“The indignities of age,” she said, sketching a vague gesture. “And if you think those are regrettable, you ought to see what has become of my bosom.”
“Grandmama,” the younger woman said, but she was grinning outright and I smiled.
“Gravity comes for us all in the end,” I remarked.
The older woman gave a bark of laughter as she eyed my own décolletage. “Mind you enjoy those whilst you can. Make the most of them before they make their descent.”
“I will,” I promised her. She gave me another nod and rolled herself away, but her granddaughter lingered.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “She is a little too revered sometimes, and people forget to speak to her as if she was a human being. It can be lonely on Olympus.”
“I would have enjoyed speaking with her longer,” I said truthfully. “I mean to be a tremendously outrageous old woman in due course and I might learn a thing or two from her.”
She laughed, her grandmother’s quick, sharp laugh. “Indeed, you would.” She put out her hand. “Alice Baker-Greene, alpinist.”
“And tonight’s guest of honor,” I finished. “I am very excited to hear your talk.”
She pulled a rueful face. “I dread these sorts of occasions,” she confided. She glanced around as if to make certain we were not overheard. “I would far rather sit in my study with a good glass of cognac and write up my climbing notes than stand up in front of a group of people and talk about myself. Still,” she said, brightening, “at least I will not be asking you lot for money.”
“Is that the normal course of affairs?” I inquired.
She rolled her eyes heavenwards. “My dear girl, I can only think that you must have been born to wealth or have a most generous benefactor if you have never resorted to pleading with strangers to open their pocketbooks and sponsor your expeditions.”
“I am neither,” I said mildly. “But lepidoptery is a singularly inexpensive proposition. I require only my net and a supply of killing jars. I lodge in tents or modest hostelries. I have neither porters nor dragomen and rarely do I require a guide.”
“You are fortunate,” she said fervently. “I spend more time begging for money to pay those wretched men to accompany me than I ever do on a mountainside.” There was a note of real bitterness in her tone.
“That must be terribly frustrating when I imagine all you want to do is climb,” I remarked.
“It is in my blood,” she told me. “My grandparents were the first Europeans to climb in the Karakoram, and my father was the first to summit the South American peak of El Infierno.” Her eyes gleamed with unmistakable pride. “I never had a dream but to follow in their footsteps. Quite literally,” she added. “I climbed El Infierno myself last season and then made an ascent of its higher companion peak, El Cielo.”
“The first woman to do so, were you not?”
“The first person,” she corrected sharply. “Or at least I ought to have been.” Her expression darkened and her complexion was suffused with anger. She pressed her lips together for a moment before continuing. “How familiar are you with mountain climbing, Miss Speedwell?”
“Vaguely. Butterflies are much more common in the tropics, so my travels seldom take me into the mountains.”
“Well, I do not know how lepidopterists conduct themselves, but amongst climbers, there is a code of behavior.”
“What are the terms?”
“That when one has been hired as a guide, one may choose the route and lead. One may even insist upon turning back if conditions are judged to be too dangerous. But what one may never, ever do is take the summit for oneself. That is the client’s privilege.”
“And someone took your summit of El Cielo?”
“He did indeed,” she said, clipping off the words sharply. “Douglas Norton is the scoundrel’s name. I engaged him at extortionate terms to accompany me and help manage the porters in Bolivia. They are not always inclined to take orders from a member of the gentler sex,” she added with an expressive gesture. “But I made it quite clear to him from the very beginning that the expedition was mine. In the end, the porters proved perfectly amenable to my suggestions and Norton was an unnecessary extravagance.”
I was not surprised to hear it. She was, to put it plainly, a force of nature, and I could well imagine most men bending before her. But then, any person who pitted themselves against mountains must be fashioned of something indomitable.
She went on. “The afternoon of the last day, we had climbed for eleven hours and paused to rest before the final push to the summit. I took a little refreshment, and when I had gathered myself and was ready to resume, Douglas was nowhere to be found. The porters dared not betray him by giving away his intentions when he slipped ahead, but I discovered his intentions soon enough. I climbed like a demon to reach him, but by the time I joined him, he was perched atop the summit having already written his name into a book for the purpose and left it atop. The glory was his.”
“What an odious man!” I exclaimed. Lepidoptery was not without its scoundrels—let any collector get so much of a whisper of a Rajah Brooke’s Birdwing in the vicinity and blows might easily be exchanged—but this was a completely different level of infamy. There could only ever be one first summit, after all.
“Yes, I think so. And I believe I might have forgiven him if he had stood up for himself and defended his actions. Boldness, arrogance, audacity—those are crimes of character that I can understand. I share them. But he whimpered and whined like a kicked dog all the way down the mountain, pleading for forgiveness and for me not to think too badly of him.”
“I begin to hate him,” I told her. “I hope you pushed him off the mountain.”
She grinned. “Again, the code of climbing, Miss Speedwell. One never endangers anyone whilst on the mountain. No, I waited until we had descended to the village at the base, where everyone could see. I seized the first weapon to hand—a buggy whip if my memory is to be trusted—and I thrashed him.”
“Well done!” I cried, wishing I had employed such tactics myself upon one or two occasions.
“Not my finest hour,” she said with a shrug, “but he deserved it. Unfortunately for him, a reporter happened to be in the village to write the story of our attempt and witnessed the entire imbroglio. It caused the most enormous fuss in the mountaineering community. The British men, who are notoriously devoted to their own sex, seem to have sided with him, the Americans with me. And now we are both of us infamous.”
“Surely his is the greater shame,” I protested.
“I think,” she said gently, “you must have enough experience of the world to know better than that. There will always be men who rally to the cause of another man in his moment of disgrace simply because they fear their own so deeply.” She drew in a deep breath and her mien became instantly more cheerful. “But I have put this behind me. I mean to make a fresh start after tonight.”