Vienna Waltz (14 page)

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Authors: Teresa Grant

Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Historical, #Romance, #Historical Romance, #Mystery & Suspense

BOOK: Vienna Waltz
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She cast the briefest glance at Malcolm and Suzanne as they stepped into the room, then continued with what she had been saying. “I know one shouldn’t speak ill of the dead. And goodness knows I’m as horrified by what happened to Princess Tatiana as anyone. More so, perhaps, since I live in the Palm Palace. I keep wishing I’d been able to do something to save her. But—well—” Princess Bagration shrugged her elegant shoulders. Her gauze scarf slithered down, baring her low-cut laced bodice. “There’s no ignoring the facts just because someone has died.”
“What facts?” the Prince de Ligne inquired. He was reclining in an armchair, gaze fixed on the princess with the appreciation of a connoisseur. Gossip was to him what brandy or first editions were to some.
Princess Bagration turned her pale blue gaze on the prince. “I made some inquiries. I’m not sure why, save that something about Princess Tatiana has never quite rung true to me. These past weeks were the first time I’d been much in her company, as she spent most of the last decade in Paris.” Her gaze moved to Malcolm and Suzanne. “You knew her. . . well, Monsieur Rannoch. Did she ever talk about her past?”
“Not her childhood,” Malcolm said. Suzanne suspected her husband’s voice would sound easy to anyone but her.
“Perhaps I was the only one who was suspicious. Of course we were both Russian. Or so I thought.”
“Thought?” Dorothée asked. She was perched on a settee beside Julie Zichy.
“Princess Tatiana’s history was cleverly documented. I can quite see how Prince Kirsanov was taken in when he married her. But I found one of the servants from the school she attended. Supposedly attended. The school—”
“Catherine.” A tall, brown-haired figure in a black domino appeared in the doorway from the ballroom. Tsar Alexander.
Princess Bagration lifted her chin and regarded the man who was acknowledged to be her lover just as he was acknowledged to have been the lover of Princess Tatiana. “I’m only revealing what I’ve learned to be fact, Your Majesty. The school Princess Tatiana supposedly attended burned down years ago, but this woman told me that the one little daughter of Prince and Princess Sarasov, Princess Tatiana’s supposed parents, died of a fever at the age of nine. Princess Tatiana quite cleverly appropriated this poor child’s identity.”
Princess Bagration paused, letting her words sink in. Suzanne resisted the impulse to look at Malcolm and see how he was taking the revelation.
Count Otronsky cast a quick glance at Alexander, then looked back at Catherine Bagration. “Are you saying Princess Tatiana wasn’t the daughter of Prince and Princess Sarasov? Then who the devil was she?”
“I haven’t the least idea.” Princess Bagration extended a gold-sandaled foot. “For all I know she wasn’t even Russian. But it’s quite clear Princess Tatiana was a fraud.”
13
E
lisabeth touched her fingers to the jeweled edge of her mask. A number of the guests had switched masks at midnight, adding to the usual masquerade mischief. She wished she had managed to do so herself, though she doubted that a simple change of mask would have given her anonymity.
Candles burned low in the chandeliers and gilded sconces, but she could still hear the strains of “Mon Grandpère” from the ballroom. The dance from the last century was a traditional close to Metternich entertainments. Some intrepid souls continued to dance, while others milled about the stairs and the entrance hall, waiting for their carriages. The guttering candlelight gleamed against brightly colored silk and glinted off jeweled masks and diamond-stitched peasant skirts.
As she was about to step from an anteroom onto the stairs, she turned and met a familiar gaze. He had changed his black mask for a harlequin design, but she still knew Adam at once. He jerked his head to the side. The slightest gesture, but they’d learned to read each other’s smallest signals years ago. The knowledge was ingrained in her, like a pattern etched in glass.
He disappeared, and a moment later she followed him, through another anteroom into a salon that had been given over to cards but was now deserted. The remains of a game of écarté lay on the baize-covered table, and the air smelled of snuff and champagne and a mélange of perfumes.
Meeting Adam’s gaze, she knew at once what had happened, despite his mask. “You weren’t successful.”
“No.” He took her hands in his strong clasp. “But we now have allies.”
“Allies?” She drew back in alarm. In the Russian court, one learned not to trust oneself to allies.
Adam’s mouth lifted in a smile. “Sometimes one must learn to take help where it is possible, Lisa.” He told her about his arrangement with Malcolm Rannoch and his wife.
Fear thrummed through her like a shock from fire-warmed metal. “We scarcely know them.”
“I’ve been in numerous meetings with Rannoch and talked to him on more than one occasion. He has a good understanding, and he strikes me as a man of honor. I’ve been impressed with his willingness to stand up to Castlereagh when he disagrees.”
“This isn’t a border dispute, Adam.”
“One learns a lot about a man over border disputes. To own the truth, I was surprised and disappointed when I thought Rannoch was selling Princess Tatiana’s papers. His subsequent explanation confirmed my earlier opinion of him.”
“Though he was apparently betraying his wife with Princess Tatiana.”
“There are all sorts of betrayals, Lisa, for all sorts of reasons. Whatever else is between them, Rannoch and his wife clearly work well together.”
Elisabeth twitched her skirt away from a patch of spilled champagne on the floor. She had spoken with Suzanne Rannoch once or twice at various events and had met her in the Prater, walking with her young son. She had an image of Madame Rannoch holding the little boy up to look at the Chinese pavilion, heedless of the way the child crushed her frogged pelisse. “I like Suzanne Rannoch.” She drew a breath. “You’re right, we must be practical. I’ve made my mistakes. It’s folly to lament over the dangers in trying to fix them. This man who wanted to buy the papers from Monsieur Rannoch tonight. He knows about my letters?”
“Not necessarily.” Adam’s fingers tightened over her own. “We don’t know what else Princess Tatiana had in her possession. But he’ll almost certainly approach Rannoch again. If we can entrap him, we can learn more.”
She lifted a hand and smoothed his thick hair back from his mask. “Be careful, Adam.”
“If I weren’t careful I’d have been dead long since.”
“Don’t joke. I have enough on my conscience as it is.” She let her fingers linger against his temple. “Did you hear about the accusations Catherine Bagration made? That Princess Tatiana was a fraud?”
“The talk spread like wildfire. Whether or not it’s true is another matter.”
“To play a part for so many years—”
Adam gave a bleak smile. “Isn’t that what we’ve all done, one way and another?”
“But not with assumed identities. Why would she have pretended to be someone else?”
He shook his head. “We can’t know that until we discover who she really was.”
“Adam.” She put her hands on his shoulders. “You didn’t tell the Rannochs
what
was in my missing papers, did you?”
“Need you ask it? Of course not.”
Their gazes held. Below the mask, she saw that Adam had a small cut on his chin from shaving and that the lines beside his mouth were deeper than she remembered. How well she knew that mouth. Teasing against the corner of her own, lingering at the hollow of her throat. Hot with urgency and yet always filled with a desperate tenderness.
The candlelight seemed brighter, but she felt the chill of the night air through the muslin and lace of her Bavarian gown. Adam stared down at her for a long moment. Then, as though yielding to a compulsion, he bent his head, and for the first time in years, pressed his mouth to hers.
Dorothée leaned her head against the Italian silk squabs and studied her uncle by marriage across the lamp-lit interior of the carriage. “Did you know? That Princess Tatiana wasn’t who she claimed to be?”
Talleyrand opened his heavy-lidded eyes and smiled at her. “My dear child, are you accusing me of perpetrating a fraud upon society all these years?”
“Of course not,” Dorothée said, though she knew her husband’s uncle was capable of doing just that if he thought it necessary to achieve his objectives. “But I can quite see you wouldn’t have wanted to expose someone you thought of as a friend.”
“Princess Tatiana is hardly the only one in society to lie about her origins.” Wilhelmine, who was sharing their carriage on the drive back to Vienna, looked up from contemplation of the mask lying on the seat beside her. “Though I must say, to adopt the identity of the daughter of a real noble family was quite brazen.”
“Safer in a way than making up an identity out of whole cloth,” Talleyrand said. “She had a real family history to back her up. There were no close Sarasov connections in St. Petersburg or Moscow. And once she’d married Prince Kirsanov, few would have thought to question her. It probably helped that she didn’t live much in Russia.”
Wilhelmine adjusted the gold silk folds of her domino. “Very enterprising of Catherine Bagration to have learned the truth. Though it smacks a bit of desperation. I always thought Catherine was afraid Tatiana outranked her in the tsar’s affections.”
Dorothée’s gaze flew to her sister’s face. “You don’t think—”
“That Catherine Bagration murdered Tatiana Kirsanova in a fit of jealousy? I can imagine less likely scenarios.”
Talleyrand crossed his clubfoot over his good leg. “Catherine Bagration is certainly cold-blooded enough to commit murder. But I think she’d need a stronger motive. Jealousy over the tsar’s attentions might pique her vanity enough she’d look for reason to discredit her rival. But I don’t think she takes any man so seriously as to kill for him. Much like you, my dear Wilhelmine.”
Wilhelmine returned Talleyrand’s smile with one every bit as dangerous. For a moment Dorothée felt as though she were watching a play without knowing quite what had happened in the first act. “Thank you, Prince,” Wilhelmine said. “But I think you forget that for women such as Catherine Bagration and Princess Tatiana and me, the way to power lies through men. Surely you of all people understand the seduction of power.”
“I do indeed.” Years of events that had occurred before Dorothée was born drifted through Talleyrand’s shrewd blue eyes. “Though I wouldn’t think a woman as addicted to power as you claim to be would have given up Prince Metternich.”
Wilhelmine shrugged her shoulders. There was something so elegant about her every movement. Dorothée always felt hopelessly gawky beside her. “It may not be in your makeup to realize this, Prince Talleyrand, but as seductive as power can be, some things are even more so. I didn’t mean to fall back in love with Alfred von Windischgrätz, but—well, that’s just it, isn’t it? Love isn’t something you plan. Besides, Metternich’s adoration was growing smothering.”
Talleyrand twitched a frilled cuff smooth. “Prince Metternich has yet to learn that love should never be allowed to interfere with politics. Though even after my long and varied career, I confess that that is often more easily said than done.”
“Metternich didn’t seem to pester you too badly this evening, Willie,” Dorothée said.
“No. He’s stopped the mad, desperate pleas. But he still follows me round the room with that intense gaze.” Wilhelmine threw up her gloved hands, her sapphire bracelet flashing in the light of the interior lamps. “Oh, the devil. I sound heartless. I am sorry for him. But you’d think by his age he’d have learned to let a love affair die a graceful death.”
“Anyone would think you didn’t believe in love, Willie,” Dorothée said, and then wondered at her own words, because she wasn’t at all sure she believed in it herself.
Wilhelmine gripped the carriage strap as they rounded a corner. “Oh,
chérie,
of course I believe in it. I just don’t expect it to last.”
In an odd way, Dorothée found this idea even more disturbing. Silly. She wasn’t as far removed as she’d like to think from the idealistic schoolgirl she’d been a few years ago. She wound the strings of her mask through her gloved fingers, and returned to the most dramatic events of the evening. “Tsar Alexander was furious at Catherine Bagration when she told the story about Princess Tatiana’s origins. I almost thought he was going to storm across the room and strike her.”
“He can’t abide being made a fool of.” Wilhelmine adjusted the links of her bracelet.
“He has the temper of a man used to supreme power,” Talleyrand said. “You’d be wise to remember that, Wilhelmine.”
“I can look after myself. Though Tsar Alexander’s temper is hardly any concern of mine.”
“Is it not?” Talleyrand asked in a soft, polite voice.
The lamplight bounced off Talleyrand’s hard gaze and Wilhelmine’s defiant one as they jolted over a rut in the road. Dorothée studied her sister. She knew the tsar had called on Willie several times recently, often at the hour of eleven o’clock in the morning, which Willie had once reserved exclusively for Metternich. She had heard the rumors that her sister’s relationship with the tsar had gone further. Some even whispered that the tsar had pressured Wilhelmine to end her affair with Metternich.
“Willie—” Dorothée said.
Wilhelmine let out a peal of laughter. “Oh, Doro, I always thought the good thing about your bookish side was that you were above listening to silly gossip. Tsar Alexander has a bevy of mistresses in Vienna, including Catherine Bagration and poor Princess Tatiana. But I’m not among their number.”
Dorothée gripped the carriage strap. “That isn’t why—”
“Why I quarreled with Princess Tatiana two days ago?” Wilhelmine flicked a glance at Talleyrand. “Doro walked in on Princess Tatiana and me being less than civil. No, that was about something else entirely,
ma chère
.”
“Did it have to do with Tatiana’s trade in art treasures?” Talleyrand inquired.
Wilhelmine’s brows lifted, then she gave a faint smile. “Your store of knowledge still surprises me. I suppose there’s no need to keep it secret, now that the Prince de Ligne blurted it out. I’d learned Princess Tatiana had come into possession of a casket that had belonged to our family for generations.”
Dorothée’s fingers froze on the carriage strap. “Princess Tatiana had the Courland casket?”
“Apparently.” Wilhelmine’s gaze flickered back to Talleyrand. “It was fashioned by Cellini. Legend has it that he created it for an Italian noblewoman called Maddalena Verano who helped him when he was imprisoned in the Castel Sant’Angelo.”
“Supposedly for embezzling jewels from the pope’s tiara,” Dorothée put in, picking up the story long familiar from childhood. “Cellini claimed the charges were false.”
“And when he eventually was freed, he gave the casket to Contessa Verano in gratitude,” Wilhelmine said. “She later became the mistress of Gotthard von Kettler, the first Duke of Courland, and gave him the casket. It’s been in our family ever since. Until it was lost in the wars.”
“How on earth did Princess Tatiana end up with it?” Dorothée asked.
“I don’t know.” Wilhelmine smoothed the folds of her domino. “I made her what I thought a very handsome offer for it by any standards. She refused me. Needless to say, I was annoyed because the casket belongs back in the family. But I was hardly so annoyed I’d have killed the princess.”
Dorothée sighed, relieved, and yet also troubled because Willie could have told her all this earlier. Why hadn’t she? “And Tsar Alexander—?” Dorothée asked.
“I find him useful at the moment.” Wilhelmine whipped the domino closed over her Carinthian costume. “For my own reasons.”
Dorothée met her sister’s armored gaze for a moment, then looked away to find that Talleyrand was watching Willie as well, his eyes narrowed. Dorothée knew the calculations that went on behind that gaze of her uncle’s. Wilhelmine was hiding something. And Talleyrand knew it.

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