“So you were just friends?” I asked, widening my eyes at him.
“What a minx you are!” he exclaimed. “You think to bewitch me into indiscretions with those beautiful violet eyes, do you not? Shall I be your devoted slave?”
His tone was arch, but there was a distinct lack of humor in his eyes.
I ignored his question and decided to thrust once more, as I seemed to have knocked him a little off his balance.
“What do you remember about the day she died? I hear you were an eyewitness.”
“You seem to have heard quite a lot,” he said, his gaze sharply watchful.
I shrugged. “I am by profession a lady explorer, traveling the world in order to study butterflies. Naturally, I take an interest in other such women. We were both members of the same club, you understand.”
He blinked. “A woman’s place is at the hearth and in the bed,” he remarked, giving me a fathomless smile. He gazed warmly at my face, then deliberately dropped his gaze to my décolletage and back again.
“Careful, Your Grace. You are verging on boorishness,” I murmured. I waited, and after a moment he sighed.
“Very well. Yes, I saw her depart that day. It was very much as usual.”
“Was it usual for her to climb alone? That seems dangerous.”
He shrugged. “Yes, but she was highly experienced and it was a climb she had done many times before and she was not planning to attempt the summit.”
I lifted a brow in inquiry and he rolled his eyes at me. “We did not discuss her climb, so you have not discovered some great secret. If she had meant to summit, she would have gone out better equipped and with a guide. She often climbed sections of the mountain in order to try different routes. She kept notes, you know.”
“Notes?”
“In a notebook.” He sketched a size with his hands. “About so large. Green kidskin. She always carried it with her to record conditions, to make little maps and notes on her experiences. There are those who say it was the key to her success as a climber. She was meticulous in her research and she was often able to offer suggestions and tips to other mountaineers.”
“Such as Douglas Norton?” I suggested.
He made a brusque gesture of dismissal. “A disgruntled, odious little man. He was not worth half of Alice’s merit as a climber.”
“What would you say if I told you that he was in the Alpenwald when Alice made her fatal climb?”
All his theatrical postures and poses fell away at that moment and his mouth rounded in genuine astonishment. “Was he indeed?” He sat back a little, suddenly preoccupied. After a moment, he shook himself a little and gave me a faint smile. “You are a very knowledgeable woman, my dear.”
“I know very little, but I am curious about a good deal,” I corrected.
“You know, I am sure, what they say about curiosity and cats?” The comment was well pitched. It might have been a threat or merely a warning. He had resumed his attitude of lazy good humor, but he watched me closely and I wondered which of us might really be playing at being the cat.
“I suppose I ought to congratulate you on your forthcoming betrothal,” I said softly. “Tell me, was the princess at all vexed by your attentions to Alice Baker-Greene?”
At this he let out a sharp bark of laughter, drawing the attention of several people seated in the boxes nearest ours.
“Why do you laugh?”
“Because you are ridiculous and beautiful.”
“You mean she was not at all distressed that you developed a friendship with another woman? A friendship so important that you secured a permanent home for Alice in Hochstadt?”
His brows shot skywards in astonishment. “Who told you that?”
“Alice. I met her once and she spoke most enthusiastically of your country.”
“What else did she tell you? Did she speak of me?”
“No. She talked of her eagerness to settle in the Alpenwald and how happy she was. I only learnt later that the house given to her was taken from Captain Durand at the behest of the chancellor—no doubt acting upon the orders of someone very highly placed,” I finished.
He gave me a long, appreciative nod. “Well, I can only say again that you are a most surprising young woman.”
“I shall take that as a compliment.”
He smiled thinly and I fell to thinking that this sophisticated nobleman with his weathercock moods might well have had an excellent motive for murdering Alice himself. He was a royal of the old, Continental variety; it was not difficult to imagine that he would find nothing untoward in settling a woman who might well have been his mistress in proximity to the castle he hoped to share with his future wife. But what if Princess Gisela had taken a different view of the matter? There was gossip about Duke Maximilian and Alice Baker-Greene, that much I knew, and it was likely that some of it reached the ears of the princess. In previous generations, a nobleman could expect to establish a cozy situation for himself—his wife comfortably settled in his official residence whilst his paramour feathered their love nest. But these were modern days. Not every royal marriage included genteel adultery on the part of the husband. Our own Prince Albert had been a paragon of marital virtue, I reflected. And Gisela, as the reigning hereditary princess, held all of the cards. She could easily refuse to accept his proposal except on her own terms, and the most logical demand would be for him to remove his ladylove from Hochstadt. All of this was quite reasonable enough and no motive for murdering the woman.
Unless she refused to go quietly. I thought of Alice Baker-Greene, standing flushed with delight in the Curiosity Club as she related her future plans to me. I remembered the photographs of her posed on a mountaintop with her suffragist banners and the stories of her whipping Douglas Norton down a Bolivian street to assuage her honor. Oh no. Alice Baker-Greene was most definitely not the sort of woman to meekly accept being cast off by a lover who found her presence burdensome, I decided. She would have staked her claim to him as stalwartly as she did a mountain summit.
These thoughts chased and tangled in far less time than it takes to describe them, and as I considered them, the duke continued to smile his oblique smile at me until the baroness rapped him sharply with her fan. She said something in the Alpenwalder dialect too rapid for me to understand and he moved his chair back again and fell into conversation with the chancellor.
“I hope he does not trouble you too much,” she began in a low voice.
I shrugged. “I have encountered many such men in my travels, Baroness,” I assured her. “If he chooses to make trouble with me, he will find me a worthy adversary.”
Her expressions were carefully schooled, but I could tell she was distressed. “I beg you, do not make an enemy of him. He might take it in his head to create mischief, and when he does, no one can be naughtier than our Maximilian.”