Read Online A Soul of Steel by Carole Nelson Douglas - Free Book Online Page B

smoke,” he said, “I warn you that it will not do. But the smoke itself can be arranged.”
    I followed him out to find Irene waiting in the narrow upstairs passage like a governess ambushing a miscreant.
    “Nell!” Her voice was low and urgent. “You must find out more about Mr. Stanhope’s mysterious mission—and his even more mysterious past.”
    “I must do no such thing! Irene, the man is ill. Have you no shame?”
    “He is not so ill that he cannot obscure his motives and plans. Nell, this is for his own good. Mr. Stanhope has obviously been long abroad and is not well suited to conduct the sort of inquiries he intends.”
    “He is wise enough to dodge your impertinent questions!”
    “Then you must put to him some less impertinent queries that he will not avoid. I count upon your impeccable tact, your undying sympathy and your eternal concern for another’s own good. You must find out more about your old acquaintance—and soon. For I fear he will not live long to tell anyone more if he is not taken in hand.”
    Godfrey met my skeptical look with a sober nod. “Irene is right. There’s something odd about the fellow. He has obviously lived outside the pale in India and environs. Englishmen seldom turn renegade in such climes without reason.”
    I turned reluctantly back to the bedchamber, my mind churning with doubt and fear. And curiosity.
    “And while you are at it,” Irene added in her best operatic sotto voce , which carried to me even as I opened the door, “you had best find out why he was called by that intriguing sobriquet, ‘Cobra.’ “
    I shuddered, for I have never liked snakes.
     

 
    Chapter Eight
    PILLOW TALK
     
    “Your... friend is a determined woman.”
    I paused in opening the shutters. If I meant to throw light on my long-ago acquaintance’s situation, the actual light of day might draw forth a corresponding candor. Besides, the hushed, dim intimacy of the sickroom made me uneasy, as did the familiar but utterly altered figure upon the bed. I opened the shutters, and the clear morning light poured in.
    “Irene has had to be determined,” I said, taking the hard chair by the bedside with a false calm. I was not used to playing interrogator.
    “Tell me about her,” he suggested after a pause. “At first I thought you were employed in some manner in the Nortons’ household. Are you actually mere friends?”
    “Yes, I am,” I said, laughing at his confusion. “And more. I assist Godfrey with certain legal matters, and—although no one can be said to assist Irene; she is far too independent—I make myself useful to her as well. I am not quite employee nor family member. I suppose you could accuse me of idleness and waste.”
    “You ‘make yourself useful,’ “ he repeated soberly. “That is more than I have done in the years since I last saw you in Berkeley Square.”
    “Surely the wish to save a man’s life is of a high order of usefulness?”
    “You have not aged,” he said, abruptly changing the subject.
    “Of course I have. I am past thirty.”
    He smiled. “So am I, but a woman should not confess such things so easily.”
    “I am not the kind of woman who would find any advantage in coyness, Mr. Stanhope. Why would I wish to conceal my age except to deceive someone, most likely myself?”
    He eyed me with some perplexity, as if, he actually found me—perish the thought—fascinating in some respect. I am not used to being regarded in such a light, although I have often seen its beams showered upon Irene.
    “I am quite astounded to find you here in Paris, in such circumstances,” he went on.
    “Indeed, Mr. Stanhope! You take the words from my mouth.”
    He frowned again, in the way of a baffled boy. “I do not remember you as being so quick-spoken.”
    “Ah.” The memory of our youthful selves had induced in me a strange tongue-tied tartness that even now I could not explain. “I was far younger then, and had seen a bit less of the