The Private Wife of Sherlock Holmes (Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes novella) Read Online Free PDF Page B

attired equerry opened the door and stepped aside as an imposing and instantly recognizable figure entered. The door just as instantly shut behind him.
    “Good Lord,” his Royal Highness said. “What a start you gave me. An attired woman merely sitting on my chaise. Outrageous as ever. What are you doing in London , Irene?”
    I had hopped down to curtsy. “You were expecting Sophie Montague, I realize, Sir. She had recruited me for her chamber drama as well as Your Royal Highness. I must say your playing the melodrama villain has been highly effective with Reginald Montague. He will be the most faithful husband in London from now on, so faithful that Oscar Wilde will write a play mocking him and call it ‘A Man of No Importance.’”
    The “Uncle of Europe” grinned into his beard. “Sophie is my hatter’s god-daughter; I find it most amusing to play the hero instead of the seducer. Quite a saucy child to appeal to me for this charade, but at least it has allowed me a chance to see the peerless Irene again.” He nodded to the beautiful but bizarre piece of furniture that was the centerpiece of the room. “You’re sure you—?”
    “Now, Your Highness, we did agree not to ruin so sublime an occasion by vulgar repetition.”
    “Of course.” He sighed, then brightened. “Mrs. Hemphill will be most worried that I was ‘cheated’ of my prize and no doubt send me something really delicious. Perhaps several somethings.”
    I left Bertie to contemplate his forthcoming feast and rejoined Mr. Holmes in the office, now empty of Montagues and madam. The Prince’s equerry stood guard over the python ottoman and its contents. One wondered if Bertie would destroy the recordings right off, or peek first, Holmes’s thought exactly.
    “At least,” he murmured to me as we left, “you have the most incriminating discs up your sleeves.”
     
    ~~~~~
     
    Back at Baker Street I divested my sleeves of their booty in the parlor while Mr. Holmes shed his latest disguise in his bedchamber.
    “One thing I must know,” I told him when he emerged in his own guise, attired in City vest and suit. His clean-shaven face in an age of mustachios was an empty canvas for his disguises, I realized, and I quite liked it.
    “How do I intend to destroy the compromising gramophone discs?” he anticipated me. “It will be a first. I suppose I’ll smash them with a hammer.”
    I smiled to picture Mr. Holmes performing such a task, a veritable Carrie Nation breaking liquor bottles.
    “Not that,” I explained. “I want to know why Dr. Watson’s story of our first encounter so badly garbled the scene of my wedding, which you witnessed in disguise at St. Monica’s.”
    “Watson ‘garbled’ nothing. I, er, omitted certain unimportant details when relating the event to him.”
    “Importance is in the eye of the beholder. I wonder that you didn’t regale him with the remarkable circumstances. Godfrey’s arrival at St. Monica’s was delayed and there was some question that the marriage wouldn’t be legal if it didn’t transpire immediately. The clergyman drafted a nearby idling groom as proxy bride groom.
    “I was forced to stand beside a tipsy side-whiskered lout as the ceremony began, until Godfrey stormed in and you were demoted to a mere witness. Is that not a much more dramatic moment than the good doctor penned?”
    He waved a dismissive hand. “Grand opera has accustomed you to high drama. A trifling fine point. We stood together at the altar only a minute or so.”
    “Nevertheless, I believe that circumstance justified introducing myself into your chambers on that pretext.”
    “Flimsy grounds, madam, exceedingly flimsy.”
    “And where is the gold sovereign with which I tipped the tipsy groom?” I looked pointedly at his waistcoat. “You wore it yesterday when you returned to these rooms to find me in residence but I have not seen it since.” Nor was my photograph any longer in view.
    He shrugged. “I was in