Then, perhaps, if he was feeling generous, he would give her another chance.
But until then …
“Let me buy you a drink,” the man before him said. “It really will help, I promise you.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” Charles muttered.
“No? You might be surprised.” The other man leaned forward. His voice lowered to a whisper. “The uses of alchemy have never been forgotten in this city, Monsieur Weston. Nor have we forgotten how to honor those who are accomplished in its practice.”
Charles blinked. Five conflicting thoughts tried to take shape in his mind all at once, and canceled each other out to leave it blank. “Who are you?” he asked, finally.
“My name is Vaçlav Grünemann, and I’ve been watching you for some time. My employer is most anxious to make your personal acquaintance. Shall we?”
Grünemann gestured to a narrow side street. Charles found himself following the other man, trapped by bewildered fascination.
“Very good,” Grünemann said calmly. “You have made the right decision, sir. But then, my employer thinks that you show great potential.”
Emperor Francis II viewed his reflection in the mirror with dissatisfaction.
Tonight would be the greatest fête of his Congress, and everything was prepared. He would charm and flatter the tsar and his Prussian toady as he must throughout the evening, and then—at last, the culmination of all his maneuverings—as soon as the theatrical performance was over, he would finally seal his secret pact with England, for an endless supply of English gold and the power it would bring him to stand against the Russian empire as an equal.
After all his years of endless humiliation, he would have his triumph at last.
Francis’s cravat was tied with crisp elegance, in preparation for the evening’s entertainment; the Orders of Knighthood pinned to his claret-colored tailcoat gleamed in the soft candlelight. Everything was in place. And yet …
His face looked positively sunken. And his eyes …
It was a trick of the light, no more. Candlelight was known to cast odd shadows. It was only his own weakness that summoned up a tinge of supernatural dread, to see the shadows form in his own eyes.
“More light,” Francis snapped. In the mirror’s reflection, he saw his personal valet jerk to sudden attention at his words, while the uniformed footman at the door kept his own gaze directed firmly ahead in professional disinterest. Francis felt a sharp stab of annoyance. “I can barely see myself!”
He waited, tautly, as the valet lit more candles around him. With each added flame, more shadows disappeared from his cheeks, taking away the look of hollowness, and—yes—removing the shadows from his eyes as well.
Francis let out his held breath in a sigh. There. No need to fear, after all. Pergen protected him from that fate, as from so many other potential dangers in his empire.
As if he’d summoned his chief minister only by thinking of him, a knock sounded on the inner door of his apartments. Francis nodded graciously, and the footman swept the door open.
“Your Majesty.” Pergen swept a deep bow. “If I might have a word …”
Francis shrugged. “As you will. Leave us,” he added to the others, and the two servants filed out of the room. As the door closed behind them, he turned away from the mirror.
“Well?”
“All is prepared for tonight.”
“I knew I could count on you.” For once, Francis couldn’t summon up the interest that catching a new subversive deserved—but for such a loyal servant as Pergen, it would be ill-done indeed not to offer well-earned praise. And perhaps afterward … His breath shortened with sudden anticipation. “Do let me know if I can help in any way.”
“But of course. Your Majesty would be most welcome.”
“I could use some fresh distraction.” Francis directed a look back at the mirror and twitched the lapels of his coat a fraction more even. Where was the triumphant glow he should have exuded, at the anticipation of his greatest success?
“Ah,” Pergen said. “Perhaps I can help even now, in that case.”
Francis blinked and turned his attention to his minister. “Yes?”
“I have recently made a discovery which, I believe, you may find quite interesting,” Pergen said. His thin lips curved into a smile of fierce satisfaction. “Let me tell Your Majesty what I’ve only just learned of Lady Wyndham’s true identity …”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Blackness pressed inexorably against the glass windows of Caroline’s carriage. Only the flambeaux borne by the link-boys before and behind the carriage sent occasional streams of light across the windows and the sides of the buildings nearby. The same buildings, every time, Michael noted, sighing. The carriage had moved less than a foot in the last half hour. With every visitor of noble birth invited to the emperor’s gala celebration, the inner streets of Vienna were as tightly packed as cards in a closed deck.
And, for once, Michael had no idea who had stacked the cards.
Sitting above the carriage, Caroline’s coachman and her personal maid were already bundled up in traveling clothes, in case they had to flee directly from the gala itself, without stopping back at the apartment for any of their cases first.
Within the carriage itself, only the faintest flickers of reflected light revealed scattered glimpses of Caroline’s face—the edge of her strong cheekbones, her closely pressed lips, her gaze fixed ahead in focused determination—or was that obsession? Too late to worry about that now. Michael took a deep breath, rolling out his tense shoulders. If they were to have any chance at all of success in the evening ahead, he could allow no fear or self-doubt to mar his performance. The only way to win at the very riskiest of gambles was to show your opponents a face of unblemished confidence.
But this was a gamble he would never have accepted on his own behalf.
“Is everything—?” he began.
Caroline hadn’t spoken for the past ten minutes. Now, she rattled off her words at a breakneck pace: “Everything is packed and ready. I have enough money in my reticule to take us halfway to France, and the rest can be sent to me there within a day.”
“Good. We—”
“I have a bribe set aside for the guards at the city walls. If they question us, I’ve just received word of an ill uncle in Sussex, possibly on his deathbed, and I cannot wait until morning to begin my travel. You’re escorting me to protect me on the journey. You don’t have your papers with you because we left in such a rush, but our bribe will ensure they don’t stop us for it. They’re always less fastidious with visitors who wish to leave the city than with visitors coming in.”
“I understand. But—”
“We can change carriages in the mountains. I left a second carriage and horses stabled there on my way in case of emergency. That carriage doesn’t carry my crest or any other signifying mark, so—”
“Caroline.” Michael took hold of her hands. “You’ve made excellent preparations. Clearly.” His lips twitched. “You needn’t convince me of anything.”
Her clenched hands opened in his grasp. Caroline let out a choked laugh, hardly more than a puff of breath.
“I …” Her words trailed off. “I’ve tried to plan everything,” she whispered. “But I can’t stop remembering how it felt to be a prisoner there.”
“I understand,” Michael said. The carriage jolted forward suddenly, as space opened up in the line, and he jerked at the surprise of it. Still, he didn’t release her hands. “It’s different now,” he said. “This time, you’re not alone.”
“No,” she whispered. Her dark eyes were hidden in the shadows, but her fingers tightened around his. “Neither are you,” she said. “Not anymore.”
It all felt like a dream, Peter thought.
The Great Hall of the Hofburg Palace was lit by magnificent chandeliers that cast reflected flames in a hundred mirrors set about the hall. Smothering heat rose from the press of a thousand bodies, despite t
he frosty chill outside. Peter had played princes, counts, kings, and dukes on stages all across the eastern edges of the Habsburg Empire. Now he mingled with all of them in truth, breathing the same stifling air and sipping at the same expensive champagne.
He was too nervous to swallow any of it.
Through the crowd, he caught a glimpse of Marta, her head tipped back in affected laughter, flirting outrageously with a silver-haired man in Prussian uniform. Peter wove through the shifting mass of bodies, trying not to bump any lightly held crystal glasses. The cost of a single shattered glass would doubtless rival his own salary from a successful night’s performance.
Marta ignored Peter’s arrival beside her as the Prussian nobleman finished what was obviously the cap of a long-set-up joke.
“… And then she said: ‘In that case, Your Majesty, I’ll have another!’”
Marta’s trilling giggles mingled with the Prussian’s own roar of laughter at his own wit.
“My goodness, Count.” Marta raised her painted fan high to peek demurely at him above its edges. “You do have a way with words.”
“Might I have a word with you, Frau Dujic?” Peter asked. He nodded to the nobleman as he took Marta’s arm. “Just for a moment …”
She stepped away from him with a twitch of twice-turned imitation silk. “Perhaps later, Herr Riesenbeck?” She cast him an irritated, sidelong look behind her raised fan and mouthed the words: Not now.
“Marta,” Peter began, under his breath.
The Prussian glared at Peter. The military medals on his uniform glittered in the light from the chandeliers. “I believe the lady wishes to remain exactly where she is … sir.”
“Apparently so,” Peter muttered … but refrained from clicking his heels together in submission, as the other man would clearly have liked.
Belatedly, his good sense returned to him, shouldering its way past his buzzing nerves. Take hold of yourself. As a struggling director, Peter could hardly afford to offend any powerful men, no matter how abstracted he felt from such mundane considerations at the moment.
“I do beg your pardon, Frau Dujic. And yours, Count.” He bowed, restraining any hint of irritation from his tone. “But Frau Dujic … should you happen to recognize an old friend in the crowd tonight, would you do me the favor of letting me know? Preferably, before the gentleman himself sees you?”
Her eyes narrowed in calculation. “Whom are you speaking of, exactly?”
Peter shrugged, conscious of the Prussian’s impatient glower fixed on him. “An old traveling companion of ours,” he said lightly. “I’d like to see him again, nothing more.”
Peter moved aside before she could pursue the point. Not that he had to worry about that, he realized a moment later, as he saw her lean closer to her companion, drawing her fan across her face in the motion that signaled deep interest. Peter wondered what spot Karl had chosen to monitor the progress of his wife’s professional flirtation.
It was just as well that he couldn’t see Marta’s husband in the crowd. Peter had no intention of asking Karl the same favor he’d asked of Marta. That could lead to far too many sharp-edged questions, especially with Karl’s pride still raw and sore from the afternoon’s confrontation.
Peter tossed down half his glass of champagne in a single gulp. Normally, he’d never drink before a performance. Tonight, he needed all the help he could muster.
Clenching his fingers around the fragile stem of the glass, he set off through the crowd to begin his search.
By the time Caroline’s carriage finally drew up outside the Hofburg, her nerves were jangling more harshly than any Janissary band. She accepted Michael’s hand as she stepped out of the carriage, less for any physical support than just for the warmth she drew from the momentary contact.
The line of glittering guests that led through the stone entryway into the Hofburg’s inner courtyards looked like a procession of buzzing flies, walking blindly into a waiting spiderweb. And at the center of the web …
Caroline dismissed the fancy with an effort, even as she released Michael’s hand.
She knew better than anyone else—even Michael, for all the protective fears he’d been trying so hard to hide from her—exactly how deep was the danger she faced tonight. She knew the secrets at the heart of the Hofburg and Emperor Francis’s government. If she let herself, she could remember exactly the way Pergen’s experiments had felt—and the coldness of the stone floors against her skin afterward, as she’d lain sobbing and alone.
But this time she wasn’t alone. She held onto that fact like a candle to carry with her into darkness.
Michael stepped onto the stone paving slabs beside her, looking as elegant and distinguished in his evening clothes as if he truly were the Eastern prince he claimed to be. At a word from the coachman, the horses moved forward, carrying the carriage away to make room for the next party of guests.
“Lady Wyndham?” Michael murmured.
“Prince Kalishnikoff.” She met his eyes in the flaring light of the footmen’s torches.
“May I?” He offered her his arm.
Caroline lifted her chin. “Of course,” she said, and laid her hand across it.
Father, she promised silently, we won’t fail you.
Together, they joined the line of guests.
Michael’s senses tingled with alertness as the line moved at a snail’s pace across the first of the Hofburg’s inner courtyards. Caroline’s hand was steady on his arm, but he felt the tension in her grip. The night air snapped with frost against his skin, a promise of the frigid winter to come. The flaming torches held by the footmen to light the way cast flickering shadows across the faces of their fellow guests, creating images as distorted as any mask. In the deeper shadows behind the torches, Michael thought he spied watching faces, contorted and malevolent—only to have them revealed, in his next step forward, to be nothing more than crannies in the ornamented stone walls.
As they crossed into the second courtyard, they stepped into the light that spilled out of the open doors leading into the Hofburg’s Great Hall. Michael drew his lips into a genial smile, nodding at the familiar and unfamiliar faces suddenly revealed before them. Heat poured out of the Great Hall, along with the gathered chaos of music and a thousand voices. As they stepped inside, Michael felt a sudden twinge of discomfort. He’d glimpsed a movement in the corner of his eye, something familiar and yet unexpected, something he couldn’t quite pin down …
Michael turned his head smoothly, maintaining his courtly smile even as his muscles tensed.
But whatever he had seen was gone.
Even as Michael turned away, a soft hand grasped Caroline’s arm from behind.
“Caro!”
She shouldn’t have been surprised, Caroline thought wryly. After all, what else could make this evening worse? She arranged her lips into a smile and turned.
“Marie. How lovely to see you here.”
“Well, how could I miss it?” Marie squeezed her way into the line ahead. The ostrich plumes in her piled hair fluttered in the wind from the open doorway. “George was hideously boring and insisted on arriving far too early so that he could conduct some tedious political business, but I wouldn’t hear of being so unfashionable—especially as we’re only to be rubbing shoulders with anyone and everyone tonight, not any true elite.” She raised her eyebrows meaningfully as she tilted the edge of her fan backward, toward the couple who stood behind them. “But now that I am finally here …”
Marie’s bright gaze landed on Michael as he turned back from whatever had distracted him. “Why, Prince Kalishnikoff.” Her lips curved into a smile of pure delight. “How absolutely marvelous to see you again. And together with Caro again, tonight.”
“Lady Rothmere.” Michael bowed as the line moved forward. “A pleasure.”
“I’ve been hearing talk of you everywhere,” Marie purred. “Who was it … oh, yes. Princess Bagration, so I hear, has named you the handsomest gentleman at the Congress.�
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Caroline felt her jaw tighten, even as she maintained her smile. She saw Michael’s lips twitch with barely restrained mirth. If he teased her about this later, she would have to throttle him.
“An honor indeed,” Michael murmured. “The princess is too kind.”
“So all the gentleman say, certainly.” Marie sniffed. “I wouldn’t know, of course.”
“No?” Michael’s voice was as soft as silk. “What a pity for you, Lady Rothmere.”
“I beg your pardon?” She blinked at him.
Amusement restored Caroline’s voice. “I believe we’re being invited to the retiring room, Marie,” she said, nodding to the gesturing footman beside them. “Prince Kalishnikoff …” She met his warm gaze and let herself smile, even knowing that Marie was watching. “I’ll see you again shortly, I hope.”
“I shall look forward to it.” He lifted her hand to his lips.
His kiss tingled against her skin, shooting warmth up through her arm. She almost stepped back to keep herself from revealing her feelings too publicly, but then she remembered. Her final duty …
Under Marie’s interested gaze, Caroline said carefully, “I know you haven’t been feeling well, Your Highness. If you should need to leave before me tonight …”
Michael’s brows drew together into a frown. Caroline finished as lightly as possible.
“My carriage is waiting on the Bankgasse, and I’ve instructed my coachman, Henry, to follow your commands. Do feel free to take the carriage if you should need to retire early. You’ll find everything there that you might need.” Should she hint at where she’d hidden the bribe for the customs inspectors? No, he was surely clever enough to find it on his own.
Michael’s grip tightened around her hand. “I’m certain that won’t be necessary.”
“I do hope not.” She drew her hand away, keeping her serene expression with an effort. “Shall we, Marie?”
She felt Michael’s gaze following her as she led the way to the women’s retiring room, where maids waited to unbutton their pelisses and smooth any wind-blown hairstyles before they were presented to the emperor and empress themselves.
Congress of Secrets Page 27
