Read Online Another Scandal in Bohemia by Carole Nelson Douglas - Free Book Online

now?” she speculated wistfully. “You never saw it either, did you, Nell?”
    “Of course not. You sang at La Scala alone. It must have been heavy, that showy swag of diamonds cascading from shoulder to hip.”
    “Not in the least. Like wearing meringue or angel hair. How cleverly it was designed, like a lacy sash of rank, to enhance any gown. They told me it shimmered like a comet on stage.”
    “Nonsense!” Godfrey lit a long cigar and stretched his slipper-clad feet to the fire, for the nights had grown chill. “You shimmered like a comet; the diamonds merely reflected your glory.”
    “There, you see,” Irene urged me, laughing. “My most devoted audience. He is won over by the very thought of my performance.”
    Godfrey did not answer, nor did I. We were suddenly both too aware that Irene’s future musical performances would be haphazard and private. She had retired from the stage only because the King of Bohemia had high-handedly cut her career short in Prague and then her risky encounter with Sherlock Holmes had forced her into premature anonymity.
    I thought about Irene’s great talent so suddenly and circumstantially silenced as I lay awake that night. She never spoke of it, and I dared not mention the subject. Yet it must secretly chafe her spirit, though she would never let that show. So I was not surprised to hear the piano’s faint tinkle in the sleepless wee hours, knowing as I did that the day’s events must bring Irene’s thoughts back to Bohemia, back to a past in which she had envisioned a glorious future that included neither Godfrey—then unmet—nor myself, save in a now-and-then way.
    But Irene did not reign as queen of stage and palace in Prague; she was an English barrister’s wife in Paris. Another woman no doubt treasured the Tiffany corsage that Irene had introduced to the fashionable world in Milan. Another woman wore the crown jewels of Bohemia that King Willie had himself arranged upon her for the incriminating photograph. Godfrey had never seen that, either. Irene told him that the sight of the King and herself together was history that would only pain him. Now I began to wonder if she feared that the sight of the jewels she had forsaken would pain him more.
    Still the distant Dvořák melody unwound like a music box. I sat up, thrust my feet into slippers before they touched the cold wooden floor, then rose and donned a shawl.
    Moments later I was feeling my way downstairs in the dark, too timid to light a candle and risk awakening Godfrey. Halfway down the steps my own shadow began to softly accompany me: Irene’s parlor light seeped into the passage to bathe me in a vague glow.
    A few steps more, and my darker self hunched in huge and twisted relief on the whitewashed passage wall. I pattered over the hall’s slate tiles onto the softness of faded French rugs.
    The leashed moon of a paraffin lamp glowed above the grand piano and reflected in its burnished rosewood, so two soft eyes beamed at me in the semidark.
    Matching green embers burned near the fireplace. Apparently Lucifer had an ear for music as well as an ever-open eye for mischief.
    At the piano, I saw only the rich gleam of Irene’s hair meandering down her back before vanishing into the satin folds of her peignoir. Her hands, white in the artificial moonlight, glided over the ivory keys, as if invoking a spell or weaving on a loom.
    Notes came forth, sometimes a separate trickle that gathered into watery falls, sometimes hunched together in throat-tightening chords. She played quietly: some notes were imagined moments strained for. She had meant not to wake us, but the effect was to haunt our dreams with an undercurrent of melody. Dvořák’s music could be melancholy, and so this playing struck me.
    I sat on a leather hassock, unsurprised when something black arched into my lap. Lucifer balanced on his claw-points, neatly puncturing my knees, before settling down to pummel my abused flesh.
    “I’m sorry I