Sweet as the Devil

by Susan Johnson

  By the time they stopped to make camp that night, red faced and bleary-eyed, she realized that whatever constituted love, however love was defined, by word or deed or aspiration, she had the ill fortune to love a man who not only didn’t love her, but also might never return.

  CHAPTER 25

  THREE DAYS LATER, traveling under forged documents collected from Ernst’s house in London, Jamie and Douglas arrived in Vienna. They’d entered Europe at Ostend rather than Calais to avoid Von Welden’s sentinels, traveled to Munich, then south by local trains since Von Welden’s spies would more likely monitor the express trains. Outfitted as farmworkers, the two men melted into the crowd of peasants from the countryside who were bringing their produce to market and slipped away down a narrow alley before reaching the market square.

  Making their way across the city with the streaming influx of laborers on their way to their daily toil, they reached a tree-lined street in a bourgeois neighborhood. Maintaining a reasonable distance, they followed a group of chattering seamstresses down a private drive leading to the back of a dress shop that served only the crème de la crème of Viennese society.

  Midway down the drive, one young girl who was a few steps behind the others glanced back and nervously quickened her pace. Two very large workmen shouldn’t be making their way to Madame Szogyenyi’s establishment at this time of day or perhaps ever. Her employer retained her own laborers and craftsmen, and none of them wore garb more customarily seen on the farm.

  But as the group of women were entering the shop, Jamie called out in a voice pitched only for the ears of the pretty laggard, “Mitzi, wake Flora for me, will you?”

  The girl spun around at the familiar voice and saw Jamie with his finger to his lips. She nodded, acknowledging his warning, and with a quick smile she turned and followed her companions into the shop.

  Jamie led Douglas to an inconspicuous black door in the corner of the three-story Baroque-style mansion. They waited perhaps five minutes in the shade of a large ivycovered topiary before the door opened and a female voice murmured, “Come in. Quickly now.”

  Both men silently followed the slender woman in a violet silk dressing gown up a narrow staircase to the main floor where she hurriedly conducted them down a short hallway and waved them into a small, elegant sitting room.

  “Are you mad?” Madame Szogyenyi exclaimed as she closed the door and collapsed against it. “Clearly you are,” she said, answering her own question. “You must know Von Welden has every spy in Vienna looking for you.”

  “We noticed. The two across the street in particular.”

  “Odious creatures,” Flora said with hearty contempt. “It’s your fault of course that I’m being harassed. Were they busy with their morning coffee?”

  He nodded. “They didn’t even see us.”

  “Herr Reuss serves them their breakfast with my compliments. Although the poor man has lost customers since they took up their posts outside his café. The blackguards are really too obvious.”

  “I do apologize for bothering you,” Jamie said, taking a small breath against the excruciating pain gripping his senses. “I thought perhaps you might not mind if we use your attic for a few days.”

  “Of course I mind, you callous rogue. Anyone with half a brain would.”

  “The question is,” he politely said, “how much do you mind?”

  Her eyes rested a second on the cool, self-contained man who stood very still by dint of his considerable will, she suspected. She softly sighed. “How can I refuse you anything, you darling man.”

  “As ever, I thank you.” Jamie smiled faintly. “I’m more than happy to pay you a fortune for the accommodations.”

  “Pshaw. As if I need money.” The dressmaker tut-tutted softly. “You look terrible.”

  “I look better than I feel.” His face was marked with stresses, his eyes dark shadows.

  Straightening, she briskly said, “You need a doctor. I’ll have Kasper come over. Someone shot you, I presume.”

  “Von Metis.”

  She quickly shuttered her startled look. “Did he survive ?”

  “No.”

  “Good riddance,” she said, wishing she could kill Von Metis again for what he’d done to Jamie.

  “Do you mind if I sit down?” His pallor was marked, his hands suddenly clenched to deter their trembling. “We’ve been traveling for three days.”

  “Tut. And you in that state,” she murmured, moving toward him with outstretched hands. “Sit anywhere, darling. Here, lie on the sofa,” she said, gently touching his arm. “Help the poor boy, Douglas. He’s practically ready to topple over. And you needn’t use the attic, Jamie dear, when my apartment is perfectly safe. Von Welden wouldn’t dare accost me or invade my premises. His wife would cut off his balls if he offended me.”

  Jamie grinned. “I was hoping that was the case.” He sank heavily onto the malachite green moire sofa and shut his eyes.

  Madame Szogyenyi shot a worried look at Douglas. “I’ll summon the doctor.”

  “No,” Jamie muttered without opening his eyes.

  “Don’t be silly. Kasper’s a friend. Now, don’t argue. I expect you’ve come for Von Welden. You might as well live to see him die.” She went to a small desk and scribbled a quick note. Calling in a servant, she handed it over with murmured instructions before turning back to Douglas. “Help the dear boy into my bedroom. We’ll get him into bed. He can sleep until the doctor arrives.”

  A short time later, after having put an only faintly protesting Jamie to bed, Douglas and Flora sat across from each other at a table in an adjoining room that had been set with a substantial breakfast in their absence.

  “Please, eat.” She waved a slender, ringed hand over the table. “Coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee, thank ye.”

  After she poured Douglas coffee and he began to eat, Flora rested back in her chair, ran her fingers through her disheveled auburn curls, and said after a short, considering silence, “How bad is he?” Jamie was her favorite lover, her only one when she tired of the vulgar world, which was more and more often of late.

  Douglas looked up from his plate. “He’ll manage.”

  “For how long?” Her eyes were bright with unshed tears, regret soft in her voice.

  “Ye know him,” Douglas replied, unblinking and direct. “For however long it takes.”

  She gathered herself, understanding a cold-blooded expediency was required to see the personal vendetta through. “What’s Jamie using to counter the morphine?”

  “Coca leaves. They’re mild but do the job.”

  “I’m not foolish enough to think he’ll go home and recuperate first.”

  “Nor foolish enough to think Von Welden would allow the bonny boy that respite.”

  She shrugged, perfunctory issues dismissed. “Agreed. What can I do?”

  “We have to talk to Katia Karolyi. Can ye get a message to her?”

  “Of course.” They were fellow Hungarians. “She hates him, you know. She’ll be perfect.”

  “That’s what we were thinking. She also might like to see her brother freed.”

  Flora laughed softly. “She might kill Von Welden herself for that incentive. She loves her brother above all things. I’ll have a servant carry over a note directly.” She raised her brows. “Couched in suitably veiled terms. Von Welden monitors Katia’s activities as if he were charged with guarding an heiress’s maidenhead. Fortunately,” she added with a faint smile, “he daren’t come here with his mistress.”

  Douglas held her gaze over a forkful of ham. “Because his wife is rich?”

  “And concerned with maintaining the proprieties.” Flora’s violet gaze was sardonic. “Aren’t we lucky.”

  Douglas grunted. “We’re going to need all the luck we can get.”

  HAVING STAYED THE night as he often did, Von Welden was breakfasting with Katia when Madame Szogyenyi’s message was delivered.

  After reading it, Katia handed it across
the table. Von Welden was suspicious of all her correspondence as he was about everything in her life.

  “Cloth of gold?” His brows rose over an inquisitor’s gaze.

  “I thought you might like me in something flamboyant,” Katia murmured with a charming smile, ever the actress for Von Welden. “Madame Szogyenyi promised to design something dramatic for me—for your enjoyment of course,” she softly added.

  He smiled at the beautiful young woman with strawberry blonde hair and the most voluptuous body in the empire. “Flamboyant—I like the sound of that. Is it ready then?”

  “No, dear. Just another fitting. Come if you like.” An artful bluff.

  “And run into my wife? I think not.”

  “Suit yourself,” Katia casually replied, well versed at masking her feelings with Von Welden. “But surely she must know. Everyone else does.”

  “Knowing and admitting one knows are two different matters. Ignorance is bliss, my dear. She’s the mother of my children after all.”

  “How are the darlings?”

  “You’d have to ask their governesses and nannies. They look well enough when I see them, although I fear Hans has his mother’s features. Poor boy. The Wittelbachs are not a comely family.”

  “But a wealthy one,” she said, passionless and cool.

  He looked up at her tone, wondering if a gift of jewelry was required to assuage that unpleasant glimpse of temperament. Straightening the cuff on his uniform, one of several he kept at his mistress’s apartment, he took another moment to debate his response. “It’s a business arrangement, my dear. Like so many marriages. Now then,” he said with a lazy smile, “why not find yourself a bit of jewelry to complement this new gown. I’ll send word to Lawry that you’re coming in. Tell me, when will this gown be ready so you can show it off for me?”

  “I’ll let you know after my fitting. Madame Szogyenyi’s an artiste who refuses to be harried. More coffee?”

  No mention of his offer of jewelry. If the bitch wasn’t so lush and succulent, he’d have her flogged for her damned impertinence. “Alas, duty calls,” he said, low pitched and pleasant. Rising from his chair, he bowed with a click of his heels. “Until tonight, my dear.”

  The moment the door closed on him, Katia summoned a servant to carry her answer to Madame Szogyenyi, then ordered her lady’s maid to draw her bath. She wished to scrub away any trace of Von Welden—a customary ritual on his departure.

  CHAPTER 26

  JAMIE WAS UP and waiting for Katia by ten. His wound had been seen to; he’d been dosed with drugs and bathed and dressed in his own clothes from a minimum selection he kept at Flora’s for just such occasions. There were times when he came into Vienna and wished to avoid his own apartment; the secret police could damn well watch someone else.

  Austria was a reactionary state: the press censored, the mail read by the police before delivery; telegrams might as well have been published in the papers; every person of note—and those of lesser stature, too, if they had the bad sense to attend the wrong lecture—were watched day and night. Even the imperial family wasn’t immune from the scrutiny of the secret police.

  At the moment, however, beyond their reach, Jamie was feeling in the pink of health thanks to the doctor’s injections. Nothing hurt, he could move without wincing, his mind was alert; no one but those with a practiced eye would have noticed his dilated irises. Flora had drawn the shades.

  Jamie appreciated the doctor’s professional attention. Jamie had been monitoring the delicate balance between the morphine and coca leaves himself all the way to Vienna, fully aware that he couldn’t sustain the morphine regime for long or a train of alarming symptoms would ultimately lead to his collapse. The ingestion of coca leaves also required stringent control; excess use could lead to bodily and mental failure. He’d felt like a damned apothecary, measuring out his doses, maintaining a credible interval between, trying to consume as little as possible to mitigate his pain.

  He was truly grateful to Flora; he was relaxed, better able to face any contingency. Not that the circumstances had changed, nor had the doctor done more than clean and redress the wound with pursed lips and grim-faced censure.

  “You could lose this arm,” Kasper had muttered, “or your life. You know that, I suppose.”

  “Not, I hope, in the next day or so,” Jamie had pleasantly replied, in harmony with the young Hungarian doctor since he’d injected a painkiller directly into his wound before beginning his task.

  “You might last that long; as for this infected shoulder . . .” The doctor paused in his gentle swabbing of the wound and held Jamie’s gaze. “It’s turning putrid.”

  “I know. Just clean it up for now. I’ll deal with it later.”

  “How many days have you been on the drugs?” Kasper asked then, assessing damage and future damage, the speed at which the infection could possibly kill him.

  “Three.”

  He quickly surveyed Jamie’s body, his gaze exacting. “Any vomiting or nausea?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Hallucinations?”

  “A few. Nothing major.”

  The doctor set down his swab and lifted Jamie’s wrist, checking his pulse. “Still relatively steady,” he said, setting Jamie’s hand down. “When it weakens, you won’t have much time before you lapse into unconsciousness.”

  “I only need another day, two at the most,” he said without expression.

  This man was obviously marshaling his strength for some urgent matter. “Whatever you’re doing must be important or Flora wouldn’t have called me. We’re all at risk, though, over this.”

  “I appreciate your coming. If it helps, my mission will eliminate one of Hungary’s enemies. He’s a new major landowner in your country with grand designs to build another Versailles.”

  “Filthy Austrians,” the doctor muttered. “They have no right to our land.” There was no love lost between cultures, no matter an ostensible partnership existed in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was a partnership in name only, the government firmly in Austrian hands.

  “This Austrian in particular,” Jamie said with a soft and frightening venom. “By the way, if you could leave me some syringes, I’d be grateful,” he added in a voice pitched to such a degree of politesse the doctor thought for a moment he’d misheard the previous comment.

  “I’ll see what I have.” Once Jamie’s wound was rebandaged, the doctor rummaged through his bag. “There now,” Kasper said, placing some syringes on the bedside table along with additional drugs. “Enough for three, possibly four days.” Although Jamie would require greater and greater doses to produce less and less effect.

  “Thank you. You’re most kind.” Jamie’s voice was easy, his green gaze clear and unwavering. He might have been expressing gratitude for a spring tonic.

  The doctor was shrugging into his coat. “Will I see headlines in the papers with regard to this mission?”

  “I’m sure you will,” Jamie casually replied, although there was nothing casual about the look in his unsmiling eyes. “However, the gentleman in question will have suffered a heart attack or some such thing; like the spurious reports that were put out on the crown prince’s death. The event will come to pass very shortly.” Jamie smiled faintly. “For obvious reasons. Although, at the moment I feel quite restored.”

  “Only until the drugs wear off,” the doctor reminded him.

  Jamie’s smile widened. “I don’t expect they’ll be wearing off anytime soon.”

  DRESSED IN GREY flannel slacks, a white linen shirt, and soft elk-skin slippers, Jamie was resting now in the large, high-backed chair Flora had purchased for him shortly after they’d met. She’d already been well established in her career, married with a young daughter (who was currently away at boarding school in Switzerland), and saddled with a harassing, aristocratic husband who spent all her money at the gaming tables.

  One night outside the casino at Baden, or so gossip had it, Jamie had taken the opportunity to speak
to Flora’s husband. Whatever was said—and neither man had ever commented on the incident—the harassment as well as the drain on Flora’s funds had come to an end.

  Her husband had never approached her again.

  Even if their affaire hadn’t already begun, Flora would have thanked Jamie exactly the same way, for he’d given her back her life. He was nineteen at the time, she was twenty-six, and a decade later, their friendship still endured.

  “You should eat something,” Flora insisted once again, watching Jamie from her vantage point on the divan.

  “Ye should,” Douglas urged, Jamie’s loss of appetite a characteristic of the drugs.

  “I feel too good right now. Let me rest.” His smile was angelic. “I promise, my dears, to eat as soon as Katia leaves.”

  “You’re not allowed to drink,” Flora directed. “Don’t forget.”

  “Why would I want to? As you see, I’m quite content. Kasper is a prince among men. My compliments, darling, on your good sense to call him in.”

  “Just remember my good sense later when I bring you food. If you don’t eat, you’ll become weak.”

  Jamie shut his eyes as though to arrest the continuous barrage of orders, and Flora and Douglas exchanged worried glances.

  Then everyone sat in silence.

  Jamie made plans behind his closed eyelids. Under the high intake of drugs, he was keyed up to an intense level of imaginative activity.

  Douglas made plans of his own; his had to do with keeping Jamie safe if the drugs made him careless.

  Flora worried; how was it possible to get to a wellguarded man like Von Welden and live to tell the tale?

  When the door opened and Katia was announced, Flora quickly came to her feet. “Thank you for coming, my dear.” She spoke in Hungarian. “Since I know how you hate cloth of gold, I knew you’d understand my little subterfuge.”

  “A perfect contrivance, I agree. Von Welden was there.” She shrugged. “He’s quite unaware.”