Femme Fatale by Carole Nelson Douglas Read Free Book Online Page B

had a mother, and I don’t intend to have one now.”
    “One’s wishes or demands don’t have much to do with the facts in such a case,” Godfrey said.
    “Perhaps not in a court of law,” she told him, “but I speak only the truth. I have never had a mother.”
    “Come, Irene!” Now he was pacing as though in court. “You cannot claim that you were birthed like Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom and war, as a massive headache emerging from the forehead of her father Zeus! Although I can picture you giving anyone who had the temerity to bear you a migraine or two. You are a remarkable woman, and I agree that wisdom and war are not unknown to you, but not that remarkable.”
    I couldn’t resist adding my twopence. “Oh, I don’t know, Godfrey. I can indeed imagine Irene giving the king of the gods a royal headache. She has been known to give a king or two of our day the migraine.”
    “Most amusing, Nell,” she answered. “If you know your classical gods, you would know that ‘Irene’ is the goddess of peace. I admit that I could use a little peace on this subject. Even those who claim to have mothers may not know them well. You hardly knew your mother yourself,” she pointed out—gently—to Godfrey.
    “No. I was”—he glanced at me, then steeled himself for the next words—“a bastard.”
    I gasped, and Casanova mocked me with a perfect imitation.
    “But I knew who my mother was, if not my father for some time,” Godfrey added quickly.
    “How?” Irene asked.
    I was shocked to realize that they had never discussed this between them. Although I was a permanent member of their household, I should not be present while they explored such painful and personal revelations.
    I bent to retrieve my fallen embroidery hoop and steal away when Godfrey spoke again.
    “How interesting. That all of us, all three of us, should have never known a mother’s care from an early age.”
    He glanced at me and I glanced at Irene, who stared at him and then turned her gaze on me.
    “Nell’s mother died,” she said at last. “You must have seen a daguerreotype or a photograph of her?”
    I nodded.
    “And she had a father. You, Godfrey, had a notorious mother who apparently did not acknowledge you publicly, though someone reared you and paid for your education. You also had a purported father you despised for what he did to your mother, although you never knew him either.”
    “That’s true. Roughly,” he admitted. “I will not go into the particulars now, because my past is somewhat known, but yours has always been a cipher from the first.”
    “Because I never knew a mother or father! I have no names, no photographs. No memories.” She lifted and weighed the flimsy cablegram paper on her palms as if it were made of lead. “This assertion must be false. It is impossible. I cannot imagine why Pink would make such an absurd statement, except that she is sadly misled.”
    “But if she is not,” I couldn’t help saying. “Murder—”
    “Why murder a woman who does not exist?!” Irene’s shoulders shrugged so violently that her fingers almost tore the message in twain. “And what is it to me if someone does?”
    We shared a mutual silence, Godfrey and I. Such callous sentiments were unlike Irene.
    She sat suddenly at the piano and crashed a resounding, atonal chord into the keys.
    “It is a fraud,” she said, “or a delusion. Let Miss Nellie Bly stew in her suspicions. I will have no part in it.”
    Godfrey flicked the upsetting message onto my side table.
    “You are quite right. One can never trust what independent American wenches may get up to.”
    Irene laughed over her shoulder at him, her hands sweeping into the lush chords of a Viennese waltz.
    The melody, one of Strauss’s, was irresistible. Casanova ducked his poly-colored head in time to the notes and swayed from side to side. Lucifer twitched his tail in time like a furry black metronome.
    Godfrey bowed before me and swept me into a waltz