“Nor I!” Louise seconded me. “I sing like a frog.”

“Certainly you would decorate an angelic chorus, my dears, even if you never opened your mouths,” Alice said. She was never one to be deflected easily from a notion.

“So kind of you,” Irene said, thrusting a delicate pink orchid into her hair, “to send an example of the invitation. I have fallen in love with—of all things—the sealing wax. Such scent, so rich a color! I must have some.”

“Oh, dear.” Alice’s high spirits sank. “I am glad that you like it, but you can’t have it. It is simply not to be had by anyone. It is the royal house’s custom sealing wax, used since before the French Revolution. The formula is secret.”

“No wonder it is so exquisite,” Irene said admiringly. “Monaco is truly a fairy-tale princedom, with even the magical proscriptions—the rose that can never be plucked, the threshold that must never be crossed—”

“It may ruffle our egalitarian American sensibilities, Irene, but Europeans are wedded to their hereditary privileges. I’d give you buckets of the stuff, really I would, darling, but Albert would be dreadfully piqued. The wax appears only on palace or personal royal correspondence.”

“You are right. In America, the commercial instinct would ferret out the formula and produce it in quantity for Mrs. Grundy to apply to her bridge-party invitations. It must be manufactured within the principality, then?”

“I believe so,” Alice said vaguely. “Despite its critics, Monaco produces more than the money spent by pleasure-seekers. Oh, Irene, how I wish you and Godfrey—and Nell, of course—would take a summer villa here! With Sarah a frequent visitor, we could establish a circle of culture that would easily counter Monaco’s reputation for all that is fast, fashionable and frivolous. When I marry Albert at last, I would love to install an opera house, but I do not know where upon this tiny rock to find room for one.”

Irene’s eyes had taken fire from the duchess’s ambitions. “Why not within the casino? Convert a grand
salle
to the purpose, or use the theater. Everyone will know where the opera house is, at least.”

“The casino? Art installed within a temple of Champagne and Chance?”

“Is not Art the greatest creation of Chance? And vice versa? And Chance merely another form of Opportunity?”

Alice laughed until her remarkable blue eyes were lost in pleats of wrinkles. “Like Sarah, you let nothing stop you. I cannot even decide whether or not to change the course of Albert’s explorations—quite literally—for no reason, save that it is forced upon me.”

“You must.” Irene had grown still. “And you must also discover more about the Gr
im
aldi sealing wax—its history, manufacture and who might have access to it.”

“Sealing wax, Irene? You are serious? I tremble to ask what Godfrey is up to this evening.”

“He is dealing with ships,” Irene answered with impish promptitude, “while I dispense with sealing wax. Nell may have cabbages, and I will leave kings to you and Sarah.”

“Thank you very much,” said I, “for assigning me a common vegetable.”

“At least it is not rutabaga.” Louise wrinkled her upturned nose.

A knock indicated that the concert was imminent. Louise and I rose to wish Irene luck, although her performing
skills
were far too formidable to require such haphazard assistance. We followed Alice to a splendid chamber, where a gilded grand piano crouched like a Chinese lion bristling with a curling mane of ormolu. Under the high, painted ceiling was assembled a gay and glittering crowd.

“I am so looking forward to hearing Madame Norton sing,” Louise confided.

“So,” said I, sitting down, “am I.”

It was only when the final applause was fading that my mind drifted to the very different songs that Caleb Winter and Godfrey must be hearing in the smoky waterfront bistros.

Lost in my speculations, I remained seated long after the audience had dispersed. When I shook myself out of my brown study and visited the refreshment table, I found myself utterly redundant. All introductions had been made, all compliments tendered, and all the evening’s clusterings begun.

I drifted by groups speaking rapid French, then surrendered and searched for Louise and Irene. Louise was easy to locate, even with her hair shining under a new halo of henna and her eyelashes blackened with burnt cork. She was a shy moon in Alice’s scintillating social orbit, which circled always around the prince’s dignified figure.

“Where is Irene?” I hissed as I joined Louise.

Surprised, she inventoried the room. “How odd. I last saw her accepting the ardent admiration of a distinguished-looking gentleman. Perhaps in the dressing room?”

I doubted it, but made my way there. The room was empty except for our cloaks and the suffocating scent of roses. Disturbed, I rustled discreetly down halls and peered through open doors. Grand, empty rooms stretched in every direction. I should need a footman to guide me through them.

Yet servants were nowhere to be seen, not even to direct me back to the recital chamber, now hopelessly distant. What if I blundered into some private area of the palace? My cheeks felt feverish. I moved down an uncarpeted hall, my footfalls echoing against the double line of mirrors that reflected my confusion.

A steady murmur reached my ears, and I rushed toward it. Beyond another pair of gilded double doors I found another empty receiving room, and beyond that, another echoing hall accoutered with paintings, mirrors and chandeliers.

The voices still lured like sirens of the Rhine from far away. I fluttered after them, and finally found the sound’s source in a pillar-bracketed niche, wherein rested a massive portrait of the naked Venus dismounting from her clamshell, which was pulled by an odd hybrid of dolphin and horse.

“Irene!”

She turned with a start. “Nell, you have found us.”

Irene was seldom one to state the obvious. I stood blinking, wishing I had worn my pince-nez so that I could put the indiscreet painting quite effectively out of focus, for I can see either far or near, but never both at once.

“Nell, this is Viscount D’Enrique, a cousin of the prince. Miss Huxleigh, a dear friend.”

“A step-cousin of the prince,” this gentleman corrected, bowing deeply.

The viscount was as sleek and animated as the prince was stolid and wooden. Save for the heavy-lidded dark eyes and the beard, they had little in common, and the viscount’s piercing yet veiled regard instilled in me a deep distrust.

“Viscount D’Enrique was showing me the palace art collection,” Irene said.

He lifted her hand for a prolonged kiss upon the wrist. “Madame Norton is the most fabled artwork of all.”

“She is an artist, and thus works very hard and must be off early to bed,” said I tartly, then turned to Irene and added, “Louise is also weary, as am I.”

“The night is but a playful kitten,” the viscount remonstrated, his dark, hidden eyes speaking dark, hidden things. “It will soon stretch its long, black back and become a cat—a panther on the prowl, with the moon for its plaything. Surely you do not propose to take Madame Norton away from me.”

“That is exactly what I suggest. She has obligations.”

“No.” Again his eyes clung to Irene. “No, the world is obligated to her. She owes nothing to anyone but the pleasure of her company.”

Irene was strangely silent, strangely complacent, in the face of this fulsome flattery. Could her recent obscurity have instilled an appetite for recognition that outweighed her ordinary good sense? If so, I must protect her from herself.

“Please, Irene, I have the headache, and Louise is most worried about her fiancé, who may be out late tonight and in who knows what difficulty,” I said pointedly. “We must return to the hotel.”

“The hotel—?” the odious viscount prompted.

“—de Paris,” Irene answered without a qualm. “Where your husband awaits,” said I. “Poor Godfrey.” I turned to the viscount. “As a barrister, he has much taxing work in Monaco, else he would have attended the recital. Godfrey never leaves Irene’s side if he can help it.”

“Apparently none of her friends do either.” His suave comment carried a sting in its tail. “I quite appreciate the sentiment. Adieu then, until—”

“Good night,” said I, sharply, taking Irene’s arm and leading her down the hall. I was still utterly lost but determined to manage a confident retreat, if such a thing is possible.

At the long hall’s end, Irene paused, then turned to the right. “This way, Nell.”

We went through a room, then right again, then left, down a hall, left, right... I can no longer recall the sequence of directions. In short order we had returned to the dressing room, where Louise was waiting with our cloaks.

“Whyever did you waste so much time with that odious man?” I admonished Irene.

She regarded me with amusement. “He is not odious at all, but a gentleman of the old school and cousin to the prince.”

“Step-cousin,” I corrected her, as he had corrected me not long before. “There must be a reason.”

Irene smiled dreamily, reminding me of the empty-headed serenity I had observed in Lillie Langtry as she acknowledged the excessive admiration of her circle of gentlemen. I had never expected Irene to tolerate, much less welcome, such superficial tribute. Perhaps Godfrey was spending too much time in the bistros as Black Otto. I would find some subtle way to warn him that he should keep closer to home. So I resolved as we three made our way back to the hotel by foot.

Alas, I failed to mention to Godfrey the odious attentions of the Viscount D’Enrique, with dire results. This confession, however, is an addendum to my diaries, made from hindsight.

I forgot the viscount for excellent reason: our return to the hotel found a fellow plotter already there, with such shocking news that unseemly palace incidents and the apparently minor issue of the royal sealing wax simply melted away for the moment.

Chapter Twenty-four

D
EAD
S
AILORS
T
HREE

“Dead?” Irene
repeated on the threshold. Her jet-spangled net evening scarf drifted around her face like cloud shadows around a highwayman’s moon. “And Godfrey?”

“Gone,” Caleb Winter muttered, his usually frank eyes cast down.

He, too, had donned seaman’s garb for the expedition. Such rough clothing suited his blunt American features, a mélange of many offshoots of the Anglo-Saxon race. Now, however, his face was ghastly and drawn. His hair dripped mist, or worse, and his pea coat reeked of wet wool and an odd piscine perfume.

“Caleb,” Louise cried, going to him despite his redolent state.

His raised hand stopped her. “No, Louise. No time to waste on me. All I can tell you, Mrs. Norton, is that we found the Indian fellow, Singh, all right, but when we followed him out of The Smoking Pig, we lost him—until Mr. Norton tripped over a mess of wet rags by the strand, only to discover that it was what was left of this Singh.”

“Dead? How?”

Caleb Winter indulged a racking cough before speaking. “Too dark to tell, especially by the sole light of a damp lucifer. Mr. Norton lit many lucifers to permit me to record this—” He pulled a wrinkled paper from inside his pea coat. “I’m a bit of a sketch artist; have to be in my line. He insisted I copy this down. And when some drunkards wheeled past singing ‘Farewell to Liverpool,’ Mr. Norton was up in a flash to join ’em and steer ’em away from me and my morbid work. That’s what I got, that little drawing there, and it’s not the fair piece of work I’d do with decent light and any time on my hands.”

Another cough overtook him. Irene brought the fragile scrap to the table, where she smoothed it out under the glare of a paraffin lamp.

“Another tattoo! And a new design,” she breathed. “That much I can tell at a glance. But what of Godfrey?”

“Off with the sailors. He went willingly, that’s all I can say. I finished my sketch moments later and returned, expecting to find him arrived here before me.”

“How long ago was that, Mr. Winter?”

“Half an hour. When I heard the door, I thought for sure it was he.”

“Not by the door. Black Otto enters by the bedchamber window.” Even as Irene spoke, she hastened to the aperture in question. She returned instantly, shaking her head. “Nothing yet. Nell, some brandy from the sideboard for Mr. Winter. I shall be back in a thrice.” She slipped quickly into the bedchamber.

I was annoyed that my dislike of spirits had caused me to overlook Mr. Winter’s medicinal need for the bracing warmth of brandy. He tossed the liquid down through chattering teeth.

“Did you... encounter some body of water?” I asked. “No, Miss Huxleigh, but when the day’s sun-warmed water meets the night chill, a fog rises from the waves and weaves through every byway, especially near the water. A seaport’s an eerie place, no doubt, threaded through with rogues, foreign folk and wanderers. There’s small elbow room for pistols in those narrow streets, but a knife comes in handy. I wager that’s what did in Singh.”