A Soul of Steel by Carole Nelson Douglas Page B

in my sitting up with a man in his bedchamber. Long custom makes clear that only when a man is laid utterly flat by illness can he be regarded as safe enough not to make improper advances to any nearby female.
    Mr. Stanhope did not seem sick enough to erase any suggestion of scandal, at least from my mind.
    “ He , you say.” My voice emerged froggy from the long silence.
    “He?”
    “Your marksman. You know, or suspect, his identity.”
    “She did not pursue that.”
    “She?”
    “Your friend. She cared only about the name of my battlefield rescuer.”
    “That is true,” I admitted, “and also odd. Yet  Irene has her instincts, and they will not be denied. Nor can I deny that such apparently wild guesses have served her well. Perhaps it is the artistic temperament.”
    He laughed. “Perhaps. I have not a jot of it.”
    “Yet you have led quite a... Bohemian life.”
    “Not at all, Miss Huxleigh. I have led an irregular life. There is a difference. That is even worse than being a Bohemian,” he added mockingly. “And you... you surprise me. You have led an adventurous life.”
    “I? Not at all! I am a complete homebody. Although,” I was compelled to add in all honesty, “I did once travel from London to Bohemia by train unescorted. It was highly improper of me, but the situation was desperate.”
    “By train? A woman alone? You see my meaning! That is the civilized equivalent of daring to dwell solitary among the brigands of Afghanistan, my dear Miss Huxleigh.”
    “Ah, but I have never been called ‘Cobra.’ “
    He sobered at that; at least I no longer glimpsed the pale scimitar of his teeth.
    “Although,” I was again compelled to add in all frankness, “I once signed a cablegram by the code name ‘Casanova.’ “
    “You! Casanova?” He leaned forward until the light limned his features.
    At the time I’d thought the ruse rather clever myself. “The parrot,” I explained modestly.
    “Ah, of course. A sagacious old bird. But you see? Coded cablegrams, unescorted train journeys. You have been quite an adventuress.”
    “Never! And only because Irene had summoned me to Prague. Even Godfrey—who barely knew her then—advised me against going, but I knew Irene would never call on me for a frivolity.
    “And it was a good thing I went, for she trembled upon the verge of a fearsome scandal. I am happy to say that my mere presence insured that no one could speak against her dealings with the King of Bohemia. Quite a nasty little man, that, though he stood several inches over six feet tall.” I shuddered in remembrance of the arrogant monarch.
    “A cat may look at a queen,” Mr. Stanhope said in amused tones, “but only a Miss Huxleigh may despise a king. You are so British, my dear Nell, and so innocently charming. I had quite forgotten.”
    I froze. “We had not agreed upon using Christian names, Mr. Stanhope.”
    “I asked you all below to call me ‘Stan.’ “
    “That is a variation of a surname, not a Christian name. And even”—I took a great mental breath before I uttered it —“Emerson... is not a truly ‘Christian’ name.”
    “Perhaps I should not confess that my middle name is... Quentin, then.”
    “Quentin?” Alas. That, too, struck me as a highly euphonious, if unconventional, pair of syllables. “Quentin is quite—”
    “A variation on the Roman Quintus. Quite pagan,” he added, a teasing glint in his cairngorm eyes. “Yet I prefer it to Emerson, and was so called among my family and closest friends before I left for Afghanistan. I prefer it.”
    “Quentin is not uncomely,” I admitted, “but it is decidedly un-Christian.”
    “So is ‘Penelope,’ “ he shot back with alarming accuracy.
    “Well—!” I didn’t know quite how to defend my poor parents’ nonconformist choice of a baptismal name. “True, the name is of classical origin, but my father was highly learned, though a humble Shropshire parson. Penelope was an admirable and virtuous woman,