The Adventuress (37 page)

“We... we are only going to see Alice?” I ascertained.

“I did not say we were going to see Alice—” Irene drew on pink kid gloves “—only that Alice had invited us to a demonstration at the palace. So we are expected, but I don’t expect Alice to be there.”

By now my blue-and-white striped skirt train was cascading alongside Irene’s wake of pink ruffles down the grand marble stairway of the hotel, while every head in the place turned toward us—or rather, toward my companion. Irene rustled through the lobby, oblivious. The faint flush on her cheeks disturbed me. I had seen that glow before, and it was always the same: the bright, feverish expression of a huntress upon the track.

“Irene,” said I. We had paused on the hotel terrace while she unfurled her extravagant parasol, dousing her flaming expression in filtered pink shade. “Why will you not tell me what you have in mind?”

“Because you possibly will betray my intentions.”

“I would not! Indeed, I have rarely known them.”

“Exactly why you would give them away if you did.” She marched, not strolled, smartly down the promenade toward the palace.

I sighed, then clattered after her like a tardy child. We were indeed expected at the palace. The liveried footman admitted us at once and led us toward the building’s rear, and deep within it. I felt vaguely like a trespasser when he flourished open a set of double doors and bowed: “Madame. Mademoiselle.”

The room beyond was vast but so overlit by gaslight that the same architectural details that were charming and whimsical above seemed glaringly gaudy below. Parlor palms thrived somehow in that bright dungeon, while standing coats of armor glittered like gunmetal specters along the walls. These walls were plainer than those above and on them hung strange artifacts: crossed rapiers and leather sacks, bizarre masks of metal mesh, clubs, shields and pistols.

“Madame Norton!” came a jubilant, welcoming voice. “You answer my note with your presence.”

We turned to see a gentleman walking toward us. In that enormous, unfurnished chamber, our entering footfalls had sounded like repeated claps of doom. Yet this man’s steps were soundless. He approached us as if treading water, his silent reflection driving deep into the polished marble floor.

I recognized the Viscount D’Enrique despite his bizarre dress: a striped jersey like a sailor’s, baggy trousers of some cotton stuff, and—now I saw the reason for the stealthy soft-footedness—lace-up shoes as flimsy as spats, with no visible soles.

“I am delighted that you and Miss Huxleigh could come today.” He nodded to me, then bowed over Irene’s hand to kiss the shell-pink kid. “Alice said that you were intrigued by the pugilistic art.”

“I am intrigued by any art, Viscount,” she responded in tones as silken and dark as her gown, “when it is well done.”

Our host was, of course, the same odious viscount who had steered Irene so far down the palace halls on the night of her concert. I liked him no better by day.

“Pugilistic?” I hissed nervously to Irene as he turned away. She shook her head imperceptibly and I subsided.

“Ladies, let me show you the ring,” the viscount offered. “An impromptu space, but it serves.”

His great, silent strides took him to a farther comer of the ballroom-sized space. Upon the floor a painted rectangle defaced the shining stone.

“But it is square,” I noted in confusion.

Irene smiled. “The term is traditional, Nell, from the time when fisticuffs were street affairs, bound only by the ring of men surrounding the contestants.”

“Fisticuffs?” I was horrified. “You call that an art form?”

“No, my dear,” Irene said, “but when gentlemen do it and it is called ‘pugilism,’ it is considered an art form. Fisticuffs is mere survival.”

The viscount’s greasy smile grew slicker. “Madame is obviously an aficionado of the sport, a rarity in a woman. But then she is a rare woman, is she not, Miss Huxleigh?”

“Rare, indeed,” I choked out.

Irene lifted her furled parasol, which she had braced on the floor like a decorative cane, to point to the wall. “Those, I suppose, are the protective gloves.”

“Those?” Was Irene blind as well as mad? I wondered, observing the fat leather bags she indicated.

“Indeed.” The viscount, smiling still, looked her up and down as if she were a painting. “I have taken the liberty of asking an equerry to play the role of sparring partner so that you ladies may observe the science of an actual encounter in the ring.”

I stared again at the
square
on the floor, but I held my tongue. Obviously, these were deep waters, and Irene had seen to it that I should have neither chart nor sextant. I looked up, startled to note the presence of another man in the room. He, too, had arrived soundlessly and was attired as eccentrically as the viscount.

The two men stepped to the wall to take down the clumsy bags, then plunged their hands into them, the viscount lacing the equerry’s closed. He turned to Irene, expecting her to perform the same service for him. She went about it as surely as if she were lacing a corset, not some bizarre appliance for a cruel and even more bizarre sport.

Then the men faced each other. The viscount glanced to me. “Miss Huxleigh,” he said in rebuke, looking at my feet.

I discovered that I was standing on the ridiculous line that indicated the square ring and stepped back, as Irene had. The men began bouncing on their toes and dancing in and out, swooping at each other with their swollen gloves.

Irene prowled the drawn perimeter like a visitor to a zoological garden inspecting a prime exhibit. I stood speechless, watching the viscount strike snake-fast at the equerry, whose head snapped away from the blow. The sound, like a muffled slap, disquieted me.

Many more such sounds ensued. The gleam in the viscount’s eye showed a feral concentration; he took this “sport” very seriously indeed. The equerry was no match for him—how could he be, given the vast difference in their station?—and the viscount soon finished pummeling the man’s resigned features and nodded brusquely to end the match.

He crossed to us like a lion proud of a kill, his face damp with effort, his jersey darkening in places from the same source.

“Well? Was it what you expected, Madame? Mademoiselle?”

“I expected nothing,” I said pointedly, more to Irene than to the viscount.

She smiled and unlaced the hideous gloves. I performed the same chore for the poor equerry, who looked quite faint. Irene regarded the viscount’s overheated state.

“It is warm work,” he said, not in a properly apologetic tone, but in one of boast.

Irene merely smiled again and remained silent.

“You are disappointed, Madame?” he asked. “I could have knocked him down easily.”

“No, no,” she said at last. “I do not require knockdowns, and your skill was most impressive. I should certainly not wish to drive you to violence, Viscount. It’s that I’m American by birth, and in the United States, pugilistic pursuits are not so... formal.”

I had no idea of what she was talking about, but the viscount laughed like a man who has just been dealt a fine hand of cards.

“America! No doubt, Madame, you are used to bloody knuckles and bare chests.”

Irene shrugged ever so slightly and smiled like the Mona Lisa. Despite her elegant pink-and-black gown, I was reminded of a cat who had just released its jaws from a mouse.

“It can be done that way here, Madame,” the viscount said, his voice going low and husky, “but not in the palace. The prince would find it in poor taste. He has found much that he and I used to enjoy together in poor taste since he has become enamored of your American friend, the duchess. I hear now that she wishes to put an opera house in the casino! Opera houses are all very well, and you sing quite ably”—Irene bristled at the comment, I was glad to see—“but the casino! I see, however, that you are a woman of another stripe.”

The conversation’s undercurrent was horrendous. I felt like a swimmer sinking in a rank, dark tide of innuendo and intrigue. Of course I had not the slightest notion of Irene’s purpose, but I wished myself gone. I wished Irene gone. I wished the Viscount D’Enrique gone also, but first I wished Godfrey to arrive and punch the man in his sneering, smiling face. It never occurred to me that I was asking rather more of my imaginary Godfrey than he might accomplish against so seasoned an opponent of the “ring.”

Irene said nothing. In the silence, the viscount barked “Jacques!” at the departing equerry. The man froze like a fox at the first call to hounds. Beside me, Irene’s kid gloves made fists for the merest moment.

With a particularly slimy smile, the viscount crossed his arms and grasped the hem of his striped jersey. “We will have another go at it. No one need know. Madame will be well satisfied.” He made to pull the jersey up— up and off.

“No!” said I.

“You may wait outside,” Irene said without looking toward me. Instead, she was staring at the viscount like a snake at a bird. I could hear my heart beating and the soft shuffle of the reluctant Jacques as he approached the “ring” again. I glimpsed a wedge of cheese-white flesh, a sprinkle of black hair, as the viscount’s jersey peeled upward.

“Really, this is most improper and quite unnecessary,” I stammered. Irene caught my arm in a tight, cautionary grip.

In that awkward, frozen instant, I heard a door open and hard-soled shoes cross the stones. The viscount dropped his jersey. Irene dropped my hand. The equerry’s face lost its look of dread.

“There you are, D’Enrique,” came the prince’s bland voice. “I thought we’d have a go at some of the official correspondence, but here you are, dressed for boxing. A demonstration for the ladies, I see.”

We all bowed.

“I will attend Your Highness within a quarter of an hour,” the viscount promised formally.

The prince’s smile and limpid wave of hand indicated that the two were on far easier terms than the viscount’s public manner hinted.

“No hurry, my dear fellow. I’ve no wish to shorten the ladies’ pleasure. I’ve quite a good gymnasium here; used it myself in my youth, but now leave that to D’Enrique. I do my exercising at the Ritz
table d’hote
.” He laughed at his own jest and left us.

“Well, my dear ladies... The viscount bowed. “Perhaps another day?”

“Indeed,” Irene said, pivoting on the point of her parasol and rustling out beside me.

Our echoing steps prevented further conversation. My last glimpse of the wretched human punching bag, Jacques, was to see him vanish down a lower hall.

We left the palace in silence. I found the frank splash of the Monte Carlo sunshine a relief, like light that is cast upon some dank, damp place.

Irene inhaled deeply of the fragrant air and sighed. “So close.”

“Close to public offense! That wretched viscount was about to remove his shirt.”

“I had so hoped, Penelope.” She sighed again.

“Irene! That is hardly the sort of answer I would expect of you.”

“Surely you did not think I had any interest in viewing that pasty, puffy expanse? If he had more than helpless equerries to practice on, the viscount would spend his time in pugilistics staring at the ceiling.”

“Then why did you go to observe him?”

‘To observe him? I wished to see if he bore a tattoo.”

“The viscount?”

“Not the equerry, surely!”

“Irene, you didn’t tell me.”

“I never dreamed that you would interfere.”

“Even if you had truly had a legitimate aim, I would have been obliged to object. Really, there must be some other way to find out than by tricking a man into removing his shirt in the presence of ladies!”

“There is another way—” Irene’s face had a speculative look “—and the advantage to it is that you would not be required to cooperate, since it would be a private ruse as opposed to a public one.”

“What is that?”

“I could accede to the viscount’s obvious intentions to seduce me and... be seduced long enough to learn what I need.”

“Worse! Truly depraved! You would compromise yourself beyond redemption. You might not be able to escape him. There would be a terrible scandal. Godfrey would—”

“Yes,” she agreed glumly, “Godfrey would. There are some severe drawbacks to marriage for the investigator.” She glowered at me. “Also for the investigator who has well-intentioned friends. She schemes best who schemes alone. Well. No harm done. I shall simply have to find another method of inspecting the viscount’s chest.”

“I can suggest one,” I said grimly.

“What?” I had caught Irene off guard.

“Drown him,” I proposed with some pleasure. “Then pretend to find the body. As we both have seen, a dead man may be bared with impunity and cause no scandal whatsoever.”

“Murder before impropriety!” Irene unfurled her parasol along with her sunniest laughter. “It never fails to shock me—what a properly brought-up Englishwoman will condone to ensure her blessed propriety.”

Chapter Twenty-nine

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