Vienna Waltz (19 page)
Authors: Teresa Grant
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Historical, #Romance, #Historical Romance, #Mystery & Suspense
The thud of a walking stick signaled Talleyrand’s arrival in the box. A few moments later, the first notes of the overture sounded, almost as though Talleyrand had cued the start of the performance. Wilhelmine wouldn’t put it past him for a moment.
The first act passed in a blur. She was in no mood for the tangled love lives of fictional characters. Figaro and Susanna were fools to think marriage would bring them happiness. Count Almaviva was doing what all husbands did. At least they hadn’t got to the long-suffering countess yet. If the woman were sensible, she’d stop bewailing her lost love and take Cherubino to her bed and have some fun. God knows he’d have more stamina than her husband.
Guests began to pour into the box almost the moment the curtain fell on the first act. Dorothée was besieged by adoring young attachés, and Talleyrand’s attention was claimed by Baron Hardenberg. Wilhelmine started to get to her feet when someone dropped into a chair beside her.
Without so much as turning her head, she knew who it was. She would know the smell of his shaving soap and the starch he used in his shirts anywhere. She stiffened. “Prince Metternich.”
“That bad?” he said in a dry voice. “I assure you, I have no intention of importuning you with any more tiresome pleas. I merely wished—”
“What?” Impatience tinged her voice.
“To assure you that all will be well.”
Wilhelmine turned to look at the face she had so often seen across her pillow. Even now she could not deny his good looks, from the golden curls falling over his forehead to the finely molded lines of his mouth. He returned her gaze, his own hot with memories.
For a moment she, too, was caught by the past. The way his fingers had toyed with her garter and slid up her leg, the brush of flesh against flesh as she pulled his shirt over his head, the roughness of his breath as his mouth claimed her breast. Had she ever loved him? Or had she merely enjoyed basking in his adoration? “I don’t know what you mean.”
His gaze remained steady on her own. “I know you have little use for me. But let me at least render you this service.”
The look in his eyes took her back to the time she could have taken comfort in his arms. And yet he had made her promises in the past that he hadn’t been able to keep. “You can’t—”
Something in Metternich’s expression stopped her. She turned and saw that Alfred von Windischgrätz had come into the box. “Alfred.” Wilhelmine extended her hand to her current lover.
“Windischgrätz.” Metternich rose and sketched a quick bow in his direction. “Duchess. I trust you will enjoy the rest of the opera.”
“My love?” Alfred kept hold of her hand but glared after Metternich with the gaze of a soldier who has spotted the enemy on his terrain. “Was he plaguing you?”
“No. Merely paying his respects.” Wilhelmine got to her feet and unfurled her fan. She loved Alfred, but she couldn’t trust even him with her current predicament. Besides, Alfred thought like the brilliant cavalry officer he was, and a saber cut could not solve this problem. Violence had already made the situation infinitely worse. She suppressed a shudder and slid her hand through his arm. “Shall we find some champagne, darling?”
“Herr Rannoch.”
The voice stopped Malcolm as he followed Suzanne and Aline down the corridor that ran behind the boxes. He turned to see Franz Schubert making his way through the press of people.
Malcolm shook the young man’s hand and presented Aline, who said, “You compose? How splendid. There’s something quite magical in turning numbers into sound.”
Schubert flushed. “Thank you, fraulein. The kapellmeister—Herr Salieri—gave me private lessons when I was in the imperial choir, and he’s been kind enough to continue my instruction now I’ve left.”
“Salieri is much talked of at the Congress,” Aline said. “When I arrived in Vienna people were still agog at the concert he organized with the hundred pianos. And—” She bit back what she had been about to say. Malcolm caught the appalled look in his young cousin’s eyes. Aline was not one to gossip, but the hothouse atmosphere in Vienna affected everyone.
“I know.” Schubert met Aline’s gaze directly. “There are still rumors about Herr Salieri regarding Mozart’s death.”
“Vienna is full of rumors,” Aline said. “The more scandalous, the wider currency they seem to receive. Though I must say, the ones about Salieri and Mozart strike me as excessive enough to be worthy of the plot of a particularly improbable opera.”
“Quite.” Schubert grinned at her, in a moment of youthful camaraderie. Then his gaze moved back to Malcolm. “I saw you in your box during the first act. Princess Tatiana meant to be here tonight.”
“She loved Mozart,” Malcolm said. Tatiana’s voice giving a mocking rendition of “Voi che sapete” echoed in his head.
“We were talking about the opera that last day I saw her. My mind wasn’t working properly when I met you yesterday—I was in shock. But seeing the opera brought it back.”
“Yes?” Malcolm drew Schubert a little to one side, into a gap between a pier table and a pillar. Suzanne and Aline followed.
“It was after she told me she’d discovered something disquieting. She recovered her composure, I gave her the music I’d brought, and we were talking about the opera tonight. She knew how I was looking forward to it. She said as a girl she wanted to be Susanna and in recent years she fancied herself as the countess, but now she thought she identified more with Figaro. I asked if that was because he was so clever. She said perhaps. Then she bent down and picked up a piece of the comfit dish she’d smashed and said she could understand Figaro’s rage when he learns the count is plotting to take Susanna. He’d thought the count was his friend and ally and look how he repays him.” Schubert’s gaze moved over Malcolm’s face. “Could that have been the disquieting news? That she realized she couldn’t trust someone she’d thought she could rely upon?”
A dozen possible scenarios raced through Malcolm’s head. “It could indeed. Thank you, Schubert.”
Schubert gave a shy smile. “The second act will be starting. You should return to your box.”
“We have a spare seat,” Aline said. “Do join us.”
“Oh no, I couldn’t—”
“Excellent idea.” Malcolm put a hand on Schubert’s shoulder. “It’s the least we can do.”
They made their way back to the box. Malcolm pulled the door of the box to, about to follow Suzanne, Aline, and Schubert through the curtains from the anteroom to the box itself, when he felt someone grasp the door handle from the corridor behind him.
“Rannoch.” The voice, coming through the crack in the door, was low and urgent. Not the voice from the garden last night, though he couldn’t place it otherwise. “Listen.” The man spoke French with a good accent, though not that of a true native. “There isn’t much time.”
“Who—”
“Who I am doesn’t matter. You’re looking in the wrong place.”
“For—”
“Don’t play dumb. It’s not who killed Princess Tatiana that’s important, it’s what she was about to discover.”
“Which is what?”
“You have to ask the right questions. Why did Princess Tatiana go to the Empress Rose tavern the day she died?”
“Why—”
“Take the gifts you’re offered, Rannoch. Don’t be greedy. I risk a great deal simply to tell you this much.”
“If—”
“Trust no one. You can’t be sure who in Vienna may be involved in this. Tatiana learned that to her cost.”
Malcolm reached out and squeezed Suzanne’s hand. Her fingers twined round his for a moment. She was behind the curtains of the windows that ran along one side of the grand salon, empty now as the waiters had taken a break during the second act. The door to the anteroom was a few feet off. Adam Czartoryski was in a convenient niche in the corridor, watching the door that opened from the corridor onto the anteroom. Whichever door the mysterious man seeking Tatiana’s papers used, they should have a view of him and would be able to follow him when he left. Malcolm released his wife’s hand and pushed open the door to the anteroom.
It was in darkness, startling after the brilliant candlelight of the grand salon. Malcolm pushed the door shut to protect Suzanne. Even as he paused to get his bearings, he sensed a presence in the shadows.
“I have a pistol drawn, Rannoch.”
“So do I.”
“But mine is pointed at your head. I had a glimpse of you as you opened the door. Turn to the wall. Tilt your pistol to the ground. I’m not taking any chances after last time.”
Malcolm complied. It was the voice from the Metternichs’ garden—definitely different from the man who had spoken to him in the box just now—but he still couldn’t place the accent.
A flint scraped against steel. A single candle flared to life. “You have the papers?” the clipped voice asked.
“You have the payment? I’m willing to humor your desire for secrecy, but should you try to take the papers without payment, I’m a very quick shot. And quite accurate, even when I fire while whirling round.”
Paper slapped against a demilune table to Malcolm’s right. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a stack of British banknotes.
“Put the papers beside them,” the uninflected voice said. “Then you can pick up the banknotes.”
Malcolm pulled Suzanne’s dummy papers from inside his evening coat without haste, held them out so Uninflected Voice could see they were letters, and then set them on the polished wood of the table. Keeping in character, he reached for the bundle of banknotes and began to count them.
Uninflected Voice gave a harsh laugh. “Trusting, aren’t you?”
“Is anyone in Vienna fool enough to be trusting?”
“You have a point. Count the money if you will but don’t turn round. I still have my pistol trained on you.”
Footsteps sounded against the parquet floor. A hand shot into Malcolm’s peripheral vision, reaching for the dummy letters. At the same moment, the door from the grand salon swung open.
“Just in time, I see,” said a deep voice. “If you hand those over to me, this will be much simpler.”
Malcolm spun round to see a man in the doorway from the grand salon, a black silk scarf tied over his face. In one hand he held a pistol. His other arm was wrapped round Suzanne, a knife at her throat.
19
S
uzanne’s gaze flickered toward Malcolm with warning and apology. The knife was just above her collarbone. Fear and anger scalded Malcolm’s throat.
uzanne’s gaze flickered toward Malcolm with warning and apology. The knife was just above her collarbone. Fear and anger scalded Malcolm’s throat.
“The papers,” the masked man said again. He wore a gleaming black evening coat over an ivory and gold brocade waistcoat, and thick, dark hair showed above the scarf that covered his face. He spoke French, though it did not seem to be his native tongue any more than it was that of Uninflected Voice or the man who had spoken to him in the box earlier. “Put them in my pocket. And drop your guns. Both of you.”
Malcolm let go of his pistol, gaze trained on Suzanne. Uninflected Voice, revealed to be a stocky, brown-haired man, lowered his hand, as though to do the same, then brought it up in a lightning motion and fired.
The masked man staggered and cried out. Suzanne spun away from him. Blood spurted from her shoulder. Malcolm caught her in his arms, dropping the banknotes.
Uninflected Voice grabbed the letters from the table, snatched up the banknotes, lurched across the room, and flung his shoulder against the window. At his second try, the frame gave way and the glass cracked. He sprang out of the window in a hail of broken glass and splintered wood. Masked Man raced after him, just as the door from the corridor burst open. Adam Czartoryski stepped into the room and froze on the threshold.
Suzanne pulled out of Malcolm’s arms and darted to the window. Malcolm ran after her to see Masked Man push himself to his feet on the cobblestones below. Uninflected Voice was almost out of sight on the lamplit street. Masked Man staggered after him, dodging through the crowd who were running out of cafés to stare up at the broken window.
Malcolm pulled his wife back from the window as a gust of cold wind cut through the broken glass.
“Malcolm—” Suzanne protested.
“No chance of catching them.” He pushed her into the nearest chair and pulled out his handkerchief.
Czartoryski was at the window. “I got a glimpse of the brown-haired man going into the anteroom, but I didn’t recognize him. What in God’s name—”
“The first man was an Austrian, I think. I’d swear I’ve seen him round the chancellery.” Malcolm pushed Suzanne’s lace and silk puff of a sleeve down off her shoulder.
“He only winged me,” she said. “I was stupid.”
“We weren’t expecting someone else to show up in search of the papers,” Malcolm said. Thankfully she spoke the truth about her wound. The bullet had hit a blood vessel, but the blood was already starting to clot. He bound his handkerchief tight round her shoulder.
“It was just like Prince Czartoryski interrupting the first meeting. This man was very quiet coming into the grand salon, but I heard the opening of the door,” Suzanne said, as Malcolm tied the ends of the handkerchief. “Of course I just thought it was an opera-goer in search of a drink, so I stayed still behind the curtains. He had the pistol trained on me by the time I realized what was happening. A few years ago, I’d have tried to get away. Before I had Colin.”
“Thank God for our son’s influence.” Malcolm pulled her gold-braid-edged sleeve up over his makeshift bandage.
“Who the devil was he?” Czartoryski asked.
“I couldn’t hear enough to place the accent,” Malcolm said. “Suzanne?”
She shook her head. “I confess I was distracted.”
“You think the first man worked for Metternich?” Czartoryski asked.
“So, it appears if I’m right about seeing him at the chancellery, though at the Congress one can never be sure who’s working for whom.”
“But why would Metternich be after—”
“The papers you want to recover for the tsarina? I doubt that’s what he’s interested in. I suspect Tatiana also had papers of interest to Prince Metternich.”
“Or perhaps to the Duchess of Sagan,” Suzanne said.
Czartoryski cast a glance out the broken window as though he would wrest answers from the wreckage. “We’re no nearer to finding where any of the papers are.”
“No, but we know Metternich didn’t get them the night of the murder.” Malcolm looked down at Suzanne, relieved to see some color returning to her face. “When Metternich went out of the room to summon Annina, I think he’d have had time to send word to one of his agents.”
“And you think the agent orchestrated the attack on us on the way home from the Palm Palace?” Suzanne asked. “Metternich thought you had Tatiana’s papers?”
“If Metternich knew where she hid them, he’d have had time to check the secret compartment. If he saw the papers were missing, it would be a logical assumption that I might have taken them. When we eluded his thugs that night, he decided it would be safer to buy them.”
“And now he knows you tried to trick him. Or he’ll realize it when his agent brings him the fake letters.”
“Assuming the masked man doesn’t get them away from him.”
“Who the devil is the masked man?” Adam asked. “Someone after yet another secret Princess Tatiana was keeping? What sort of game was she playing?”
“Tatiana’s games tended to be rather Byzantine. But she always had an endgame in mind. Do you know how she got the tsarina’s papers?”
“I don’t—”
“Damn it, Czartoryski.” Malcolm strode toward him. “I trusted you with my wife’s and my safety.”
“The tsarina thinks Princess Tatiana took them herself on a visit to the Hofburg, though she isn’t sure precisely how.”
Suzanne’s gown rustled as she got to her feet. “If Prince Metternich didn’t take the papers the night of the murder, either the killer took them or Princess Tatiana hid them somewhere other than in her rooms.”
“And if the killer took them, he or she doesn’t seem to have used them for blackmail,” Malcolm said. “At least not yet.”
“But if Tatiana did hide them—”
“What?” Malcolm studied his wife’s face. He knew the look she wore when she was piecing together bits of information.
Suzanne pulled her shawl up to cover her bandaged shoulder. “I was thinking of a place a woman can go without comment, and yet in which she tends to place all her trust.”
“Where?” Czartoryski asked.
“Her dressmaker’s.”
“I’m ten times a fool.” Malcolm struck a flint to the tapers on the dressing table in their bedchamber. The smell of beeswax filled the night air.
Suzanne twisted round on the dressing table bench to look at her husband. Her dressing gown, which she was half wearing, leaving her injured shoulder bare, slithered down on the bench about her. “You weren’t the one who had someone sneak up behind you with a drawn pistol.”
“No, I was engaged in a charade in the next room while someone put a knife to my wife’s throat.” He pulled a brandy flask and a clean handkerchief from a drawer in the dressing table.
“Malcolm, I’ll never forgive you if you turn into a Hotspur or a Brutus. Not now.”
“At least Hotspur and Brutus weren’t so wantonly careless with their wives.” He doused the handkerchief with brandy and pressed it to her shoulder.
She winced at the touch of the alcohol against her torn skin. “It’s barely a scratch.”
“You could have been killed.”
“So could you. Tonight, last night. Most nights I’ve known you.”
Malcolm opened another drawer and took out the brass-bound box where she kept her medical supplies. Usually she was the one patching him up. Geoffrey Blackwell had trained her well. “I chose this life.”
“And you think I didn’t?” She stared up at him. In the flickering light from the tapers, his face was unusually grim, all sharp angles and intense eyes. “Darling, I knew what you did when I married you. I knew I’d never be able to bear being your wife if it meant sitting on the sidelines or waiting like Penelope to see if you came back alive. If you wanted that sort of wife you shouldn’t have married me, however strong your chivalrous impulses.”
He flipped open the lid of the medical box and clipped off a length of lint. “When I married you—” He gave an unexpected smile. “I hadn’t the least idea what I was getting into.”
“We barely knew each other.” She saw them the night he proposed, on a moonlit balcony overlooking the Tagus River. A romantic setting for a very unromantic scene. Malcolm had explained what he was offering her with all the precision with which he’d outline a policy option to Lord Castlereagh, pointing out that his parents had given him a bad impression of marriage, that he’d never thought to marry, and that he feared he wouldn’t be very good at it. Not so very long ago, yet when she recalled the scene the two people standing on that balcony seemed so very young. “Marriage has a way of opening the eyes.”
“So they say.” He pressed a pad of lint against her shoulder. “Though in many ways—”
“We’re still strangers?”
“We haven’t had time. For much of anything.”
“Beyond strategizing our next move.”
“This isn’t a game, Suzanne.” He took her hand and put it over the lint. “Hold this.”
She pressed the pad of lint against her shoulder. “Oh, darling, the whole Congress is a game. But the stakes are the fate of countries, and lives hang in the balance. That’s why I won’t be left on the sidelines.”
Malcolm began to unwind a length of linen. “I know you have the heart of a lion, Suzanne. But I sometimes think—”
“What?”
He snapped the scissors on the linen. “That marrying you was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”
For a moment, her blood went ice-cold. “That’s ridiculous, Malcolm. Marrying me was an act of kindness. We both know that.”
He turned to look down at her, his gaze night black. “Is that what you think?”
She returned his gaze, her own steady. “I know the man you are. I know what I owe you.”
“For God’s sake, don’t—”
“I don’t ask a lot. Only not to be wrapped in cotton wool while you go off on your adventures.”
He bound the linen round her shoulder with deft, precise fingers. “When have I ever tried to wrap you in cotton wool?”
“Just now. It’s the one thing—the
only
thing—I won’t tolerate from you, Malcolm.”
only
thing—I won’t tolerate from you, Malcolm.”
“Damn it, Suzanne, if you think—”
“What?”
He pulled her to her feet and caught her in his arms with unexpected force. His fingers sank into her hair. His mouth came down hard on her own.
She clung to him without hesitation, parting her lips, clutching the fabric of his coat, pulling him closer.
He was the one who drew back abruptly. “I’m sorry. I—”
“No.” She dragged him back to her with a hunger that matched his own.
This at least was real between them. His fingers sliding into her hair, the smooth super fineness of his coat beneath her hands, the ragged warmth of his breath on her skin, his mouth hot and desperate against her own.
He kissed her as though he could keep her safe. She held him to her as though she could strip away his mask and find the truth of who he was. Brand him with recognition of what was between them.
When he raised his head, it was only to lift her in his arms. He carried her to their bed and she lost herself in the familiarity of his hands and the tantalizing mystery of his lips against her own.
Later, lying against his shoulder, she said, “What else did you learn tonight?”
“Mmm?” Malcolm had his head turned to the side, his lips against her hair.
“Before you came back to the box after the first interval. Something happened.”
His fingers tangled in her hair. “You don’t just have witchcraft in your lips, Suzanne. It’s in the workings of your mind.”
“Simple, everyday observation. I looked round and saw your face when you came into the box.”
“And to think I flatter myself on my acting abilities.”
“Don’t worry, darling. At least half the time I haven’t the least idea what’s going through your head.”
He pushed himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. The candlelight slid over his smooth skin and outlined the muscles she had traced with her lips. “I’m not such a mystery.”
She stared into his eyes, deceptively open at the moment. He’d made love to her with startling intensity. As though seeking to lose himself in oblivion. His memories of Princess Tatiana must still be raw. “Oh, dearest. You could rival the most elaborate cipher.”
“Easily enough said, given your skills at code breaking.”
“Not when it comes to you.”
“You just said marriage was supposed to end the mystery.”
“In some cases it only deepens it.” She reached up and pushed his hair off his forehead, indulging herself by letting her fingers linger against his temple. These were the moments when she could almost believe the illusion that he was hers.
She dropped her hand back to the tangled sheets. “But despite all your brilliant efforts at diversion, I do know something happened tonight at the end of the first interval.”
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