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

at least, he addressed Mademoiselle Huxleigh in that language. His accent was perfect.”
    “So is your French accent, Madame,” Dr. Mersenné said with a bow that was a little too low and a little too long.
    “That is true.” Godfrey led the doctor to the passage. “Appearances can be deceiving and so can aural impressions.” The two men ambled toward the front door.
    “Well,” I asked Irene, “is it poison or fever, and will he live or die? Like most physicians, Dr. Mersenné was indefinite.”
    She regarded me closely. Lucifer chose that moment to stalk into the parlor and brush against my skirts. Irene rummaged in a Sèvres box on the marquetry table until she had found a cigarette and one of Lucifer’s namesake matches. I found her habit of prefacing the answers to momentous questions with such stage business most annoying.
    Irene smiled at me through her veils of smoke, looking like a snake charmer working with a ghostly subject. “He may suffer from both: fever and poison. Doctors are so unimaginative. From my observation, the puncture wound would accommodate any one of a dozen hatpins I have on hand. Or that you have.”
    “A hatpin?”
    “Don’t sound so skeptical, dear Nell. I have put a hatpin to good use in my own defense on numerous occasions. Seven to ten inches of sharpened steel is nothing to underestimate, particularly if it is dipped in a toxic substance. Hatpins are miniature rapiers, and often a woman’s best defense. Why could they not be a man’s downfall?”
    “I have never regarded a hatpin as lethal,” I admitted, “but then I see the world with the innocent eyes of a parson’s daughter.”
    At this announcement, Lucifer narrowed his emerald eyes and leaped onto my lap, there to switch his tail most commandingly. “Why must this creature cast himself upon my skirts?”
    “Apparently innocent parson’s daughters are as attractive to cats as they are to mysterious strangers.”
    “Oh, I see I will never live it down,” I retorted. “And you still have not said whether the man would live or die.”
    “I don’t know, Nell, any more than Dr. Mersenné does.” Irene snuffed her cigarette, then rose and smiled down at me. “All I know is that the swarthy gentleman upstairs requires constant tending. We shall have to take turns nursing him, you, Sophie and I.”
    “I can stand guard as well,” said Godfrey as he returned from seeing the doctor out. “Who will take first watch?”
    They stood there, shoulder to shoulder, my handsome friends, and eyed me blandly.
    “Perhaps Nell should,” Irene suggested at last. “After all, the man is asking for her.”
    I stood so abruptly—and unthinkingly—that Lucifer thudded to the floor with a furious hiss. The sound was echoed by the parrot Casanova in his cage, but no noise was louder than the oceanic roar of my inner disbelief.
     

     
    A sickroom always reminds me of a wake to which no one has yet come. My melancholy in the presence of illness is no doubt due to my lot as a parson’s daughter. From an early age I made myself useful to my father and his flock, and running sickroom errands was one thing a child could do.
    Simply closing the shutters in daylight and putting a dormant form in the bed linens had transformed our cheery upstairs bedroom into a slightly sinister place. A paraffin lamp glowed softly on the bureau, casting enough light to reveal the figure in the bed.
    “He looks quite different,” I exclaimed, keeping my distance nevertheless.
    “A fascinating man,” Irene said, her voice vibrant with its most dramatic timbre.
    “How can you say that? You know nothing about him.” Her amber-brown eyes fairly scintillated. “Ah, that is what makes him fascinating. Speculation, darling Nell, is always much more exciting than information. What do you think of him now?”
    “He will not—”
    “Awaken? I cannot say. At the moment he is quiet. You may study him safely.”
    “I wish Godfrey were—”
    “We are