“I went to Lady Castlereagh’s,” she said. “She was covered in diamonds as usual and there seemed to be even more dogs about than there were the last time I visited her. Then I went on to a reception given by Princess Paul Esterhazy. The Baroness Waluzer was there and she had brought with her a young girl. She has only just arrived in Vienna and is entranced with everything and everybody, a charming child! I took a great fancy to her. Funnily enough she reminded me of someone I know, but I cannot think who it may be.”
With an effort the Prince forced himself to listen. What was his wife saying?
“You say this girl is enjoying herself?” he asked.
“Tremendously, from all accounts. She seemed to find everything, even the most commonplace things, exciting and different from anything she had ever known before. She is so pretty, Clement. I would like you to see her. Her name is Wanda Schonbörn.”
“I have seen her,” the Prince replied.
“Then you will agree that she is very pretty,” his wife said.
“Yes, very pretty.”
“I think it must be those brilliant blue eyes with that red hair which is so striking,” the Princess went on. “They are almost as blue as yours.”
She waited for her husband to say something, but there was no answer. The Prince was staring into the flames again.
For a moment Eleanore contemplated asking him who he was thinking about and then she repressed her curiosity. He would tell her all in his own good time, she knew that. She shut her eyes for a moment.
She felt as if the room spun round her. Another woman to hear about, to dream about and to envy. Oh, how she envied them, these women her husband loved!
Would this one be tall or small, dark or fair, clever or stupid? It was impossible to guess where his affections might lead him.
He had no type that attracted him particularly, but whoever he loved would have something unique about her, something a little different from other women, something, Eleanore thought despairingly, that she herself had never possessed.
She would hear all about her, her virtues, her attractions, her enticements!
But for the moment he wanted to be alone, he wanted to think of this new star, which had flashed upon his horizon.
He wanted to reach out his arms towards the unknown in secret and in silence.
Gathering up her furs that she had put on the chair, Eleanore went softly across the room until she reached the door and then she looked back. Her husband had not even realised that she was leaving.
“Don’t be late coming up to change for dinner,” she said, and knew despairingly, even as she spoke, that he had not heard her.
Chapter 7
There was no light by the private door that Richard left the Hofburg by at ten o’clock that night. Everything had been arranged for his departure by the Czar himself.
He came out of the Imperial apartments wearing a wide-brimmed hat pulled low over his forehead and carrying a mask on a stick, which he kept raised to his eyes.
He wore a black evening cloak over the civilian clothes that the Czar himself used when he wished to be incognito.
As Richard stepped through the doorway, the sentries presented arms. He hurried past them down a narrow staircase that led to a private door opening onto a deserted courtyard.
A carriage was waiting there, but otherwise, as far as Richard could see, there was no one in sight.
Yet he was certain that Baron Hager would report his every movement to the Emperor Francis next morning.
As the carriage started off, he threw himself back against the cushions with an ill humour that he thought sourly could only bode ill for the assignation that lay ahead.
He could no longer deny what a shock it had been to learn of Wanda’s perfidy.
He had been thinking of her all day, even as he had dreamed of her last night, but now the thought of her youth and freshness was an insult all the more vehement because he had been deceived by it.
He was not foolish enough to believe that the intricacies of European diplomacy could be carried on without Secret Police or the employment of agents, but he had always considered that such work should be executed by those who needed money or those who had a natural aptitude for hypocrisy.
He had not believed it was a task that a gentleman should soil his hands with and least of all a lady.
He detested the thought that Katharina should have been employed by the Russian Government and then by the Czar himself as a skilled and extremely successful agent.
She had made no secret of her prowess, recounting her successes as eagerly and as enthusiastically as any General might speak of his manoeuvres on the field of battle.
But Katharina was a Russian, an oriental, and the Russian blood in his own veins made him understand that their minds worked differently from Europeans and more especially from those of the British.
Wanda had seemed so different and untouched by intrigue and subterfuge. It was hard to explain even to himself why a girl he had met for such a short time should make such an impression on him.
He was used to beautiful women, he was used to their artifices of enticement and to the practised sweetness that fell from their too eager lips.
But Wanda had seemed original, she had not been like the others. Yet now he knew it was all an act, a role played so skilfully that he had been utterly and completely deceived by it.
Richard’s lips were set in a grim line as he thought how easily he had been duped.
He would have taken an oath that Wanda was as pure and unsophisticated as she appeared. What idiots men were where a pretty face was concerned and how cunning were women when it came to the art of deception!
He was honest enough to admit to himself that shyness and a certain timidity had always appealed to him in a woman. He supposed it made a man feel strong and masculine to be confronted with the frailty of femininity. Katharina had excited him for that very reason the first time he saw her.
It was only later that he was to learn that, when she veiled her eyes with her long lashes, it was not modesty, but to hide her too easily awakened desire.
Katharina was at least frank.
If she wanted a man, she wooed him with her lips and her naked body. She was a spy, but when a man took her in his arms, knowing her for what she was, he found himself wildly intoxicated by a number of sensations that he had not suspected.
Wanda was a cheat, a deceiver and a liar.
Richard found himself longing to confront her with her lie, to tell her that he knew her for what she was, to denounce her, to watch her eyes drop before his and the blush of shame creep up her cheeks.
Then he remembered his instructions. Well, if it came to a duel of wits, he supposed, inexperienced as he was, he could play a part as well as anyone else.
He would give Metternich a run for his money. It would be a new thrill, he decided, to outmanoeuvre one of the astutest diplomats in Europe, to play at his own game and leave him discomfited.
The carriage drew up at the Razumovsky Palace. Richard had been there before and knew it as one of the sights of Vienna.
It had taken twenty years to build. Count Razumovsky had embellished the place with all the treasures that wealth and influence could buy.
The reception rooms in their decoration surpassed any others in the whole of the country. There were galleries containing world-renowned pictures and statuary and there was a library in which the rarest manuscripts and books had been collected from all over the world.
Count Razumovsky had spent so much money on the Palace that it was even rumoured his fortune had been impaired by it. But this was unlikely for his wealth, inherited from his father, who had been a famous Field Marshal in the Russian Army, was enormous.
Several times since the opening of the Congress, the Czar had borrowed the Palace from his Ambassador. There he had given some of the fêtes that had equalled, if not exceeded, in pomp and splendour those given by the Austrian Court.
But tonight Rich
ard was not driven into the huge courtyard with its gilded gates and great marble pillars.
Instead, as the Czar had told him had been arranged, he was set down at the side door leading onto a small dark passage, then up a twisting iron staircase, which led through a secret panel into a small salon.
The room was empty and the trusted servant who had shown him the way up the stairs closed the panelling behind him as he stepped into the room.
Richard noticed at once that the room was furnished with the same sumptuous magnificence that was prevalent all over the Palace. But there was a certain motif in its decoration that did not escape his attention.
The Dresden china candelabra, for instance, which held the flickering tapers, were ornamented with cupids and love birds, the pictures on the walls and the painted ceiling showed Venus in various exchanges with those who wooed her and the designs on the coral silk hangings were of hearts pierced with arrows.
There was a huge couch in the room covered with cushions and there were flowers whose exotic fragrance seemed to have an almost aphrodisiacal effect upon the senses.
From somewhere far enough away not to intrude but near enough to be heard came the strains of music.
Richard’s lips twisted in a wry smile.
The Czar certainly knew how to set the scene for a love affair, he thought, and decided that this was another side to the Imperial character, as incompatible with his earnest reading of the Bible as the fact that he kept, in a secret drawer of his desk, of portrait of Madame Narischkin exhibiting her charms as Aphrodite rising from the waves.
With an effort Richard remembered the part he had to play.
He pulled his hat from his head and took off his cloak and then, throwing down the mask that he held in his hands, he drew a small black velvet one from his pocket and fixed it over his eyes.
It was the same mask he had worn last night at the ball and, as soon as he had it on, he could see by his reflection in the mirror that he bore an unmistakable resemblance to the Czar.
Butinski, the barber, had arranged his hair in the same fashion as before, but to be on the safe side, Richard blew out a dozen or two of the candles that lit the room so brilliantly.
Now the shadows were deeper and there was an air of mystery about the place.
On a table in the corner Richard noted there was a collation of appetising dishes and several of the choicest and rarest wines in a gold ice bucket.
Picking up the first bottle that came to his hand, he poured himself out a glass of wine. It was cool and of a delicious bouquet and, having gulped down the first half of his glass, he drank the rest slowly and with respect.
This must have been Count Razumovsky’s choice he thought and acknowledged that the Ambassador’s taste was flawless in every detail.
As he set the glass down on the table, he heard the sound of footsteps outside and then the door was opened.
The servants did not announce her.
She merely came in and the door was shut behind her.
She stood there looking apprehensive and very small. He had, in fact, forgotten how tiny she was. She wore a dress of some soft green material that was laced over her shoulders and beneath her tiny breasts with silver ribbons.
She might have been a nymph who had strayed from the Vienna Woods and that quality of youth and spring was there just as he had remembered it from the night before.
How clever it was that she could look like that and still be Metternich’s spy!
“So you came. I was half-afraid that you would disappoint me!”
He heard himself say the words smoothly as he walked across the intervening space between them and took her hand to raise it to his lips.
Her fingers seemed to tremble in his.
“I was so – frightened,” she said softly, “when I saw where the carriage had brought me. I hoped that we were going to that little restaurant – where we supped last night.”
“There was a masked ball last night,” Richard answered. “Everyone in Vienna was disguised. Tonight it would be different and you will understand that I dare not be seen.”
“Then you really are – ” and, as he did not speak, she continued, “ – who I think you are. I wondered if I might have been mistaken.”
“Why?”
The monosyllable came from his lips unexpectedly and sounded sharp even to himself.
“You were so different from what I imagined an – an Emperor – would be like.”
“What did you expect?”
“Someone who was not quite human – someone I could not talk to as I talked to you. Oh, it is difficult to put into words. I-I kept forgetting who you were.”
He found himself listening intently to her words and then he remembered that this was all part of the act to deceive him.
“And now you are disappointed!”
The statement was a sneer.
“No, no, of course not! It is only that it is all so strange. You see, I have never met anyone like – you before.”
“Shall we forget who I am and talk as if we were just two ordinary people who like each other and who want to be together?” Richard enquired.
“Isn’t that just what we are doing?” she replied. “What we did – last night?”
“I suppose so.”
“But first of all I must thank you for my present – it is a lovely fan, far lovelier than the one I broke, which was my mother’s.”
“Yours shall be mended for you.”
“Thank you. It is greedy, but I would like to have both. The one you have given me is magnificent and I shall treasure it, but the other has sentimental associations for me and I would hate to lose it.”
“It shall be mended by the man I told you about and returned to you as soon as it is done.”
“Oh, thank you! How kind you are!”
“I wonder if you will always think so?” Richard asked enigmatically. “Will you have a glass of wine?”
“A very little, please.”
She watched him cross the room to the side table and then looked around with wide eyes.
“What a wonderful room! I have never seen anything so magnificent as the entrance to this Palace – and the stairs and the corridor I came along. Who does it belong to?”
“Count Razumovsky, the Russian Ambassador,” he replied and his eyes narrowed.
She must have known, for Metternich would have told her.
“I must try to remember his name,” Wanda said. “It is all very bewildering – the crowds one sees and meets. All day long I have been presented to distinguished people and now I am afraid I have their names all jumbled up in my mind and I have no idea who is whom.”
“You must tell me what you have been doing,” Richard said. “Shall we sit down?”
He indicated the cushion-covered couch and noted that Wanda eyed it a little apprehensively and sat on the very edge of its cushioned softness at some distance from himself.
“Are you afraid of me?” he asked with a smile.
“No, of course not.”
The words came too quickly and her tone was nervous.
“Then why sit so far away?”
A sudden flush came to her cheeks.
She was cleverer than he imagined possible, he thought.
This was undoubtedly the brilliant acting of a very experienced woman or else there had been some incredible and unforgivable mistake.
And then, even as the doubt came to his mind, he knew that there had been no mistake.
Would any innocent girl have come here alone, unchaperoned, obeying, without question a brief request in an unsigned note?
No, Wanda Schonbörn had her reasons for coming and doubtless her instructions.
“Last night you did not seem afraid of me,” Richard continued.
“Last night it was different,” she answered. “I suppose it is being here alone – in this very grand room that makes me feel uncomfortable. Perhaps really – I ought not to have come.”
“And yet
you did.”
His voice was hard.
“I-I wanted to see you again.”
“Is that the only reason?”
He saw the blood rise in her cheeks again and now her eyes fell before his. A streak of cruelty he had never known before in his character made him long to torture her.
He bent forward and took her hand.
“Can I really credit,” he said softly, “that it is as a man, an ordinary commonplace man, that you like me? If I could be sure of that!”
She did not answer and, looking at her downcast eyes, he added,
“Can you let me hope that that is true?”
“It is – true.”
She looked up suddenly, her eyes vividly blue.
“As a man, not an Emperor?” Richard insisted. “That, has made me very happy. Now, tell me about yourself. Where have you been today and what have you seen?”
“There is so much to tell I might bore you.”
“Everything interests me except lies.”
He saw her swallow a little convulsively.
“The Baroness and I drove in the Prater this morning,” she said hastily. “It was full of people and I thought – I thought – I saw you in the distance.”
“I wish I had seen you,” Richard answered. “Yes, I was driving in the Prater with the Princess Katharina Bagration.”
“I saw her – too. She is beautiful, more beautiful than anyone I have ever seen in my life before,” Wanda said.
“A great many people have called her beautiful,” Richard agreed. “As I expect you know, Prince Metternich loved her for many years and she him.”
“Prince – Metternich!”
Wanda’s voice seemed to falter on the words.
“Yes, he is a great success with the ladies, as you will have already heard.”
“I – had not heard – that.”
“Indeed? But why should you? For you told me last night that you had not met the Prince. Or was I mistaken?”
“No, no, I have not met him – of course. Last night I had only just arrived in Vienna. I had met no one except the Baroness.”
“Yes, I remember now. Well, it augurs well for your visit that your first real admirer should be an Emperor.”
The Enchanted Waltz Page 10
