Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1) (24 page)

Only he wasn’t asleep. He’d been riding full tilt from Vienna to the inn when, without warning, something had struck him hard in the chest, knocking him backwards off his horse. It was if he’d ridden into a tree branch in the dark, only the force was too great and between them, he and the horse were used to avoiding such obstacles…

He’d been a soldier too long. He’d survived too many battles and ambushes. Even dazed, he listened to his warning instincts and right now they were screaming.

Vanya rolled, leaping to his feet and drawing his sabre in a smooth, practiced action, just as a sword slashed at the ground where his neck would have been. And with new, sickening fear, Vanya remembered that Lizzie and her siblings had passed this way already this evening.

Trying to blink his dizziness away, Vanya saw there were three of them—big, vicious bruisers. He didn’t wait for them to attack again. He was in too big a hurry because he needed to know what had happened to Lizzie. Instead, he flew at them with his best Cossack war cry. His horse whinnied in instant response, so he knew the animal hadn’t gone far without him.

Taken by surprise by the force of his attack, the enemy fell back before him. Only one of them had a sabre. The others had vicious daggers and clubs. And they were undoubtedly strong. He’d have thought them street brigands, thugs, except for the fact they swore in Russian. It wouldn’t save them. Not if they’d touched so much as a hair on Lizzie’s head.

Dropping one villain with a vicious sabre swipe to his right arm, he seized the club of the second and wrested it from him by means of a kick in the chest. As the man staggered back, Vanya drove in, smashing the club left handed into the man’s head while he fended off the third man with the sabre.

Seeing his fellows both out of action, the third man panicked and dropped his weapon. Vanya kicked his feet from under him and fell on him, holding the sabre across his throat. He imagined his victim doing the same to Lizzie and barely managed to stop himself from cutting the bastard in two before he’d even asked the question. As though seeing it, the villain’s face contorted in abject terror. He knew he’d never been closer to his Maker.

“Who else have you attacked on this road?” Fear reduced Vanya’s voice to a little more than a whisper, but the hiss must have sounded even more sinister to his attackers, for the one he’d beaten with his own club stopped crawling toward him, while the man with the sabre sobbed out, “No one, Excellency! I swear!”

Could he believe him? He thought he could. The man had been too surprised by the question. But he didn’t yet dare to relax. “Who sent you?” he barked.

It was an ambush. On a quiet stretch of road too late for most traffic. Someone had sent them, and since they were Russian, it had probably been for him rather than Lizzie. In which case, he could guess who was behind the attack. He was going to have to do something about Blonsky.

“Mercy, Excellency! Mercy!” the brigand babbled.

“Major Blonsky?” Vanya demanded.

“No, no, not him,” the man replied as though relieved to be able to tell the truth to his bloodthirsty tormentor. “The Englishman. He gave us gold, too much to refuse.”

Surprise caused Vanya to lift the sabre. His victim clapped a hand to his throat but otherwise didn’t move. Vanya rose and stood back. Blood dripped down the side of his face and trickled under his sleeve and over his hand. He didn’t think it was serious.

“Englishman?” he repeated. “What Englishman?”

“Don’t know his name,” the soldier wailed.

“But you’re Blonsky’s men, aren’t you?” Vanya said shrewdly. “That’s why you didn’t mind having a poke at me. You think I’m your major’s enemy.”

“Aren’t you?” the one with the slashed arm said bitterly from a few feet away, as he cradled his badly bleeding limb.

Vanya said, “I was under the illusion we’d all just fought in the same army against a common enemy. We’re all Russians.”

“Didn’t stop you trying to kill the major!” came the indignant response.

“Swordplay,” Vanya said with a dismissive wave of one hand. “No one had any intention of killing anyone else.” At least Vanya hadn’t. He hadn’t minded the fight, though. He hadn’t minded at all showing the boy who’d once bulled him and humiliated him so often exactly who was now the stronger, better man. But this was different. This was malice. Murder, initiated surely by a total stranger, not the drunken brawl he was used to among Russians.

Vanya tore off his cravat and cleaned his sabre with it before returning it to its scabbard. His horse snorted down his neck and he reached up absently to stroke its nose.

“Well,” he told his attackers who still sat on the ground staring at him with their mouths open. “You’d better get back to your English master and tell him I’m coming for him next. And if I see your ugly faces again, I’ll have you hanged. In fact, I might anyway unless you do
my
bidding. If I call you at any time, you jump to it, Major Blonsky notwithstanding.”

Without waiting for a response, he threw himself onto his horse’s back and galloped off toward the inn. Lizzie. He had to know that Lizzie and the children were safe.

*

Mrs. Fawcett’s face
gave nothing away except incomprehensible frustration. “Elizabeth—”

“It’s Johnnie!” Michael reported from the window and Lizzie, conscious still of that nagging fear for him, leapt to her feet, hurrying toward the door before it flew open and Johnnie—Vanya—strode in, wild-eyed and bloody.

A strange animal-like sound escaped her lips as his gaze swept around the room.

“Good God!” Mrs. Fawcett exclaimed. “What on earth happened to you?”

His gaze found the children, seemed to count them, moved on to Lizzie, where it blazed like some strange, flaring firework. Then he closed his eyes and simply sat down on the floor.

Lizzie threw herself to her knees in front of him. “Johnnie!” Seizing his face between her hands, she turned it up to hers. Someone—Mrs. Fawcett—thrust a damp napkin at her and she wiped the blood from his face. “Where are you hurt? What—”

She broke off as his hand closed on hers, holding it still against his face.

“I’m fine.”

“Goodness,” Henrietta said from the window. “Mrs. Fawcett, you are quite cast in the shade. The most dazzling creature imaginable has just stepped from her carriage into the inn.”

“I passed someone almost at the gate,” Johnnie said, his voice so blessedly strong and normal that relief swept over Lizzie, drowning even the commotion of, presumably, the fine lady’s entry to the inn.

“Georgiana,” Mrs. Fawcett said calmly, “run up to my chamber and fetch Cartwright and my medicine box so that we can tend Johnnie’s hurts. What happened to you?”

“Ambush,” Johnnie said succinctly. “Don’t worry, this is only a scratch. It’s just…I was sure Lizzie and the others weren’t far in front of me and I didn’t know…”

The door burst open again before Georgiana even reached it and a positively dazzling lady in silk and jewels sailed inside with the innkeeper and his wife both bowing and protesting like importunate dogs at her heels.

“Oh the
devil
,” Johnnie uttered.

T
he fine lady,
who seemed to take in every occupant in the room with one withering, haughty glance, said tartly, “I’ll thank you to mind your language.” Without even turning her head, she snapped “Be gone, sirrah,” to the landlord. “And take your good woman with you.”

The landlady, her mouth opening and closing without making any sound, gazed at Mrs. Fawcett as though asking somewhat apologetically for permission to escape from a situation she no longer understood. Mrs. Fawcett waved one impatient hand and waited until the door closed.

But even then, the fine lady was before her. Fixing Lizzie with a glare of loathing, she demanded, “What have you done to my son?”

Lizzie blinked. “If this is your son, I wiped blood off his face.”

The lady, holding herself rigid, advanced on Johnnie. Her face looked rather white. Johnnie, in spite of Lizzie’s instinctive movement to prevent it, rose to his feet. He seemed perfectly steady, even bent to take Lizzie’s hand and raise her, too. “Thank you,” he murmured. Then, dropping Lizzie’s hand he turned to the fine lady. “Forgive my dirt and blood. Consider yourself embraced with due filial duty and affection.”

Only by the unfurling of her tightly fisted fingers did the lady give away any relief. “Well, since your hurts are clearly not serious, you had best present these people to me.”

As though resigned now to the inevitable, whatever that was, Vanya said, “Of course. Allow me to introduce Mrs. Fawcett, from England. And the Misses Gaunt and –”

“Gaunt?” the lady uttered with apparently fresh loathing. “
Gaunt?
”

“Gaunt,” Vanya said firmly, fixing her with an expression Lizzie could only describe as ferocious. Even more surprising, the lady subsided, while Vanya also introduced Michael, who was hanging valiantly on to the dog with Henrietta’s aid, and Herr Schmidt. “My mother,” he finished with what appeared to be reluctance. “Countess Savarina.”

“Savarin?” Georgiana repeated with quite as much hatred as the countess had uttered “Gaunt. Your mother is a Savarin? Johnnie, what does this mean?”

“It means English children have no manners,” Countess Savarina said tartly.

“Of course they do,” Lizzie countered. “But even the best of manners tend to lapse in the face of bejeweled strangers who turfed them out of their family home the same day they buried their father.
Manners
doesn’t really cover that one. Children, come, it’s time we left.”

The countess, whose jaw had actually dropped during Lizzie’s speech, narrowed her eyes. “Past time,” she said grimly.

Which is when Michael let go of the dog.

Lizzie didn’t move. She knew Vanya would catch Dog before he knocked the countess over. And he did, almost distractedly. But that didn’t stop her petty pleasure in the countess’ suddenly alarmed backsteps.

Lizzie walked to the door, ignoring Vanya’s burning gaze on her face. “Don’t take my words personally, Countess Savarina. I was referring to your son. Good night, Mrs. Fawcett. Thank you, as always, Herr Schmidt.”

“Lizzie,” Vanya said quietly. There might have been a plea in his voice, but it was far too late for that. Dignity, belatedly, was all she had left. And for once, the children, and even Dog, following submissively on her heels, allowed her to have it.

*

“
Johnnie?
Johnnie is
Ivan the Terrible
?” Michael’s stunned voice drifted through the closed door, dripping with loathing as he spoke the hated name.

Into the silence in the parlor, Mrs. Fawcett said distantly, “Excuse me. I must instruct my coachman.”

The countess barely waited until she was out of the room before she exploded. “Ivan the Terrible? Do they think that is funny?”

“No,” Vanya said, irritably, throwing himself into a chair by the table. “They think it’s apt since you evicted them before their father was cold.”

“This is the first time I’ve left Russia,” she objected, clearly affronted.

“You sent your orders, Mother. They were carried out. Let’s not demean ourselves further by pretending otherwise.”

The countess sniffed. “Well. They’d kept your poor dear father’s inheritance from him for too long.”

Vanya blinked. “A week?”

“All his life!” his mother corrected waving one encompassing arm with indignation. “And then to be treated like—”

“You know there was nothing to inherit before the old man died,” Vanya interrupted. “My grandfather and my father both made good lives for themselves in Russia. None of us were ever left destitute. Which is what you did to the Gaunts. And then you swan in here dripping with diamonds and contempt. What kind of reception did you expect, exactly?”

“I didn’t know she was a Gaunt,” the countess muttered. “What I expected was a little affection from my only son.”

Vanya regarded her with the powerful mixture of frustration and affection she induced in him so easily. “Mother, what in God’s name are you doing here?”

“I got it out of Misha that you came here with the so-called young lady. I thought she was inveigling you into marriage, so when I went to the Castlereaghs’—isn’t her ladyship a quite eccentric dresser?—and discovered you’d already left, I assumed you’d come here and made Misha show us the way.”