Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

  She suppressed a sigh, unsure if it was the fact that they still had things to discuss or something else that had stopped him. “According to the Prince de Ligne, Princess Tatiana was selling looted art treasures.”

  Malcolm’s eyes widened. “Good God.”

  “I think Wilhelmine of Sagan was negotiating to buy a piece from Princess Tatiana. It seems almost insignificant next to everything else we’ve discovered—”

  “But it’s the seemingly insignificant things that may be vital clues. What—”

  A discreet rap at the door made them both jump. Malcolm tied the sash on his dressing gown and went to the door. His valet, Addison, stood outside.

  “I’m sorry, sir. Madam. But I thought you’d want to hear this at once.”

  “Of course.” Malcolm stepped aside to allow Addison into the room.

  Addison’s normally immaculate shirt collar was limp and tinged gray, his pale blond hair fell over his forehead in uncharacteristic disarray, and he wore a corduroy jacket instead of one of his exquisitely cut coats. His costume for a night of information gathering.

  “I spent most of the night—and the early morning—in a tavern with three footmen employed at houses near the Palm Palace,” he explained.

  Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Yes?”

  “There was a great deal of speculation. One of them saw a gentleman go in through the side entrance about three in the morning, who must have been Tsar Alexander or you, sir. Another saw a cloaked lady arrive, and swore it was just before the clock struck three. I assume that was Mrs. Rannoch.”

  Suzanne nodded.

  Addison drew a breath, a rare sign of unease. “But the third footman says he saw a gentleman go into the house much earlier in the evening. About twelve-thirty.”

  Malcolm cast a glance at Suzanne. Too early even to be Adam Czartoryski.

  “The gentleman stopped beneath a street lamp, and the footman got a glimpse of his face. Apparently he’d seen the man go up the side stairs to Princess Tatiana’s room before.” Addison hesitated. A shadow of concern flickered over his usually impassive face. “The footman swears it was Lord Fitzwilliam Vaughn.”

  14

  One advantage of being at an international peace conference where the fate of nations hangs in the balance is that no one looks askance if one bangs on doors in the middle of the night. Malcolm rapped on the door of Fitz and Eithne’s room. Not as hard as he would have liked, but hard enough to wake any sleepers.

  Fitz opened the door, dressing gown open over his nightshirt, eyes wide with confusion. “What’s happened?”

  “We need to talk.” Malcolm jerked his head down the passage.

  Fitz gave a quick nod. “It’s all right, darling, go back to sleep,” he called over his shoulder to Eithne.

  Malcolm strode down the passage to the sitting room appropriated by the attachés. A litter of papers covered the desk in the center of the room and the smells of ink and brandy hung in the air. He set his candle down on a table near the door. Then he grabbed Fitz by the throat and slammed his friend against the door panels.

  “Did you kill her?”

  “Of course not.” Fitz’s voice was a choked rasp. “I told you—”

  “You lied to me.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “You bastard.” Malcolm tightened his grip. “You were seen going into Tatiana’s rooms last night.”

  Fitz’s shoulders went slack beneath Malcolm’s hands. “God in heaven.”

  “Do you deny it?”

  In the flickering light of the single candle, Fitz’s gaze held not fear or anger but sick horror. “What’s the use?” He sounded more exhausted than a soldier after a fortnight’s siege.

  Malcolm loosed his grip and took a step back. “What happened?”

  Fitz scraped his hands over his face but made no attempt to move away from the door. “I did come home and go to work on a white paper on the Saxon situation. In this room.” He cast a glance round the sitting room. “I was sitting at that desk, drinking a pot of coffee I’d sent for to counteract a night of brandy and champagne, when the footman brought in her note.”

  “Don’t tell me she wanted you to call at three in the morning along with the rest of us.”

  “No. She just said she needed to see me at once.” His gaze went to the flowered porcelain stove in the corner. “I burned the letter and ground up the ashes. I wish—” A spasm of pain gripped his eyes. “That was the last letter I had from her.”

  “And then?” Malcolm kept his gaze trained on his friend’s face.

  Fitz drew a harsh breath. “When I got to the Palm Palace Tatiana was—distressed.”

  “About?”

  “Look, Malcolm—” Fitz moved away from the door, paced over to the desk, turned back to face Malcolm. “I know my lying to you is unconscionable. But the truth is, I didn’t want to have to tell you this.” His hand clenched on the desktop. “After everything else that happened, I couldn’t bear to tarnish her memory.”

  “Christ, Fitz. Tatiana was one of the most pragmatic people I’ve ever met. She’d care more about us discovering who killed her than she would for her reputation.”

  Fitz cast a glance at the sheets of scribbled-over, hot-pressed paper on the desk, as though they held the answer to how to frame his story. “Tatiana was—I don’t think Kirsanov left her very comfortably situated.”

  “Not given the circles in which she moved.”

  “Quite. A woman like Wilhelmine of Sagan could purchase a country with the wave of her hand. It can’t have been easy for Tatiana to make her way in that world. If you look at her actions in that light—”

  “Fitz, are you trying to tell me Tatiana was selling looted art treasures?”

  Fitz’s widened eyes gleamed white in the blue-black shadows. “What have you heard?”

  “Rumors.”

  Fitz picked up a tinderbox from the desktop. It took three tries of his shaky hands to light one of the tapers in the candelabrum on the desk. “Tatiana had come into possession of a number of valuable pieces.”

  “Where did she get them?”

  “I didn’t ask.” Fitz lit the second taper. “But I assume—”

  “From various of her lovers.”

  The third taper flamed to life. “You don’t seem surprised.”

  “I had no notion it was going on until I heard the rumors tonight. But I’m not surprised Tatiana would do such a thing.”

  The candle flame flared in Fitz’s eyes. “You wrong her.”

  “Hardly, since it seems it’s precisely what she was doing. Tatiana was very good at looking after herself.” Malcolm strode forward so the angle of the candlelight gave him a better view of Fitz’s face. “When did you learn of it?”

  “The night she died.” Fitz passed a hand over his eyes. “God, was it only last night?”

  “What made her tell you?”

  “When I got to the Palm Palace she was upset. She’d just had a terrible scene with the Duchess of Sagan.”

  “Relating to the art treasures?”

  “Apparently Tatiana had a silver casket that had belonged to the Courland family. Wilhelmine of Sagan had learned somehow that it was in Tatiana’s possession and tried to buy it from her.”

  “They couldn’t agree on a price?”

  “Tatiana didn’t want to sell it.”

  “She thought she could get more for it elsewhere?”

  “She said she wouldn’t part with it under any circumstances. She said it had value to her beyond mere coin.” Fitz stared at the candle flame. “I can only assume the value had to do with whoever had given it to her.”

  “She didn’t tell you who that was?”

  “No. And it seemed indelicate to ask. Apparently the Duchess of Sagan had tried to buy it from her the day before, and they’d quarreled. Dorothée Périgord arrived and cut the scene short. Last night, Wilhelmine of Sagan called on Tatiana and demanded she hand over the piece. Tatiana said they had a dreadful quarrel. I’d
never seen her so shaken.”

  “What time did you leave?”

  “A bit after one. I heard the clock striking a quarter after when I returned to the Minoritenplatz. I’d have stayed longer, but she told me it was too risky. If only I had stayed—”

  “I suspect she sent you away on purpose.”

  “Because she’d summoned the rest of you at three in the morning?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  “And in the interval between my leaving and your arrival someone killed her.”

  “So it seems.”

  “You mean, assuming I’m telling the truth.” Fitz met Malcolm’s gaze. Perhaps it was a trick of the flickering light, but his face looked sharper and harder than usual. “I told myself I kept it secret to protect Tatiana’s memory. But the truth is, I knew what you’d think if you knew I’d been with her last night.”

  “You assumed I’d rush to judgment.”

  “You’ve already twice accused me of killing her, Malcolm.”

  Their gazes locked. Friendships were delicate things, built slowly, carefully nurtured through the years, shaped into something precious. And like fine crystal, they could be smashed in an instant.

  Suzanne helped herself to a pastry from the sideboard, mostly to keep her hands busy. She hadn’t seemed to be hungry for the past two days, though she knew from experience the necessity of continuing to eat.

  Behind her, she heard the rhythmic click of a spoon against a cup as Eithne, the only other occupant of the breakfast parlor, stirred her coffee. Suzanne stared down at the pink-flowered porcelain of her plate, searching for small talk to get them through the meal.

  “I must have had a dozen people commiserate with me at the ball last night on not being among those invited to Princess Tatiana’s funeral,” Eithne said. “As though it were the social event of the season.”

  “It’s rather ghoulish. But not unexpected.” Suzanne added a dollop of currant preserves to her plate.

  “I own to a craven relief you and Malcolm are going instead of Fitz and me.”

  Suzanne reached for the butter, feeling the weight of the coming event press on her shoulders. “I can’t say I’m precisely looking forward to it.”

  “You know, don’t you?” Eithne said.

  Suzanne set down the butter dish and spun around. “I beg your pardon?”

  Eithne returned her spoon to the gilt-rimmed saucer. “That Fitz was Princess Tatiana’s lover.”

  Suzanne, who prided herself on her skill at dissembling, stared into her friend’s seemingly guileless Wedgwood blue eyes. “Eithne—”

  Eithne lifted her cup and took a careful, precise sip of coffee. “As soon as I knew you and Malcolm were looking into the murder, I was sure you’d learn the truth. Poor Fitz should have realized it as well.”

  Suzanne moved to the table. “Dearest—How long—”

  “Almost from the beginning.” Eithne returned the cup to its saucer. The porcelain barely rattled, but her knuckles were white.

  Words, which usually sprang easily to Suzanne’s lips, seemed to have quite deserted her. She had seen her family killed, had nursed dying soldiers, had confronted her husband over the body of the woman who might be his mistress. But the bleak despair in her friend’s gaze was uncharted territory.

  She dropped into a chair across the table from Eithne. “I’m so sorry—”

  “It was the day of the expedition to the Klosterneuburg abbey,” Eithne said. “I stayed in town for a dress fitting—God, how the most trivial detail can come back to haunt one. When Fitz came home that evening, I could tell something was different. I could almost feel it in his lips when he kissed me.” She put a hand to her mouth. “A little too insistent and yet at the same time surprisingly detached. Strange how much one can tell from a kiss.”

  “It’s one way couples communicate.” For a moment, Suzanne had an intense memory of Malcolm’s lips against her own in the pianoforte maker’s darkened shop.

  “And one way couples lie,” Eithne said, with a cynicism Suzanne had never before heard in her friend’s dulcet voice. “When I watched Fitz kiss Princess Tatiana’s hand at a ball at the Hofburg two nights later, I was sure.”

  Suzanne reached across the table and laid her hand over Eithne’s own. Her friend’s skin was ice-cold.

  “I used to think we were safe.” Eithne’s voice cracked, like a pianoforte when a wire snaps. “I remember watching Princess Metternich’s face while Prince Metternich waltzed with the Duchess of Sagan and thinking how dreadful her situation was. I was so secure in my own marriage, I could be magnanimous with my pity. Oh, I knew things had changed a bit between us through the years. I told myself one couldn’t live in that mad, passionate state forever. He had his work to focus on, I had the children. He’s been thinking so much about standing for Parliament. I actually thought Vienna would be good for us. I knew he’d be busy, but with Will and Bella at home, I thought we’d have more time for each other. A sort of second honeymoon. Dear God, I’m a fool.”

  “Eithne.” Suzanne tightened her grip on her friend’s hand. “Fitz is the one who committed the betrayal. You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”

  “And yet I can’t stop going over every detail and wondering where we went wrong. In some deep corner of my mind I suppose I always knew it was a possibility. How could you live in our world and not?”

  “Does Fitz—?”

  “I don’t think he has the least idea I know. Men are frequently ten steps behind their wives when it comes to understanding these things.” Eithne studied Suzanne, her gaze flat and cold and at the same time filled with pain. “A wife always knows, don’t you find?”

  “I’m not sure.” Suzanne’s chest tightened as though a knife had cut through her corset to twist between her ribs. “Perhaps I don’t have your instincts. Or perhaps I don’t know Malcolm as well as you know Fitz.”

  “Or perhaps you haven’t had to face betrayal.”

  Yet. The unspoken word hung in the air between them. “Betrayal rather depends on one’s expectations going into the marriage. Malcolm and I made a bargain. You and Fitz made a love match.”

  Eithne twisted the heavy gold of her wedding band round her finger. “I thought so. But that was when I believed in love. Or believed it was something permanent. Fitz must have loved Princess Tatiana. He’s not a man who’d stray without that. Do you know what’s odd? When I heard she’d been killed, my first thought was ‘poor Fitz, this will be beastly for him.’”

  “You still love him.”

  “A part of me remembers the time I did.” Eithne picked up her coffee cup, then set it down untasted. “I said I thought we were safe, but the truth is, there’s no such thing as a marriage that’s safe. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a marriage that’s happy. Not under the surface. When it comes down to it, they’re all bargains, even if dressed up in roses and lace veils and cakes from Gunter’s.”

  Suzanne swallowed. Why, when she prided herself on her lack of illusions, did Eithne’s words send a chill to her soul?

  “You can’t help but wonder, of course,” Eithne added. “I knew that the moment I learned Princess Tatiana had been killed.”

  “Wonder?”

  “If Fitz killed her.” Eithne reached for her cup again and this time took a sip with careful deliberation. “Or if I did.”

  15

  Annina looked up at Malcolm as he slid into a chair across from her at a table in the back room of Café Hugel. “You must have just come from the funeral.”

  “Yes.” The image of the open casket was burned in his memory.

  Annina rubbed at a lip-rouge smear on her cup of mocha. “I couldn’t go. Admission by invitation only, and all the spots saved for dignitaries.”

  “It wasn’t about Tatiana.” Malcolm could still feel the artificial press of the hot air in the room. “Not the real Tatiana. She was gone the night before last. This was a public show. People were there to speculate about Tania and gape at those close to her
. Though that didn’t stop Tsar Alexander from weeping. I think Metternich did as well, though less openly.”

  “Did you?” Annina asked.

  “Not at the funeral.”

  Annina met his eyes in a moment of understanding. Her own were still red. “You didn’t ask me here to talk about the funeral. What have you learned?”

  A waiter set a cup of coffee before Malcolm. He took a measured sip. “Did you know Tatiana was selling looted art treasures?”

  Her dark blue eyes widened. “I’d have told you.”

  “Would you?”

  “Why keep it secret now?”

  “Perhaps because you wanted to sell them yourself.”

  Annina gave a harsh laugh. “I might have done, at that. If I’d known about them. But that’s a secret she’d have thought too dangerous to share with me.” She jabbed a strand of hair behind her ear. “Where did she get these art treasures?”

  “I was hoping you could tell me. From one of her lovers? Or more than one?”

  Annina took a sip from her cup of mocha. “The tsar and Prince Metternich gave her the occasional bit of jewelry, but I can’t see them giving her art treasures to sell off, no matter how besotted they were.”

  “Surely there were others. What about before her involvement with the tsar last spring?”

  “I told you, I didn’t know the name of every—” She broke off, gaze appraising. “Gregory Lindorff.”

  “From the Russian delegation?”

  “He came to Paris with Tsar Alexander, as a military aide. I heard him boasting one night about the riches he’d seen as the Russian army moved across the Continent.”

  Malcolm had caught a brief glimpse of Lindorff at the funeral. His normally carefree face had seemed uncharacteristically gaunt. “He was Tatiana’s lover?”

  “I think so. In Paris, last spring. Before her affair with the tsar began. She was having difficulties with her creditors at about that time, and then suddenly she paid them all off and ordered a new wardrobe. So the timing would fit.” Annina cast a quick glance round the café. The back room was mostly empty, but she leaned closer to him. “Do you think someone is looking for these bits of art?”