Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]
Page 45
Talleyrand’s voice had shifted into a different key. His gaze had gone across the room to Suzanne, who was standing between Dorothée and Wilhelmine. “Your wife was invaluable throughout the whole.”
“My wife is invaluable in many ways.”
Talleyrand’s gaze remained on the three women, framed beneath a red-ribboned pine garland, their ringleted heads close together, their gowns spots of vibrant color. “It’s an odd thing to realize one wants something one never even thought one believed in. And to realize it’s entirely out of reach.”
Once again Talleyrand surprised him. The naked longing in his face and voice was very like that shown by Adam Czartoryski when he’d looked at the tsarina. Malcolm hesitated, then touched Talleyrand’s arm.
“Oh, don’t worry,” Talleyrand said. “I’ll muddle along.”
As though aware of his regard, Dorothée turned and met his gaze. A smile crossed her face and was reflected in Talleyrand’s eyes.
Suzanne and Malcolm stayed after most of the guests had filtered out, drinking a final cup of wine with Dorothée, Count Clam-Martinitz, Wilhelmine, Alfred von Windischgrätz, and Talleyrand. Perhaps it was the spiced wine, but Suzanne could almost feel the peace of the holiday begin to steal over her.
When they finally took their leave, Wilhelmine pressed a kiss to Malcolm’s cheek. “Happy Christmas.” She squeezed his shoulders and stepped back. “By the way, Annina Barbera is a wonderful addition to my staff. She has a splendid fashion sense. Thank you for recommending her.”
Suzanne knew how pleased Malcolm had been to find a place for Annina, just as he was pleased young Heinrich and Margot had settled in well in the Minoritenplatz.
Malcolm smiled at Wilhelmine, the warm, unguarded smile Suzanne knew he reserved for those he trusted. “Thank you for taking her on. I’m glad it’s working out.”
Wilhelmine met his gaze in her frank way. “I’m sorrier than I can say that I never had the chance to acknowledge my sister. But I’ll always be grateful that I got to know her brother.”
Malcolm bowed over her hand. “The feeling is mutual, Wilhelmine.”
Talleyrand had offered to send them home in his carriage, but Malcolm suggested they walk. Dorothée and Talleyrand waved to them from the doorway, Dorothée clinging to Talleyrand’s arm and holding her shawl against the chill.
Malcolm and Suzanne emerged from the Kaunitz Palace to find a light snow falling, dusting the courtyard and the cobblestones of the street beyond and the tiled roofs above. Suzanne raised the hood of her cloak. Malcolm tucked her arm through his own, and they stepped forward into the still, white world.
“The first Christmas Colin will be able to appreciate,” Suzanne said. “He loved the tree when I brought him to see Dorothée this afternoon. I think he would have climbed it if I hadn’t kept hold of him.”
“Perhaps one day we’ll have a settled enough home that we’re able to have a tree for the holidays ourselves,” Malcolm said.
Suzanne pressed her cheek against the snow-dampened wool of his greatcoat. The thought seemed not as madly laughable as it once would have.
Malcolm stopped walking suddenly and swung round to face her. Snowflakes dusted the shoulders of his greatcoat and the curling brim of his hat. He hesitated, as though searching for a way to step over a divide. “I love you.”
Simple words. Words he’d said once before, but only, she was convinced, because they’d been under sniper fire and he’d thought one or both of them was about to be killed. Words she’d thought she’d never be able to believe from him. Yet, to her own amazement, she believed his declaration without question. She put her hands on his shoulders to pull him to her, and felt a smile break across her face. “I know.”
HISTORICAL NOTES
In combining real and fictional characters and events, I have, of course, had real historical people do and say things that are not part of the historical record. I have tried to stay true to things these people might have done, based on my research into the complex and fascinating individuals they were. Count Otronsky is fictional, as is his plot against the tsarina and Talleyrand’s attempt to manipulate him. But Tsar Alexander was increasingly belligerent in his dealings with the allies at the Congress in October and November. Talleyrand was particularly concerned with the dangers posed by Alexander’s positions on both Saxony and Poland. Talleyrand was also a master manipulator throughout his career.
Tsar Alexander was rumored to have had a role (from advance knowledge to outright complicity) in his father’s assassination. Tsarina Elisabeth’s lover Alexis Okhotnikov was knifed to death outside the theatre in 1807. Alexander’s brother, Grand Duke Constantine, was rumored to have been behind his death. When a third brother, Nicholas, succeeded Alexander as tsar, he destroyed the letters between Elisabeth and Okhotnikov and some of her diaries. From these facts I have constructed the story of the letters stolen by Tatiana and Gregory Lindorff.
Wilhelmine of Sagan did have a secret child by her mother’s lover Gustav Armfelt. In 1814, Wilhelmine was desperate to have Vava restored to her. Metternich was determined to help her. They corresponded freely and many of their letters concern their attempts to recover Vava. Their letters, tied with white ribbon, were discovered by Maria Ullrichová in a fake well on one of Metternich’s estates in Bohemia in 1949.
For the purposes of the story, I have compressed the timeline of historical events slightly. Prince and Princess Metternich did give a ball on 21 November, two days before the Carrousel, but the Venetian-themed masquerade that occurs in Vienna Waltz on 21 November actually took place on 8 November. Beethoven’s gala concert at the Redoutensaal took place on 29 November. In the chronology of Vienna Waltz, it occurs on 27 November.
Lord Castlereagh brought a large staff to the Congress, including three plenipotentiaries, his private secretary, and ten young assistants from the foreign office. In the events of the novel, I have involved only my three fictional attachés (Malcolm, Fitz, and Tommy) and Castlereagh’s half brother, Lord Stewart. Some of the British delegation stayed in the twenty-two-room suite in the Minoritenplatz; others were scattered in lodgings about the city.
The Courland casket is fictional, as is Maddalena Verano, but Cellini was imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo, on charges of embezzling jewels from the pope’s tiara.
Wilhelmine of Sagan and Princess Catherine Bagration both lodged in the Palm Palace during the Congress. I have taken the liberty of giving Tatiana rooms there as well.
Dorothée was very involved in the Carrousel, but I have enhanced her role in orchestrating it, and involved Suzanne in the planning as well. My apologies to Felix Woyna and young Trautmansdorff, to whom I gave fictional cases of the mumps to allow Malcolm and Fitz to participate in the Carrousel.
Schubert was in Vienna at the time of the Congress, teaching in his father’s school and studying with Salieri. His first mass premiered in October 1814. He did not play at a musicale given by Wilhelmine of Sagan or at Dorothée’s Christmas party at the Kaunitz Palace (which she did give on Christmas Eve 1814). But perhaps if he had met Tatiana, Malcolm, and Suzanne, he would have done so.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Alsop, Susan Mary. The Congress Dances. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1985.
Brion, Marcel. Daily Life in the Vienna of Mozart and Schubert. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1962.
Dino, Dorothée de Talleyrand-Périgord, Duchesse de. Souvenirs. Middlesex: Echo Library, 2008.
Erickson, Raymond (editor). Schubert’s Vienna. New Haven & London: Yale University Press, 1997.
King, David. Vienna, 1814. New York: Harmony Books, 2008.
La Garde-Chambonas, Auguste, Comte de. Anecdotal Recollections of the Congress of Vienna. London: Chapman & Hall Limited, 1902.
McGuigan, Dorothy Gies. Metternich and the Duchess. New York: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1975.
Nicholson, Harold. The Congress of Vienna. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company, 1946.
Pradt, Dominique Georges Fré
déric. The Congress of Vienna. London: Samuel Leigh and Messrs. Bossange and Masson, 1816.
Zamoyski, Adam. Rites of Peace. New York: Harper Perennial, 2008.
A READING GROUP GUIDE
VIENNA WALTZ
Teresa Grant
About This Guide
The suggested questions are included
to enhance your group’s reading of
Teresa Grant’s Vienna Waltz.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
1. Before Malcolm told Suzanne the truth about his relationship with Tatiana, what did you think had transpired in the past between Tatiana and Malcolm?
2. How does being in Vienna at the Congress constrain the characters’ actions and/or free them to act in ways that might not be possible were they at home in London, St. Petersburg, Paris, or wherever their homes may be?
3. Both Malcolm and Suzanne keep secrets from each other. How might their marriage have been different if they had told each other the truth from the start? Or would they have married at all in that case?
4. Tatiana sets in motion an elaborate plot to regain what she sees as her rightful heritage. What are the parallels between the game she is playing and the more overtly political games being played at the Congress?
5. Do you think Malcolm would ever have told Suzanne the truth about Tatiana if Suzanne hadn’t found the locket?
6. Do Castlereagh, Metternich, and Talleyrand remind you of any present-day politicians? If so, in what ways?
7. Suzanne and Malcolm both frequently are playing a part, whether they are in disguise (as at the Empress Rose), or playing their roles as a diplomatic couple, or at times even (or perhaps especially) when they are alone together. At what points in the novel do you think each of them is the most wholly her- or himself without masks or deception?
8. How are Suzanne’s, Dorothée’s, Wilhelmine’s, Elisabeth’s, and Tatiana’s attitudes toward marriage and love shaped by their experiences in childhood and adolescence?
9. Compare and contrast Suzanne and Malcolm’s marriage with Fitz and Eithne’s, from their reasons for marrying, to their secrets and betrayals.
10. Several of the characters in Vienna Waltz fear the revelation of secrets about their personal lives. Do you think they have more or less to fear from their secrets being revealed than present-day public figures?
11. Did you suspect Fitz of killing Tatiana before the end of the book? Why or why not?
12. Malcolm says to Fitz that Castlereagh and Metternich are doing everything they can to put the French Revolution “back in the box. Quite ignoring the fact that the box broke twenty years ago.” How does this idea parallel some of the characters’ efforts to erase the past on a more personal level?
13. Suzanne and Malcolm struggle to balance their roles as agents and their duties in the diplomatic corps with being parents and husband and wife. How are the difficulties they face juggling all this similar to or different from those of a present-day couple?
14. Many of the characters claim not to believe in love or not to believe love lasts, yet a number of them do things that are motivated by love. Which actions, by which characters, do you think most strongly convey love for another character?
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Copyright © 2011 by Tracy Grant
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ISBN: 978-0-7582-6791-7