The Adventuress by Carole Nelson Douglas

overridden my protestations. “Of course you shall come, Nell! After all, you’ve met Louise, too. Besides, this is a most delicate mission. I will need all the aid I can get.”
    “How should it not be delicate?” I wondered aloud. “You have no connection whatsoever to the bereaved family. I am amazed that you would intrude at such a time.”
    “I must. How else can I make amends?”
    Irene’s expression of concern in no way resembled one of her habitual exaggerations for effect. I, too, sorrowfully recalled the soft brown rabbit who had been Louise Montpensier, alive in our Neuilly residence but days before.
    “It is settled!” Irene declared, rejoicing in the face of my silence. I know of no one else who can always find such cause for optimism in mere hesitancy.
    Godfrey took me aside moments later. “My dear Nell, I know it offends your sense of propriety to accompany Irene on her investigations”—I sniffed at the notion of ennobling this questionable outing with such a word—“but I also am most anxious to clear up matters. You, being less intimately involved in the tragedy, can offer a perspective unclouded by—”
    “Guilt?” I suggested.
    Godfrey nodded. “As a clergyman’s daughter, you know better than most that such an emotion can poison... or purge.”
    “I see. I suppose that if you put my presence in the light of a spiritual advisor—”
    “Exactly! You are so sensitive. You may perceive the true mind of the aunt, whom Irene believes to be falsely accused. You may detect—”
    “The true guilt,” I supplied.
    “Indeed. We rely upon you.”
    “In that case, I shall object no more.”
    “Wonderful!” Godfrey clapped me on the shoulder as if I had volunteered for foreign service. I began to see myself as a shuttle caught in the opposing pull of two highly persuasive threads of vastly different hue but of similar resilience.
    Actually, I believe that the necessity of converting me to their viewpoints provided both of my friends with a challenge they required on a daily basis, as athletes require exercise. I admit to taking a certain satisfaction in also providing them with an opponent of some mettle.
    Our living arrangement might strike some as bizarre, but in truth it suited each of our natures, as well as befitting social practice. It is not uncommon, of course, for inconvenient persons such as myself—that is to say, spinsters—to affix themselves to relations on some tenuous excuse and become family fixtures.
    Indeed, the occupation of governess is predicated upon just such a system, save that there is no blood relation and the children’s inevitable maturation forces a governess to change family circles from time to time.
    Since I had no near relations, I was doomed to a solitary existence unless I sought a lodgings partner, as I had found in Irene. I felt quite capable of leading a solitary life; at times, in fact, I felt that I should insist upon it. But it was far more agreeable to reside with Irene, as before, and Godfrey, as now—the one my dear and longtime friend, the other my respected erstwhile employer and advocate.
    Any fears of inadvertently interfering in their marital life soon had proven themselves moot. Godfrey and Irene were, for all their charm and bravado, obsessively private persons. I seldom glimpsed the more intimate side of their lives, or if I did, perhaps I was too inexperienced to mark its symptoms.
    So we three lived as congenial members of one household, at times prone to differences or fits of pique, but always respecting one another and relishing the interplay that challenged our individual assumptions.
    For myself, I enjoyed the role of ever-reliable brake to their imperious progress against the grain of propriety and convention. For their part, it cheered them enormously, I believe, to have so near at hand a person upon whom to exercise their considerable force of personality and persuasive abilities. Nowadays Irene had no “audience” save me