Congress of Secrets

by Stephanie Burgis

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Charles stood in the doorway, his face ravaged with shock.

  “Charles!” Caroline struggled up, pulling at her crumpled gown. “I thought you were upstairs …” Her voice trickled hopelessly to a halt.

  Oh, God. The look in his eyes sent dread lancing through her. There had to be something she could say or do, if only she could think of it. Something …

  Michael pushed forward to shield her from the door. “What the devil do you mean by bursting in here, Weston?”

  “I apologize. Your Highness.” Charles bowed stiffly. His voice came out as a near croak as he turned away. “I won’t disturb either of you again. I promise.”

  “Charles, wait—!” Caroline began.

  The door fell closed. She heard his footsteps turn into a run, hurtling down the hallway.

  Caroline pushed Michael away and leaped off the bed, working her arms back into the tiny puff sleeves of her gown with excruciating awkwardness. Every moment lost …

  “Caroline,” Michael began.

  She lunged for the door. “Charles!”

  She emerged into the corridor just as the apartment door slammed shut. She hurtled down the corridor, through the outer door and down the stairs. If anyone saw her—shoeless, her hair uncovered and disheveled, running as fast as she could—they’d take her for a madwoman.

  The bleak fear in her stomach told her there were worse fates, and she was already courting them.

  She pushed open the door onto the street.

  Sunlight glinted off the windows of the elegant carriages that rattled down the Dorotheergasse. Strolling gentlemen paused to stare at Caroline through their quizzing glasses as she emerged into the cold, fresh air. Ladies whispered to each other. Derisive laughter sounded in Caroline’s ears.

  Charles was nowhere in sight.

  Caroline sagged against the doorway. She heard familiar footsteps running down the stairs behind her. Her feet felt as heavy as millstones as she stepped back and let the door fall shut, closing off the light and air. And hope.

  She’d ruined everything.

  “Caroline.” Michael took her arm and turned her to face him. He was fully dressed again and looking unfairly polished, in sharp contrast to her own appearance. “What on earth—?”

  “Don’t touch me!” Caroline jerked away. “Do you have any idea what a disaster has just occurred?”

  “Disaster?” Michael shook his head. “It was unfortunate, it was ill-timed …” His mouth relaxed into a smile. “Most ill-timed. But I’d hardly call it—”

  “You know nothing about it.” She set her jaw and started up the stairs.

  “Then tell me!” He caught up with her half a second later. “So your secretary saw us in a compromising position. What of it? He’s hardly a social arbiter.”

  “Be quiet,” Caroline hissed. “The door upstairs could be open. There are spies—”

  “Everywhere. I know.” He dropped his own voice to a whisper. “And how much joy do you think they took in watching you tear after him so desperately, just now?”

  She sucked in breath between her clenched teeth. “A charming description.”

  “Charming for me, too.” Michael’s face was tense with anger. He threw open the door to his apartment and gestured her inside with exaggerated courtesy. “Would you care to explain?”

  If she didn’t, he’d doubtless follow her up to her own apartment to pester her. Giving in, Caroline swept past him with all the dignity she could muster and waited for him to close the door before she turned on him.

  “I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

  “No? What of your relationship with your secretary, then? You must care about him a great deal to let all the emperor’s spies witness you running after him like a woman lost in love.”

  She let out a half-laugh that bordered on hysteria. “I am not in love with Charles!”

  “What other reason could you possibly have?”

  “You fool,” Caroline said, and felt all her resolution break into the release of pure despair. “Didn’t you understand anything about what you saw earlier?”

  Michael rubbed his hand over his eyes and dropped his shoulders back against the green wallpaper as if all his boundless energy had finally deserted him. “Just this once, could you answer a simple question for me? Please?”

  “Certainly,” Caroline said, and felt clear, clarifying coldness flood through her body. “Charles is not only my secretary.”

  “Hah.”

  “Charles is an alchemist. Al-che-my,” she added, enunciating each syllable with precision. “You do understand what that is, I presume?”

  “Alchemy? Oh, let me think.” Michael closed his eyes. “Half-mad experimenters dabbling in chemicals and trying to transmute lead into gold, perhaps. Or extremely accomplished tricksters who convince the gullible of their deep magical prowess. Several of whom I worked for when I was younger. Give over, Caroline!” He opened his eyes to glare at her. “I’m not a fool to be fobbed off with children’s stories. I can’t see Weston fitting either type.”

  “That’s because you don’t understand anything about it.” Caroline bit out the words. “Alchemy is no fraud, nor is it as simple as turning lead into gold. Not for everyone.”

  “And you would know this because …?”

  “Because I had the knowledge thrust upon me.” She turned away from him, looking sightlessly out the drawing room windows. “You think of alchemy as a children’s story?”

  “Well …”

  “Then think of this story,” Caroline said. Anger seemed to have released her, until she was floating above herself, listening to herself speak words she had never planned to say. “Imagine an eleven-year-old girl being taken by the police when her father was arrested and their house set aflame.”

  She heard Michael’s indrawn breath behind her, but she didn’t pause. “Children of criminals aren’t typically arrested, you might think. They are sent to orphanages, or to foster homes, or let loose into the streets. But sometimes they disappear. And who is there to notice, when the only person who might have cared had already run away to save himself?”

  “Caroline …”

  She moved toward the window. “And so this girl, who was only eleven, was taken away and put into a tiny room, underground. And when the door to the room opened …” She reached out to rest the flats of her hands on the cool glass windowpane, drawing in the cold to infuse her body and protect herself against the memories. “You might not believe in alchemy, but Emperor Joseph’s minister of the secret police did, and he needed practice to better his skills at it. Who better to experiment on than a girl nobody else would miss? She could be drained—hurt—used …”

  “Caroline.” Michael was standing behind her suddenly, his hands on her waist, his voice taut with suppressed anguish. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Four years,” Caroline said. She didn’t turn around. Instead, she spoke into the window, looking out at the bustling life of the street below. It was a reminder: I have escaped. “Four years in a tiny, windowless room, first in one of Pergen’s own houses and then …

  “He moved me into the Hofburg, after Francis came to power. Because”—she paused, fighting to control her voice—“because Francis wanted to help. He was Pergen’s pupil. In every way.”

  “Dear God.” Michael’s breath ruffled her hair. “Does he know—?”

  “Who I am? Not yet.” She held herself still in his embrace. She couldn’t let herself relax back into his arms. If she did, the cold she’d hoarded within would melt into warmth, and all her frozen tears would melt with it. “He—they sold me when I was fifteen. Every so often, Francis would show me off as part of his collection of curiosities to a few men he trusted. Wealthy, discreet visitors. He was younger then, of course. Less practiced in politics. Now he’d never dare reveal the secret. But then …”

  “He showed you off,” Michael repeated tonelessly behind her. “And?”

  “On
e of the visitors was English. A wealthy alchemist himself. And he … wanted me. So they sold me to him, and he took me to England.” Caroline breathed deeply, steadily, controlling her voice. “He would show me to his friends sometimes, too. And he had one friend—a marquis, very eccentric—who took a fancy to me. He even shocked convention by marrying me, although he kept me hidden on his estate, of course. And he gave me a new name. Caroline. He died a year after that, and then one of his friends, Lord Wyndham …” She stopped. The broken pieces inside her were too close to the surface for safety. She shoved them down again. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “And you raised yourself from that to become one of the most powerful women in English society,” Michael said softly. “You are remarkable.”

  “Haven’t you been listening to me?” Caroline twisted around to meet his gaze. “Don’t you understand anything? I was Pergen’s prisoner. I was nothing. I was his experiment! I tried every single day to escape. I did everything I could, and nothing worked. Nothing ever worked. Every day, I swore I wouldn’t let the alchemy work against me, and every single day that he chose to visit …” Tears stung behind her eyes. She gritted her teeth and held them back.

  Michael captured her cold hands and held them between his own. Warmth leached into her skin, persistent and inescapable. “You survived,” he said, “and you didn’t stop fighting.”

  “It didn’t do any good.”

  “If you think that, then you’re the one who hasn’t been paying attention,” Michael told her. “You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

  Caroline shook her head numbly, even as she met and was trapped by his intent gaze. Intent and unmistakably sincere.

  The frozen cold within her shivered and creaked under his warmth. She opened her mouth, searching for protection, drawing on all the methods of grim self-defense that she’d mastered over the years.

  “I would give anything to change the past for you,” Michael said. “Anything, Caroline. But I would change nothing about you now.”

  The ice cracked. Caroline almost choked on the painful, gulping sob that forced its way up her throat against her will. She knew better than to lean on anyone. She couldn’t trust anyone, ever, no matter how much she was tempted.

  Her legs melted underneath her, and she collapsed into Michael’s embrace as sobs ripped up from her chest, overwhelming her.

  Michael wrapped his arms tightly around Caroline, holding her as she wept. Every wrenching sob was a knife blade thrust into his chest.

  What could he have done differently, indeed. How many times had he used that excuse to himself over the years? It rang poisonously false to him now.

  Perhaps he couldn’t have saved her, truly.

  But he could have tried.

  Michael had never sacrificed his own good to help anyone else after his long-ago flight from Vienna. It had been the strongest and most vivid lesson he’d learned from that night of fire and terror: never again to let himself care about anyone or anything but his own safety and advancement.

  What lesson had Caroline learned, when she’d watched him turn away from her that night?

  No wonder she’d lashed out at him with such anger when they’d first met again at the emperor’s masked ball. He could barely believe that she was letting him hold her now.

  Caroline’s sobs gradually slowed and stilled. She sniffed and took a breath against his damp shirtfront. Michael held his arms still around her, hardly daring to breathe and break the moment.

  “That was why they didn’t let my father go,” she whispered, so softly that he wasn’t sure he’d heard her correctly.

  “Your father?”

  “All the other printmakers from Joseph’s reign were released by the turn of the century. Except for him.”

  “Oh.” Michael met her upturned gaze and swallowed. “Oh. I see.”

  If Pergen and his emperor wanted to avoid uncomfortable, public questioning …

  “That’s why you came back,” he said. “Isn’t it?” He barely needed her nod of confirmation. “That’s what you want from the emperor.” The emperor …

  Realization of the risk she ran squeezed his chest with sudden panic, worse by far than any he’d felt for himself. “If they recognize you—”

  “They almost have. Pergen told me …” She paused, taking a deep, shivering breath. “He told me last night that I seemed strangely familiar. And that he would make it his first priority to find out who I really am.”

  “We have to leave.” Michael would have stepped away if he could have forced himself to let her go. “I’ve already packed. If you gather your things, we can—”

  “I can’t leave! Don’t you understand? I haven’t found my father yet.”

  “If Pergen finds out the truth—”

  “If I run now, I’ll never find him,” Caroline said. “It’s my fault he’s imprisoned.”

  Michael’s sharp bark of laughter hurt his chest. “Your fault? You were a child! It was Pergen who—”

  “My father has no one else but me. He’s been locked in a prison for twenty-four years now. Twenty-four years!” Tears shone brightly in Caroline’s eyes, but Michael recognized the thread of steel in her voice. “I will not abandon him. I cannot leave until I find out where he is.”

  Michael swallowed a groan. “And what does Weston have to do with it?”

  “I brought Charles with me … as a safeguard against the alchemy I knew to be waiting here for me.” Her voice turned level, expressionless. “And then, if nothing else worked, to use alchemy myself, as a final weapon.”

  “So what I saw this morning—”

  “Was my last plan. My final hope. I asked Charles to find my father, using my own blood.”

  “So Weston knows—”

  “Almost exactly who I am.” She nodded. “Now do you see why that moment downstairs was such a disaster?”

  Michael bit back a foul curse. Every instinct in his body told him to flee. Now. Without waiting even long enough for Caroline to pack. He’d escaped barely in time from discoveries and retribution in a dozen cities in the past two decades, relying on those well-honed instincts. None of those situations had promised the sheer horror that he could feel roaring toward them now. But the stubborn, set look on Caroline’s face expressed more clearly than any words that logical arguments would be futile.

  He should be making his excuses, now. He should grab his satchel from his room and slip out of the building before it was too late.

  Just as he had last time.

  “Of course you don’t have to stay.” Caroline’s face stiffened as she stepped back, pulling free of his arms. “It’s not your battle.” Her lips twitched, attempting a smile that didn’t quite work. “There’s no reason for you not to leave now and save yourself.”

  “I am not leaving you again,” Michael said, through gritted teeth.

  He must have gone mad. Even as her expression softened into startled hope, he wondered where his sense of self-preservation had gone.

  It must have abandoned him back in that damned bedroom. Or maybe it had flown away at that first moment when he had recognized her adult face underneath her English bonnet and his life had shifted, insensibly and irrevocably, in its path.

  “But,” he added reluctantly, “I should tell you that I’m in danger too.”

  “Well, of course, if they discover my—”

  “No,” Michael said. “Not because of you. A troupe of actors smuggled me into Vienna from Prague. The Riesenbeck troupe. I fobbed them off with a story of lost inheritances, a tragic romance, powerful families, danger—”

  Caroline’s laughter startled him—and herself as well, judging by the surprise on her own face as laughter broke out of her mouth. She raised one hand wonderingly to her lips, but she didn’t stop laughing. “You are incorrigible. Even when we were children, the stories you used to try to fool me into believing—”

  Michael captured her hand in his, smiling despite himself. “Quiet. I’m telling you s
omething important.”

  “Fine. What name did you use with them?”

  “Count Michael von Helmannsdorf.”

  “Hmm.” Her lips quirked into a mischievous grin. Her face, open with laughter, looked suddenly younger, echoing the carefree girl she’d once been.

  “I saw the leader of the troupe again this morning,” Michael told her. “He saw me and recognized me, even without the disguise.”

  “And?” Caroline raised her eyebrows. “What did you tell him?”

  “Nothing. He ran the moment he saw me. I chased after but couldn’t catch him.”

  “Oh.” The amusement drained out of her face. “Oh. So—”

  “So he must have known that I wasn’t who I’d claimed. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have run. Which means—”

  “The secret police,” Caroline breathed. “He had already been questioned.”

  “At the very least.” Michael kept his firm hold around her hand. “That was why I packed to leave.”

  “I see.” Her eyes narrowed as she thought. Her fingers tightened around his.

  Michael watched her, waiting. Something felt odd, itchingly unfamiliar … ah.

  His decades of travel and adventuring and avoiding real attachments had saved him from all the dangers of loss and regret … but it had also meant that he’d never had a partner he could trust. Someone who would listen to his own declaration of risk without immediately severing ties and betraying him for their own self-preservation, if that was what the moment called for.

  Just as he would have done in turn … until now.

  Caroline hadn’t returned his unexpected, involuntary declaration of love when he had blurted it out and shocked them both. But that stubborn loyalty, which had already sent her back into unholy danger, was at the core of who she was, beneath all those layers of disguise and self-control. And as their fingers wrapped tightly around each other, Michael knew that the bone-deep connection he felt to her was not one-sided.

  “He didn’t see where you went, afterward?” Caroline asked.

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Then you’re safe for the moment—at least, until you leave the building again. If he wanted to find you, dressed as you were, it would be obvious for him to look in the first district, among the nobility.”