A Soul of Steel (A Novel of Suspense featuring Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes) by Carole Nelson Douglas

charitably tended and uncharitably interrogated. I suspect you have no personal interest in me at all.”
    I blushed, this time from an all-too familiar emotion, shame. “I didn’t wish to pry, but Irene is determined to help you. She insists on aiding anyone caught in the skeins of a puzzle that is beyond their ken. There is no arguing with such an impulse.”
    “Irene, Irene! You quote her as the vicar cites Scripture on Sunday. Can you not speak for yourself, Miss Huxleigh?”
    I straightened. “You misunderstand our relationship. Although I have at times... assisted Irene in her good works, shall we say, I have never hesitated to give her the frankest benefit of my advice and opinions on any subject.”
    “I am sure that she is much the better for that,” he murmured. “So you admit, then, that although you seek the secrets of my past on your friend’s suggestion, your own curiosity—your own sense of duty, I should say—requires you to ferret out the truth.”
    “Of course. It is clear that you have led an adventuresome and possibly irregular life. Any decently helpful person would wish to understand the difficulties you have faced so as better to encourage you to... to put the past behind you and resume the life you left.”
    “And you always try to be a decently helpful person?”
    “I do hope so.”
    He reached again for my hand, and indeed he was an invalid of sorts. A charitable woman can hardly withhold comfort from such a person, no matter his state of grace, or lack of it. Yet my heart began to beat most unevenly as his lean brown fingers brushed my palm and his eyes burned into mine with a mélange of amusement and keen insight and an odd flicker of challenge.
    I was appalled to find that during our conversation I had unthinkingly leaned nearer and nearer the bed, until we seemed to be in conspiratorial closeness, something resembling what the confessional must be for the Papists. The thought crossed my mind that whatever poor Mr. Stanhope might confide in me, I would be the judge of whether it was fitting or proper to pass on to Irene or not... and he had leaned toward me, as well, as the moment stretched into a strangely unsettling silence.
    I scarcely knew what to think, could scarcely think at all, gazing into his hazel eyes....
    Then Lucifer, finding his luxurious position pinched as Mr. Stanhope shifted upon the bed, leaped down between us. We both started with surprise, and bent simultaneously to prevent the cat from landing askew when a sound like a sharp clap of hands exploded in my ear.
    My heart spurted into a racing rhythm not at all pleasant as Mr. Stanhope seized my arms and conveyed me to the floor, falling atop me. The cat screamed like a banshee and writhed away between us. Before I could catch my breath to protest this indignity as loudly and more articulately than Lucifer, the door of the chamber sprung open so violently that it clapped back against the wall like thunder. My heart pounded even harder in the charged silence.
    Godfrey and Irene stood on the bedchamber threshold, the small revolver so familiar from Irene’s early adventures poised in her hand. I lay smothered and speechless in the tight clasp of Mr. Stanhope, unable to stir if my life had depended on it.
    “When I asked you to entwine yourself in Mr. Stanhope’s affairs, my dear Nell,” Irene drawled in odious amusement, “I did not expect you to take my suggestion so literally.”
    While I sputtered without the breath to defend myself, Godfrey went swiftly to the window and from the side, flung the shutters closed. I cannot recall whether Mr. Stanhope helped me to rise, or I him, but we at least struggled halfway up before Irene raised a hand (not the one bearing the revolver, I am happy to report).
    “Pray do not be overambitious of rising in the world just yet, my friends. At least come nearer the door.”
    And so I was herded like some two-legged sheep to the threshold, where Mr. Stanhope and I were at last