Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1) (17 page)

“I have to say I like him better than I thought I would.”

“Then you’ve met him?”

“Oh yes. We nursed our friend together last night.”

“How is our friend?” Lizzie asked.

“Not good. He’s just about holding his own, but the fever is still raging.”

“Oh dear! Well, I’m here to take my turn, so you and Johnnie can both get some sleep.”

“Not a chance,” said Mrs, Fawcett. “I want to get to know these remarkable children.”

“Good morning, Johnnie,” Lizzie broke off her conversation to greet the thief. Under Mrs. Fawcett’s perceptive eye, she felt somewhat uncomfortable. She’d no idea how she was meant to behave toward a supposed lover she’d just jilted. “You’d better show me our patient,” she blurted, before she realized how it would sound to Mrs. Fawcett, who now must imagine she wanted to be alone with him.

Which, of course, she did, though not for any of the reasons Mrs. Fawcett might imagine.

“Watch the dog!” she called hastily to the children. “Don’t let him run off too far.”

“Or chase the chickens,” Mrs. Fawcett added.

“Oh no, he’s very good like that,” Henrietta assured her. “He never worries chickens or sheep. I think he finds them boring because they won’t play with him.”

The rest was cut off as Lizzie preceded Johnnie inside.

“I didn’t think you’d still be here,” she said, low.

“I don’t have to be anywhere else.” He still sounded as stiff as she’d felt greeting him in the yard.

She tried for lightness as she began to climb the stairs. “But, of course, I forgot your fee.”

“Which is, of course, why I came back.”

There was no mistaking the bitterness in his voice.

Stricken, she stopped and swung around to face him on the stairs. “I didn’t mean that. You’ve done far more to help me than even an old friend might have done.”

Although he halted, too, her suddenness meant he stood too close, on the step below, eye-to-eye with her. But there was no time or, indeed, need to be embarrassed.

He said curiously, “Why should you care what I understand or misunderstand?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I suppose I was brought up to care about other people’s feelings.”

His rather hard eyes scanned hers and slowly softened, which had an odd effect on her stomach. It reminded her of a different feeling, a different situation she wouldn’t get into now.

“A courtesy not always returned,” he guessed.

“Often enough,” she said lightly. “You’re not angry with me?”

Something that wasn’t quite laughter surged out with his breath. He spread his arm, gesturing her to proceed. “How can I be angry with you? If we could only keep our friend up there alive, it would be the best diversion ever.”

Lizzie walked on. “Mrs. Fawcett said his fever was worse.”

“Worse than yesterday when you left. No worse than last night.”

Lizzie didn’t need to touch his forehead; she could see his fever in his face.

“We gave him a cold bath last night, which helped,” Johnnie said.

Lizzie nodded, biting her lip in pity for her victim. Then, distracted, she cast an amused glance at Johnnie. “You and Mrs. Fawcett did?”

“Well, I and Mrs. Fawcett’s footmen. Mrs. Fawcett supervised from a modest distance.

Lizzie’s lips twisted. It wasn’t quite a smile. “You’re right. It would be fun if we weren’t afraid he would die.”

She found the familiar cloth and dipped it in the fresh bowl of water before she bathed his face and neck. As she worked, she felt Johnnie’s gaze following her movements, but he didn’t come any farther into the room or sit down.

He stirred. “Did you want to speak to me about something else?”

“Well, apart from the money—which is in my reticule, by the way, just take it—and to offer any help I can from my family’s connections—”

He smiled, leaning his shoulder on the closed door. “You are a one woman reformist movement, aren’t you?”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“Only in an admiring kind of way. I’ve only ever taken care of myself.”

Lizzie moved on to her restless patient’s hands and arms. “And our friend here and me. And if you were a soldier, I expect you took care of each other.”

“That doesn’t count.”

She paused to glance at him in surprise. “Why not?”

He blinked, straightening, then walked farther into the room with a shrug. “I don’t know. In war, there are just things one
needs
to do. You have no such need.”

She grimaced. “And yet, I’m no saint, am I? Oh, that reminds me. How knowledgeable is your buyer?”

“I beg your pardon?”

“The man who bought the necklace from you. Would he know diamonds from paste?”

Johnnie halted on the other side of the bed, frowning. “I would hope so. Why?”

“Because my aunt still has a necklace that looks exactly like the one you stole. The only solution is that she had a replica made, probably to fool Ivan the Terrible. If it’s the fake she still has, then Ivan will be mad as fire. But she must think she’s
lost
the fake, so she’s not much put out by its loss.” She frowned at Johnnie’s lack of reaction. “Johnnie, if she
has
lost the fake, then whoever bought the necklace for that huge amount of money is going to be furious with us when
he
finds out!”

Dropping the cloth back in the bowl, she looked over at Johnnie, expecting some kind of panic. But he looked perfectly calm as his eyes searched her face.

“It doesn’t matter. We have the money and I assure you we’re perfectly safe.”

“Won’t he be able to find you again?”

“No,” said Johnnie flatly. “He’s gone back to…Bohemia.”

“Oh.” She searched in vain for any signs of anxiety in his face. He looked tired, she thought, irrelevantly, noting the dark rings under his eyes, the rather tight lines around his mouth.

He said, “Don’t worry. That part is over.”

“It just seems wrong to cheat someone. Even a receiver of stolen goods!”

“Well, it can be a dangerous practice,” Johnnie allowed. “But they leave themselves open to it. I assure you he’d have cheated us if he could. In fact, he probably did. Perhaps the necklace was worth ten thousand.”

“Hardly.” Lizzie sank into the chair by the bed, again watching her patient. “Has he been delirious?” she asked suddenly.

“I think he has bad dreams from the fever, but he’s a close-lipped fellow, even in this state. He mutters occasionally, but nothing comprehensible.”

“Then we still have nothing to tell us who he is?”

“I’m pretty sure Baron Hager could tell us that. He’s the Austrian police minister.”

“Maybe I should try to see him.”

Johnnie opened his mouth to speak, then closed it again and swallowed. “Best not, just yet. We’ll just get him in trouble for this mess. Once he’s well, he can sort it out himself.”

Lizzie nodded, agreeing that she’d done the man enough harm. Irrelevantly, it struck her that Johnnie was a very handsome young man. Those cheek bones, those lips… “It must be a Russian look,” she blurted aloud.

Johnnie blinked. “What must?”

She blushed furiously. “I beg your pardon! I was thinking aloud. You just remind me a little of another Russian I met recently.”

Johnnie grinned. “Not the tsar?”

She laughed with relief. “No, not the tsar.”

“Well, I hope he is worthy of your notice, whoever he is.”

Lizzie sighed. “It doesn’t matter,” she said, having coming to terms with reality rather than the sweet, if silly, fairy tale fantasy that had crept up on her. “He won’t remember me.”

Johnnie blinked. “I would doubt that. You’re not easy to forget, Miss Lizzie.”

She waved that away. “Not when we’ve stolen a necklace, shot a man, and nursed him together,” she said humorously. “I assure you I don’t have many such alliances.”

M
eanwhile, Eleanor Fawcett
was spending a very instructive half hour with the beguiling Gaunt children and their ridiculous dog. In the quiet inn courtyard, they sat at the wooden table beside her or ran about as the notion took them, chattering away to her without any self-consciousness at all. Even the staggeringly beautiful Henrietta, who was doomed to slay hearts across Europe, seemed to accept her gift without pride or even much interest. Even when the passing inn trade occasionally stopped to stare at her.

Despite their normal openness, they were a little evasive about Johnnie and how Lizzie had met him. Eleanor suspected they’d been sworn to silence on that score. But they spoke happily of life at Launceton Hall and their sudden departure due to the unfeeling and vulgar haste of the new baron, whom they referred to as Ivan the Terrible. The harassed but kind-hearted Lucy Daniels had clearly taken them in and swept them all off to Vienna with her own family.

However, reading between the lines of their funny stories and innocent remarks, Eleanor picked up that Lizzie had been the organizing force on the journey. It sounded as if she’d earned her keep well before they’d even arrived in Vienna, where they all lived in a cramped little house and cheered Cousin Minerva off to balls.

“Doesn’t Lizzie go to the balls, too?” Eleanor asked innocently.

“Well, no, there isn’t the money to buy her suitable gowns,” Henrietta said, sadly. “The ones she used to wear at Launceton are too old and tired.”

Georgiana snorted. “They’re afraid Lizzie will cast Minerva in the shade and spoil her chances of a brilliant match. What?” she added aggressively as Henrietta and Michael both nudged her. “It’s true!”

“But not for strangers’ ears,” Eleanor agreed. “Don’t worry, I’m not really a stranger and I’m discreet to a fault. Don’t you like Cousin Minerva?”

“She’s all right,” Michael said carelessly. “A bit dull and mopey. Lizzie thinks she wants to marry my uncle’s secretary, Mr. Corner, and is unhappy being forced to all these parties.”

“Well, in our position, one can’t always do what one wants,” said Eleanor, who, in fact, had always done exactly what she wanted. Except for marrying Launceton, of course, though with age and experience she could see that he would have been a terrible husband and they’d have made each other miserable. Michael was the living proof of that.

Eleanor straightened her shoulders. “Well, when I finally get to Vienna, you must all come to my parties. You’ll make me the rage of the Congress.”

They all laughed uproariously at that until Dog jumped on them to see what the fuss was about. But Eleanor wasn’t really joking. She’d had an idea, which she continued to mull as Johnnie came back out of the inn, leaving Lizzie to tend to the patient.

He was vilely hung over, of course, but it seemed to Eleanor that he emerged somewhat brighter than he’d entered a quarter of an hour or so ago. Lizzie seemed to have that effect on people. She was clearly wasted combing hair and adjusting hems at this Congress.

While Johnnie took the children and the dog off for a walk, Eleanor dozed in the midday sun, remembering the past and dreaming of the future. She woke, smiling, to the laughter of children and the delicious smell of luncheon. The food here was tolerable now she’d made it clear to the landlord exactly what she expected of him.

Eleanor went up to check on the patient, pronounced him comfortable enough to be left for half an hour, and herded Lizzie downstairs for luncheon which, to please the children and cater to Dog’s partiality for human company, was served at the outside table.

Dog hurled himself at Lizzie as if he hadn’t seen her for a week. “Goodness, what a filthy, muddy creature you are,” she observed without rancor.

“We took him down to the river,” Michael explained. “He tried to dry himself in the mud afterwards.”

“I wonder if we could hose him down somehow before we take him home?” Lizzie mused.

“Wait until he’s dry, then brush him like a horse,” Johnnie recommended, holding a rickety chair for Eleanor at one end of the table.

Eleanor sat with a murmur of thanks and watched as he performed a similar service for Lizzie at the other end. He and the children sat on the benches while the food was brought out and placed on the table.

“We’ll serve ourselves,” Eleanor assured the staff, waiting until they’d gone before she leaned forward and whispered, “Go!” to the children.

They laughed with delight and fell on the food with gusto. And yet, they weren’t little animals. They had manners and they knew not to be greedy, even thinking to pass certain plates to those who couldn’t reach them. Eleanor was pleased.

Georgiana said, “Lizzie, can we go and see the man you shot?”

Eleanor choked.

“He’s not very well,” Lizzie said, not the least discomfited. “Maybe later.”

“Is Papa’s pistol still here?” Georgiana inquired with an innocence that made Michael grin.

Lizzie frowned at her. “No, it’s back in Vienna, and you are
not
to shoot the poor man again.”

“He might be sorry,” Henrietta offered.

“He’d better be,” Georgiana said darkly.

“Even if he isn’t,” Michael said, “you can’t shoot a man when he’s down.”

Georgiana seemed ready to dispute this, until Lizzie said firmly, “Michael’s right.”

Georgiana shrugged and reached for more bread.

Eleanor opened her mouth to ask a few salient questions of her own about the shooting, but at the last moment, her attention was caught by Johnnie’s steady gaze on Lizzie. Although no one, least of all Lizzie herself, noticed, the moment crashed over Eleanor with the force of a very large wave.

So that’s the lie of the land…

Whoever and whatever Johnnie was, and whatever the truth of the elopement nonsense—and the more she saw of Lizzie, the less she was inclined to believe any of that—and its subsequent calling off. Johnnie appeared to be falling very hard.

*