Masks and Shadows (18 page)

She took a quick, shallow breath. Darkness wrapped like velvet around them. Under his gaze, her lips seemed to throb. She lifted her eyes to his.

A bell rang inside the building, signaling the end of the interval. Signor Morelli stepped back, shaking his head as if to clear it.

“Signor?” Charlotte's voice came out as a rasp.

He swallowed visibly. “It seems that I must thank you, madam.”

Charlotte blinked. “For—?”

“For arguing . . . as it was not over
Anna
, after all.” He smiled tightly and sketched a bow. “I must return to see the drama played out. I bid you goodnight, Baroness.”

“Goodnight.” Charlotte curtseyed and watched him disappear into the lights of the opera house.

As she set out along the path that led back to the palace, the darkness felt suddenly far too empty.

Chapter Twelve

It was all very well to order some poor fool to go sit for hours in tedious opera rehearsals, but it was quite another thing to have to do it yourself, without even being allowed to fall asleep.

Friedrich scowled as he pushed himself upright in his chair, fighting the pull of his leaden eyelids. This whole thing felt like a bloody practical joke. “
Attend the rehearsals. Become a familiar figure.”
Well, this was the fourth day he'd attended rehearsals, and when he'd walked in that morning, that sultry, older lady singer had given him a coy little wave. Was that familiar enough for the bastards?

The music struck up again, and Friedrich stifled a groan.
Bloody hell
. It was the same song
again.
They'd gone through it three times already in the past hour!

Enough was enough. He crossed his arms, let his eyes fall closed, and sank back down into the chair. He was here, anyway, whether or not he was awake. That would have to be enough for them.

Franz watched the blond officer sink lower in his seat. Another minute, to be safe—yes, he was definitely asleep. As Madame Zelinowsky and Monsieur Delacroix began a third attempt at their patter-song duet, Franz slipped off the stage and walked casually down the aisle.

He'd preserved the note carefully since receiving it inside his own instructions last night, fighting down all temptations to steam it open and read it himself. Whoever had sent this note through his care could presumably have delivered it to the officer themselves . . . which marked this as a personal test. A test that he was determined to pass with flying colors. Franz would prove his trustworthiness to the Brotherhood in any way they chose, whether it was by keeping the secrecy of their messages or by following orders without question. Each task marked one step closer to freedom and a fortune.

He dropped the letter onto the floor just beside the officer's sprawled legs, finished walking the length of the aisle as if nothing had occurred, turned around—and saw Fräulein Dommayer watching him from the stage with brightly speculative eyes.

Blast
. Franz walked back at the same meandering pace, but his heartbeat was racing. Trust her, of all people, to have seen him. Seen him and speculated about his actions—she was cleverer than he'd thought when he'd first met her. She might look like a pretty, vacant Bavarian milkmaid, but he'd wager she saw and understood nearly everything that went on around her.

Wait
. He paused halfway down the aisle as an idea seized him. It was so unlikely—and yet . . . what other explanation was there? Why else would she watch him so intently? Why else with such a measuring look? She had even rescued their note to him from Delacroix the night before.

She must work for the Brotherhood, too
. She was reporting back to them on his movements.
Perhaps . . .
She didn't look like a spy. But then, the whole story of her employment had sounded so bizarre and unlikely. From personal maid to singer in one great leap? It would make so much more sense, in the same wild and dreamlike manner of that original nighttime visit, if he assumed instead that her “discovery” had been engineered by the same great forces that had found him in his prison and had planned a great design.

What if his inclusion in their plans depended on her reports of his success in this and other tests?

Franz smiled brilliantly at her and walked back up to the stage as quickly as his injured back would let him. His pulse was still racing as he nodded to her.

“Fräulein Dommayer. You're looking lovely, as ever, this morning.”

She blinked and stepped back. “I . . . thank you, Herr Pichler.”

“You sang beautifully in last night's performance.” Was he laying it on too thick?

Perhaps
. Her eyes narrowed.

“What were you leaving for that officer, Herr Pichler?”

“Nothing much,” he said. “Only going about my business. Following instructions.”

She sighed and rolled her eyes. “Your
instructions
—”

Herr Haydn called out, “Herr Pichler! Frau Kettner!”

Franz grinned at Fräulein Dommayer and took the risk. “I'm sure you know all about those instructions, Fräulein. I only hope you may be pleased with the way I accomplished them.”

He limped up the steps onto the stage with a lighter heart than he'd felt for days.

“I shouldn't even be speaking to you,” Sophie hissed to Charlotte.

They had fallen behind the rest of the group strolling through the pathways of the Prince's gardens. Sunlight shone down on the colorful beds of flowers and soaked through the black cloth of Charlotte's gown and all her undergarments until she felt ready to sink beneath the heat. The water shooting out from the nearby fountains called to her with a dangerously seductive appeal.

She sighed and wrenched her gaze away from the streams of cool water jetting out from Neptune's copper trident, five feet away. “I am sorry, Sophie,” she whispered back, “but I have apologized several times already. What more do you want me to say?”

“It was inexcusable for you to embarrass me in front of everyone.” Sophie glared straight ahead, her pretty face shadowed by her wide, curving hat. Blue ribbons dangled down across her shoulders, matching her parasol. “How did you think such behavior must reflect on me, your sister? Your
hostess
? I had to apologize to Niko and his niece for you, and promise—”

“There was no need for you to do any of that, as I had already apologized to them myself.” Charlotte bit off the ends of her words as renewed temper threatened to overwhelm her. “Oh, Sophie.” She closed her eyes a moment against the too-bright sunlight and took a deep breath. “Perhaps I am causing you too much trouble, after all. If you are finding my visit too much of a trial, you really can cut it short without injuring my feelings, I promise you.”

“What?”

“Only say the word, and I can be packed to leave within the day. Perhaps it has been unfair for me to linger here and take advantage of your hospitality. I can go to Vienna—”

“To Maman? Don't be absurd, Lotte! You'd go mad within a fortnight. She would have you remarried and sold off—”

“I can manage Maman
,
” Charlotte said evenly. “I'm old enough to say no to her nowadays.”
I hope
, she added silently. Hidden in her skirts, her fingers clenched at the memory of the last time she had tried. “If you'll let me have the loan of a carriage for the journey, I'll—”

“Lotte,
no
.” Sophie came to a halt and grasped her arm. “Please don't leave. For my sake, not yours.” Her face twitched, as though she fought back tears. “It's meant so much to me to have you here. Twelve years since we'd last seen each other. Twelve
years
, Lotte!”

“I know.” Charlotte squeezed Sophie's gloved hand. “It was far too long.”

“And who knows where Maman will marry you off to next? You might have to travel to the wilds of Poland, for all I know! Besides . . .” Sophie's smile was watery. She took her hand back to wipe her eyes. “I need you here, Lotte. I love Niko, of course I do, but there's no one else here for me, apart from him. No one who cares about
me
, Sophie, and doesn't just think of me as Niko's pet, or hope that he'll be rid of me soon, or—”

“Sophie!” Charlotte stared at her. “Dearest, I'm sure that isn't true.”

“It is. Of course it is. They all give me lip-service as Niko's hostess, but I know what they really think. I'm a joke to them, or else a scandal. I hate it!”

“I never knew you felt that way.”

“I try not to think about it.” Sophie shrugged and patted her face, smoothing it back into order. “Oh, Lotte, please do say you'll stay and forget about my silliness. You will, won't you?”

“Of course I will.”

Charlotte would have embraced her, if they hadn't stood in so public a place. They were already attracting curious glances from the others, now that they had fallen so far behind. Charlotte took Sophie's arm and walked forward in silence to catch up with the rest of the group. She hadn't felt so fiercely protective since they had been children and she'd had to comfort Sophie after some particularly scathing nursery visit from their mother.

They'd been each other's sole defense, back then, against their mother's mercurial moods and her venomous temper, which could strike so suddenly and unexpectedly. Charlotte could still remember the feel of her younger sister's consoling embrace—though Sophie had been only ten years old at the time—as eighteen-year-old Charlotte had wept, lashed by their mother's words after her first, humiliating debut into Viennese society. When the news of Charlotte's betrothal was announced three months later, to a man above sixty years of age, whom she had never met, it had been Sophie who had vowed resistance.

It was Sophie, too, who had given Charlotte the courage to stand against her mother then, for once in her life trying to refuse the course that her parents had set for her. The coldly calculated threats that she'd garnered from her father for that resistance had been nothing to the burn of her mother's tirade, scorching her for her disloyalty and for the dishonor that a broken engagement would bring to her entire family.

In the end, of course, there had been no choice. She would have lost both her home and her family if she had refused to fulfill her allotted path. But once Charlotte had given in . . .

Oh
. She shut her eyes against the vivid memory. Sophie, weeping bitterly over her older sister's upcoming marriage, and Charlotte weeping, too, even as she promised frequent visits. Little had she known that, within a year, any visits would be out of the question. Within four years, she had relinquished even the faintest hope of them.

Charlotte had taken the place of a mother to Sophie from the moment that her younger sister had been born. Their love and loyalty to each other had been the only warmth that either of them ever knew in their family's cold household. Once married, though, and hundreds of miles away, Charlotte had become so absorbed in Ernst's worsening health, the endless demands of his wide-ranging correspondence, and the urgent needs of his estate and dependents, that her own correspondence had faltered and faded for lack of time and energy. Meanwhile, Sophie's letters from Vienna, once so frequent and full of news, had become shorter and rarer with every year, until they disappeared entirely. By the time of Ernst's death, Charlotte hadn't exchanged so much as a page-long note with her sister in years.

Had she been responsible for abandoning her younger sister? At the time, she had guiltily excused her lack of effort by telling herself that Sophie must surely have formed new friendships to replace their former closeness. But, clearly, not one of them had worked to protect Sophie from her own whimsical nature, or reinforce her own better judgment and sense of honor. If Charlotte had kept up the correspondence and maintained her former loving support, would Sophie still have made this foolish, hurtful bargain with her husband and the Prince?