Vienna Waltz (20 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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He seemed almost relieved at the subject change. “It’s going to sound mad, but someone else approached me in secret.”
Suzanne pushed herself up against the pillows so she could get a better look at her husband’s face. “About Princess Tatiana’s papers?”
“No. To tell me I was asking the wrong questions.”
“About her death?”
“He said I should be asking not who killed Tatiana but what she had discovered. He implied she uncovered a plot just before she was killed.”
Suzanne sat up in bed and wrapped her arms round her knees, bare beneath the cool sheet. “The disquieting news she told Schubert about?”
“Very likely. The unseen man who told me this said she went to the Empress Rose tavern the day she died.”
“It could be a trap.”
“Possibly.” He rolled onto his back and sat up beside her. “But we know from Schubert that she’d discovered something. It’s worth investigating. I’ll take Addison.”
“Take me.”
He swung his gaze to her. “Sweetheart, it’s not wrapping you in cotton wool to—”
“I can say I’m looking for information about my sister. It’s a more innocuous approach. It will take them by surprise.”
“I thought you were going to call on Tatiana’s dressmaker to see if she hid the papers there.”
“I’ll send Blanca. A maid will more easily be able to do it without rousing suspicion.”
“Suzanne—”
“And if there’s a trap waiting for you at the Empress Rose, they won’t be expecting you to have a woman with you. It will throw off suspicion.”
His indrawn breath scraped through the still air. “Castlereagh ought to take you to meetings. We could use some arguments that are impossible to refute.”
“I’ve had your example for two years. Do you have a likeness of Princess Tatiana?”
“Why—”
“It would help in making inquiries. I could do a sketch or we could probably find a portrait in a print shop; her likeness was much copied. But I thought you might have a miniature.”
His gaze shifted to the hills and valleys of light and shadow made by the sheet. “Yes, actually. She gave it me years ago.”
“Good,” Suzanne said with determination. “It will be helpful. What else did this man say?”
“To trust no one. That anyone in Vienna might be in on the plot. So you see the risk I’m taking in trusting you.”
She pleated a fold of sheet between her fingers. “I’m flattered, dearest.”
“Of course, we don’t know what the devil the plot is, which makes it a bit difficult to judge who may be behind it.”
“Malcolm.” Suzanne stared at the shadow patterns her fingers made on the white sheet. “Princess Tatiana seems to have been amassing a blackmail dossier against a number of powerful people. It makes me wonder if—”
“If?”
She could feel the pressure of Malcolm’s gaze on her face. “If she was striking out on her own. Making a bid to amass power herself.”
One of the candles on the dressing table sputtered in its silver holder. Malcolm lit a taper on the bedside table, then got to his feet and went to the dressing table. “Tatiana was—I knew her less of late.” He brought the candlesnuffer down over the sputtering tapers. “To begin with she was loyal to Talleyrand, but she’d branched into working for whoever paid the most. I think she saw safety in power.”
“We don’t know what country she actually came from, do we? She might have been working in the interests of her real country.”
“Not Tatiana.” Malcolm snuffed the brace of candles on the table by the door. An acrid smell drifted through the air. “I never knew her to think in terms of countries.”
“But you’ve just admitted you knew her less well of late.” Suzanne studied the angles of her husband’s bare back. She’d swear he was seeing Tatiana Kirsanova’s face in the smoke guttering from the extinguished candles. “For all you know, she could have been secretly working for her real country even when she was supposedly working for Talleyrand.”
He turned round and stared at her. “My God, Suzanne. You have a devious mind.”
“Thank you.”
“But whether she was working for herself or for someone else, the question is, was it random chance that she acquired information about these particular people—Tsarina Elisabeth, the Duchess of Sagan—or was there a specific endgame in mind?”
“Would Metternich change the course of Austrian policy to protect the duchess?”
Malcolm returned to the bed and pulled the covers over both of them. “He’s certainly given every sign of being a man desperately in love. The tsar, on the other hand, has hardly shown himself protective of the tsarina.”
“But if whatever these papers contain would bring embarrassment to him and his family—”
Malcolm nodded, unseen ghosts in his eyes.
“Someone with a hold on both Metternich and the tsar could achieve a great deal at the Congress.”
“They could indeed.” His hand clenched on the embroidered silk coverlet.
“It’s as though she was two different women,” Suzanne said. “The schemer amassing blackmail information and the agent uncovering a plot.”
“Being two different people would be positively straightforward for Tatiana.” Frustration edged his voice, and something like regret. He leaned back against the pillows. “Speaking of surprises, I didn’t realize you knew Frederick Radley in Spain.”
Her breath froze in her throat. How odd that after a night of knives and gunshots, the most terrifying moment came now. Sitting naked beneath the covers, her arm brushing her husband’s own, her body still warm from their lovemaking. “He was near my family’s home on a mission.”
It was a bare half-truth, but Malcolm merely nodded.
Then, because it might be important, she added, “Dorothée says she met Colonel Radley at Princess Tatiana’s in Paris.”
“Does she?” Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Not that it’s necessarily surprising. Still, any connection to Tatiana—”
“Doro said there seemed to be something between them, but she didn’t think it was a love affair, even a past one. Doro’s a good judge of people.”
“Interesting.”
“Did you know Radley well in the Peninsula?” Better not to mention Radley at all, but she couldn’t resist asking.
“Not particularly, but we were thrown together a fair amount when he was stationed in Lisbon. Fitz’s stepbrother was in his regiment, and Fitz would take me along when he went to dine with Christopher.”
She cast a sidelong glance at him. “You didn’t like Radley?”
He gave a sheepish grin. “Soldiers tend to dismiss diplomats as frippery talkers rather than doers, and diplomats tend to categorize soldiers as quicker with a pistol than a thought. So Radley and I weren’t exactly set up to be blood brothers.”
“You have friends who are soldiers. Fitzroy Somerset, Alexander Gordon, Lord March. Radley wasn’t an exception to the rule?”
“Radley always struck me more as defining the rule. Sorry, I expect to you he was quite charming.”
“On the surface.” Again, it was a half-truth.
Malcolm laughed and let his head slide into the pillows.
Suzanne settled into the linen beside him. He flung a warm arm round her and she turned her head into the hollow of his shoulder, but a cold knot lurked in the pit of her stomach. Malcolm gave every indication of believing her. She’d diverted any suspicions he might have, for now.
The sad, uncomforting truth was that she was quite adept at lying to her husband.
20
T
he sour, pungent smell of beer seemed to have leached into the rafters and the floorboards of the Empress Rose tavern. Smoke from pipes and cigars, forbidden in most of Vienna’s more elegant cafés, hung thick in the air. Suzanne stepped through the door that Malcolm was holding open for her. Guessing Princess Tatiana would have costumed herself for the venue, Suzanne had dressed in a simple poplin covered by a scarlet wool cloak. A deep-brimmed cottage bonnet covered her hair, which was in turn covered by a blond wig.
Malcolm, garbed in a sturdy wool coat that might belong to a middling tradesman, followed her into the tavern. Heads turned in their direction. Though several women were present, their gaudy, low-cut gowns and bright hair dyed in shades of gold and red suggested that they were there in search of custom. It was just past eleven o’clock, but a number of men filled the tables as well. Tradesmen and clerks, judging by the cut and fabric of their clothes. And some, with flashy coats and spotted handkerchiefs in place of cravats, who Suzanne suspected were cardsharps or even thieves or fences. The smattering of accents that assailed her ears as talk resumed came from a variety of classes and districts, and she caught fragments of French, Dutch, and Italian layered in with the German.
Malcolm took her arm and steered her to an empty table. Ostentatiously in the middle of the room. Today they wanted not to hide but to observe those about them. When a waiter appeared, Malcolm ordered two glasses of beer but made no effort to ask questions. Safer to settle in first.
Suzanne untied her cloak and let it fall over the rough-cut slats of the chairback. She felt a crossfire of curious gazes shot their way. Hostility from several of the women, frank appraisal from a number of the men. Her gown had a modest neckline but clung to the curves of her body and the blond wig had luxuriant ringlets that fell over her face for added protection. She caught a negotiation over terms, in progress at a nearby table between a lady with bright gold hair and a stout, red-faced gentleman. Fragments of other conversations drifted through the air—the rise in the price of candles and laundry soap during the Congress (a lot of dirty linen to be washed, one man joked), the money to be made if one had rooms to let, and the gullibility of foreigners. In particular the English, if she heard correctly. Malcolm must have heard the same, for she saw a grin reflected in his eyes.
Their waiter returned and set two foaming glasses of pilsner before them. Suzanne looked up at him, her gaze turned beseeching. “If I could ask you—You see, we didn’t just happen to come into this tavern.” She hesitated, eyes downcast, as though modesty forbade her to frame what she needed to say next.
“My wife is in search of her sister,” Malcolm said.
The waiter, a thin young man with straw-colored hair and sharp blue eyes, looked between them. “Ladies don’t come here often.” He cast a glance round the tavern, indicating that he would not class the other women present as ladies.
“That’s just it,” Suzanne said. “Constanze ran away.” She put a hand to her face.
“
Meine liebe,
you’re getting it all muddled.” Malcolm gripped her hand and drew it down to the table. “My wife’s sister ran off with a scoun—A man of whom the family did not approve. I fear it wasn’t the first—” He coughed. “That is neither here nor there. We have been searching for my sister-in-law in vain for some weeks—”
“You didn’t
try
hard enough.” Suzanne pulled a handkerchief from her felt reticule and blew her nose.
“
Liebling,
as I’ve told you many times, I want her safely home as much as anyone. The scandal isn’t good for business.”
“You and your wretched shop.” She wadded up the handkerchief and threw it on the table.
Malcolm spared her a brief, quelling glance. “Suffice it to say, we had no luck in discovering my wife’s sister’s whereabouts until yesterday. Someone reported seeing Constanze come into this tavern three days ago.”
Suzanne reached into her reticule again and drew out a pewter-framed miniature. A Titian-haired young woman, loose curls falling about her face, a gauzy white muslin gown slipping from her shoulders. When Malcolm had first shown it to her, she’d been startled by how young Princess Tatiana looked. Young and unexpectedly artless, though worldly wisdom still glinted in her eyes. Suzanne suspected the princess had had that from childhood.
The simplicity of her gown and hairstyle fit well with their charade. The fair-haired waiter took the picture and held it to the light from the windows, raised his brows, frowned, then shook his head. “I was here three days ago, from opening until closing. I saw no one resembling this lady. More’s the pity.”
“She might have disguised herself,” Suzanne said. “Changed the color of her hair perhaps.”
“Believe me, I’d have remembered this lady. Whatever her hair color.”
“She might even have been dressed as a man,” Malcolm suggested.
“
Mein schatz
—” Suzanne protested.
“God knows what your sister might get up to.”
The waiter grinned, then shook his head again. “Even dressed as a man, she’d have stood out.”
Suzanne studied him with wide, pleading eyes. “Could you ask the others who might have been working that day?”
“They won’t remember differently.”
Malcolm took a sip from his glass of beer. “I’m sure I need hardly say how highly we would value news of my sister-in-law.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a purse. He slid out a handful of banknotes. “Very highly.”
Something flickered in the waiter’s eyes for a moment. Then he gave a reluctant grin. “Sorry. I’d like to. But I’d have to fabricate a story.”
That smile was just a bit too practiced. Suzanne’s blood quickened. She didn’t risk a glance at Malcolm, but she knew he had sensed it as well. The waiter was lying.
“All the same,” Malcolm said, “if we could talk to the others who were working that day. I fear my wife will give me no peace if we do not pursue all possible avenues.”
Wariness settled in the waiter’s eyes for an instant. Then he inclined his head. “Of course.”
Two other waiters, a kitchen maid, and a potboy returned the same negative answers. One of the waiters made appreciative noises over Tatiana’s picture. The other answered in monosyllables. The kitchen maid fidgeted with the tie on her apron. The potboy stared fixedly at the worn toes of his shoes. His eyes widened at the sight of Tatiana’s picture. For an instant Suzanne thought he was about to tell them something. Then he cast a sidelong glance at the fair-haired waiter and went silent.
Malcolm and Suzanne lingered at their table for a time in case any of the staff tried to approach them on their own, or any of the tavern’s regulars who had overheard them (they had taken care to speak in tones that carried) offered information, but no one came forward. At length they wrapped themselves in their outer garments and left, their glasses of beer still half-full.
A light rain was falling when they left the tavern and an autumn chill had settled in the air. The unseasonable warmth was at last giving way to the promise of winter. Malcolm gave her his arm, and they proceeded down the street at a slow pace.
A whistle sounded as they passed an alley on the left.
“Mein herr
.
”
The voice was low, fierce, and high-pitched.
It was the potboy. Heinrich. He was a thin child of perhaps ten or eleven, with brown hair in want of trimming and a smattering of freckles across his pale skin. Malcolm stepped quickly into the alley, bringing Suzanne with him, so the skirts of his greatcoat and the folds of her cloak shielded Heinrich from view.
The boy’s wary gaze shot between them. “I wanted to tell you. But I knew I’d get a whipping. If they find out—” He cast a nervous glance in the direction of the tavern.
“There’s no need for them to find out,” Malcolm said.
Heinrich gave a quick nod. He looked at Suzanne. “The lady with the red hair—she’s your sister? She’s in trouble?”
“We fear so,” Suzanne said. “Did you see her?”
“Three days ago. She must have dyed her hair or been wearing a wig like you said, sir. Her hair was dark as boot blacking. But I remember her face. Her smile—it was kind.”
“Was anyone with her?” Malcolm asked. “Or did she meet anyone at the tavern?”
“No. She came in alone. And she wasn’t meeting anyone. She wanted information.”
“About?” Malcolm asked. Suzanne heard the edge of tension in her husband’s voice.
Heinrich scraped his foot against the cobblestones. “She wanted to know if a group of men met in the tavern.”
“And do they?” Malcolm’s voice was gentle and steady.
The boy gave a quick nod. “In a room above the taproom.”
“Who are they?”
Heinrich dug at a loose cobblestone with the worn toe of his shoe. “Gentlemen, from their coats and linen. Here for the Congress.”
“How do you know?”
“They speak German with an accent. And when they’re alone in the room, they speak another language. I don’t know which.”
Malcolm cast a glance at Suzanne. “Was it this?” He offered a phrase in French. “Or this?” He tried Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Dutch, Swedish.
Heinrich listened, brows drawn with concentration, but shook his head. “I never heard more than vague sounds through the door. The few times I was sent into the room with a pot of ale or a plate of food they stopped talking. They always spoke to me in German.”
“When did they start coming to the tavern?”
He frowned, knocking the loose cobblestone against its fellows. “A month since, perhaps. They come about once a week, sometimes twice. Not always on the same night. And sometimes they don’t come at night at all. The last time was a week ago yesterday.”
“You told the lady about them?”
“Axel did. The waiter you first talked to. But then later a man came to the tavern and spoke with him for a long time and with Herr Franck, who owns the tavern. Afterward Axel said we were to say no more about the men. When I asked a question he cuffed me.”
“You’re very brave.” Malcolm reached into his pocket and drew out the purse he had offered to Axel.
Heinrich stared at it, then lifted his gaze to Malcolm, his shoulders straightening with pride. “I didn’t ask for money.”
“No, but you’ve rendered us a great service, at considerable risk to yourself. I hope you’ll allow us to show our gratitude. It will help ease our consciences from the fear that we’ve brought danger upon you.”
The boy hesitated a moment longer, then gave a quick, shy smile and accepted the banknotes Malcolm pressed into his hand. “Is the lady with the red hair in danger?”
“Not anymore,” Malcolm said. “And your information will help us ensure no one else is put in danger. Do you know Café Hugel?”
Heinrich nodded.
“If you discover anything further or if your situation at the Empress Rose becomes difficult, go there and ask for Lisl. She’ll know how to find me.”
Heinrich gave a grave nod, pleased to be treated as an adult and equal. He inclined his head to Suzanne, then darted down the alley.
Malcolm put up an umbrella and gave Suzanne his arm as they moved back into the street, quiet now as most had gone inside for the midday meal. The rain was falling harder, tumbling in sheets off the overhanging roofs, washing the street with gray and obscuring the view.
“Who do you think these men are?” Suzanne asked.
“They could be anyone, from the boy’s description. Damnation.” Malcolm stared at the sodden cobblestones. “If only I’d been in Vienna those last days.”
“Do you think—”
She broke off as a carriage rumbled down the street, at a speed only allowed by the lack of traffic. Wheels rattled, horse hooves pounded against the rain-slick cobblestones, sending up sprays of water. They drew to the side. The carriage veered, thundering straight toward them.
Malcolm half threw her into a doorway. She stumbled and caught her hand against the doorjamb, just as a hoof struck Malcolm, and he fell on top of her.
His body slammed into her own and crushed the breath from her chest. Pain shot through her injured shoulder. A broken spoke of the umbrella jabbed her near the eye.
“Malcolm?” She pushed side the wreckage of the umbrella, slid out from under Malcolm, and shook her unresponsive husband. His eyes were closed, his hat knocked from his head. She pulled him into her lap, carefully, tugged off her gloves, and felt sticky blood on the back of his head. “Darling?”
She put her fingers to his throat and found a pulse that sent a wave of relief coursing through her. She slid her fingers into his hair and explored his scalp gently, seeking for how bad his injuries were.
He jerked away from her touch and lifted his head with a sound of protest.
Air rushed into her lungs.
He sought for purchase on the rain-splashed stone, trying to push himself up. “What the devil—”

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