Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

  “A woman who was the tsar’s mistress.”

  “Metternich and the tsar have a way of competing in all things.”

  Malcolm stared at Talleyrand’s sharp-featured face. Equal parts viper and raptor, his aunt had once said. “It was your idea, wasn’t it?”

  Talleyrand smoothed his sleeve. “What?”

  “Tatiana resuming her affair with Metternich. Tatiana becoming the tsar’s lover. That’s why you wanted her in Vienna.”

  “You credit me with a farther reach than I possess.”

  “I can’t believe I didn’t see it sooner. She was more your creature still than I realized.” Malcolm folded his arms across his chest. “She told someone the afternoon of the day she was killed that she’d had disturbing news. She wanted to tell me about it.” And he had failed her, as he seemed so often to do.

  “Who told you this?”

  “A source.”

  “Perhaps that’s what she meant to tell you last night.”

  “Perhaps. Or were you the one who told her to summon Metternich and the tsar and me?”

  Talleyrand’s thin mouth relaxed into a smile. “I almost wish I could take credit for such an audacious action. But I can’t imagine a logical reason to orchestrate such a meeting. I don’t know what Tatiana was thinking of.”

  “It’s possible her killer arranged the whole.”

  “To create discord? Or spread blame? A bit Byzantine, surely. Though almost devious enough to be the sort of thing I might think up myself.”

  Malcolm swallowed the last of his calvados. “My thoughts exactly.”

  “Of course,” Talleyrand added, settling more comfortably into his chair, “given what Tatiana knew about you, you could be said to have an excellent motive yourself. A little more calvados, my boy?”

  Malcolm crossed the courtyard of the Kaunitz Palace. Autumn twilight shadows slanted across the street as he turned down the Johannesgasse. He could hear bells chiming from the nearby St. Stephen’s Cathedral.

  He had a keen memory of the first meeting he had attended with Talleyrand at the Congress. Talleyrand had walked into a room filled with the representatives of Austria, Britain, Prussia, and Russia. The victorious powers who, Talleyrand must have known full well, had been negotiating among themselves for weeks. He examined a protocol they showed him, detailing their plans for how to settle the issues of the Congress. In a voice of exquisite politeness, he inquired about the use of the word allies. Allies against whom, he wanted to know. Surely the war was over. If they still considered themselves allies against France, then he had no place at the meeting. Suddenly, Castlereagh and Metternich and the others were protesting and apologizing, and Talleyrand had neatly taken control of the scene. One never would have guessed he represented the defeated power at the table.

  He had done much the same just now, turning the focus of the conversation to Malcolm’s relationship with Tatiana. And yet he had revealed more than Malcolm had expected. The resumption of Tatiana’s affair with Metternich. Talleyrand’s own role in orchestrating that affair and her affair with the tsar. Talleyrand only revealed things when he had very good reasons for doing so.

  Malcolm turned down an alley that offered a shortcut to the Minoritenplatz. Talleyrand’s relationship with Tatiana had been a complicated one. Despite his inside knowledge, Malcolm knew barely a fraction of what had gone on between the wily French foreign minister and—

  Tania. She was dead. The reality slammed into him like a fist to the gut. He stopped abruptly, beneath an overhanging balcony, and drew a harsh breath of the cooling air. He had known she was dead for close on eighteen hours, and there had been no time to mourn. Perhaps there never would be. Certainly there was no one with whom he could share his grief. Which shouldn’t matter. God knew, he had been used to doing things alone since boyhood.

  He pressed his hands over his eyes, forcing back the tears that would help no one, then strode on, more quickly, hoping to outrun his thoughts. His senses caught something—a stir of movement, a whiff of human scent—a split second before a hand closed on his shoulder. Through the fabric of his coat, he felt the cold press of a knife against his ribs.

  “I advise you not to turn round, Monsieur Rannoch.” It was a man’s voice, an expressionless monotone, speaking French, as so many people did in Vienna, with an accent he could not place. “I have a message for you.”

  “Then you’d best deliver it.” Malcolm calculated how much damage the man could do with the knife before he could get in a good blow.

  “We want what you have. We are willing to pay handsomely for it.”

  “I don’t—”

  “The garden at the Metternich masquerade tonight. By the Temple of Mars. Two a.m.” The knifepoint bit through Malcolm’s coat. “If you know what’s good for you, you won’t fail.”

  10

  The flames of the tapers on Suzanne’s dressing table swayed as the door opened. In the looking glass she saw her husband step into the room.

  He paused, taking in her mantilla, her red satin gown edged in black Spanish lace, the fringed shawl and castanets beside her on the dressing table bench.

  “The ladies are asked to come to the ball in regional costume.” Suzanne pushed the jet comb that anchored her mantilla more firmly into her hair. “I thought we would do Spain, as it’s a bit tricky to work out British regional dress. Lady Castlereagh is wearing Lord Castlereagh’s Order of the Garter in her hair.”

  “Sorry I don’t have one to lend you, though I think I prefer the mantilla.” His gaze moved over her reflection for a moment. “I’ve always liked you in them.”

  She’d worn a white mantilla at their wedding in the stuffy sitting room in the British embassy in Lisbon that had stood in for a chapel. His hand had brushed against the lace as he took her hand to slip a hastily purchased wedding band onto her finger. She’d felt the warmth of his fingers and the cold of the engraved metal and the strange reality of the fact that she had bound her life to the life of this man who was virtually a stranger.

  Malcolm stepped into the room and began to unbutton his coat. “I’m not going as a toreador, am I?” He left it to Suzanne to arrange their masquerade costumes. Masked balls were one of the more popular entertainments at the Congress. There had been so many, beginning with the masked ball at the Hofburg that had marked the start of the Congress, that she could scarcely remember how they had dressed for each.

  “A Spanish grandee, circa 1700. Your costume’s laid out on the bed.”

  He stripped off his coat and tossed it over a chairback. “Where’s Blanca?”

  “Trying to put Colin down.”

  He went to work on his waistcoat buttons (his valet, Addison, was out interviewing tradesmen Princess Tatiana had dealt with). “I saw Castlereagh on my way in. You and I are to represent the British delegation at Tatiana’s funeral tomorrow, along with Lord and Lady Castlereagh.”

  In the looking glass, Suzanne watched her husband’s fingers making precise, controlled work of the waistcoat buttons. “I’m glad we’ll be able to be there. I wasn’t sure—I know a limited number of people will be allowed to attend.”

  Malcolm tossed the waistcoat after his coat. “Castlereagh wants me there because he has me investigating the murder.”

  Or the foreign secretary had included Malcolm because of his relationship to the princess, but that was a topic it would be folly to pursue.

  Malcolm began to unwind his cravat. “Speaking of the investigation, this afternoon proved interesting.”

  Suzanne turned round to look at her husband more closely. His eyes had a glitter that at once signaled trouble and the scent of the chase. “What happened? Was it Talleyrand?”

  “No. That is, yes, he had some interesting things to say, but if I look a bit puzzled, it’s over what happened later.” He tossed the cravat after his coat and waistcoat. “I have a secret rendezvous at the Metternichs’ ball in the garden at two. With a mysterious man who stuck a knife in my ribs on my way back from t
he Kaunitz Palace and informed me he is willing to pay a great deal for what I have to sell.”

  “What on earth does he think you have to sell?”

  “I haven’t the least idea. It could be an attempt to buy intelligence about Castlereagh and Britain, but I’d lay odds it’s to do with Tatiana.”

  Suzanne took a sip from the cooling cup of coffee on her dressing table. “Perhaps someone thinks you have the box of papers that Annina told you was missing from the princess’s rooms. It’s no secret you were close to Princess Tatiana. If she gave it to someone—”

  “Yes. They might think she’d trust me with it.”

  “Malcolm?” Suzanne studied her husband’s face as he unfastened his shirt cuffs. Lying next to him last night in the dark, she had been certain he was lying about something. “You don’t have it, do you?”

  “If I did, and I was bent on keeping it secret from you, I like to think I’d have had the wit not to tell you it was missing.”

  She watched him as he pulled the shirt over his head. “You’re going to keep the rendezvous, aren’t you?”

  He grinned. She forgot sometimes just how much her serious husband thrived on risk. “How else do we discover what they’re after?”

  “We?”

  “I thought you could hide in the shrubbery and see if you can identify the man. He’ll undoubtedly be masked. I’ll bluff as long as possible and try to draw him out. You can come to the rescue if necessary.”

  “That’s my Malcolm.”

  He picked up the frilled shirt of his grandee costume. “Put your pistol in your reticule. Just in case.”

  The Metternichs’ villa was a twenty-minute drive from the heart of Vienna along the Rennweg, a thoroughfare lined with many elegant palaces belonging to Vienna’s elite. Masks and dominoes in hand, the British delegation crowded into carriages in the Minoritenplatz. Malcolm and Suzanne shared a carriage with Aline, Tommy Belmont, Fitz, and Eithne. It was the first time Suzanne had seen either of the Vaughns since Dorothée’s revelations about Fitz’s affair with Princess Tatiana. She watched Fitz hand Eithne into the carriage with his usual solicitude. The cup of coffee she’d swallowed while dressing for the masquerade rose up in her throat.

  Seated between Aline and Eithne on the forward-facing seat, which the gentlemen had chivalrously yielded to the ladies, Suzanne reminded herself that she had engaged in far more elaborate deceptions than pretending to be ignorant of an adulterous love affair in front of the man in question and his wife.

  Across the carriage, the three men were a study in contrasts. Tommy, costumed as an English jockey, sprawled in the middle with unconcern, white-blond head thrown back against the silk-damask squabs. Malcolm leaned in one corner with an air of reserve that accorded well with his dignified grandee’s costume. Fitz, dressed as a gondolier but with none of a gondolier’s bonhomie, leaned into the opposite corner, his gaze fixed on the window, though he didn’t seem to be focusing on the country estates they passed.

  Eithne smoothed the skirt of her Tyrolean peasant dress. “I wonder if Tsar Alexander will be at the ball?”

  “Because of Princess Tatiana, you mean?” Aline asked.

  “He was threatening not to attend the ball long before the princess was murdered,” Tommy said. “Ever since the dustup over Metternich and Castlereagh trying to get Prussia in their corner instead of Russia’s. Metternich and the tsar trade their allies back and forth just like their women.”

  “That’s what I like about you, Mr. Belmont,” Aline said. “You’re so wonderfully direct.”

  Malcolm ran a finger over the mask he held in his lap. “I suspect he’ll be there. Tsar Alexander enjoys the public stage. And whether he likes it or not, tonight the stage is at the Metternichs’.”

  Midway down the long curving drive to the villa, the press of carriages waiting to let their passengers off stopped their own carriage in its tracks. “Just like a Mayfair ball,” Tommy said as they inched over the gravel. “Only more so.”

  “Better put our masks on,” Eithne said. “Fitz? Darling, you’ve dropped yours.”

  Fitz picked his mask up with an apologetic smile. Eithne studied him for a moment, a line between her delicate brows, then briskly tied her own mask over her face.

  At last their carriage rolled up to the villa, a rambling, columned building in the Italian style. A footman let down the steps and they descended from the carriage, stretching their stiff limbs.

  Flambeaux cast a red-orange glow on the wide granite steps that led to the front doors. After the cool night air, the press of heat and bodies in the high-ceilinged entrance hall was stifling. Fortunately, both Suzanne and Malcolm were adept at navigating a crowd. With Aline in tow, they inched through the hall and up the stairs to an equally close-pressed anteroom and then another and then, at last, the ballroom.

  Metternich had added the ballroom to the villa for the Congress. The domed pavilion was designed to accommodate above a thousand guests. The crystal chandeliers that ran down the center of the long room sparkled with a fortune in wax tapers. Strings of Murano glass glittered in the columned recesses on either side of the room, as tonight’s masquerade had a Venetian theme. Carnival masks in fantastical shapes hung from the pillars that supported the ceiling and brilliant Italian silks draped the walls.

  Perfumes and eau de cologne vied with the scent of hothouse flowers and the smell of sweat from energetic dancing in an overcrowded room. The strains of a waltz rose above the cacophony of chattering voices and the clink of crystal.

  Aline studied the dancers swirling on the gleaming walnut of the parquet floor. “I suspect there are enough diamonds on that Alsatian peasant dress to feed an entire Alsatian village for a month.”

  “If not a year.” Malcolm stopped a footman and procured three glasses of champagne.

  “You can tell who almost everyone is despite the masks,” Aline said. “Oh, look.” She nodded toward a tall, sandy-haired man in black who stood near the main entrance to the ballroom. “I’m sure that’s Tsar Alexander. Weren’t all the sovereigns supposed to come in black?”

  Suzanne took a sip of champagne. The slender woman beside the tsar was obviously Tsarina Elisabeth. She wore Bavarian dress, the country that had been her home until she went to Russia as the tsar’s bride. Beneath her mask her ash blond hair flowed loose over her shoulders in her signature style.

  The tsar and tsarina stood for a moment, her hand resting lightly on his arm, accepting the attention of the crowd. Then she released his arm, and they moved in separate directions.

  “They do make an exquisite couple,” Aline said.

  “And as with so much at the Congress, the truth is quite the opposite of the public image,” Malcolm replied.

  “Glad to see some familiar faces behind the masks.” Geoffrey Blackwell joined them, red and white domino billowing over a dark coat. “Came as a British military doctor,” he said. “No time to fuss with a costume. Exhausting day. Everyone’s talking about Princess Tatiana. They think because I’m a family friend and you discovered the body I must know something. I was stopped four times to listen to theories—each more outlandish than the next—before I even reached the ballroom.”

  “It’s rather fascinating,” Aline said. “A problem that can’t be solved mathematically.”

  “At least not without knowing all the variables,” Geoffrey replied.

  She grinned at him. “Quite. Too many unknowns for a proper equation.”

  “And impossible to define the constants. Would you care to dance, Aline?”

  Aline blinked. “Oh, I don’t really—That is, yes. Thank you.”

  “I’m far from the most dashing gentleman you’ll dance with this evening,” he said, holding out his arm, “but I think I can promise I’m the safest.”

  Aline, who often looked uncomfortable with the courtship ritual of dancing, relaxed into a smile and permitted him to lead her onto the dance floor.

  Malcolm looked after them, eyes narrowed behind his ma
sk. “I think that’s the first time in a good ten years I’ve seen Geoff dance.”

  “Aline’s far more comfortable with him than with the young attachés,” Suzanne said.

  Malcolm swallowed the last of his champagne and touched her arm. “You’ll do better getting information on your own. As will I. I’ll find you just before two.”

  “Madame Rannoch. May I hope for a dance?”

  As Malcolm moved away, a broad-shouldered man bowed over Suzanne’s hand. Strongly marked brows and sleek black hair showed above his purple mask. Even before he had spoken, Suzanne easily recognized him as Count Otronsky, one of Tsar Alexander’s closest aides. This was not the first time the handsome count had asked her to dance, but she wondered if tonight he was acting on fact-finding orders from the tsar.

  “Have you been besieged with a hundred questions about Princess Tatiana?” Otronsky said as he led her into the dance. “Or only a couple of dozen?”

  Suzanne looked up at him, her gaze as open and unaffected as she could make it. “No one can talk of anything else. Only yesterday I’d have sworn nothing could supersede Poland and Saxony as topics of debate.”

  Otronsky twirled her under his arm. “My dear Madame Rannoch, little more remains to be said about either. Our troops have given Saxony to the Prussians, to whom it belongs, and Poland will soon be ours. One way or another.”

  By possession if not negotiation, his expression implied. Otronsky was one of the most militant of the tsar’s advisers. “You mean Poland will be a reconstituted kingdom that pays fealty to Russia,” Suzanne said.

  “Forgive me, Madame Rannoch. I come from a long line of soldiers and sometimes miss diplomatic niceties. Of course that’s what I meant.” He swung her forward in the movement of the dance and then back to face him. “Will we see you at Princess Tatiana’s funeral at the embassy tomorrow?”