"I said a firm hand."

"Ah... the Crown Prince."

She laced her arm through mine and led me down the portrait-strewn gallery. Behind us the little dog's nails clicked as it deserted us for the main chamber. "Willie... I have not yet told Willie what these paintings are."

"Whyever not?"

"Because Willie has not yet told me what I am to be."

'To be?"

Irene shrugged carelessly. "Or not to be."

"Oh, for heaven's sake, Irene, I have traveled relentlessly for five days, worried the whole while; I am in no mood to play cryptic games. As Casanova would say, 'cut the cackle!'"

She drew back, her topaz-colored eyes widening. Then she laughed until the marble echoed and the painted faces all along the walls seem to smile with her.

"I had no idea, Nell, that Casanova numbered among your intimates."

The stamp of my foot ended the echoes. "Casanova is a nasty, ill-spoken parrot, but at least he makes his meaning plain."

"You are quite right. I have mystified you too long, only because I am mystified myself. Here, let us sit on this exceedingly uncomfortable marble bench. Thank G.o.d for bustles."

"Well."

Irene sighed. "Willie is madly in love with me."

"Of course."

She smiled at my partisanship. "He has showered me with gifts-most of which I have refused. He has escorted me about two ancient European cities as if permanently attached to my skirts. He was overjoyed when Dvoak proposed me for the Prague National Opera. He speaks as if we shall never part-"

"Then...?"

Irene studied the paintings. "Then I may very well be in a position soon to 'rediscover' these lost glories. It would mean much to the kingdom's purse strings, and to the pride of the Czech people, of whom I have become very fond."

"Then why not do it now?"

"Because Willie has not spoken."

"Is it to be t.i.t for tat?"

"No..." Irene turned back to me. "But I have struggled too long to turn over my high card without seeing what the other hand holds. Your Mr. Norton is right; court intrigues boil in these ancient cities. Warsaw, Prague... both are satraps of the greater Austro-Hungarian empire and spring from traditions of their own that resist the yoke of rule. It was only recently, after two hundred years, that the Czechs have been allowed officially to use their own language." She tapped her foot on the hard marble. "I will take no step until I am sure my ground is firm."

"So that is why I am here-to coax a proposal of marriage from Wilhelm Gottsreich Sigismond von Ormstein?"

She shook my arm admonishingly. "Nell, Nell, your memory is still inferior to none, but no, I need no aid with Willie. He gives all indication-"

She leaned nearer, her eyes bright. "It is no secret that most prima donnas wear genuine jewels, not paste, on stage, jewels bestowed by their wealthy admirers. It's even less secret that they are mistresses to many of those admirers. I refused Willie's offerings-even a suite of garnets, so gorgeous-but I could not compromise my independence. What one may accept from a client like Mr. Tiffany, who is after all a shopkeeper, one may not accept from a king, for a king-even a prince-has power and must not think he can use it in such a relationship as between man and woman.

"Willie was not used to being refused," Irene confided. "The novelty quite undid the poor man. One evening after dinner he took me to a room in this castle and showed me the crown jewels. He put them upon me with his own hands, then clapped those royal hands and a photographer emerged from the next chamber. We were photographed together, I with rubies and diamonds garlanding my wrists, my neck, my temples. He gave me the photograph, saying it was an offering I could keep until a day when I could accept his gifts in reality..."

"He does mean to marry you! But, Irene, you would be queen. That can't be!"

"And why not? Am I not queen on the stage, even when I sing the role of a Spanish cigarette girl?"

"You are sublime on stage, but... you are American, Irene. Surely a t.i.tle holds no allure for you, with your native independence-"

"Independence! Independence is a step on the road to sovereignty. I will rise in this world as far as I can, and have you not seen the Prince? He is courtly, devoted, a.s.sured, a man of Continental upbringing, a lover of music-"

"Exactly. He is a European, a man of n.o.ble blood. However much he may admire you, he cannot, will not make you queen-"

She lashed upright like a whip, her silken gown crackling around her. "You know nothing of Willie, or the relationship between us. He has extended me the greatest respect. Another man in his position would have expected my favors by now. Oh, how can I expect a sheltered violet like yourself to understand these things, the... unspoken promise that may exist between a man and a woman!? That was not what I called you here to talk about!"

"Irene ..." I had never seen her so agitated, so easy to offend.

It was I who should have taken umbrage. Irene blithely dismissed my lack of sentimental education even as her words reminded me with piercing clarity of my lone moment of romantic magic, when the scales had fallen from my eyes with a blindfold, for just an instant-years before in a children's playroom in Berkeley Square. Irene was too enmeshed in her own difficulties to heed my involuntary gasp.

"My possible marital adventure is not the most pressing problem, at any rate," she continued.

"What is, then?"

"The King."

"I have not met him, apparently he is ill."

Irene rose and took a tiny step away from me, paused, then stepped back to press very close. Her face held the same brisk intelligence I had seen of old as she stared down at me. "The King is... dying. That everyone knows."

"Oh. I'm very sorry, but I don't see how I can help-"

She leaned closer, her silks snapping like distant lightning, with her voice the hushed contralto thunder that followed it.

"There is something that no one else knows-or, I should say, that only one other knows. I am convinced that he is being slowly poisoned!"

Chapter Nineteen.

ROMANCE IN A MINOR KEY.

To see my friend, Irene Adler, and the Crown Prince of Bohemia together in early 1887 was to witness the idyllic enactment of a Viennese operetta or a Strauss waltz.

Even I, who was most skeptical of their future, found myself softening as I accompanied them through the baroque beauties of old Prague.

Yet I remained hopelessly tongue-tied in the Prince's company. Despite the fact that he, like Irene, was two years my junior, I found myself utterly intimidated by his foreign ways, his larger-than-life size, and even by his t.i.tle. His heroic robust perfection awed me; Wilhelm von Ormstein made all romantic figures of fiction and fact shrink by comparison.

Certainly diffident Jasper Higgenbottom shriveled in my memory as if baked by an African sun to insignificance; even dashing young Mr. Stanhope's attractions blurred in the Prince's presence.

The Czech composer, Mr. Dvoak, was a man more to my taste, once one understood the two fierce vertical frown lines separating his dark brows-marks of intensity rather than irascibility. As unprepossessing as the Prince was impressive, Mr. Dvoak's warmth radiated from his features despite his rough-cut beard and hair. He delighted in practicing his charmingly mangled English upon me, perhaps sensing the patience of a nanny in my demeanor. He endlessly sang Irene's praises-for her voice, her empathy in performance, her hard work in mastering both his music and his native tongue.

"Linguist born," he would say, a finger shaking in emphasis. "And a tone, a... sound ... that would make a saint to cry." He never mentioned her beauty.

Seeing Irene with the Prince gave me a greater sense of removal from her than I had felt when all of western Europe separated us. She had never been a woman to be overwhelmed by men, but in relation to the physically imposing Prince she seemed a porcelain fashion doll, albeit one with a mind of her own.

They made a splendid couple; that no one could deny. His ma.s.sive, mustachioed blond good looks and habit of wearing dress uniform and Irene's feminine dark beauty made them seem like a marzipan soldier paired with a milk chocolate ballerina. Even the Queen's eyes followed them fondly, though Hortense and Bertrand remained aloof. And the Prince doted upon Irene, his admiration shouted in every gesture, whispered in each word addressed to her.

Once that spring, when an unseasonable snowfall had whipped Prague's streets into froth, Irene hesitated to cross where carriage wheels had churned the melting snow into a grey mush. The Prince flung his silk-lined cloak over his shoulder and lifted her-cloak and m.u.f.f and all. He carried her across the thoroughfare, vehicles jolting to a stop for their royal progress, his shiny black hessians spanning the puddles as if they were seven-league boots.

It was not a gesture I could fancy a country curate making-yet it thrilled me as melodrama moves an audience.

I began to see it-how Irene, having struggled so long on her own behalf, might relish success, might even relinquish somewhat her fierce independence to enjoy another's solicitude. Yet I saw danger in it, on every side... danger in the unseen King's decline, danger in the d.u.c.h.ess Hortense's sour, sidelong looks, in Bertrand's sulks, in the quick, fatherly frown Dvoak often cast at Irene when she was in the Prince's company.

"I know the English," he told me when I visited a rehearsal. "Have been many times in London. Five," he toted proudly. "They like my 'Spectre Bride' and 'Saint Ludmila.' Your friend, she is American. Not like English, nor like Czech... not like German. I worry for her. She is too self-certain. These Americans know not the compromise we Europeans have make in our land, our language-for centuries. Old feelings stir. Politics. Pride. Not good for your friend to be here now."

"Yet you invited her-"

"Yes, yes. For voice. For artistry. Not for"-Mr. Dvoak glanced at the Prince, whose unmistakable silhouette had darkened the doorway-"not for... danger."

Mr. Dvoak's awkward English expressed my innermost worries. I had missed Irene's autumn performance in his King and Collier, a peasant opera, but that spring she sang Saint Ludmila in Prague, the part carried in Leeds the previous autumn by the contralto, Janet Patey.

I sat in the velvet-cushioned royal box on opening night, mother-of-pearl opera gla.s.ses, a gift from Irene, primed. The rest of the von Ormsteins were not present; the King's illness forbade a too-public presence. Willie sat beside me, his resplendent evening dress garnished with a scarlet sash from shoulder to hip and burdened by a glittering corsage of medals. I barely spoke to him, letting myself sink into the music, as eager as he to watch for and listen to Irene.

She was magnificent, as was the sweep and pull of Dvoak's melancholy music. It teased one like a tide, these notes from the heart of a landlocked composer. I found my own internal salt.w.a.ter rising and glanced at the Prince. In the darkened opera house, his eye-whites glistened like wet pearls. His profile was rapt. I swallowed my own emotion and looked away. His tears made him human in my estimation, more than anything purposeful he could have done to win my favor. I vowed silently then to help Irene in any way I could, even if it led to an alliance I feared would invite tragedy.

"How was I?" Irene asked breathlessly after the opening night champagne had been consumed and we had returned to the castle and been divested of finery by our respective maids.

"Wonderful! They shall no longer speak of the 'Divine Sarah' but the 'Sublime Irene.' No, I am quite serious; I've never heard your voice so rich and resonant. It must be-"

"Yes?" Irene c.o.c.ked her head wickedly.

"-Mr. Dvoak's music."

"A truly humble man for all his genius. These poor Czechs have been so downtrodden by their German masters that they return to their roots with incomparable zest. That is what you hear in Mr. Dvoak's music, the ecstasy of finding himself, and finding fellowship with other patriots like himself."

"Is it not difficult, Irene, to be part of the Czech national resurgence through your music, and yet live in the castle of their conquerors?"

"Oh, that... that is politics. Very old politics." Irene's dismissive gesture shook out the ringlets her dresser had spent an hour that afternoon impressing into her hair with a curling iron. "The last revolution here was in 1848-the same year France hiccoughed, politically speaking, and the Zone of Diamonds vanished. The Austrian Empire is wise now to restore some self-government to the people; it will avoid uprising."

I sighed and kept silent. Irene reminded me of a Roman rider at the circus, each leg balanced on the back of a different steed, but she refused to see it. She had blithely permitted herself to bask in two irreconcilable seasons-the joyous spring of Czech cultural revival and the looming autumn of her Prince's hereditary rulership. I wondered how much longer there would be kings in Bohemia, even those who were mere figureheads for the Emperor, Franz Josef, in Vienna.

"It is true," Irene said after a moment, for she had been musing on matters quite different, "that this sojourn in Prague has deepened my musical experience quite unexpectedly. My ambitions, as you know, lie in the direction of grand opera and Vienna. Yet while here I have developed a fondness for the lieder, the simple love songs so beautifully done by Schumann, and Mr. Dvoak's l.u.s.ty peasant melodies. Somehow they lie closer to the heart than the spectacular arias of grand opera. But-once certain matters are settled, I must direct my attention to my operatic career again."

"You do not expect to be Queen of Bohemia and still perform publicly?"

"Why not? Being a queen is one long engagement at performing publicly, save that it is in the service of duty. It should be quite a novelty and gain me a good deal of press. Besides, as you have pointed out, Bohemia is almost a storybook kingdom, like little Liechtenstein. Who will care what the Queen of it does or does not do? Royalty here is a mere formality. A charming... anachronism."

I lifted the photograph of Irene and the Prince from her bedside table. It was mounted in a small, velvet-upholstered cabinet so it could be closed or displayed ajar, like an open book. I undid the tiny gold latch to regard it. The crown jewels of Bohemia-the crown itself-seemed dull in the photograph's grey monotone, but Irene looked every inch a queen, every inch the match of the Crown Prince of Bohemia. I held the case out to her.

"If royalty were an anachronism, why did he give this to you in a case? Why do you keep it shut beside your bed so that the maid may not see it?"

She s.n.a.t.c.hed the case from me and latched it. "Discretion. The Queen holds me in high regard, but the unlovely Hortense and the slovenly Bertrand do not. Willie asked me to keep it secret; only you know."

"So with one hand he appears to give, while with the other he takes away."

Irene shook her head and drew an Egyptian cigarette from a long, narrow tin box. She bent to a candle flame to light it, then straightened to exhale a veil of blue smoke.

"Time was when Bohemian royalty married into the greatest royal houses of Europe, but that was five hundred years ago. Willie is not under the same pressure. Even if he were, I could overcome it."

That ended the discussion for Irene, if not me.

Yet, the next day, as if to prove her power, Irene conducted me on visits to the royal family quarters. The Queen's suite was even more grandly gilded than Irene's. She served us tea in wan china, her worry-worn face morose. What in the Prince was handsome became slightly coa.r.s.e in her older, feminine features. I wished I could see the King to compare him to his Herculean son.

"How is his Majesty?" Irene inquired.

"Still failing and still undiagnosed by the doctors," the Queen said.

"Have you ... tried any folk remedies?" Irene asked so casually that I perked my ears like a spaniel to catch her true meaning.

The Queen sighed and pressed a handkerchief that was more lace than linen to her mouth. "So Hortense has been urging. And Bertrand swears that the tonics he takes for hair growth have had a wonderful effect."

"Indeed?" Irene arched an eyebrow at me while I searched for some significance in the fact.

From my observation, Bertrand's shedding pate needed far more aid than whatever mythical fuzz he believed the hair tonic had bestowed. So I told Irene as we left the Queen and her tepid tea and rustled into another wing of the castle.

"But is it not as I told you?" she interrupted me. "Even the palace resorts to these herbal remedies. I find that fascinating."

"Not so odd. You yourself have said that folkways linger here in Bohemia, as numerous as flowers in an alpine meadow, in fact. Even royalty is gullible."

"Or clever." Irene's face grew harsh with concentration. "Diabolically clever."

Our next call was paid upon the unhappy Hortense. Her suite of rooms faced south, so mullioned shadows criss-crossed thick Aubusson rugs that paled in the fierce sunlight. Despite the brightness, something soured in her chambers; an emanation from her soul, I fancied, which I envisioned as having a squint, for that was the sidelong, suspicious way she looked at us both and, apparently, life.

"The Queen, your mother, says your father continues to decline," Irene murmured sympathetically.

Hortense, who had been sitting by the window doing st.i.tchery, kicked a ball of wool aside, nearly striking a fat, low-legged little dog that waddled off as if used to her sudden tempers.

"The doctors can do nothing," Hortense complained. "I have urged a return to a simple regime-herb teas and system-cleansing soups. Perhaps a stay at Marienbad."

"Ah, the spa the Czechs call Marianska Lazn, near the forest bordering Germany. Mud baths and mineral water, an excellent idea. The Prince of Wales has found it helpful."

Irene's approval lit a spark of life in Hortense's pallid cheeks. If she were an advertis.e.m.e.nt for the efficacy of her herbs, the cause was lost.

'Tell me, Miss Adler, do you find the lavender and licorice gargle I suggested useful?"