Another Scandal in Bohemia Read Online Free PDF Page A

with excess yardage and poundage. The silk must fall unimpeded.”
    “But—” I began, for I had never left home without a petticoat, and usually several, under the most casual of day dresses.
    Irene frowned as if hearing a sour note. She waved me silent with the same imperious gesture that Monsieur Worth had used, save that hers indicated mental abstraction rather than arrogance.
    “Shhh. I hear something,” she whispered.
    Of course she heard something. The women in the salon, in the other dressing rooms, were chattering like chickens. We had simply ignored them as we would an out-of-tune chorus at the opera.
    Now Irene did not ignore those nearby voices. Now she cocked her head to listen.
    I couldn’t help following her lead, though I abhor eavesdropping. The first familiar word I heard struck my composure with ice-water shock.
    “Or course he is divinely handsome,” a languid, violalike voice was pronouncing in oddly accented French. “If I deigned to take a lover of no consequence, I would ensure that his personal attractions made up for his lack of social ones.”
    “But to wed such a man, Serafina!” another voice broke in, merry as a flute. “A mere barrister. To end all opportunity of marrying well! Or at least of mistressing well.”
    “And have you seen her jewels?” a deeper, crueler bassoon voice intoned. “No, of course not. She has none, save for a few sorry trinkets.”
    “Still,” the more charitable flute trilled, “she has powerful friends.”
    “La Bernhardt?” mocked the bassoon. “That upstart broomstick? I would be surprised if she didn’t desert Paris for good one day and fly off on one. Even Alice Heine is only American-born, after all, and connected to those German bankers, and you know what they are. Vulgar parvenus. Money men. Like the Rothschilds.”
    “She is beautiful,” declared the viola, entering the fray, “and is said to sing like an angel. I hear that she quieted some scandal involving Alice Heine and thus paved her way to marrying the Prince of Monaco next autumn. Some say that this Norton woman is terribly clever.”
    “Not clever enough,” the bassoon retorted, coughing as if from cigarette smoke. “A truly clever woman would cease pushing her nose into other people’s affairs and pursue her own. She shouldn’t have to sing for her supper. With her looks she could snag a grand duke, even a prince or a king, if she played her cards correctly. She could collect jewels enough to make even Monsieur Worth’s spaniels sit up and take notice. Clever? Oh no, my dears. She is an utter fool, with enough pathetic pretensions, mind you, to show up here. I cannot think what came over Monsieur Worth to allow her in.”
    I had clutched a hand to my mouth, and found my other hand was fanned upon my breast, as if to hold my jumping heart inside my corset.
    Irene had moved. I turned to look. She was marching toward the dressing room door, her face as white as cambric. I hurled myself into her path, and found myself, back to the door, facing a whirlwind of ice.
    “Irene! You mustn’t. You cannot.”
    She reached beyond me for the door lever even as I inched in front of it. “No, Irene. Confronting them will serve nothing but make a scene and make them happy— please!”
    “Step aside,” she bid me in the most polite, stony tone I had ever heard. Her eyes were agate, and her lips were carved coral.
    “Irene—” I inched away from that terrible gaze. In my instant of retreat, she seized the lever.
    “You cannot!” I repeated in the same forced whisper I had used throughout our battle of wills.
    “Why not, Nell?” she asked me calmly.
    She pulled the door inward and, stunned, I gave with it, only mustering my final argument when she was already over the threshold.
    “Irene!” I cried raggedly. “You are not fully dressed.”
    She glanced over her implacable shoulder, over the lace and baby blue satin ribbon that edged her camisole like tiny angel wings.
    “I am