Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1) (6 page)

When the family eventually passed out of his sight, he sat down again and pulled on his other boot. Then, seizing his coat, he left his lover sound asleep in her tiny apartment and set off to walk to Boris’ lodgings.

Boris was already awake and looking harassed as he sorted out a huge bundle of papers.

“You’re up early,” Vanya observed.

“Comes with the job,” Boris said grimly. He spared him a quick, half-amused glance. “I suppose you haven’t been to bed yet.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Vanya replied in the interests of strict truth. “Just came to give you this.” He placed a bundle of roubles on the table.

“You won, then?”

“Surprisingly, yes. But I won’t let it go to my head. I’m sure God was only smiling on that
particular
cause.”

Boris raised one wry eyebrow. “Don’t drag the Almighty into your vices.” He set down his papers and fixed Vanya with his clear, direct gaze. “What are you up to, Vanya? What is this particular cause? Are you still talking about a necklace? Or does it have something to do with your feud with Blonsky? I heard he cut you last night.”

Vanya shrugged. “The man’s a boor. But you needn’t worry. I’m not going to risk my life or anyone else’s.”

“But I’ve heard such odd things of you recently that you really do have me worried.”

Vanya curled his lip. “Afraid I’m finally going to the devil?”

“Yes,” Boris said frankly. He leaned both hands on the table. “Look, I know everyone thinks it’s such an amusing start, but taking a woman’s necklace, ripping it from her throat…
stealing
, Vanya!”

“Oh, for the love of—” Vanya cast his eyes to heaven. “It wasn’t
her
wretched necklace, it was mine!
She
stole if from me!”

Boris frowned. “How did she do that? And what were you doing with a woman’s necklace anyway?”

“It’s my mother’s. She forced it on me, said I should wear it under my uniform in battle. So I do. It may be my one act of filial obedience, but I’ve stuck to it and, if you must know, it’s a bit of a secret talisman.”

Boris’s brow smoothed. “You imagine it keeps you safe.”

Vanya shrugged impatiently. “Something has. So far. Besides, Louise Fischer is a nasty piece of work. I wouldn’t have my mother’s necklace on her cheating little throat.”

“But you didn’t mind her cheating little throat in your bed?”

“That’s different. Or at least it was. I thought we both understood the nature of the game. Then she took the necklace from my trunk while I slept, crossing one of my very few lines.”

“Why? Isn’t she wealthy?”

“Getting wealthier by the day,” Vanya said cynically. “She and her husband entertain the rich and gullible, drawing them in with Louise’s beauty. She flirts with them while he fleeces them. They have high-stake card games in their apartment twice a week and nobody wins in the end.”

“Even you?”

He shrugged. “I saw what they were up to. After losing, of course.”

“So you took your revenge by bedding the woman and then humiliating her in public.”

Vanya hated the hint of defiance he was sure must show in his eyes as he met his friend’s gaze. Boris could always do this to him, show him how badly he was behaving and make him ashamed. In the end, he’d always been grateful, because Boris had always been right. At least until now.

“Something like that,” Vanya said steadily.

Boris’ eyes bored into his and then unexpectedly they smiled, and his shoulders relaxed. “No it isn’t. You were drunk, weren’t you?”

Vanya’s smile was twisted. “Inevitably.”

“And you never denied the accusations because if you’d told the truth you’d have revealed the Fischer woman publicly as your mistress. Or your whore. After everything, you were protecting her reputation.”

“How saintly am I?” Vanya said flippantly, throwing himself into the nearest chair.

Boris hurled a cushion at him. “Not very. You just have an odd saving grace.”

Vanya caught the cushion and put it behind his head so that he could lean back and pretend to close his eyes. “Well, one more scandal makes no difference to me. And who am I to quibble at the enterprising Fischers making a few kopeks from the wealthy fools who’ve invaded their city?”

Boris shook his head. “And I suppose you’re going to be giving the rest of
that
money—” He flapped one hand towards the pile of roubles on the table. “…to charity?”

Vanya laughed. “Almost. You might say I’m righting a wrong with it. Or just enjoying the fun.”

T
he day of
the Emperor’s ball dawned fair and sunny. Lizzie found herself much in demand, running errands and making last minute adjustments to the gowns of her aunt and cousin.

“I wish you were coming, too,” Minerva said once, as their eyes met in the glass. “It would be so much more fun, then. On my own, I feel like a piece of meat left in the butcher’s window too long.”

Lizzie didn’t really blame her. Like all debutantes, Minerva was being displayed for sale to the most eligible husband. But Lizzie only smiled and squeezed her cousin’s hand. “Trust me, you look nothing like a piece of meat. And if you were such a thing, you’d be the one snapped up as soon as the shop opened for business.”

Minerva laughed but caught at her hand. “Seriously, Lizzie, why don’t you come?”

“I have nothing to wear,” Lizzie said lightly. “And I didn’t come to Vienna with you to go to balls but to help if I could.” Her conscience twinged a little at that.

Although she wasn’t stealing, the act of taking the necklace was bound to frighten her aunt and cause considerable anxiety. Until now, she had been able to thrust such awareness aside with the resolve to comfort her aunt after it had happened. But suddenly, the whole great plan seemed just a little mean.

“Maybe I shouldn’t do it,” she said worriedly to her siblings when she found them all with the dog in the garden.

“Why ever not?” Georgiana demanded.

“It’s bound to scare poor Aunt Lucy into a fit. Maybe Johnnie was right and he should just steal it from the house. Let Ivan the Terrible have what suspicions he likes, he’ll never prove anything.”

“Even when we suddenly have enough money to set up our own home?” Georgiana asked.

“Well, that’s going to be an issue anyway,” Lizzie said ruefully. “Not so much to the world, who might imagine Papa left us a little un-entailed property. But to my aunt and uncle who must know there was no such thing.”

“I thought you had a plan for that,” Michael said.

“Well, I thought we could forge a letter from Ivan the Terrible appearing to make us an allowance out of the goodness of his heart, but you know that would only work if my uncle never actually speaks to him.”

Georgiana and Michael both gazed at her with a mixture of anxiety and accusation. Henrietta, much more evenly tempered, looked from one to the other and then to Lizzie.

“I don’t think you
can
call it off now,” Michael said at last. “You won’t see Johnnie until it’s done.”

“I will, since I have to point out my aunt…Why do I feel like Judas Iscariot? Anyhow, there may or may not be a chance to speak to him, but I definitely have to go.”

“What’s brought on such doubts?” Henrietta asked.

Lizzie sighed. “I don’t know. The approach of the reality probably. And then I was talking to Minerva who wished I was going with her to the ball. I felt like a…a
cad
.”

“Well, she has a point,” Henrietta said. “Why
don’t
you ever go to the balls and parties with them? You could make a splendid match here, Lizzie.”

“
That’s
the problem,” Georgiana said, nodding wisely. “Lizzie would cast Minerva in the shade and catch all the best suitors.”

Lizzie laughed with genuine, if touched amusement. “Hardly. I’m twenty-three years old and quite on the shelf. Even when I was seventeen, I was no beauty.”

“Yes you were,” Henrietta said loyally. “You still are, if only you could see it.”

“Why didn’t you have a London season like everyone else?” Michael asked.

Lizzie shrugged. “I don’t know. The time passed. I never actually wanted one. Papa was ill off and on. It made more sense to everyone if I just stayed at Launceton. To be honest, I was grateful no one pushed me into it because you know I could never behave well for an entire evening, never mind several weeks. Our neighbors are used to my eccentricities, but London society would not be so forgiving.”

Her gaze settled on Henrietta, whose dreams had always been of romance, husbands, babies, and decorating houses. “However, it would be a crime if
you
never had a London season, Henri. So one way or another, we need the necklace.”

A knocking on the window drew her attention back to the house. Benson, Aunt Lucy’s maid, was beckoning her inside. Lizzie waved and went dutifully back to help with the preparations.

*

Walking to the
Hofburg presented no difficulty to Lizzie. In fact, the proximity of the palace was the main reason she was so easily able to talk the children out of accompanying her with the dog.

“I would love to see all the emperors and empresses, kings and queens as they arrive,” Henrietta said hopefully.

“But you wouldn’t see the really important ones from the street anyhow,” Lizzie assured her. “Most of them are staying in the Hofburg itself. It’s only the lesser mortals who’ll arrive by carriage. But I promise I’ll tell you all about it and tomorrow night, providing I’m back, I promise we’ll all go and gawp outside Prince Metternich’s house to see all the royalty arriving for
his
ball.”

Having fastened “the” necklace around her aunt’s throat and positioned the elegant pearl clip in Minerva’s beautifully dressed hair, Lizzie admired their appearances with quite genuine generosity. James seized her for a quick, private confab about his cravat, which she pronounced fine without a great deal of interest, before frowning suspiciously.

“Are you trying to impress someone in particular?” she asked.

James looked at once sheepish and awestruck. “
She
will be there. Louise.”

“Then Madame Fischer is no longer the sole object of your admiration?” she asked, pleased for no reason that she could account for.

“Of course she is,” James said haughtily, straightening to look down his nose at her. “Louise
is
Madame Fischer!”

Lizzie had to swallow a laugh. In fact, her main worry, despite Johnnie’s assurances, was how she would persuade the palace doormen to let her in without a card. But as she tripped out into the street with the rest of the admiring household, to watch her aunt, uncle, and cousins step into their carriage, someone pressed an envelope into her hand.

Startled, she glanced around her. She had an impression of flashing white teeth and a small figure vanishing up the street. An urchin younger than Michael. Hastily, she crushed the envelope, hiding it as casually as she could in the folds of her gown while she waved the carriage off.

When she got back inside, alone in the parlor with the children, she tore it open – and found a card for the Emperor’s ball.

There was no note with it, nothing to show where it had come from.

“Johnnie,” Michael said with certainty. “I think you picked a very clever, thinking, planning kind of a thief.”

Lizzie thought rather doubtfully about the hand snatching the necklace from the throat of Madame Fischer in full view of the theatre, about the blatant escape of the thief and his casual admission of drunkenness when she’d hidden him in her uncle’s carriage. And yet, he hadn’t ever been caught for the crime. So far as she knew.

“I think he’s a very strange kind of a thief,” she countered. “But since we don’t know any others, how would we tell?” She took a deep breath and stood up with a decisive spring. “So, you remember your parts? I’ll come and see you as soon as I return, but try and cover for me if that isn’t tonight.” They’d already agreed she should stay with Johnnie until the necklace was sold.

“You can’t be alone with him all night,” Henrietta said suddenly. “That would be
too
improper, even for us!”

“I doubt it’s any less proper than engaging a thief in the first place,” Lizzie said dryly. “In any case, who will know? But hopefully, it will not be anything like all night. In fact, if Johnnie has a buyer set up, I hope to be home before the others.”

*