Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

  Talleyrand smoothed a lace ruffle over his fingertips. “You disagree?”

  “On the contrary. You also saw Count Otronsky as the most dangerous influence on the tsar, pushing him toward extreme views that would lead down the road to violent confrontation with the other Continental powers.”

  “I suspect many at the Congress would agree with that analysis.”

  “But you were willing to take action.”

  “By helping Otronsky assassinate the tsarina?” Talleyrand eased his clubfoot straight and regarded the diamond buckle on his shoe. “My dear Malcolm. Your grasp of chess strategy used to be better than that.”

  “By entrapping Otronsky into a plot that would expose the extent of his propensity to violence and lose him the tsar’s favor.”

  Talleyrand’s eyes narrowed. His face was admirably under control. “Interesting. Do, pray, continue.”

  “You knew the tsarina had papers in her possession that Otronsky would kill to keep secret. Letters she’d written to Alexis Okhotnikov in which she confided her suspicions about her husband’s role in his father’s assassination. You had Tatiana steal the papers with the help of another of your minions. And then you had the minion tell Otronsky Tatiana had taken them and suggest that the tsarina had become too dangerous a liability. How long has Gregory Lindorff been in your employ?”

  Talleyrand gave a low laugh. “You overestimate my reach, my dear boy.”

  “I think not.”

  “My dear Malcolm, you’re suggesting I would risk the tsarina’s life—”

  “Oh, the attack was never meant to succeed. The whole idea was for the plot to be uncovered.”

  “How?”

  “By me.” Malcolm leaned back in his chair. “Tatiana was supposed to feed me information. I’m an outsider whom Alexander would be far more likely to believe than Lindorff if he denounced Otronsky directly. It was quite clever, really. Lindorff acted as agent provocateur with Otronsky. He kept Tatiana advised of the plot. Tatiana fed me information. I’m flattered that you placed such faith in my deductive abilities. Tania even wrote a note to be given to me at the Carrousel in the event something happened to her. At the time she wouldn’t have thought anything would happen to her, but she must have planned to use the note in case she needed further evidence that she’d been investigating the plot. Only, as it happened, harm did befall Tania. With her out of the picture, I wasn’t quick enough, so Lindorff had to start feeding me information himself.”

  Talleyrand crossed one leg over the other. “Ingenious.”

  “But you reckoned without Tatiana’s determination to claim her heritage. Once Tania saw what the tsarina’s letters contained, she decided she could make use of them for her own ends. And you realized you’d unwittingly given her the power to take part of Dorothée’s heritage away from her.”

  “You’ve lost me again.”

  Malcolm slapped his hand down on the marquetry tabletop. “For God’s sake, sir. I suspect you knew Peter of Courland was Tatiana’s father from the moment you learned of my mother’s pregnancy.”

  Talleyrand drew a breath. “No. But your mother did tell me. When I was in Britain.”

  The admission caught Malcolm off guard. Which perhaps was why Talleyrand had made it. “So you always knew Tania could pose a threat to Dorothée.”

  “If every sibling born on the wrong side of the blanket posed a threat, no one in the aristocracy would be safe.”

  “But Tatiana had the ear of Metternich and Tsar Alexander and leverage over them.” Malcolm pushed himself to his feet. “If she’d been compensated with Courland lands, they’d have had to come from Peter of Courland’s legitimate children. I can’t imagine you wouldn’t have been distressed. And then there’s the fact that you knew Tatiana could no longer be relied upon.”

  “My dear boy, Tatiana couldn’t be relied upon at the age of five.”

  “But she could do incalculably more damage now. Especially if she became financially independent and no longer needed you.”

  Talleyrand flicked a bit of lint from the lapel of his frock coat. “We could dance round this for hours, or you could ask me straight out.”

  Malcolm leaned over Talleyrand, gripping the arms of his chair. “Damn it, sir, did you order my sister killed?”

  “To protect myself?”

  “And Dorothée.”

  He expected a blanket denial, but as so often, Talleyrand surprised him. “I won’t deny Tatiana had become a liability. I sent Lindorff to deal with her that night.”

  “Deal with her?” Malcolm’s fingers bit into the damask of the chair.

  “His orders were to get her out of Vienna.”

  “Alive?”

  “For God’s sake, Malcolm, I’ve known her since she was a baby.”

  “And that would stop you?”

  “It would certainly have an influence upon me.” A smile played about Talleyrand’s lips. “When I saw you talk with Lindorff last night at Count Stackelberg’s, I suspected you’d have reasoned things through this far. But I’m not the one who can give you details of what happened that night.”

  “Don’t think you can fob me off—”

  “On the contrary. As Tatiana was your sister, I agree you have the right to as much of the truth as may be uncovered. It’s the least I owe to your mother. A woman of whom I was very fond.” Talleyrand hesitated a moment. When he looked at Malcolm, his eyes were more hooded than usual. “I don’t expect you to believe this, but I will regret what happened to Tatiana until the day I die. Now if you will permit me to reach for my walking stick, I will summon someone who can give you answers.”

  Malcolm straightened up and stood, arms crossed, before Talleyrand’s chair. Talleyrand lifted his walking stick and pounded three times on the floor.

  A few moments later, Gregory Lindorff stepped into the room. He glanced at Talleyrand, who inclined his head. “As predicted, Malcolm has worked most of it out. I think it’s time you told him what you saw the night of Princess Tatiana’s murder.”

  Lindorff met Malcolm’s gaze directly. “I got there after you did. I could see people in Tatiana’s salon through the bay window. I questioned a servant and heard she’d been murdered. What I didn’t realize at the time is that Otronsky had had the bright idea of trying to force Tatiana to give up the papers that night.”

  Malcolm’s pulse quickened. “He said as much yesterday. Do you know when?”

  “He arrived just before two o’clock, as near as I can tell. He told me Tatiana was dead when he arrived. As he confessed yesterday, he searched the rooms but couldn’t find the tsarina’s letters.”

  “And he suspected I had them.”

  “He thought you were the likeliest person for Tatiana to have given them to. Especially after he had one of his agents break into Tatiana’s rooms and search again the following night, without success. His agents got wind of the fact that Metternich’s agents were trying to buy Tatiana’s papers from you.”

  “So Otronsky tried to take the papers at gunpoint that night at the opera. That was Otronsky himself who put a knife to Suzanne’s throat, wasn’t it?” Malcolm regretted not planting Otronsky a facer the previous night when he’d had a chance.

  Lindorff nodded. “He wouldn’t have trusted something so delicate to anyone else.”

  “And when Metternich’s agent jumped out the window with the papers, Otronsky followed. Did he catch him?”

  Lindorff gave a wry smile. “Otronsky is nothing if not efficient. He recovered the papers from Metternich’s agent, and saw they were fakes.”

  “So he realized I didn’t have the letters and turned his attention elsewhere.”

  “He had his agents searching other places he thought Tatiana might have hid them. Meanwhile, he was preoccupied with fresh concerns. I’m sorry about Vaughn.”

  “Fitz?” Malcolm cast a glance between Lindorff and Talleyrand, who was looking on with the detached interest of a spectator at a fencing match. “What about him?”

&
nbsp; “The accident at the Carrousel,” Lindorff said. “I didn’t know what Otronsky had planned.”

  “Otronsky was behind Fitz’s accident—” A pulse pounded in Malcolm’s head. “Why, in God’s name?”

  “Otronsky saw Vaughn leaving Tatiana’s rooms the night of the murder. Otronsky was afraid Tatiana might have told Vaughn about the tsarina’s letters and what they contained. He wondered if she could have given Vaughn the letters, but he couldn’t manage to infiltrate the British delegation’s lodgings to search, and he suspected Tatiana wouldn’t have entrusted them to a lover who wasn’t an agent. His real fear was that Vaughn had seen him going into the Palm Palace the night of the murder. He was worried about what Vaughn might let slip, particularly because Vaughn is a friend of yours, and you were poking your nose into things. When he heard Vaughn was to compete in the Carrousel, he seized on the chance to remove him from the field of play.”

  “But—” Malcolm stared at Lindorff, while in his mind he saw Fitz smiling at Eithne in the antechamber of Redoutensaal the night before. Every drop of blood in his body seemed to turn to ice. “Thank you, Lindorff. That explains a number of things.”

  Suzanne stared at her husband. His fingers were pressed to his temples and there was a look in his eyes she had never seen before. “But why—”

  Malcolm shook his head. Unanswered questions clustered behind his gaze, each one a potential killing blow. “There’s no sense in speculating until we confront him.”

  “We?” Despite the circumstances, his words warmed her. And yet—“Malcolm, are you sure—”

  “I need you with me. I need your judgment and your cool head.” He drew a breath that scraped like granite against granite. “And I need you to make sure I don’t murder Fitz.” He held out his hand. When she put her own into it, his fingers closed tight on hers. “The truth is, I need you, sweetheart.”

  “Malcolm. Suzanne.” Fitz looked up from the paper-littered surface of the writing desk in the attachés’ sitting room. “No rest at the Congress. Castlereagh thanked me for my efforts at the Beethoven concert and gave me a mountain of dispatches to draft before dinner.” He pushed back his chair and got to his feet. “Have you recovered from yesterday, Suzanne? I still can’t believe—” He shook his head.

  Suzanne advanced into the room where she had a good view of Fitz’s face. His gaze was as seemingly open, his smile as quick and warm as they had always been. “Unfortunately it isn’t the first time I’ve shot someone. We all lived through the war.”

  His eyes clouded with the memories. “We just never expected it to follow us here.”

  Malcolm pushed the door of the sitting room to. The panels rattled against the frame. “Being surrounded by killing changes one. Even when one isn’t a soldier.”

  Outside the windows, rain dripped from the plaster moldings and ran in rivulets down the sash windows. The sound echoed through the room.

  Fitz stared at Malcolm. “What is it?”

  Malcolm walked forward and faced his friend across the desk. “Count Otronsky saw you leaving Tatiana’s rooms the night of the murder.”

  “Good God. Otronsky was there, too?”

  “At two in the morning. Nearly an hour after you claim to have left.”

  For a moment, Fitz simply stared at Malcolm with numb, vacant eyes. “I—”

  “Damn you.” Malcolm slammed his hands down on the desk, sending a hail of papers fluttering to the floor. “Were you so desperate to keep your sordid little affair a secret?”

  “You think that’s why—” Fitz turned away. “Oh God, what does it matter now?” He sounded unutterably weary.

  “She tried to blackmail you, didn’t she? She demanded you use your influence on Castlereagh, as she demanded of me and of Radley.”

  “No.” Fitz looked back over his shoulder. “That is—Revealing the affair wasn’t what she threatened. I could have withstood that. God, I hope I could have withstood that.”

  “What, then?” Malcolm said, hands taut on the edge of the desk.

  “Christopher. My stepbrother.”

  Suzanne drew a sharp breath. “Radley.”

  Fitz’s gaze flew to her face. “How did you know?”

  Malcolm looked between them. “Christopher was Radley’s confederate in stealing the gold?”

  “He must have been the emissary Radley sent to the bandits to make sure they carried out the mission according to his orders,” Suzanne said, her gaze on Fitz.

  “I didn’t know at the time.” Fitz squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his hands to his face. “Christopher was always a bit feckless, always with pockets to let, but I never thought—I refused to believe it until Tatiana showed me papers in his hand.”

  Suzanne exchanged a glance with Malcolm. Tatiana must have not put those papers in the box she hid at Catherine Bagration’s because she’d needed them to convince Fitz of Christopher’s perfidy.

  “You burned the papers?” Malcolm asked.

  Fitz nodded, meeting Malcolm’s gaze without flinching.

  “It was to show you those papers that she summoned you the night of—” Malcolm bit the words back. He was very white about the mouth. “That night.”

  “I think she—” Fitz’s face twisted. “I think that was the whole reason she began our involvement. To be close to another Englishman she could force to do her bidding. When she told me, I couldn’t—I knew even if I tried my damnedest, I’d never be able to persuade Castlereagh to do anything to give her a share of the Courland lands. If she carried through on her threats—Christopher’s only five-and-twenty. It’s always been my job to protect him. He’d have been ruined.”

  “Tatiana’s dead.”

  The reality hung in the air between the two men. Layers of the past—Oxford lectures, chess games in the British embassy library, missions in the Spanish mountains—overlaid by this stark fact that changed everything.

  Fitz shuddered and looked away first. “I know.”

  “To save your sorry brother you killed my sister.”

  Malcolm’s voice shook. Some part of him, Suzanne realized, hadn’t really accepted this fact until now.

  Fitz shook his head in confusion. “Tatiana was your sister?”

  “My mother’s daughter.”

  Silence gripped the room for a moment. A gust of wind rattled the windowpanes. Then Malcolm lurched across the room, grabbed Fitz by the throat, and slammed him against the wainscoting. Two tapers tumbled from wall sconces.

  “She left me no choice.” Fitz’s voice was a harsh rasp.

  “There’s always a choice.” Malcolm tightened his grip. A porcelain clock fell from the wall to shatter on the floorboards.

  “Malcolm.” Suzanne ran forward and grabbed her husband’s arm. Fitz’s face was losing color. “Not that way.”

  His muscles were like iron beneath her hand. She wasn’t sure he heard her. Yet after a moment he relaxed his grip and flung Fitz against the wall.

  Fitz put his hand to his throat and drew a rough breath. “I’ll meet you anywhere you please.”

  “For God’s sake.” Malcolm slumped against the desk. His own breath was harsh. “Firing pistols at each other across a stretch of green is no answer.”

  Fitz wiped his hand across his mouth. “There isn’t any answer to this, is there?”

  “None that I can see.”

  The broken shards of a friendship littered the room. Fitz straightened his shoulders. He had the eyes of a man staring into an abyss and knowing he has no choice but to jump. “I’ll go to Hager and make a full confession to Tatiana’s murder. But I’ll tell him it was a lovers’ quarrel. I’ll keep Christopher out of it.”

  His tone made the last not quite a question. Malcolm inclined his head.

  Fitz met his gaze for a moment. “Thank you.” He took a step forward. “If you’ll permit me, I’d like to speak to Eithne first.”

  Malcolm nodded again. Then, as Fitz crossed to the door, he took a half step toward him. “Fitz—”

&n
bsp; Fitz looked back at Malcolm over his shoulder. “Don’t worry. Putting a bullet through my brain would be by far the simplest solution, but that would leave the question of who killed Tatiana unresolved, and the least I can do is make a full confession. My word on it. Though I realize you’ve no reason to take my word.”

  Malcolm looked directly into the gaze of the man who had killed his sister. “I don’t discount it.”

  Fitz held Malcolm’s gaze a moment longer, then turned to Suzanne. “Eithne will need friends.”

  Suzanne swallowed. Her mouth felt scalded. “Eithne will always be my friend.”

  “That means a great deal to me.”

  The door closed behind Fitz with a click of finality. Suzanne went to Malcolm and touched his arm. He reached out and pulled her tight against him as though he would meld his body into her own. “I suppose that passes for justice,” he said, his voice rough against her hair.

  She drew back and looked up at him. “You know the truth. And he won’t escape without consequences.”

  “So why does it have such a hollow ring?”

  42

  Metternich slapped his Córdoba leather gloves down on Castlereagh’s desk. “Lord Fitzwilliam Vaughn just presented himself at Baron Hager’s office and tried to make a confession to Princess Tatiana’s murder.”

  Castlereagh glanced across the desk at Malcolm, then looked back at Metternich. “Tried?”

  Metternich’s gaze shot between them. “Surely we can agree that a trial is the last thing we need at the moment. Men summoned to give testimony when they’re wanted in council chambers, private lives turned public, questions asked—”

  “You said you wanted her killer brought to justice,” Malcolm reminded him.

  “There’s more than one type of justice.” Metternich picked up his gloves and ran them through his fingers. “He’s yours. Deal with him.”

  Castlereagh watched the door close behind the Austrian foreign minister. “I thought this might happen.”