Lady of Intrigue

by Sabrina Darby

  The following days she stayed good to her word. She stuck close to her father, did her best to be the dutiful daughter, the one who could assist him with anything that occurred. He gave her only the most menial of work, and she caught him staring at her in odd moments.

  Life grew uncomfortable, and when Silviana, the Princess von Wolfstein, returned to Vienna from a brief trip to the countryside and invited her for a day of shopping, Jane agreed with alacrity.

  “It is so good to be able to spend time with you,” Silvie said as they walked down the street, Silvie’s footman in tow. She was Jane’s second cousin, and the last time she had seen her was several years ago in London. They exchanged regular, if infrequent, correspondence, one of the ways in which Jane practiced her German and maintained knowledge of the details of life abroad, as Silvie was frequently traveling, unperturbed in the recent years by Napoleon’s army cutting its swath across the continent. She was intrepid, to the point that Jane had often thought her wandering a sign of foolishness more than intelligence. But now, strolling together through the busy Baroque streets of fashionable Vienna, she was inclined to adjust her opinion. Or adjust her opinion of herself, for she would not be a hypocrite and judge her cousin with one standard and herself with another.

  Silvie was neither flighty nor stupid. She merely had a lust for life that was not satisfied by the narrow boundaries of her small country.

  “The patisserie is very good, I assure you,” she said, pointing at the cake shop to their right. “I am thankful these high-waisted styles allow me to indulge. But if you don’t mind, I would love to stop in this store first. I have begun collecting antique porcelain. Collections are always such odd things, but after I read Father d’Entrecolles’ book on Chinese porcelain, how I came upon that book is an entirely different story, I had an absolute fascination.”

  Jane laughed. She knew little more than the basics of porcelain production, and was not particularly interested in the wares other than their usefulness when hosting dinner. But she followed her cousin into the store. Soon Silvie was engrossed in the little porcelain boxes, engaging the proprietor in a discussion about their provenance and craftsmanship. Jane wandered away, perusing the aisles filled with goods, some of which seemed more broken than desirable.

  The store was narrow and winding, a series of small connected rooms that took up the ground floor of a four-story building that might once have been a townhouse but now seemed to be cut up into individual apartments. Each little room was devoted to something different, from oil lamps to armoires—that last room had been very difficult to navigate. As she reached a room that fit her idea of what might once have been kitchens or a scullery, another customer entered. From her peripheral vision, she had the sense that he was a larger man, and really, he took up so much space in the tiny room. He was moving closer as if he wished to pass her. She looked to the side. Past her was one more shelf and then a door, possibly a door to the back alley, although she was disoriented in this winding space.

  Jane stepped closer to the shelf, the edge of the wood uncomfortable against her, but the man did not pass. Instead, he crowded her. She whirled around to give him a proper dressing down for practically accosting a woman. A fist hit her rib cage. “That’s a knife I’ve got,” a harsh voice said, and she recognized that the fist was wrapped around a blade that came to a sharp point. “Leave with me or you won’t be leaving alive.”

  She jabbed her elbow back instinctually, and then a sweaty hand clasped over her mouth even as the knife dug into her side, stinging as it penetrated cloth and broke skin.

  “Don’t say a word,” the man said with a grunt of effort as he yanked her toward him. “Unless you want it to be your last.”

  She looked around the room, so far from where she had left Silvie and the proprietor at the front of the store. She had thought nothing of venturing back to this corner to examine the wares. If she screamed, how fast would someone respond? Would it be before she’d been stabbed to death?

  As she thought through the iterations of possible events, the man shuttled her to the rear door of the store, which led out into the mews. He pushed open the door and a gust of cold wind blew in.

  Why was he trying to kidnap her? Did he perhaps want Silvie? There were any number of political reasons the princess might be threatened, but there was only one reason for Jane to be. Unless this was not a premeditated attack but some insane man intent upon… She did not wish to finish the thought.

  She walked slowly, trying to give herself time to find some way to escape. Was there a carriage waiting down the lane? Or how else did he intend to transport her? Would she be able to signal help?

  A loose stone beneath her foot gave her an idea and she forced herself to stumble. He tried to hoist her back up, the knife just grazing her flesh and causing a new stinging, but there was space, space to slam her heel back against his leg and then twist away.

  Free of his grip, she ran for the open door, aware that he thundered behind her, gaining ground. He slammed her down. The ground was hard and cold beneath her, his weight heavy. Then the pressure of his body was gone and instead of the gravel of the man’s voice, she could hear grunts and the sound of a struggle, of bodies engaged in a fight. She rolled to her side. There was a thundering of footsteps away from her. She looked down the alley where another man, in a dark green coat, raced after her attacker. At the end of the alley, the green-coated man hesitated, looked over his shoulder at her, and then came to a full stop, a full turn, and headed back her way.

  She scrambled up from the ground in case this man was no more of a friend than the other. She had thought at first he must be an employee or patron of the store, but he cut a fierce figure with a nose that looked to have been broken multiple times and a large, muscular frame.

  “Are you all right?” he asked in heavily accented English.

  “Yes, thank you. Fortuitous that you stumbled upon us when you did.”

  The man’s expression was rather grim as he shook his head. “If he had entered from the rear, I would not have been able to save you.” He said the dire words as if he were criticizing himself for not being more heroic.

  “Mr…”

  “Bohm.”

  “Mr. Bohm, I do thank you very much. I have no idea who that man was—”

  Bohm laughed humorlessly. “But you do. That was Szabo’s man. You were supposed to stop asking questions.”

  She stared at him. “I don’t understand.”

  “Badeau instructed me to protect you in his absence, but it is difficult to protect a woman who does not heed advice.”

  “How do I know this is true?” Despite her question, she believed him. The pieces fit into place in her mind.

  “I have known him for a very long time, since he was a boy. But I can give you no proof other than my identity and my reputation. Ask any sporting man who Valentin Bohm is and you shall know of me.”

  A pugilist, then. Perhaps this was a complex plot to gain her trust, but she went with her instinct. “Would you accompany me home?”

  He nodded.

  As they made their way back through the store, Jane attempted a defense against his previous accusation. “I did, in fact, heed his advice,” she said and then sighed. The conversation with Mrs. Abbings had seemed so innocuous and yet she had been drawn into a mistake. “He did not tell me he had hired me a bodyguard.”

  “I believe he did not wish to alarm you unnecessarily, or draw undue attention to my presence.”

  “I certainly am alarmed. And apparently need one very much. One not in the shadows.” They had reached the front of the store and Silvie was still there chattering with the owner of the store as if there had been no commotion, nothing amiss anywhere else. When Jane stepped up to her and excused herself from the rest of the outing, Silvie looked at her with a frown, her gaze likely taking in every tear and speck of dirt on Jane’s dress. Jane shook her head slightly and thankfully Silvie took the hint, turning her attention to Bohm.

&nb
sp; “I know you, do I not?”

  He smiled. “As I was telling Lady Jane, I am famous here in Vienna.”

  “Herr Bohm, yes.” The proprietor was nodding now, too. Jane knew the recognition was a false sort of validation for her instinct. A famous man could as easily be a villain, but she had chosen to believe Bohm. He had, after all, just saved her life.

  “I am not feeling quite the thing, cousin,” Jane said.

  Silvie sent her footman for the carriage, and used the few minutes of waiting to complete her purchase. She was a bit nonplussed to discover Bohm would be accompanying them, but in the carriage Jane explained a small portion of the events, that she had been set upon by a man determined to abduct her person. Silvie was suitably horrified and Jane wished for a moment she could confide everything to her cousin, discover if here there was really a kindred soul, someone who might understand or help Jane to better understand the recent events, the changes within herself.

  Instead, Jane begged Silvie not to mention the incident to anyone, and the drive back to Jane’s Vienna residence was filled with a falseness that discomfited her. She had never had reason to not be forthright. She understood and practiced discretion but fabricating events was a different matter entirely. Yet, she would simply have to live with the dissonance of her actions going against her values.

  Once the door of the apartment had closed behind her, Jane started shaking. She wrapped her arms around herself, eyes stinging. Then the shaking grew worse and her teeth chattered as tears streamed down her face.

  “Lady Jane, you had better sit.” Bohm stopped, and she was aware that he spoke with a maid before he guided her into the sitting room. She let him direct her, his hand on her arm. Her face was hot, even as she shook uncontrollably.

  “I can’t stop shaking.” He arranged a lap blanket around her on the sofa as if he were her maid. She murmured a thank you and wiped at her eyes.

  “It is a normal reaction to a shocking event,” Bohm said. “You’ve held up admirably.”

  Admirably. She had survived the carriage accident, traveled across many German countries and Austria, and had an affair with a man who was both spy and assassin. Comparatively, the incident in the antique shop was not any more traumatic, and yet— A sob escaped her. She covered her face with her hands, all too aware that a stranger was witnessing this collapse.

  “Jane, what happened?”

  Fear whipped through her. A strange reaction and yet at that same instant she knew it was because she had so much to hide. She took a deep breath, wiped the tears away, and looked up at her father who was striding into the room, a maid with a tea tray nearly on his heels.

  “This man.” She gestured to Valentin Bohm, aware that her hand trembled wildly. “He saved my life. Someone tried to abduct me.”

  “Where was your maid or your footman?”

  “I was with Silvie. I thought perhaps the attempt was intended for her.” That was an obfuscation, as that thought had been brief and easily disposed. “However, I am concerned… Herr Bohm, would you mind if I return momentarily?”

  She rose, folding the blanket and placing it on the sofa. The action calmed her, steadied the residual trembling.

  “Of course.”

  She walked with her father down the hall to the room that currently served as his study. It was pink and filled with delicate things and certainly had not originally been intended to be a man’s sanctum.

  “Father, I am concerned that this event had to do with Lord Powell’s death. It isn’t as if I didn’t understand the meaning beneath your questions. So I want to know, why do you not think his death was an accident?”

  She was not quite lying and that was the only thing that kept Jane from blurting out everything that had happened. But she could not reveal Gerard. If she must be a liar to protect him, then she would until she was given a reason to reveal him. Furthermore, Gerard was merely a tool, a dagger, so to speak. The one who needed to be brought to justice in the event Powell’s death was unjust was the one who hired him.

  She was making excuses for Gerard and it made her feel despicable and hopeless. How could she love a man who was dishonorable?

  To support that irrational love, she was fishing for information. It was beneath her, and yet…

  “Jane, this is very serious. What happened?”

  “We were in an antiques shop near Michaelerplatz and a man put a knife to my side and instructed me to calmly leave with him or he’d hurt me. I struggled against him, but when he dug the knife into my side, making it clear he intended his words, I worried that I would not escape his knife fast enough if I did scream for assistance. I was on the ground, he was running away, and Herr Bohm was in fast pursuit. I hoped Herr Bohm, though I did not yet know his name, would return with the criminal for questioning. Herr Bohm did return, though not with the man.”

  “Jane…”

  She gestured to her side. “My dress was ripped and I was bleeding and did not feel I could continue shopping in such an instance. I asked Silvie to keep the matter secret. I wanted to speak with you.”

  She could see the thoughts swiftly moving behind her father’s eyes. She could only imagine their content.

  “You did the right thing, my dear. We do not wish to create panic in Vienna. It is best to investigate quietly and not draw undue attention to the English delegation.”

  Although they were only on the fringes of the delegation, as English, their behavior would reflect on the rest, though it would be hard to surpass the more widely discussed, scandalous affairs of Talleyrand, Metternich and the Emperor Alexander, or to be more circumspect than Lord Castlereagh and his wife.

  “What is happening, Father? Why have I been targeted?”

  “I am not certain, but perhaps it was truly for Princess von Wolfstein.”

  “You don’t believe that.”

  He sighed. “Why do you doubt me?”

  She could have asked him the same. Except, she was, in fact, concealing truth from him. She suspected her father of the same. Perhaps it was her guilt that made her shade him with her motivations. That thought made her retreat.

  “I would like to hire Herr Bohm for my personal protection while we remain in Vienna,” she said simply.

  “Who is this man?”

  “As I understand it, he is a pugilist by trade. I am not certain what quirk of fate brought him to my assistance, but I am grateful.”

  A quirk of fate named Gerard. A quirk of fate that had changed everything six weeks earlier—the decision to travel with the Powells, Gerard’s decision to let her live, the unimaginable ability of love to flower between two unlikely people.

  “I am certain that a footman would be sufficient, but you have had a difficult month, and I wish to set your mind at ease. I shall speak to the fellow and if his reputation is honorable, will do my best to fulfill your request.”

  Anger seethed at the demeaning way in which her father addressed her, yet Jane smiled her gratitude. He had always appeared to show her intellect the greatest respect, had not judged her by her sex, but now, ever since she had arrived in Vienna, despite availing himself of her skills, he treated her as if she were nervous and prone to hysteria. As if she needed to be placated and coddled.

  Of course, her father had just walked in on her sobbing like the worst sort of weakling. But though she could not reveal it to her father and risk exposing Gerard, Jane’s fear for her own life was very real and grounded in fact.

  And that fear deepened when her father came to her the next day.

  “Jane, my dear, I’m sending you back to London. With Mr. Bohm as your guard.”

  A chill ran down her spine at the words. Her father would not reveal so much, would not do anything so drastic, if he did not believe the threat to be serious. If other people he respected had not concurred. She wondered what interviews he had had that morning to form his opinions. Who had he spoken to? Who knew what? She was beyond frustrated that despite her questioning she had unearthed very little and acco
mplished nothing other than to put her life in danger. It was not the sort of actions she prided herself on, and she could not excuse herself by saying that it was out of her realm of experience. Wisdom and intellect were talents to be used when faced with new challenges. If she were only ever faced with tasks with which she was familiar, then she might as well be an automaton.

  “Apparently your questioning has attracted unwanted attention.”

  “Apparently,” she agreed, her tone uncharacteristically sarcastic.

  “The reason I questioned you so closely is that we do have reason to believe that the accident was not in fact an accident. I imagine you were spared simply because you were unconscious. Perhaps these villains thought you dead.”

  “What does this have to do with England’s aims?”

  “I’m not certain,” her father said, surprising her with that confession. “What this has brought to light is that Powell’s last mistress was an Austrian spy.” Jane blinked, more pieces of the puzzle coming together. The way Mrs. Abbings had attached herself to Jane, seemed inordinately interested in Jane’s work for her father. “Powell’s death may have been related to that or to his role as an advisor on German affairs, as his wife was born in Saxony.” Jane had known the last, it was why she had chosen Saxony for misdirection. But was it her questioning that had made that reach her father’s ears or was the connection in truth one that was suspect?

  But more interesting and frightening than that question was her father choosing to make this revelation at all. He was rarely so forthcoming about subjects he considered secret. Of course, for so long she had been his confidante and privy to many of those secrets, but still.

  “Or it may be due to his partnership with Imre Szabo. The man is known as ruthless. I do not know.”