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

told, carries well."
    “Superbly, Madame, but so did their voices beforehand. I am curious about these puzzling affairs they mentioned, in which you take an interest, and about your cleverness. These women implied that you had aided the future Princess of Monaco in avoiding a scandal before her forthcoming marriage.”
    “That is true.” Irene leaned forward to take the Meissen cup, thin as a butterfly wing, that I offered her. “I of course cannot tell you the exact nature of her difficulty—”
    “Of course not!” The Queen seemed ready to press her palms to her ears at the very thought. “But the matter was of a personal and delicate nature?”
    “Of the most personal and delicate nature,” Irene said complacently, sipping what I had discovered to be a delicious cinnamon-flavored tea.
    “I see. But I do not understand how you undertake such matters."
    “For friends,” Irene replied. “And for fees. I acted as an inquiry agent in my youth for the Pinkertons in America and for private parties abroad. Some were American themselves, such as Charles Lewis Tiffany; others were English, such as Oscar Wilde.”
    “Oh. Oh my, Madame. You have indeed aided some prominent individuals, and I doubt that your youth can be spoken of in the past tense.” Queen Clotilde smiled as she sighed, her breath agitating the curling feathers at her neck and bosom. She herself, I saw with some surprise, was a mere girl, perhaps of twenty or so.
    Yet she was an aristocratic ghost, this woman, a pale specter who frightened even herself. She had sipped the tea but once. Now it sat cooling within the exquisite rim of her cup while she sat before us nursing cold, aristocratic feet.
    “How may I aid you?” Irene prompted gently.
    I was surprised by that gentleness, but then Irene was the complete confidante. She could take whatever tack another required, despite her own feelings. Or, rather, she could mask her own feelings to serve another purpose. I felt a stab of pity for Queen Clotilde, royalty in name only, and so obviously ill-equipped to deal with a crisis or even a minor social matter. She would be mincemeat in the courts of any land, especially Bohemia, with her obstreperous in-laws, the family von Ormstein.
    Irene could have handled them, and had. Oh, how unfair life was! What a queen Irene would have made, to quote the King of Bohemia in one of his rare, perceptive moments. She would have played the role to perfection, and have never lost herself, or her humanity, to it. Instead, King Willie had made this mail-order princess his bride. Now the unhappy creature was coming to Irene for aid. Aid for what? What did a pampered queen have to fret about?’
    She was about to tell us, but first she must wet her fish-belly-pale lips. They had cracked from such frequent gestures, adding to her lackluster air despite the rich garb and the soft, ever-present flutter of gray ostrich feathers that framed her person like dust-ridden gilt.
    What a complete and total loss she was. A shaking little white rabbit with nervous pink eyes. This the King must recognize each day of his life when he thought of the vital woman he had betrayed, whose blood was unblued by royal birth but whose every other attribute was of a royal nature.
    “I am not sure that anyone can aid me,” the Queen confessed, her brows knitting, I assume, since I could see only furrowed skin and a dusting of down. “I find it most embarrassing to name my ill. Perhaps I should begin with my personal history.”
    Irene expertly managed to conceal a yawn without lifting a rude but veiling hand to her face. I felt inclined to groan myself. The Queen of Bohemia looked to be a thorough sort of young person, seriously dull beyond her years.
    “I am my father’s second-born daughter,” she began.
    Irene’s and my glance intersected. We had read all we wished to know of her in the newspaper.
    “It was always intended that I wed the future King of Bohemia.”
    “Oh, really?” Irene