Vienna Waltz (15 page)
Authors: Teresa Grant
Tags: #Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, #Mystery, #Historical, #Romance, #Historical Romance, #Mystery & Suspense
There was something unusually brittle in Wilhelmine’s manner tonight. The tension of being Metternich’s guest might account for some of it, but Willie had been in company with Prince Metternich a score of times since their love affair had ended. Was Wilhelmine’s quarrel with Princess Tatiana as simple as an argument over purchasing back the Courland Cellini casket? And why on earth did Willie, who was fabulously wealthy and had her pick of men, need Tsar Alexander?
Dorothée rubbed her elbows. Even in her earliest memories, Wilhelmine had seemed thoroughly grown up, though thinking back, Willie would only have been a young teenager. They had never been close, but they had spent more time together these past weeks in Vienna. For the first time, Dorothée could almost think of her eldest sister as a friend. And yet in many ways she didn’t know Wilhelmine at all.
Dorothée looked up to find Talleyrand’s gaze had shifted to her. The appraising expression was gone from his eyes. They rested on her with a look that was carefully veiled. Yet behind that veil lay—She couldn’t say what, precisely, save that it was something very different from the usual chess master’s calculation in his eyes.
Confused, for reasons she didn’t entirely understand, she smiled back, a little uncertain, and turned her gaze to the dark glass of the window.
This time it was Malcolm who opened the dressing room door to look in on their sleeping son. He stepped into the room, moving with the quiet that was second nature to him in his intelligence work, twitched the blanket smooth, touched his fingers lightly to Colin’s forehead.
Suzanne watched from the doorway, her throat gone tight. Whatever uncertainties she had about Malcolm’s feelings for her, his love for Colin was absolute. She moved to the dressing table and began to remove her gloves. As she peeled down the finely knitted silk, she recalled the pressure of Frederick Radley’s hand on her own. Her gaze went back to the dressing room, her husband bending over their son. Despite the coals glowing in the porcelain stove, a chill shot through her at the cold reality of everything she had to lose.
Malcolm returned to their bedchamber and gave a crooked smile. “There’s something about danger. I always need to reassure myself that he’s all right.”
“So do I.” She moved Malcolm’s shaving kit to the chest of drawers to make room on the dressing table. “Given the life we lead, that means we need to reassure ourselves pretty much every night.”
She pulled out the comb that anchored her mantilla and folded the lace into careful squares. Malcolm went to the chest of drawers, picked up the bottle atop it that held the whisky he’d brought from Britain, and poured them each a glass.
She took a sip when he put the glass in her hand. The smoky bite took her back to her first visit to Scotland the previous summer. Granite cliffs, salt-tinged air, Malcolm at home in a way she had never seen before.
While he helped her undress, he told her about his talk with Fitz. Suzanne was grateful to be busy with tapes and laces and hairpins. Much easier not to meet her husband’s gaze as they discussed the infidelity in the marriage of two of their closest friends.
“In the end, all I can really say is that Fitz doesn’t have an alibi for the time of Tatiana’s murder,” Malcolm finished.
Suzanne wrapped her dressing gown over her nightdress and took a sip of whisky. “Princess Tatiana could have destroyed his marriage and his political prospects by revealing the affair. But why would she have done so?”
“Quite. But with Tatiana one can never be certain. Or they could have had a lover’s quarrel.”
“Malcolm, do you really think Fitz—”
“I don’t. But I didn’t suspect he was Tatiana’s lover, either.”
Suzanne perched on the edge of the bed, one arm curled round the bedpost, while Malcolm finished removing his grandee costume. “What do you think is in the papers Princess Tatiana had that Adam Czartoryski is desperate to recover? Love letters he wrote to Tsarina Elisabeth?”
“I suspect it’s more than that.” Malcolm tossed his coat over a chairback. “I’ve heard stories from Michael Langley, who was stationed in Russia in those days. Czartoryski’s love affair with the tsarina was a fairly open secret twenty years ago. In essence, Czartoryski had been sent to the Russian court as a hostage. He was the main voice calling for Polish independence, and the Russian government feared he’d inspire an uprising if he returned home.”
“This was before Alexander became tsar?”
“His grandmother, Catherine the Great, was still on the throne.” Malcolm tossed his frilled shirt after the coat. “She died a year later, and Alexander’s father, Paul, became tsar. Paul was a temperamental man with a violent streak. Alexander was a rebellious heir apparent. Czartoryski’s idealism appealed to the side of Alexander that sees himself as a liberal reformer. The two became close friends.”
“Until Czartoryski’s affair with Elisabeth?”
“No, that’s the interesting thing. Alexander was seeking consolation elsewhere and by all accounts didn’t object to his young wife doing likewise.”
Suzanne found herself remembering Frederick Radley’s mocking gaze in the Metternichs’ salon this evening. “Surprisingly broad-minded of him.”
Malcolm stepped out of his breeches and reached for his nightshirt. “The affair went on for three years. Then Elisabeth gave birth to a baby girl. Her first child. At the christening, Tsar Paul commented on the wonder of two light-haired people producing a child with such dark hair and eyes.”
Suzanne’s fingers closed on the silk folds of her dressing gown. “And that ended Prince Czartoryski’s residence at the Russian court?”
“He was packed off as ambassador to Sardinia.” Malcolm shrugged his dressing gown on over his nightshirt. “As Michael Langley describes it, Alexander appeared to miss Czartoryski as much as Elisabeth did. Czartoryski returned to Russia two years later, when Alexander ascended to the throne. Before long he became chief minister. Langley worked closely with him, as Czartoryski’s policies were anti-French and favored an alliance with Britain.”
“And the affair with Elisabeth?”
“The tsarina is said to have been seeking consolation elsewhere by then. Czartoryski and the tsar did fall out, but over the Prussian policy, not the tsarina. And Czartoryski still advises Alexander.”
Suzanne curled her feet up under her. She had seen a wide variety of marital relationships, but this triangle of the tsar, his best friend, and the tsarina was difficult to grasp. “What happened to the dark-haired child?”
“She died young, as did Alexander and Elisabeth’s only other child.”
Suzanne cast an involuntary glance at the closed dressing room door behind which Colin slept. “Tsarina Elisabeth has had a difficult life.”
Malcolm’s gaze flickered after her own. “Yes.”
“And her relationship with Prince Czartoryski now?”
Malcolm picked up his whisky glass and looked thoughtfully into it for a moment. “I know no more than what is revealed by his gaze when he looks at her. Whatever the state of their relationship, his feelings are deeply engaged.”
“But whatever secret these papers contain may have nothing to do with Czartoryski.”
“Perhaps not.” Malcolm moved to the bed and dropped down beside her, draping his arm round her shoulders.
She leaned into him, warmed by more than just the heat of his body. “I like Adam Czartoryski, Malcolm. He’s always struck me as a decent man. But if he killed Princess Tatiana—Working with us would be a clever feint.”
“I thought about that.” His fingers moved against her shoulder. “But I can’t see him killing Tatiana when she was the only one who could tell him where the tsarina’s papers were.”
“No, you’re right, it doesn’t make sense.” Suzanne slid her own arm round him, the silk of his dressing gown soft beneath her fingers. “Count Otronsky asked me to waltz and posed some not too subtle questions about our arrival at Princess Tatiana’s last night. I suspect the tsar sent him.”
Malcolm’s fingers stilled against her arm. “I wouldn’t doubt it for a minute. The tsar seems to rely on Otronsky more than any of his other advisers these days.”
“Malcolm.” Her husband’s heartbeat reassuringly steady beneath her ear, Suzanne sought for the best way to frame her next question. “Did you know Princess Tatiana wasn’t really the daughter of Prince and Princess Sarasov?”
She felt his sharp intake of breath and the tension that ran across his shoulder blades. “No. Perhaps the one thing I never questioned about Tatiana’s life was her origins.”
Suzanne lifted her head from her husband’s shoulder and studied him beneath the shadows of the canopy. Whatever Princess Tatiana had been to him, he made no secret of having cared for her. Surely to learn she hadn’t been what he had thought could not but cause him distress. Yet his face was even more carefully armored than usual. A sign, perhaps, of just how deep his feelings ran. “Do you think Talleyrand arranged Princess Tatiana’s new identity?” she asked. “Could she have been his agent even then?”
“It’s possible.” His voice was cool and appraising, but he kept his arm round her, which was oddly reassuring. “Tatiana would certainly have needed the help of someone as powerful—and wily—as he is.”
“It seems a bit odd for him to arrange all that to get her into the Russian court, only to have her end up spending most of her time in Paris. But perhaps his objectives changed.”
“And it would have been easier for her to infiltrate French society as a foreigner than with a counterfeit French identity.”
Suzanne took a sip of whisky. “Do you think Princess Tatiana was really French?”
“Difficult to say. She was damnably skilled at accents. She could sound convincingly as though she came from a host of countries.”
“Like you.”
“And you.” He lifted his hand from her shoulder and brushed his fingers against her cheek. Odd how his slightest touch could stir her. He leaned forward. She felt the warmth of his breath and caught the scent of whisky. For a moment she was sure he was going to kiss her. Instead, he drew back and asked, “What else did you learn tonight?”
She suppressed a sigh, unsure if it was the fact that they still had things to discuss or something else that had stopped him. “According to the Prince de Ligne, Princess Tatiana was selling looted art treasures.”
Malcolm’s eyes widened. “Good God.”
“I think Wilhelmine of Sagan was negotiating to buy a piece from Princess Tatiana. It seems almost insignificant next to everything else we’ve discovered—”
“But it’s the seemingly insignificant things that may be vital clues. What—”
A discreet rap at the door made them both jump. Malcolm tied the sash on his dressing gown and went to the door. His valet, Addison, stood outside.
“I’m sorry, sir. Madam. But I thought you’d want to hear this at once.”
“Of course.” Malcolm stepped aside to allow Addison into the room.
Addison’s normally immaculate shirt collar was limp and tinged gray, his pale blond hair fell over his forehead in uncharacteristic disarray, and he wore a corduroy jacket instead of one of his exquisitely cut coats. His costume for a night of information gathering.
“I spent most of the night—and the early morning—in a tavern with three footmen employed at houses near the Palm Palace,” he explained.
Malcolm’s eyes narrowed. “Yes?”
“There was a great deal of speculation. One of them saw a gentleman go in through the side entrance about three in the morning, who must have been Tsar Alexander or you, sir. Another saw a cloaked lady arrive, and swore it was just before the clock struck three. I assume that was Mrs. Rannoch.”
Suzanne nodded.
Addison drew a breath, a rare sign of unease. “But the third footman says he saw a gentleman go into the house much earlier in the evening. About twelve-thirty.”
Malcolm cast a glance at Suzanne. Too early even to be Adam Czartoryski.
“The gentleman stopped beneath a street lamp, and the footman got a glimpse of his face. Apparently he’d seen the man go up the side stairs to Princess Tatiana’s room before.” Addison hesitated. A shadow of concern flickered over his usually impassive face. “The footman swears it was Lord Fitzwilliam Vaughn.”
14
O
ne advantage of being at an international peace conference where the fate of nations hangs in the balance is that no one looks askance if one bangs on doors in the middle of the night. Malcolm rapped on the door of Fitz and Eithne’s room. Not as hard as he would have liked, but hard enough to wake any sleepers.
ne advantage of being at an international peace conference where the fate of nations hangs in the balance is that no one looks askance if one bangs on doors in the middle of the night. Malcolm rapped on the door of Fitz and Eithne’s room. Not as hard as he would have liked, but hard enough to wake any sleepers.
Fitz opened the door, dressing gown open over his nightshirt, eyes wide with confusion. “What’s happened?”
“We need to talk.” Malcolm jerked his head down the passage.
Fitz gave a quick nod. “It’s all right, darling, go back to sleep,” he called over his shoulder to Eithne.
Malcolm strode down the passage to the sitting room appropriated by the attachés. A litter of papers covered the desk in the center of the room and the smells of ink and brandy hung in the air. He set his candle down on a table near the door. Then he grabbed Fitz by the throat and slammed his friend against the door panels.
“Did you kill her?”
“Of course not.” Fitz’s voice was a choked rasp. “I told you—”
“You lied to me.”
“I didn’t—”
“You bastard.” Malcolm tightened his grip. “You were seen going into Tatiana’s rooms last night.”
Fitz’s shoulders went slack beneath Malcolm’s hands. “God in heaven.”
“Do you deny it?”
In the flickering light of the single candle, Fitz’s gaze held not fear or anger but sick horror. “What’s the use?” He sounded more exhausted than a soldier after a fortnight’s siege.
Malcolm loosed his grip and took a step back. “What happened?”
Fitz scraped his hands over his face but made no attempt to move away from the door. “I did come home and go to work on a white paper on the Saxon situation. In this room.” He cast a glance round the sitting room. “I was sitting at that desk, drinking a pot of coffee I’d sent for to counteract a night of brandy and champagne, when the footman brought in her note.”
“Don’t tell me she wanted you to call at three in the morning along with the rest of us.”
“No. She just said she needed to see me at once.” His gaze went to the flowered porcelain stove in the corner. “I burned the letter and ground up the ashes. I wish—” A spasm of pain gripped his eyes. “That was the last letter I had from her.”
“And then?” Malcolm kept his gaze trained on his friend’s face.
Fitz drew a harsh breath. “When I got to the Palm Palace Tatiana was—distressed.”
“About?”
“Look, Malcolm—” Fitz moved away from the door, paced over to the desk, turned back to face Malcolm. “I know my lying to you is unconscionable. But the truth is, I didn’t want to have to tell you this.” His hand clenched on the desktop. “After everything else that happened, I couldn’t bear to tarnish her memory.”
“Christ, Fitz. Tatiana was one of the most pragmatic people I’ve ever met. She’d care more about us discovering who killed her than she would for her reputation.”
Fitz cast a glance at the sheets of scribbled-over, hot-pressed paper on the desk, as though they held the answer to how to frame his story. “Tatiana was—I don’t think Kirsanov left her very comfortably situated.”
“Not given the circles in which she moved.”
“Quite. A woman like Wilhelmine of Sagan could purchase a country with the wave of her hand. It can’t have been easy for Tatiana to make her way in that world. If you look at her actions in that light—”
“Fitz, are you trying to tell me Tatiana was selling looted art treasures?”
Fitz’s widened eyes gleamed white in the blue-black shadows. “What have you heard?”
“Rumors.”
Fitz picked up a tinderbox from the desktop. It took three tries of his shaky hands to light one of the tapers in the candelabrum on the desk. “Tatiana had come into possession of a number of valuable pieces.”
“Where did she get them?”
“I didn’t ask.” Fitz lit the second taper. “But I assume—”
“From various of her lovers.”
The third taper flamed to life. “You don’t seem surprised.”
“I had no notion it was going on until I heard the rumors tonight. But I’m not surprised Tatiana would do such a thing.”
The candle flame flared in Fitz’s eyes. “You wrong her.”
“Hardly, since it seems it’s precisely what she was doing. Tatiana was very good at looking after herself.” Malcolm strode forward so the angle of the candlelight gave him a better view of Fitz’s face. “When did you learn of it?”
“The night she died.” Fitz passed a hand over his eyes. “God, was it only last night?”
“What made her tell you?”
“When I got to the Palm Palace she was upset. She’d just had a terrible scene with the Duchess of Sagan.”
“Relating to the art treasures?”
“Apparently Tatiana had a silver casket that had belonged to the Courland family. Wilhelmine of Sagan had learned somehow that it was in Tatiana’s possession and tried to buy it from her.”
“They couldn’t agree on a price?”
“Tatiana didn’t want to sell it.”
“She thought she could get more for it elsewhere?”
“She said she wouldn’t part with it under any circumstances. She said it had value to her beyond mere coin.” Fitz stared at the candle flame. “I can only assume the value had to do with whoever had given it to her.”
“She didn’t tell you who that was?”
“No. And it seemed indelicate to ask. Apparently the Duchess of Sagan had tried to buy it from her the day before, and they’d quarreled. Dorothée Périgord arrived and cut the scene short. Last night, Wilhelmine of Sagan called on Tatiana and demanded she hand over the piece. Tatiana said they had a dreadful quarrel. I’d never seen her so shaken.”
“What time did you leave?”
“A bit after one. I heard the clock striking a quarter after when I returned to the Minoritenplatz. I’d have stayed longer, but she told me it was too risky. If only I had stayed—”
“I suspect she sent you away on purpose.”
“Because she’d summoned the rest of you at three in the morning?”
Malcolm nodded.
“And in the interval between my leaving and your arrival someone killed her.”
“So it seems.”
“You mean, assuming I’m telling the truth.” Fitz met Malcolm’s gaze. Perhaps it was a trick of the flickering light, but his face looked sharper and harder than usual. “I told myself I kept it secret to protect Tatiana’s memory. But the truth is, I knew what you’d think if you knew I’d been with her last night.”
“You assumed I’d rush to judgment.”
“You’ve already twice accused me of killing her, Malcolm.”
Their gazes locked. Friendships were delicate things, built slowly, carefully nurtured through the years, shaped into something precious. And like fine crystal, they could be smashed in an instant.
Suzanne helped herself to a pastry from the sideboard, mostly to keep her hands busy. She hadn’t seemed to be hungry for the past two days, though she knew from experience the necessity of continuing to eat.
Behind her, she heard the rhythmic click of a spoon against a cup as Eithne, the only other occupant of the breakfast parlor, stirred her coffee. Suzanne stared down at the pink-flowered porcelain of her plate, searching for small talk to get them through the meal.
“I must have had a dozen people commiserate with me at the ball last night on not being among those invited to Princess Tatiana’s funeral,” Eithne said. “As though it were the social event of the season.”
“It’s rather ghoulish. But not unexpected.” Suzanne added a dollop of currant preserves to her plate.
“I own to a craven relief you and Malcolm are going instead of Fitz and me.”
Suzanne reached for the butter, feeling the weight of the coming event press on her shoulders. “I can’t say I’m precisely looking forward to it.”
“You know, don’t you?” Eithne said.
Suzanne set down the butter dish and spun around. “I beg your pardon?”
Eithne returned her spoon to the gilt-rimmed saucer. “That Fitz was Princess Tatiana’s lover.”
Suzanne, who prided herself on her skill at dissembling, stared into her friend’s seemingly guileless Wedgwood blue eyes. “Eithne—”
Eithne lifted her cup and took a careful, precise sip of coffee. “As soon as I knew you and Malcolm were looking into the murder, I was sure you’d learn the truth. Poor Fitz should have realized it as well.”
Suzanne moved to the table. “Dearest—How long—”
“Almost from the beginning.” Eithne returned the cup to its saucer. The porcelain barely rattled, but her knuckles were white.
Words, which usually sprang easily to Suzanne’s lips, seemed to have quite deserted her. She had seen her family killed, had nursed dying soldiers, had confronted her husband over the body of the woman who might be his mistress. But the bleak despair in her friend’s gaze was uncharted territory.
She dropped into a chair across the table from Eithne. “I’m so sorry—”
“It was the day of the expedition to the Klosterneuburg abbey,” Eithne said. “I stayed in town for a dress fitting—God, how the most trivial detail can come back to haunt one. When Fitz came home that evening, I could tell something was different. I could almost feel it in his lips when he kissed me.” She put a hand to her mouth. “A little too insistent and yet at the same time surprisingly detached. Strange how much one can tell from a kiss.”
“It’s one way couples communicate.” For a moment, Suzanne had an intense memory of Malcolm’s lips against her own in the pianoforte maker’s darkened shop.
“And one way couples lie,” Eithne said, with a cynicism Suzanne had never before heard in her friend’s dulcet voice. “When I watched Fitz kiss Princess Tatiana’s hand at a ball at the Hofburg two nights later, I was sure.”
Suzanne reached across the table and laid her hand over Eithne’s own. Her friend’s skin was ice-cold.
“I used to think we were safe.” Eithne’s voice cracked, like a pianoforte when a wire snaps. “I remember watching Princess Metternich’s face while Prince Metternich waltzed with the Duchess of Sagan and thinking how dreadful her situation was. I was so secure in my own marriage, I could be magnanimous with my pity. Oh, I knew things had changed a bit between us through the years. I told myself one couldn’t live in that mad, passionate state forever. He had his work to focus on, I had the children. He’s been thinking so much about standing for Parliament. I actually thought Vienna would be good for us. I knew he’d be busy, but with Will and Bella at home, I thought we’d have more time for each other. A sort of second honeymoon. Dear God, I’m a fool.”
“Eithne.” Suzanne tightened her grip on her friend’s hand. “Fitz is the one who committed the betrayal. You have nothing to reproach yourself with.”
“And yet I can’t stop going over every detail and wondering where we went wrong. In some deep corner of my mind I suppose I always knew it was a possibility. How could you live in our world and not?”
“Does Fitz—?”
“I don’t think he has the least idea I know. Men are frequently ten steps behind their wives when it comes to understanding these things.” Eithne studied Suzanne, her gaze flat and cold and at the same time filled with pain. “A wife always knows, don’t you find?”
“I’m not sure.” Suzanne’s chest tightened as though a knife had cut through her corset to twist between her ribs. “Perhaps I don’t have your instincts. Or perhaps I don’t know Malcolm as well as you know Fitz.”
“Or perhaps you haven’t had to face betrayal.”
Yet. The unspoken word hung in the air between them. “Betrayal rather depends on one’s expectations going into the marriage. Malcolm and I made a bargain. You and Fitz made a love match.”
Eithne twisted the heavy gold of her wedding band round her finger. “I thought so. But that was when I believed in love. Or believed it was something permanent. Fitz must have loved Princess Tatiana. He’s not a man who’d stray without that. Do you know what’s odd? When I heard she’d been killed, my first thought was ‘poor Fitz, this will be beastly for him.’”
“You still love him.”
“A part of me remembers the time I did.” Eithne picked up her coffee cup, then set it down untasted. “I said I thought we were safe, but the truth is, there’s no such thing as a marriage that’s safe. I’m not sure there’s such a thing as a marriage that’s happy. Not under the surface. When it comes down to it, they’re all bargains, even if dressed up in roses and lace veils and cakes from Gunter’s.”
Suzanne swallowed. Why, when she prided herself on her lack of illusions, did Eithne’s words send a chill to her soul?
“You can’t help but wonder, of course,” Eithne added. “I knew that the moment I learned Princess Tatiana had been killed.”
“Wonder?”
“If Fitz killed her.” Eithne reached for her cup again and this time took a sip with careful deliberation. “Or if I did.”
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