Portrait of Seduction

by Carrie Lofty

  “Shall I be flattered or insulted?”

  “Be practical. Give me the name of someone I can use and where to find him.”

  With unnerving calm, his surprise apparently exhausted, Karl stepped to the gate and held the bars. “Why don’t you ask Oliver?”

  Greta frowned. The idea of asking Oliver for such a favor not only made her nausea worse, but it was utterly laughable. “Perhaps I would if I thought he might know such people.”

  “I wasn’t suggesting that he would know criminals.” Karl grinned with such malice that Greta shivered within her pelisse. “I meant you should ask him to do it.”

  “Why ever would I do such a thing?”

  “Because he’s very good at whatever he sets his mind to. And at one time, many years ago, that included criminal enterprises.”

  The air left her lungs in a heady rush. “No,” she whispered. “I don’t believe it.”

  That vicious grin intensified. “Believe it, Fräulein. Your dear Oliver is one of my oldest friends. He and I—well, we share a few particularly sordid years. Ask him how he wound up in the army. You’ll be surprised by his reply. That is, if he decides to trust you with the truth.”

  “Give me a name.”

  “I just did.”

  “And I tell you I won’t believe it!” Her whispered hiss likely echoed no further than a few feet, but Greta flinched at how loud it sounded there in the night-quiet garden.

  Karl chuckled softly. “Poor girl. Was he very good for your first time?”

  “I won’t listen to this.”

  “I think you will. You’re a curious thing. Ask yourself what sort of valet can do what he does. Ask yourself why he was able to save your life without so much as breaking a sweat.”

  “He was a soldier.”

  “And before that he was a thief. Army life beat a healthy dose of respectability into him, but don’t let appearances fool you.” He glanced down at his simple garb. “You saw through me. I wonder why he’s been able to fool you so completely.”

  At Greta’s inability to speak, he produced another low, chilling laugh. “I’ll bid you gute Nacht,” he said. “Whatever blackmail you’d intended to leverage against me will now be, I assume, reconsidered? You wouldn’t want anyone to know what I do about our dear Oliver’s past, nor about—what was it? A painting you intend to steal? That wouldn’t do at all.”

  He bowed formally and turned on his heel. Greta slumped against the gate, slowly sinking toward the dirt. All strength had seeped out of her. All certainty.

  Oliver was a good man. The best she had ever known. Karl Schulz was a lying, conniving bounder who was perpetrating a grand ruse. She should no more believe him than she should be there in the garden in the middle of the night. But Oliver had never added up properly. Something about him always struck her as out of step with the picture he presented to the world.

  And the fact of Maria Lucca remained. Greta was no closer to solving the problem of that forgery than she had been at the start of this sordid conversation.

  She was still sitting on the ground, her body trembling, when a familiar pair of boots stepped out from behind a dwarf cherry tree.

  Oliver held his wrists behind his back to keep from leaping toward the gate and grabbing Karl by the throat. All this time he had been careful, upstanding, decent. That a man could come along and threaten that carefully maintained life struck him as some strange divine justice. The sins of the past would not be quiet.

  But he had held still, flaying himself with the disbelief and outrage in Greta’s voice. She could not even entertain the notion that Karl spoke truthfully. They were half-truths steeped in bitterness, but Greta did not know that.

  Now he had two difficulties to confront—explaining his past and figuring out why she met with Karl in the middle of the night. Both would alter, perhaps forever, his tenuous relationship with the woman he loved.

  Love.

  With a whispered curse, Oliver hung his head. How had he let this go so far? He loved Greta Zweig, only realizing it now when fate was prepared to send them spinning away from one another—without even the comfort of a few unblemished memories to keep them company. All they had shared would now be tainted.

  She was a wreck, huddled on the ground, her forearms draped over trembling knees.

  “I’m glad he’s gone,” Oliver said quietly.

  “I should like him gone too, if he knew something incriminating about my past.”

  Crossing the distance between them took nerve and concentration. “Ask me what you want to know. But understand if you do, I may ask a few questions too.”

  “Such as?”

  “If I were to guess, I’d say it had just gone three in the morning. Why were you out here meeting the esteemed Baron Hoffer at such an hour?”

  “Baron? Don’t perpetrate his ruse for him.”

  Oliver had not heard their entire conversation. He had been awake, pacing his room, before sensing her footsteps in the corridor. “He told you?”

  “No, I told him. He worked last summer in the kitchen of my uncle’s manor. I only just recalled where I’d seen his face.” She tipped her head back, meeting his gaze squarely. “Is he your friend? Are you here planning some criminal scheme against the Venners?”

  He should have known how much her suspicion would hurt, but suggesting that his past had fingers long enough to sully his family was too much to endure. “I care very deeply for them both. Everything I do, all of my energy, goes toward repaying their kindness and show of faith.”

  “And you want me to believe that?”

  “Yes.”

  Greta sniffed. Her wide eyes shone with an unnatural brightness. “Tell me.”

  Weary, resigned, Oliver sat heavily on a cobblestone some two feet from Greta. She flinched and dragged her knees tighter toward her chest—a subtle act to slice at his heart. Only now did he realize how deeply he cared for her, when she was ready to treat him as a criminal.

  Perhaps, at the very least, he could explain.

  “I was a…a wild young man. All of the forthrightness you tease me about now—these were hard-won victories over how I once behaved. My father was a man of some importance, but I was born a bastard. He never acknowledged me or my mother.” The simplicity of such a sentence struck him as painfully comical. Even after all these years, he could not face that truth without heartache. To be fathered by such a coward. Oliver bit his molars together, shoving away the hurt. “So I did what many a lad would do in such a situation. I broke every rule and made sure he knew it.”

  “You say that as if it’s some justification.”

  “Perhaps. But realize that I take full responsibility for what I did. After a time, I was more than aware of right and wrong, then went out of my way to make trouble anyway.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “I started stealing things from his home. Tokens, at first—pieces of him. Just to prove that I could. When I’d learn he was furious at missing a book or a cigar box, I congratulated myself. I was winning, you see. Then it became a matter of striking out against his friends, too. Anyone I thought harbored a kind word or thought for the old man.”

  He chanced a quick look toward Greta. She was no longer quite so distant, her body leaning nearer as if in anticipation of his next words. Before he lost his resolve, he pressed on.

  “But then he began to punish the household staff.” A chill shivered across his shoulders as he recalled that horrible time. He had been a young man lost. “My father made public spectacles of the servants he suspected of the thefts—jewels and such. They were humiliated, or dismissed without a letter to recommend them. I couldn’t let them take the punishment.”

  “You revealed yourself?”

  “I did. I returned all of the items and stood before him, ready to accept whatever consequences my behavior merited.” Oliver exhaled heavily. He wanted very much to take Greta’s hand but he did not dare. Not yet. “I fully expected to be jailed for the crimes. Perhaps it was a general sense of mercy,
or perhaps a nod to the paternity he never acknowledged, but he gave me a commission to join the Prussian army. I took it, eagerly, and said good-bye to my mother. She passed away the following year, and my father a few months before I returned to civilian life.”

  “You never saw either of them again.”

  He needn’t have fretted about taking Greta’s hand because she reached for him. Palm to palm, fingers twined, her gaze fixed on his face, she silently urged him to continue.

  “Karl was not wrong,” he said. “My illicit skills were very useful to my commanders. I was a spy and reconnaissance expert. But I never forgot the humiliation of having to admit to my father what I had done, and I never forgot his unexpected moment of kindness in handing me a profession.”

  Oliver shrugged, shifting the heavy weight of his past. He had worked too hard to escape; he would not be dragged back.

  “After the fighting concluded,” he said, “when I had the opportunity to join Lord Venner’s household, I vowed to do my duty by him. I would not succumb to the anger of my youth. Not again.”

  Greta smoothed the fine hairs along the back of his hand. “And that’s what makes you so stubborn now?”

  He was about to take offense when she flashed a shy smile. “Yes,” he said. “Afraid so.”

  “And how did you know this man, Karl?”

  “He and I grew up together, got into trouble together. When I joined the army, he followed me. He didn’t have anything to gain by staying. We were very close but got separated during the war.”

  No matter the relief of unburdening himself of certain past events, Oliver could not give voice to his complicated relationship with Karl. The key was to keep Greta away from him.

  With her head bent low, she was shaded by evening shadows and the drape of her unbound hair. Desire and a deeper, more terrifying regard turned her to a living goddess. But she was here in the garden after dark, consulting Karl for some reason. He did not enjoy the idea of her thinking badly of him, but neither did he want to consider her in an inauspicious light.

  “Why are you out here?” he asked. “Why Karl?”

  The tips of her hair trembled. Otherwise she held perfectly still. Even her fingers had stopped their anxious petting. “I needed his help.”

  “Help?”

  “I said I recognized him from my uncle’s staff. I assumed he might know someone who…who could help me.”

  “You’re not telling me.”

  “Uncle Thaddeus sold a forgery of mine to Maria Lucca.”

  “Tell her it’s a forgery.”

  Greta shook her head violently. “There won’t be any need. She’s a renowned connoisseur of art. She’ll spot it as a forgery straight away. As the duke’s mistress, she has influence enough to ruin my family. My uncle will never forgive me if my cousins are unable to marry well.”

  “The fault is his.” Anger made his voice more harsh than he had intended. “He should’ve learned his lesson in trying to cheat Ingrid.”

  “He should have but he didn’t. I—Oliver you must believe that I argued against it. I fought him, and I never fight him. Not outright, at any rate. But it’s too late. The painting has been delivered to her private residence, displayed in her great hall.”

  “And she’s returning from Berchtesgaden with the duke.”

  “Yes.” That one word was nearly a sob. “And so I asked Karl for a name. Someone who could retrieve that painting.”

  “Retrieve? You mean steal.”

  “Yes.”

  “And what name did he give you?”

  Greta bit her lower lip. Then she met his gaze squarely. “He said I should ask you.”

  Oliver blanched. This was going to end badly. He knew it. But he could no more deny her in distress than he could have permitted that knife-wielding madman to hurt her at the opera.

  “He’s right,” Oliver said quietly. “Ask me.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Morning came and went with Greta in a nervous stupor. She tried to sketch but kept breaking her charcoal. Fiddling with watercolors became more of a frustration than a release, so she spent hours arranging her meager selection of brushes and pots of paint. Sometimes it was easier to play with the tools of her trade than to dare tackle a new creative work. The tools did not invite criticism, not like she did her own feeble attempts.

  The urge to pace—even run—overrode all thought. Maria Lucca would arrive within the next two days, with rumors abounding that Napoleon would soon follow.

  French armies invading Salzburg. Again.

  Greta tried to reprimand herself, that the fates of entire countries were far more important than her relatively petty concerns, but she found no comfort there. The advancing French assault only strengthened the need to keep her family safe. Anna and Theresa needed wealth and respectability, yet they only possessed half of that important combination. Without their respectability, they would never marry well—trapped in the path of oncoming armies.

  The two problems bound up within her mind so tightly that a headache followed her through the whole morning. Until a missive arrived.

  She was sitting in the salon where Ingrid had promised to put in an appearance. The sketchbook in Greta’s lap remained closed. She simply tapped her fingers against the arms of the chair, needing an occupation but finding no concentration. Anna and Theresa were writing letters and sharing quiet words. Greta watched their bowed heads, how the sunlight caught silver-blond strands of hair in elaborate coiffures. She envied them their innocence. They knew nothing of fear or anxiety. They knew nothing of feeling as if grave mistakes already tainted the present and blackened the future.

  The footman who entered was nearly anonymous in the Venner family livery, but Greta had taken to finding the human being beneath the costume. In an odd way, she felt compelled to—if only to constantly honor Oliver and the fact he was very much his own man, no matter his lower station.

  “Thomas, isn’t it?”

  “Ja, Fräulein Zweig,” he said, a slight frown edging across his brows. “That’s right.”

  She accepted the letter, proud that her hands barely shook. “Danke, Thomas.”

  He snapped a quick bow and hurried out of the salon. Anna and Theresa both tittered before returning to their correspondences. Weary of such game-playing, Greta did not wait to open the letter. Her heart thumped painfully at the sight of Oliver’s unmistakable script:

  Your room. Now.

  The painful thump of her heart transformed into a racing pulse. He had an answer for her. But the power of those three simple words had her thinking of how thoroughly he commanded her sexually. She was no longer an innocent like her cousins, but she had discovered something far more important. Desire. She desired Oliver Doerger like she had never wanted anything in her life—not even painting. Her feelings for him were pure inspiration, untainted by the criticism she leveled at her work.

  She stood and stuffed the letter in a skirt pocket. “I have a headache, my dears,” she said in all honesty. “I believe I shall retire to my room.”

  “Of course,” Anna said with an absent wave of her quill. “You look rather dreadful. Do get some rest.”

  With her customary chagrin, Greta shrugged off her cousin’s tactless yet honest comment. Having been out in the garden for most of the dawn’s early hours, huddled with Oliver against the garden gate, had not done wonders for her appearance upon waking. Her body was weary and her limbs leaden. Even her face felt overly haggard.

  Stiff legs carried her up the stairs. The doorknob turned beneath her fingers, despite a creeping numbness. Maria Lucca. Napoleon. Forgeries. Oliver. Too many tricks and troubles blunted her senses until nothing made sense.

  She entered the empty, sunlit room and hastened to draw the shades.

  Oliver cleared his throat.

  Greta whirled, her hands flying to her throat. A little squeak slipped free. Standing beside the bureau, Oliver was as at home in shadow during the day as he had been at midnight. He stepped away from
the bureau with almost negligent movements and locked the door. There he stood, watching her in a way that reminded her of their initial meetings—so intense, so piercing. Greta wanted to turn away but did not. She had grown so very fond of being scrutinized by his perceptive gaze and sharp mind. He allowed no pretense.

  “I’ll do it,” he said.

  Hardly in control of her senses, she blinked twice and shook her head. Surely he had not said those words. Surely he was above the criminal enterprise she had proposed. In the garden, his face had frozen over with a stony coldness as he’d offered himself as a candidate. Give me till morning, he’d said. I’ll have an answer then.

  Greta found herself approaching him, slowly, steadily, as if walking toward a trapped predator. Such an animal could lash out at any moment. Oliver, for all his goodness, was a tough man to bend. This request, she feared, would do more than bend him. He would break, and what they had—no matter how brief and illicit—would break too.

  “Why?” she asked.

  “Too many reasons, none of them good.” He touched her face, the softest of caresses. “Because I’m good at dangerous work. I’m good at keeping secrets. And part of me—damn, I’m still trying to prove myself to you.”

  “I—” Greta swallowed thickly. “I shouldn’t have asked it of you.”

  “Too late now. I am a man indebted to too many. To my father—right old sinner he was. To Karl. To Venner.” A tick along his jaw was her only indication of Oliver’s building temper, until he squeezed his powerful fingers along her nape. He dragged her face closer, breath heating the scant space between their lips. “Maybe for once, no matter how selfish, I want someone to be indebted to me.”

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I think I do.”

  A wave of panic cooled her skin and froze her bones. This was wrong. She was asking too much of him, like dragging an angel down to earth. “Don’t do this, Oliver. Please. I’ll take the blame and—Uncle Thaddeus has influence. We’ll be fine.”

  “Tonight,” he said, his mouth a grim line, “meet me in the garden. We’ll exit through the rear gate and have done with this.”