Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

  Metternich drew a breath. The mask of Austria’s foreign minister settled over his features. “Did Tatiana ask you to come here?” he asked the tsar.

  “How dare you—”

  “I mean tonight. Specifically. Or was it just chance that you walked in?”

  “I don’t see what the devil—”

  “Because she sent me a note,” Metternich said. “Asking me to call at three in the morning and specifying that I be sure to use the front entrance.”

  Alexander’s eyes widened. “She sent me a note saying the same. Only she said to use the side door.”

  “Damned odd. Rannoch?”

  “She sent me a message asking me to come at a quarter to three,” Malcolm said.

  Alexander scrubbed his hands over his face. “Are you saying she wanted us all here at once?”

  “Or the killer did,” Malcolm said.

  Metternich met his gaze for a moment. “Precisely.”

  “Either way,” Alexander said, “it makes it clear none of us killed her.”

  “Not necessarily.” Malcolm was still looking at Metternich. His voice was even, but his face was like bleached linen. “Any of us could have killed her and then come back. Or in my case, I suppose, never left.”

  “Except that I was here with you,” Suzanne said. “So we’d have to have killed her together.”

  Metternich’s gaze shifted to her. For a moment she felt he was stripping her bare, cutting through layers of gauze and satin and linen in a way that had nothing to do with amorous intrigues. “I haven’t known you long, Madame Rannoch, but you strike me as a very loyal wife. I suspect there’s little you wouldn’t do for your husband.”

  “I wouldn’t kill for him.”

  “But would you lie?”

  Malcolm moved to Suzanne’s side. “Keep my wife out of this, sir. If you have accusations to make, make them to my face.”

  “Your wife is unfortunately in the middle of it, Rannoch. And I don’t know enough to make any accusations. Yet.”

  “Why the hell would Tatiana have sent for you?” Alexander was staring at Metternich as though they faced each other across a stretch of green with pistols in their hands. “You’ve had little contact with her in recent months.”

  “Have I?” Metternich raised his brows. “Who told you that? Tatiana herself?”

  “She—” Alexander’s cheekbones whitened. For a moment, Suzanne thought he would lunge across the room and seize Metternich by the throat.

  Metternich smoothed the cuff of his greatcoat. “And you, Rannoch?”

  “The princess is—was—a friend.” Malcolm’s voice was clipped.

  “A word that can cover a multitude of sins.”

  “You forget, Prince,” Suzanne said. “Malcolm came here with his wife.”

  Metternich regarded her again with that same appraising, razorsharp gaze. “I forget nothing, Madame Rannoch.” He spun away and strode through the door to the front of the house. “Annina!” he called in the voice of one used to command.

  Alexander took a step after him but checked himself, perhaps aware of the risks of advertising his presence in Princess Tatiana’s rooms. He frowned at the closed door panels, then looked back at the dead princess. A spasm crossed his face, but he seemed unable to look away.

  Malcolm’s gaze had gone to the murder weapon. Suzanne could see him studying it, analyzing the spatters of blood on the carpet, the angle at which the dagger had fallen, recreating the crime in his mind. Keen appraisal with a weight of grief beneath.

  After perhaps five minutes, Metternich returned, holding a chestnut-haired woman by the arm. She wore a linen nightdress with a green damask dressing gown hastily thrown over it, and her hair fell down her back in a long braid. She too froze on the threshold. “Madame.” She flung herself down beside Princess Tatiana.

  Malcolm moved to the woman’s side and put a hand on her shoulder. “I’m so sorry, Annina.”

  “Monsieur Rannoch?” Annina looked up at Malcolm in bewilderment. She must, Suzanne realized, be Princess Tatiana’s maid. And Malcolm was obviously no stranger to her. His fingers tightened on Annina’s shoulder. Their gazes met and held for a moment.

  “Who’s been to see the princess tonight?” Metternich demanded.

  “No one.” Annina straightened her shoulders and dashed tears from her eyes. She looked to be in her midtwenties, a few years younger than the princess. Her face was delicate, but she had the sharp eyes of a woman who has seen much of the world. Suzanne, who had seen more of the world in her one-and-twenty years than most people knew, recognized the signs. “That is, no one I saw before I retired for the night.”

  “Which was when?” Metternich asked.

  “Just after ten. She said she’d have no further need of me. I read in my room and then went to sleep.”

  “Was she expecting anyone?” Metternich asked.

  “She—” Annina’s gaze slid round the room, settled on the tsar for a moment, darted back to Metternich.

  “She was dressed for visitors,” Suzanne said, looking down at Princess Tatiana’s satin and tulle gown, cameo jewelry, and the ringlets and coils of her hair. “Had she been out this evening?”

  “No.”

  Which in itself was unusual. In Vienna these days, quiet nights at home were a rarity. “I saw a man leaving the palace earlier.”

  Annina fingered a fold of her dressing gown. The green damask edged in black lace looked to be a castoff of the princess’s. “I didn’t hear the bell. My bedchamber is near the princess’s, some distance from the salon. She could have let him in herself. Or he could have entered on his own.” As the three men presently in the room had all done.

  The tsar had dropped down beside the princess again. “It’s gone.”

  “What?” Metternich’s voice was impatient.

  “Her necklace.”

  Tatiana’s cameo necklace was half-obscured by blood. “I think—” Suzanne began gently.

  “He means her locket.” Malcolm was looking down at Tatiana’s face, his eyes dark with an emotion Suzanne could not put a name to. “She always wore it, though it was often tucked into her bodice.”

  Alexander touched the bodice of Tatiana’s gown, then snatched his hand back as though burned.

  Annina reached inside the tulle-edged satin of Princess Tatiana’s bodice. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “It’s gone. She was wearing it earlier. Monsieur Rannoch is right. She never took it off.”

  “What was in the locket?” Metternich asked.

  “I don’t know, Your Highness.” The gaze Annina turned to Metternich was as steady and implacable as polished armor. “I never saw it save when it was round her neck.”

  Metternich gave a quick nod of dismissal. “See that the doors of her rooms are secured and assemble the rest of the staff. I’ll speak with you again presently.”

  Malcolm helped Annina to her feet. Her legs seemed not quite steady, but she held her head high. She fixed Metternich with a gaze like a lancet. “Find who did this.”

  “I intend to do so,” Metternich said. “And I seldom fail.”

  Annina opened her mouth as though to say more, then gave a quick nod.

  Malcolm squeezed her hand and walked to the door with her. He pushed the door shut behind her and rested his palm against the panels for a moment. But when he turned back to the others, his gaze was cool again. “I assume you’ll want us all to stay here until we can give a statement to the authorities.”

  “God in heaven.” Alexander’s head snapped up from contemplation of his dead mistress. “You can’t call in—”

  “A common constable?” Metternich surveyed the tsar. “You’d find that inconvenient?”

  “A number of us would find it inconvenient.” Alexander pushed himself to his feet.

  “You’d prefer there be no investigation into the death of a woman you claim to have loved?”

  “Of course not.” Alexander dug his fingers into his hair. “But—”

  Me
tternich took a step forward. He and the tsar faced each other across the princess’s body.

  “Might I remind you, Your Majesty, that we are on Austrian soil?” Metternich’s voice was soft, but his tone was the tone of a man who had ordered armies across Europe. “Princess Tatiana’s murder will be dealt with by the Austrian authorities.”

  Alexander looked down at Metternich from his superior height. The tsar outranked the foreign minister. Russia had played a more powerful role in vanquishing Napoleon than the vacillating Austria had done. But as Metternich had pointed out, they were presently in Austria, and the machinery of the Austrian government was at Metternich’s fingertips.

  “Your authority doesn’t extend over the Russian delegation,” Alexander said. “Or the British delegation, if it comes to that.”

  “True.” Metternich looked from the tsar to Malcolm. “If either of you suspect your compatriots of complicity in Princess Tatiana’s murder and attempt to protect them, there is little I can do. You must act according to your consciences. But I will manage the investigation as I see fit.”

  He moved to the door. “I’ve learned enough for tonight. I advise you all to return to your quarters.”

  “You don’t wish us to give formal statements?” Malcolm said.

  “Not yet.” Metternich held the door open. “I know where to find you.”

  Tsarina Elisabeth closed her door in the Amalia wing of the Hofburg and leaned against the cool, white-painted panels. Her heartbeat thudded in her brain like a Beethoven crescendo. For seconds she was unable to move, afraid that moving would mean thinking, and thinking would mean remembering the events of the evening.

  She squeezed her eyes shut, but she could not blot out the images. The memories were even worse than present reality. She opened her eyes and forced herself to look down at the skirt of her gown. Her cloak had fallen back and splotches of crimson showed against the figured ivory silk of her skirt.

  She drew a breath that shuddered against the laces of her corset. Then she tugged at the ties on her cloak and cast it aside. She reached for the tapes on her gown, desperate to be free of it. She would strip it off and burn it. But even as she tugged at the first tape, so hard it tore off in her hands, she realized the remnants of pearl-beaded fabric among the ashes would betray her.

  Damn this life in which there was no privacy.

  She ran to her night table, grabbed the ewer, and poured water on her skirt, heedless of the amount she spilled over the parquet floor. The crimson spread and faded to pink. She tugged up the hem, stiff with pearls and silver embroidery, and rubbed at the spots, crushing the fabric, pulling threads, knocking pearls loose on the floorboards. She seized a cake of lavender soap and scrubbed it over the stains.

  They didn’t go away. They would never go away. But in the end, when she held her skirt up to the light of the Argand lamp, the stains had faded enough that her maid would not be able to tell precisely what they were. And her maid could not, after all, question what had happened to the gown that had looked so pristine earlier in the evening. There were advantages to being an empress.

  Hysterical laughter welled up inside her and spilled from her lips. She pressed her shaking fingers to her mouth. No, the stains on her gown would not betray her.

  It was the stains in her mind that would never go away.

  3

  Suzanne stole a glance at her husband as they walked down the Schenkengasse. His gaze was fixed straight ahead, his generous mouth set in a hard line. Before they had left Princess Tatiana’s salon, he’d turned, almost as though under compulsion, and looked back at the dead woman for a long moment. Suzanne had the oddest sense he’d have knelt and closed Tatiana’s eyes if Metternich would have permitted it. Instead, he’d held the door open for Suzanne and strode from the room.

  Now he walked close beside her, but he’d made no move to offer her his arm. He hadn’t touched her since that moment when he’d grabbed her wrist as he knelt by Princess Tatiana’s body.

  “Do you think Metternich will put Baron Hager in charge of the investigation?” Suzanne asked, in as level a voice as she could manage. Baron Hager was the head of Austria’s secret service.

  “I expect so.” Malcolm didn’t pause or turn to look at her. “Hager’s agents have bungled some things, but he’s an able man. And Metternich knows Hager will understand the need for discretion.”

  “I still don’t understand why Metternich let us leave without giving statements.”

  “I suspect he wanted a chance to search Tatiana’s rooms unobserved.”

  Suzanne looked up at her husband in the yellow glow of a street lamp. “For what? Love letters?”

  “Among other things.” A carriage clattered by, bringing the glow of flambeaux and the smell of pitch. Malcolm continued to walk, his gaze shifting over the dark street ahead. The moonlight gleamed blue-black on the cobblestones, but the narrower side streets were in shadows. “We need to get our story straight. We’re damned lucky we didn’t trip over each other making things up as we went along.”

  She swallowed a host of emotions that tore at her chest. “It was dangerous to lie to the tsar. I spoke on impulse. I should have thought things through.”

  “Perhaps.” He stopped abruptly and turned his head to look at her. The lamplight bounced off his sharp-boned, Celtic features and the pewter of his eyes. “But your impulsiveness probably saved my liberty and quite possibly my life. To say thank you seems shockingly inadequate. It was a generous thing to do. Particularly given what you think of me.”

  “Malcolm—” The words caught in her throat. She put out her hand, then let it fall to her side. “I know how much I owe you.”

  He drew a breath and released it. His dark hair fell over his forehead in that way that gave him the unexpected look of a schoolboy. Save that the ghosts that haunted his gaze made him seem years older. When he spoke, his voice was harsh. “I don’t believe in calling in debts. And if you owed me anything, it’s been repaid long since. Simply by the fact that you put up with me.”

  He turned and began walking again, scanning the streets ahead. A carriage had drawn up before a tall house at the corner. Three young men with silk hats decidedly askew stumbled out and clambered up the steps of the house. Attachés, no doubt, home after a night of revelry, though at this distance it was impossible to make out who they were or what country they represented. Of one accord, she and Malcolm fell back in the shadows until the young men had vanished into the house.

  “Malcolm,” she said as they started forward again. “Were you really in Pressburg?”

  They turned down a side street. The overhanging balconies on either side encased them in darkness. “No,” he said at last, as though he already half regretted the words. “But I was gone from Vienna from two nights ago until this evening. Castlereagh sent me to rendezvous with a contact who had information about the disposition of Prussian troops in Saxony.”

  “Did you really receive a note from Princess Tatiana? Or—”

  His hand moved to her elbow. He didn’t quicken his pace, but he turned his head toward her, his voice conversational. “Don’t look round. We’re being followed.”

  Even as he framed the words, she could hear the faint footfalls against the cobblestones behind them. One man. No, two. Moving carefully and almost in unison but with slightly different gaits.

  Suzanne had spent part of her life on streets like this. Not the best preparation for a diplomatic wife, but excellent training for other aspects of Malcolm’s life. Like her husband, she knew better than to quicken her pace. They turned down another street, lined with shuttered shops and cafés warm with candlelight despite the hour.

  “Are they still behind us?” she asked as they passed a brilliantly lit building with fashionably dressed women visible through the windows. Quite definitely a brothel. The strains of a waltz played on the pianoforte spilled out a first-floor window, making it difficult to pick out the sound of the footsteps.

  Malcolm nodded. The
y turned another corner, past three boys roasting chestnuts over a fire in the street. Malcolm pulled her into a shop doorway and into his arms.

  His lips were warm. His mouth tasted of wine. She clung to him, with an urgency that took her by surprise, even as she listened for noise from the street behind, heard him fumbling in his pocket, heard the scrape of metal and the jiggle of tumblers.

  He pushed the door open and pulled her inside. “Very old ruse,” she said. Her voice was just a shade less steady than she would have liked.

  “But nearly always effective.”

  The smell of dust and beeswax and lemon oil engulfed them. The lamplight seeping through the thick, old glass of the windows showed dark rectangular shapes and larger triangular ones with slender tapered legs. They were in a pianoforte maker’s. Trust Malcolm to find music even in the midst of an escape.

  Malcolm returned his picklocks to his pocket. He and Suzanne threaded their way over the worn floorboards, mindful of the fact that the shop owner probably lived upstairs.

  Malcolm paused in the middle of the room and glanced round the darkened shop. “You didn’t by any chance think to bring a weapon, did you?” he said in a low voice.

  “I could make do with the brooch that fastens my cloak.”

  “Resourceful as always. But I think we can do better.” He scanned the shadowy room. His fingers hovered over the keys of one of the pianofortes, though he didn’t dare strike a note.

  Suzanne’s eye had fallen on another shape, too low and broad to be an upright, too rectangular to be a grand. A worktable. Her eyes growing accustomed to the dark, she found a drawer and tugged it open. “Surely a pianoforte maker would have—” Her fingers closed round them. “Wire clippers.”

  “That’s the woman I married.” Malcolm spared her a brief smile, a white gleam in the shadows. He reached inside his coat and pulled out two dark objects. She caught a whiff of sulfur and heard the familiar scrape of a pistol being loaded.