Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

  “Thank God for our son’s influence.” Malcolm pulled her gold-braid-edged sleeve up over his makeshift bandage.

  “Who the devil was he?” Czartoryski asked.

  “I couldn’t hear enough to place the accent,” Malcolm said. “Suzanne?”

  She shook her head. “I confess I was distracted.”

  “You think the first man worked for Metternich?” Czartoryski asked.

  “So, it appears if I’m right about seeing him at the chancellery, though at the Congress one can never be sure who’s working for whom.”

  “But why would Metternich be after—”

  “The papers you want to recover for the tsarina? I doubt that’s what he’s interested in. I suspect Tatiana also had papers of interest to Prince Metternich.”

  “Or perhaps to the Duchess of Sagan,” Suzanne said.

  Czartoryski cast a glance out the broken window as though he would wrest answers from the wreckage. “We’re no nearer to finding where any of the papers are.”

  “No, but we know Metternich didn’t get them the night of the murder.” Malcolm looked down at Suzanne, relieved to see some color returning to her face. “When Metternich went out of the room to summon Annina, I think he’d have had time to send word to one of his agents.”

  “And you think the agent orchestrated the attack on us on the way home from the Palm Palace?” Suzanne asked. “Metternich thought you had Tatiana’s papers?”

  “If Metternich knew where she hid them, he’d have had time to check the secret compartment. If he saw the papers were missing, it would be a logical assumption that I might have taken them. When we eluded his thugs that night, he decided it would be safer to buy them.”

  “And now he knows you tried to trick him. Or he’ll realize it when his agent brings him the fake letters.”

  “Assuming the masked man doesn’t get them away from him.”

  “Who the devil is the masked man?” Adam asked. “Someone after yet another secret Princess Tatiana was keeping? What sort of game was she playing?”

  “Tatiana’s games tended to be rather Byzantine. But she always had an endgame in mind. Do you know how she got the tsarina’s papers?”

  “I don’t—”

  “Damn it, Czartoryski.” Malcolm strode toward him. “I trusted you with my wife’s and my safety.”

  “The tsarina thinks Princess Tatiana took them herself on a visit to the Hofburg, though she isn’t sure precisely how.”

  Suzanne’s gown rustled as she got to her feet. “If Prince Metternich didn’t take the papers the night of the murder, either the killer took them or Princess Tatiana hid them somewhere other than in her rooms.”

  “And if the killer took them, he or she doesn’t seem to have used them for blackmail,” Malcolm said. “At least not yet.”

  “But if Tatiana did hide them—”

  “What?” Malcolm studied his wife’s face. He knew the look she wore when she was piecing together bits of information.

  Suzanne pulled her shawl up to cover her bandaged shoulder. “I was thinking of a place a woman can go without comment, and yet in which she tends to place all her trust.”

  “Where?” Czartoryski asked.

  “Her dressmaker’s.”

  “I’m ten times a fool.” Malcolm struck a flint to the tapers on the dressing table in their bedchamber. The smell of beeswax filled the night air.

  Suzanne twisted round on the dressing table bench to look at her husband. Her dressing gown, which she was half wearing, leaving her injured shoulder bare, slithered down on the bench about her. “You weren’t the one who had someone sneak up behind you with a drawn pistol.”

  “No, I was engaged in a charade in the next room while someone put a knife to my wife’s throat.” He pulled a brandy flask and a clean handkerchief from a drawer in the dressing table.

  “Malcolm, I’ll never forgive you if you turn into a Hotspur or a Brutus. Not now.”

  “At least Hotspur and Brutus weren’t so wantonly careless with their wives.” He doused the handkerchief with brandy and pressed it to her shoulder.

  She winced at the touch of the alcohol against her torn skin. “It’s barely a scratch.”

  “You could have been killed.”

  “So could you. Tonight, last night. Most nights I’ve known you.”

  Malcolm opened another drawer and took out the brass-bound box where she kept her medical supplies. Usually she was the one patching him up. Geoffrey Blackwell had trained her well. “I chose this life.”

  “And you think I didn’t?” She stared up at him. In the flickering light from the tapers, his face was unusually grim, all sharp angles and intense eyes. “Darling, I knew what you did when I married you. I knew I’d never be able to bear being your wife if it meant sitting on the sidelines or waiting like Penelope to see if you came back alive. If you wanted that sort of wife you shouldn’t have married me, however strong your chivalrous impulses.”

  He flipped open the lid of the medical box and clipped off a length of lint. “When I married you—” He gave an unexpected smile. “I hadn’t the least idea what I was getting into.”

  “We barely knew each other.” She saw them the night he proposed, on a moonlit balcony overlooking the Tagus River. A romantic setting for a very unromantic scene. Malcolm had explained what he was offering her with all the precision with which he’d outline a policy option to Lord Castlereagh, pointing out that his parents had given him a bad impression of marriage, that he’d never thought to marry, and that he feared he wouldn’t be very good at it. Not so very long ago, yet when she recalled the scene the two people standing on that balcony seemed so very young. “Marriage has a way of opening the eyes.”

  “So they say.” He pressed a pad of lint against her shoulder. “Though in many ways—”

  “We’re still strangers?”

  “We haven’t had time. For much of anything.”

  “Beyond strategizing our next move.”

  “This isn’t a game, Suzanne.” He took her hand and put it over the lint. “Hold this.”

  She pressed the pad of lint against her shoulder. “Oh, darling, the whole Congress is a game. But the stakes are the fate of countries, and lives hang in the balance. That’s why I won’t be left on the sidelines.”

  Malcolm began to unwind a length of linen. “I know you have the heart of a lion, Suzanne. But I sometimes think—”

  “What?”

  He snapped the scissors on the linen. “That marrying you was the most selfish thing I’ve ever done.”

  For a moment, her blood went ice-cold. “That’s ridiculous, Malcolm. Marrying me was an act of kindness. We both know that.”

  He turned to look down at her, his gaze night black. “Is that what you think?”

  She returned his gaze, her own steady. “I know the man you are. I know what I owe you.”

  “For God’s sake, don’t—”

  “I don’t ask a lot. Only not to be wrapped in cotton wool while you go off on your adventures.”

  He bound the linen round her shoulder with deft, precise fingers. “When have I ever tried to wrap you in cotton wool?”

  “Just now. It’s the one thing—the only thing—I won’t tolerate from you, Malcolm.”

  “Damn it, Suzanne, if you think—”

  “What?”

  He pulled her to her feet and caught her in his arms with unexpected force. His fingers sank into her hair. His mouth came down hard on her own.

  She clung to him without hesitation, parting her lips, clutching the fabric of his coat, pulling him closer.

  He was the one who drew back abruptly. “I’m sorry. I—”

  “No.” She dragged him back to her with a hunger that matched his own.

  This at least was real between them. His fingers sliding into her hair, the smooth super fineness of his coat beneath her hands, the ragged warmth of his breath on her skin, his mouth hot and desperate against her own.

  He kissed her as
though he could keep her safe. She held him to her as though she could strip away his mask and find the truth of who he was. Brand him with recognition of what was between them.

  When he raised his head, it was only to lift her in his arms. He carried her to their bed and she lost herself in the familiarity of his hands and the tantalizing mystery of his lips against her own.

  Later, lying against his shoulder, she said, “What else did you learn tonight?”

  “Mmm?” Malcolm had his head turned to the side, his lips against her hair.

  “Before you came back to the box after the first interval. Something happened.”

  His fingers tangled in her hair. “You don’t just have witchcraft in your lips, Suzanne. It’s in the workings of your mind.”

  “Simple, everyday observation. I looked round and saw your face when you came into the box.”

  “And to think I flatter myself on my acting abilities.”

  “Don’t worry, darling. At least half the time I haven’t the least idea what’s going through your head.”

  He pushed himself up on one elbow and looked down at her. The candlelight slid over his smooth skin and outlined the muscles she had traced with her lips. “I’m not such a mystery.”

  She stared into his eyes, deceptively open at the moment. He’d made love to her with startling intensity. As though seeking to lose himself in oblivion. His memories of Princess Tatiana must still be raw. “Oh, dearest. You could rival the most elaborate cipher.”

  “Easily enough said, given your skills at code breaking.”

  “Not when it comes to you.”

  “You just said marriage was supposed to end the mystery.”

  “In some cases it only deepens it.” She reached up and pushed his hair off his forehead, indulging herself by letting her fingers linger against his temple. These were the moments when she could almost believe the illusion that he was hers.

  She dropped her hand back to the tangled sheets. “But despite all your brilliant efforts at diversion, I do know something happened tonight at the end of the first interval.”

  He seemed almost relieved at the subject change. “It’s going to sound mad, but someone else approached me in secret.”

  Suzanne pushed herself up against the pillows so she could get a better look at her husband’s face. “About Princess Tatiana’s papers?”

  “No. To tell me I was asking the wrong questions.”

  “About her death?”

  “He said I should be asking not who killed Tatiana but what she had discovered. He implied she uncovered a plot just before she was killed.”

  Suzanne sat up in bed and wrapped her arms round her knees, bare beneath the cool sheet. “The disquieting news she told Schubert about?”

  “Very likely. The unseen man who told me this said she went to the Empress Rose tavern the day she died.”

  “It could be a trap.”

  “Possibly.” He rolled onto his back and sat up beside her. “But we know from Schubert that she’d discovered something. It’s worth investigating. I’ll take Addison.”

  “Take me.”

  He swung his gaze to her. “Sweetheart, it’s not wrapping you in cotton wool to—”

  “I can say I’m looking for information about my sister. It’s a more innocuous approach. It will take them by surprise.”

  “I thought you were going to call on Tatiana’s dressmaker to see if she hid the papers there.”

  “I’ll send Blanca. A maid will more easily be able to do it without rousing suspicion.”

  “Suzanne—”

  “And if there’s a trap waiting for you at the Empress Rose, they won’t be expecting you to have a woman with you. It will throw off suspicion.”

  His indrawn breath scraped through the still air. “Castlereagh ought to take you to meetings. We could use some arguments that are impossible to refute.”

  “I’ve had your example for two years. Do you have a likeness of Princess Tatiana?”

  “Why—”

  “It would help in making inquiries. I could do a sketch or we could probably find a portrait in a print shop; her likeness was much copied. But I thought you might have a miniature.”

  His gaze shifted to the hills and valleys of light and shadow made by the sheet. “Yes, actually. She gave it me years ago.”

  “Good,” Suzanne said with determination. “It will be helpful. What else did this man say?”

  “To trust no one. That anyone in Vienna might be in on the plot. So you see the risk I’m taking in trusting you.”

  She pleated a fold of sheet between her fingers. “I’m flattered, dearest.”

  “Of course, we don’t know what the devil the plot is, which makes it a bit difficult to judge who may be behind it.”

  “Malcolm.” Suzanne stared at the shadow patterns her fingers made on the white sheet. “Princess Tatiana seems to have been amassing a blackmail dossier against a number of powerful people. It makes me wonder if—”

  “If?”

  She could feel the pressure of Malcolm’s gaze on her face. “If she was striking out on her own. Making a bid to amass power herself.”

  One of the candles on the dressing table sputtered in its silver holder. Malcolm lit a taper on the bedside table, then got to his feet and went to the dressing table. “Tatiana was—I knew her less of late.” He brought the candlesnuffer down over the sputtering tapers. “To begin with she was loyal to Talleyrand, but she’d branched into working for whoever paid the most. I think she saw safety in power.”

  “We don’t know what country she actually came from, do we? She might have been working in the interests of her real country.”

  “Not Tatiana.” Malcolm snuffed the brace of candles on the table by the door. An acrid smell drifted through the air. “I never knew her to think in terms of countries.”

  “But you’ve just admitted you knew her less well of late.” Suzanne studied the angles of her husband’s bare back. She’d swear he was seeing Tatiana Kirsanova’s face in the smoke guttering from the extinguished candles. “For all you know, she could have been secretly working for her real country even when she was supposedly working for Talleyrand.”

  He turned round and stared at her. “My God, Suzanne. You have a devious mind.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But whether she was working for herself or for someone else, the question is, was it random chance that she acquired information about these particular people—Tsarina Elisabeth, the Duchess of Sagan—or was there a specific endgame in mind?”

  “Would Metternich change the course of Austrian policy to protect the duchess?”

  Malcolm returned to the bed and pulled the covers over both of them. “He’s certainly given every sign of being a man desperately in love. The tsar, on the other hand, has hardly shown himself protective of the tsarina.”

  “But if whatever these papers contain would bring embarrassment to him and his family—”

  Malcolm nodded, unseen ghosts in his eyes.

  “Someone with a hold on both Metternich and the tsar could achieve a great deal at the Congress.”

  “They could indeed.” His hand clenched on the embroidered silk coverlet.

  “It’s as though she was two different women,” Suzanne said. “The schemer amassing blackmail information and the agent uncovering a plot.”

  “Being two different people would be positively straightforward for Tatiana.” Frustration edged his voice, and something like regret. He leaned back against the pillows. “Speaking of surprises, I didn’t realize you knew Frederick Radley in Spain.”

  Her breath froze in her throat. How odd that after a night of knives and gunshots, the most terrifying moment came now. Sitting naked beneath the covers, her arm brushing her husband’s own, her body still warm from their lovemaking. “He was near my family’s home on a mission.”

  It was a bare half-truth, but Malcolm merely nodded.

  Then, because it might be important, she added, �
�Dorothée says she met Colonel Radley at Princess Tatiana’s in Paris.”

  “Does she?” Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Not that it’s necessarily surprising. Still, any connection to Tatiana—”

  “Doro said there seemed to be something between them, but she didn’t think it was a love affair, even a past one. Doro’s a good judge of people.”

  “Interesting.”

  “Did you know Radley well in the Peninsula?” Better not to mention Radley at all, but she couldn’t resist asking.

  “Not particularly, but we were thrown together a fair amount when he was stationed in Lisbon. Fitz’s stepbrother was in his regiment, and Fitz would take me along when he went to dine with Christopher.”

  She cast a sidelong glance at him. “You didn’t like Radley?”

  He gave a sheepish grin. “Soldiers tend to dismiss diplomats as frippery talkers rather than doers, and diplomats tend to categorize soldiers as quicker with a pistol than a thought. So Radley and I weren’t exactly set up to be blood brothers.”

  “You have friends who are soldiers. Fitzroy Somerset, Alexander Gordon, Lord March. Radley wasn’t an exception to the rule?”

  “Radley always struck me more as defining the rule. Sorry, I expect to you he was quite charming.”

  “On the surface.” Again, it was a half-truth.

  Malcolm laughed and let his head slide into the pillows.

  Suzanne settled into the linen beside him. He flung a warm arm round her and she turned her head into the hollow of his shoulder, but a cold knot lurked in the pit of her stomach. Malcolm gave every indication of believing her. She’d diverted any suspicions he might have, for now.

  The sad, uncomforting truth was that she was quite adept at lying to her husband.