Interest, Pergen could certainly feel for the objects of his experiments; the will to power and control, she thought, was probably his truest ruler, in every sense of the word.
But personal physical desire for a woman—or a man, for that matter … no. That particular impulse, she was certain, had been cast aside long ago, sacrificed along the road to power. She doubted it had ever been a strong compulsion for him. Pergen’s deepest passions lay in other directions.
So, what game did he think to play now? And how, exactly, would it be best to respond to this gambit?
She settled on a slight, haughty smile. There was no point in pretending liking; she could never carry it off.
“You flatter me, sir,” she said coldly, and turned to leave.
“Flatter? How could I, when the emperor himself sings your praises?”
Caroline stilled. “I’m certain the emperor has far more important matters on his mind.” The rage she’d glimpsed simmering in his eyes …
“So I would have thought, as well.” Pergen drew closer, dropping his voice. A chill emanated from his skin, mingling with his soft, hissing whisper. “To have captured the emperor’s interest would have been novelty and boast enough for an ordinary Englishwoman, even one of rank and title. But for a lady without a past …”
“I’m afraid I don’t take your meaning,” Caroline said, through numb lips. “Are you speaking in riddles now? No one is without a past.”
“Indeed not. And yet, you’ve somehow hidden yours with remarkable finesse.”
“What a creative imagination you must have, Count Pergen.” She laughed, dismissively, her fingers tightening around the delicate fan she carried. “Why on earth would I have bothered to hide my past?”
“Why indeed, if there is nothing to hide?”
Flicking out her fan to its full extension, Caroline waved it as if wafting away a stench. “You are offensive, sir,” she drawled.
“I am loyal to my emperor, Lady Wyndham. And I am deep within his confidence.”
Caroline drew a deep breath. Time to move to a different strategy. She raised her eyebrows with cool amusement. “Then you must know that he and I have spoken of my past, and he did not seem displeased by it.”
“He knew at that time only my first conclusions,” Pergen said. “That you were nothing more than your first husband’s whore.”
Caroline gasped and jerked her fan up to wave in front of her face, a show of aristocratic outrage that safely hid at least half of her expression. Her pulse was beating rapidly against her wrist, but she kept her voice steady. “You have said quite enough, Count Pergen. I will not remain to listen to more slander.”
“No? But that was only my first conclusion, while I still assumed you were essentially harmless. Will you not stay to hear how my mind was changed?”
On the other side of the room, two great doors swung open, leading to the improvised stage. The crowd around Caroline and Pergen shifted and surged toward the opening doors, following the lead of the imperial and royal couples. In the press of people, Caroline stood frozen, head held high.
Stay or leave, stay or leave …
All she wanted to do was run. Instead, she snapped her fan shut and looked Pergen in the eyes.
Far better to know the worst immediately.
“Changed?” she repeated, as frostily as possible.
“Now that I have met you myself, Madam …” Pergen’s dark, smudged eyes narrowed as he regarded her. “Something about you strikes me as oddly familiar,” he murmured. “Only the emperor’s pride has been injured by your actions, so far. That would be reason enough to banish you from Vienna, so far as I am concerned, and yet …”
She recognized that look in his eyes: focused interest, as keen and chilling as a dagger. It was how he had regarded her for four long years, as he’d catalogued the effects of his experiments upon her.
“It is not only the emperor who is intrigued by you anymore,” he whispered.
Fury swept through Caroline, overwhelming the panic he’d trained her into years ago.
Never again.
She was no one’s victim anymore, and she would not give this man the gift of her fear.
“Should I consider myself flattered?” She allowed a sneer to lift her upper lip. “I have never been to Vienna before. If you once visited London and attended the same ball or assembly …” She shrugged contemptuously. “I cannot always choose my company. But I have no recollection of any such chance meeting.”
“No?” Pergen’s lips twisted into a half-smile. “You have forgotten a great deal of your own history, it seems. You have even persuaded everyone in England to share in your selective amnesia. But you are no longer standing on English soil, Lady Wyndham.”
The last of the crowd filtered out around them. In the distance, Caroline saw the Prince de Ligne disappear through the doorway, followed by—oh, yes, it was—by Michael, painfully familiar even with his back to her. Again.
Alone in the great hall except for silent servants, she met Pergen’s shadowed gaze and felt a deathlike chill creep across her.
“No one can escape their own past, Lady Wyndham,” Count Pergen said softly. “And I will—I promise you—make it my first business to discover yours.”
Peter walked back into the Theater an der Wien through the same back door he’d used to leave it. Only twenty-six hours ago. Almost impossible to believe it could have been such a short span of time. It felt as if a lifetime had passed.
It had. He wasn’t the same man who had walked out into a dark alleyway, full of confidence and luck, thinking himself the hero of his own personal adventure—ready to tilt against Fate to win his inevitable fame and fortune.
No more heroics, Peter thought as he crossed the threshold. He had to pause halfway through, gasping for breath and clutching the doorway for support.
It was a hard thing to realize, at five and twenty years of age, that he wasn’t a true hero after all … just a bit player, to be used or else disposed of in the second act. If he’d died, it wouldn’t even have been the tragic climax to an epic drama—only a minor after-thought to two other men’s great struggle.
Peter had written a dozen plays that killed off innocent bystanders to prove a villain’s wickedness. But he’d never thought, until now, to find himself as one of them.
He was still alive though. Alive, albeit no longer innocent. For all the noble speeches he’d written and believed in over the years, it seemed, after all, it might be bitterly preferable to be free and in league with horrors than to be nobly resistant and dead … or wishing to be so.
He’d been an actor for eighteen of his twenty-five years of life. Perhaps it was time, at long last, to learn the harsh truths of the world outside the stage.
Peter limped his way through the cluttered backstage area, full of sets for a variety of different dramas, from Turkish harem comedies to Spanish tragedies and the local Hanswürstslapstick pieces. Through the thin wall of his own company’s backdrop, he could hear the steadily growing murmur of the gathering audience in the seats, like the distant roar of a great beast. The play hadn’t yet begun, then. He was in luck—
He jerked his thoughts to a halt, gritting his teeth. The fact that his plans hadn’t stumbledyet meant absolutely nothing for the future. He couldn’t let himself fall into the trap of overconfidence again.
One of the theater’s young stagehands hurried purposefully off the set. He jerked back, wide-eyed, when he saw Peter.
“Herr—Herr Riesenbeck? Is it you?”
Peter snorted painfully, taking in the boy’s expression. “I’m no ghost.”
“But they said …” The stagehand swallowed his way to an embarrassed silence, glancing guiltily over his shoulder.
Peter sighed and squared his own shoulders. “I can imagine what they said. Let me pass.”
The boy slid out of his way with a burst of relief-driven speed, and Peter started down the murky, badly lit corridor that led to the actors’ dressing
rooms. He thanked heaven now for the narrowness of the corridor, though he’d cursed it only the day before. It let him lean both hands against the peeling, moldy wallpaper for support as he walked with the last remnants of his energy.
He heard raised voices even before he arrived at the first door—Marta’s shared dressing room. Of course, Peter thought, as Karl’s voice rose above the others.
“I told you we couldn’t rely on him. He’s probably off on some drinking binge, or—”
“Herr Riesenbeck has never been a drunkard,” Marta said doubtfully. “Surely, my love—”
“Not that you knew of,” Karl said, “but—”
“Ohhh!” A well-modulated wail cut him off.
It was Josephine, the second lady of the company—eager to wrest the center stage role from Karl, no doubt. “Where can he be?” Josephine wailed.
Peter had never heard a more perfect cue. He grinned widely and swung open the door.
“My friends!” he said. “I’m afraid I was delayed.”
Despite every ounce of pain, horror, and disillusionment that Peter had suffered in the past twenty-six hours, he couldn’t help feeling the hugest enjoyment as he witnessed the frozen tableau before him. His entire company had crowded into Marta and Josephine’s small dressing room. All of them were fully equipped in thick stage make-up and costumes, all of them stared in open astonishment at the door, and all of them—for once—were entirely lost for words.
They hadn’t lost all their abilities, though. At least half of them had fallen—unconsciously, Peter wondered?—into the hand-flung-to-brow-or-bosom theatrical pose of Shock … although Karl, Peter was glad to note, had managed to restrain himself from assuming an actual Attitude of Horror.
Marta was the first to move, rising from her dressing table with a sweep of lace.
“My dear Herr Riesenbeck!” She advanced on him, holding both hands out to him in appeal. “We have been so distraught—so overcome with worry—so—oh!” She recoiled, one hand flying to her chest. “Your face! You’ve been bruised!”
Peter stepped forward and caught her hands. “Your sympathy is more than medicine enough, dear lady.” He raised her hands to his lips. “My dearest Marta—Josephine—Karl …” He smiled gently at the lead members of his company. “What can I say? I knew you would take everything in hand magnificently. And you have!”
“We weren’t given any choice, were we?” Karl glared at him. “Where have you been?”
“He’s been hurt,” Josephine said. “Look at his face! And the way he’s moving! Were you set upon by footpads, Herr Riesenbeck?”
“Alas, yes. After my meeting last night, I was on my way back to tell you all of our good fortune, when suddenly …” Peter staggered—thought to catch himself—and then decided not to after all. Instead, he let himself sag forward into Marta’s fragrant embrace. “Forgive me. My legs are so weak …”
“You poor man.” She helped him to her chair.
Josephine swept up to help, cooing over him as they settled him into a more comfortable position. Peter let himself enjoy the moment, even as he listened to Karl muttering to himself and the rest of the small cast whispering to one another, all jostling for position in the cramped dressing room.
“I woke up this morning in an alley I didn’t recognize,” Peter said hollowly. “They had taken all the coins I had on me, knocked me unconscious, and left me lying in the street outside the city wall. I’ve been walking all day, trying to find my way back …”
“Did you think of asking directions?” Karl growled.
“Really!” Josephine snapped. “How can you be so unfeeling?”
“Directions? Of course I did. To the nearest policeman,” Peter said.
The others turned looks of blank amazement on him. Peter sighed. Perhaps he was stretching the believable truth too far, now. But now that he had begun …
“My missing coins,” he said patiently. “Your salaries!”
“Oh, God,” said Karl.
Marta took a deep, shivering breath. “And … did you have any luck?”
Peter shook his head, his face turning grim. “I’d been given coin in advance last night, which I was planning to distribute among you.”
“In order of position, I hope?” Marta said coolly, drawing away from Josephine.
“What?” Josephine demanded.
“Dear ladies …” Peter sighed again, more heavily. “The police were of no help. In fact, to tell the truth, I’m not certain they even cared.”
“You should have made them care,” Karl growled. “If you’d been firm enough—”
Marta raised one hand. “From all I’ve heard, the police in Vienna care nothing for such matters. Their only true concern …” She made an expressive face that spoke volumes.
There was a pregnant pause. Karl heaved a sigh of his own, and his big shoulders finally slumped.
“Yes, well, that’s done with, then,” he said. “But what’s this about our good fortune? And who was the patron, after all?”
Peter looked across the crowded group of actors, all watching him with rapt attention. Despite himself, he felt the familiar tingle of pleasure at the sight. It was working. He had them back in hand again.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “In twenty-four hours’ time, we are to perform at the Burgtheater itself!” Slowly, painfully, he levered himself to his feet and stood swaying. He raised his voice, pitching it to carry over all the gasps and eager questions. “The emperor has decided to throw open his palace tomorrow night to host every person of rank in Vienna for this Congress. The royalty of Europe, the flower of the nobility …” And the imposters, as well.
“They will all be audience to your glory—and all, dear ladies and gentlemen, your devoted admirers tomorrow night. We have been especially invited and requested, by imperial command, to mingle and converse with as many of the emperor’s guests as possible within the Great Hall of the Hofburg palace, before the performance even takes place.”
“Invited by the emperor himself!” Josephine breathed.
Even Karl’s face had taken on a new glow of rapt determination. It took no great effort of the imagination for Peter to guess that he was already planning how to attract the emperor’s own attention.
Let Karl scheme and fantasize as he would. All Peter cared about was that his new plan worked.
He’d convinced his captor that Michael would have taken on the pose of an aristocrat during his stay in Vienna, just as he had for his travels with Peter’s own company—and every aristocrat in the city was certain to attend tomorrow night’s gala. Michael, just like all the rest, would step smugly across that glittering threshold …
And then I’ll have you. Because Peter and his company, too, would be there—and Peter would be waiting, along with Grünemann, to capture the man who’d led him into disaster in the first place.
It was enough—just enough—of a chance and a scheme to have won him his freedom … at least for one night.
Had his captor truly been convinced? Or was he merely playing a devilish new game, restoring Peter’s life and hope only to reel him back in with even greater satisfaction, one night later, when he failed … just as expected?
If this was no more than a game on his captor’s part …
Peter swallowed hard and kept his brilliant smile for his audience. Whether his captor believed in Peter’s plan or not, it would work.
He would find Michael among the gathered nobility of Vienna, no matter how effective the man’s disguise.
Peter’s own life depended on it.
Applause rippled through the audience in the makeshift theater, as the great silk curtain rose to reveal the first tableau of the evening—Louis XIV kneeling at Madame de la Valliére’s feet. Count von Trauttmansdorff knelt before the Comtesse de Zichy, offering himself to her in a frozen, crystalline moment, accompanied by a swelling orchestral background. The young comtesse’s face, as befitted the character she played, was a picture of modesty, fe
ar, and innocence … but none of those would last for long, Emperor Francis reflected. He wondered, idly, whether the rumors were true. According to gossip, the comtesse had already surrendered herself to the count in private … and with far less hesitancy than she displayed onstage.
“How romantic,” Tsarina Elizabeth breathed, on Francis’s right. Her face was rapt with longing as she gazed at the brightly lit scene before them; her auburn hair, left loose and unbound, rippled against Francis’s arm as she leaned forward.
“Mm,” Francis murmured noncommittally, and smiled gently to hide his thoughts.
If the tsarina hadn’t already found consolation for her husband’s neglect in the arms of one of the tsar’s own closest friends, Francis would have been tempted to give it to her himself out of mere sympathy.
The curtain fell before either of the noble actors could succumb to temptation and rub a nose or sneeze to break the moment. As applause broke out around them, the tsarina turned to murmur to her other neighbor. Francis turned his head slightly and nodded. Although all the candles had been extinguished to lend greater effectiveness to the stage lights, he knew his most trusted minister would see his signal even in the dark.
A brush of cold air signaled Pergen’s approach even before he spoke.
“Majesty,” Pergen murmured, just behind Francis’s high-backed chair.
Under cover of the continuing applause, Francis leaned back and whispered softly, “A curious thing, Pergen. You know Prince Kalishnikoff, of Kernova-as-was?”
“The gentleman staying in Lady Wyndham’s second apartment.”
“The same.” Francis bit down on rising anger and kept his voice to a bare thread of sound. “He informed me that their fathers were childhood friends.”
Pergen’s narrow eyebrows rose. Francis nodded slightly.
“Curious indeed,” Pergen murmured. “I shall look into it directly.”
“Do,” Francis murmured. “See to it.”
The curtain rose again, and he sat forward in his seat. As Pergen stepped back into the shadows, Comte Woyna and Princess Yblonowska were revealed in a reproduction of a painting by Guérin, “Hippolytus refuting Phedra’s accusation before Theseus.” The princess’s face bore all the signs, indeed, of passion struggling against remorse; the comte might perhaps be attempting respectful grief, but he did not quite succeed. A beam of light had somehow arranged itself to perfectly highlight the princess’s half-exposed bosom in her transparent Grecian dress.
Congress of Secrets Page 20
