Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1) (11 page)

The carriage door opened again, very quietly.

“Johnnie, this is—” She broke off as a total stranger stood there, reaching in to the fiacre quite blatantly to seize the bag on her lap.

With a gasp of shock, she slapped his hand, before her brain engaged and she remembered she had a more powerful weapon. In the instant his slapped fingers paused, she snatched the bag out of his reach and jerked out her other hand with the pistol.

“Get away from me,” she commanded.

The man wore a peaked cap and was, she could swear, the man who’d arrived in the pony and trap shortly after herself and Johnnie. He paused with one foot on the step. He’d clearly meant to climb in with her until he found himself gazing at the not quite steady barrel of her pistol.

“The bag,” he said peremptorily. “Show me.”

“It’s nothing to do with you. Go away or I’ll shoot you.”

“If you shoot me, Miss Gaunt, you’ll be in more trouble than you could ever envision. Give me the bag.”

Something in the grim authority of his voice made her want to comply. However, she had no intention of giving up her siblings’ future to anyone, let alone to a total stranger. Even one who knew her name. She lifted her chin and opened her mouth to give a haughty reply.

She never made it. Quite suddenly, the intruder was seized by the shoulder and spun around to receive a crashing blow to the jaw.

Johnnie stood there, fist clenched, his mouth a straight hard line of fury, his eyes positively murderous, reminding Lizzie that there had always been a hint of danger and suppressed violence about him. Well, the violence was no longer suppressed.

The blow should surely have broken the stranger’s jaw or perhaps laid him out cold. Instead, he was already rolling as he fell to the ground, as if preparing to spring back to his feet. Johnnie went after him and the stranger hooked one foot around his ankle, jerking him to the ground.

Lizzie let out a squeak of distress. Abandoning the bag inside the coach, she jumped down. “Stop!” she commanded, then resorted to pleading. “Oh, please, stop!”

The two men paid her no attention. They rolled together, aiming and parrying blows so that only a few ever connected.

“You fight dirty,” Johnnie observed, panting as he leapt to his feet, giving himself space. He held a wicked-looking dagger in his hand, presumably one he’d wrenched from his opponent’s grip. “Now, get out of my way.”

“So do you,” the stranger replied. His hand delved into his coat pocket and suddenly he held a small pistol pointing straight at Johnnie’s heart. “Now, get out of mine.”

Johnnie raised his dagger arm. The stranger cocked his pistol, his finger curled around the trigger. And Lizzie couldn’t take anymore. She rushed between them, yelling “Enough!” Much as she did when Michael and Georgiana were squabbling. Her fingers curled with more fury now than fear, because they were behaving so childishly.

Her arm jerked and a huge bang rent the air. The stranger stared at her in ludicrous astonishment, and then crumpled to the ground.

“Oh God,” she whispered. She’d forgotten she was holding the cocked gun. She wasn’t normally when she stopped a fight…

Her fingers opened in revulsion, letting her father’s pistol fall to the ground. “Oh no. Oh God, what have I done?”

She dropped to her knees before the fallen man. Johnnie crouched by his other side.

“Bring a light,” he commanded the fiacre driver. But by the coach lanterns, Lizzie could already see the ominous dark stain on the man’s coat.

“Is he dead?” she whispered. “Have I killed him?”

The thief shook his head. “Not yet,” he said. He jerked his head around to the inn building where several men had spilled out, presumably attracted by the gunshot.

One of them, the smoking man, was already running toward them. Johnnie gestured with his arm, a peremptory gesture that suggested he was used to giving orders that were promptly obeyed. Perhaps he’d been a sergeant in his army… And right now, why did that matter? She’d shot a man who lay dying at her feet.

Johnnie yanked off his necktie with one hand, opening the injured man’s coat with the other. The smoking man spoke to Johnnie in a strange language. It might have been Russian. Johnnie answered in similar vein, pressing his hastily folded cravat over the red wound.

“What can I do?” Lizzie demanded.

“Hold this over the wound when we lift him,” Johnnie said. “Press hard.” He looked up at the man who’d just arrived and, in German, ordered a room for the injured man and the summoning of a doctor. The landlord bristled, hands on hips, releasing a torrent of protesting words that Lizzie couldn’t follow, and which cut off quite abruptly when Johnnie looked at him again.

In silence, the landlord ran back the way he’d come. Lizzie could hear him issuing commands as Johnnie and the smoking man lifted her victim between them. They were surprisingly gentle although efficient. Blood oozed over Lizzie’s hand as she pressed the pad of the cravat to the wound and trotted along beside them.

“Press harder,” Johnnie said. “You want to stop any more blood coming out of him.”

“Won’t I hurt him more?” she asked anxiously.

“He won’t mind if he lives. Besides, he’s out cold. Best if he stays that way until we fish the ball out of him…”

A woman met them at the door of the house and led them up to a clean, tidy room on the first floor. While between them, Johnnie and his ally wrestled the injured man out of his coat and cut away his shirt, the woman and Johnnie babbled in German. Among the few words Lizzie picked out were “police” and “brother” and “doctor”. The woman went unhappily away, though she came back a few moments later with tweezers, for which Johnnie politely thanked her.

The smoking man with the fine whiskers, took the tweezers and held them in the nearest candle flame.

“Lift the pad,” Johnnie instructed, “And let’s see what we’ve got. Miss Lizzie, you won’t like this next bit. Why don’t you go and see if you can extract some clean bandages from the landlady? I asked her to bring them up but you’d better chase her up here.”

Eager to do her part, Lizzie nodded and hurried to the door.

“Oh, I told her we were eloping,” Johnnie said casually. “That this man is your brother who tried to make you go home with him.”

Lizzie’s mouth fell open. “Why?”

“Because I suspect the truth is rather more dangerous. Fetch the bandages and I’ll tell you.”

To avoid the landlady’s questions—asked with a mixture of avid curiosity, sympathy and disapproval—Lizzie pretended to understand less German than she actually did and returned almost gratefully to her victim’s room.

A bowl of gory red water stood on the wash stand which had been dragged over beside the bed. The tweezers and a small red ball had been dropped into it.

Lizzie felt queasy as she set her armful of bandages on the bed. “You got the ball out then,” she managed. The smoking man seemed to be sewing up her victim like a dress seam. She swallowed. “Will he live?”

Johnnie touched her shoulder. “He has a chance. It’s a pity there’s no doctor nearby, but Misha and I are quite used to dealing with such wounds. Our man is strong and fit, so his chances are better than most.”

With almost unconscious efficiency, Lizzie had begun to make a dressing for the wound. When Misha’s needlework was done, she placed it over the wound, running the bandages around his chest to hold everything in place, while Johnnie and Misha lifted the patient for her. That done, they settled him on the pillows and covered him with the crisp sheet and blankets.

“He’s very white,” Lizzie said doubtfully, sinking onto the bed beside her victim. She frowned. “Doesn’t the landlady think it odd that my brother is Austrian, while I speak so little German?”

“Clearly, he’s a half-brother,” Johnnie said.

“Clearly,” Lizzie agreed with a catch in her voice. She cleared her throat with determination. “So why did you make up this ridiculous story?”

“He has no identity papers with him,” Johnnie said, perching on the foot of the bed. “None at all. He arrived here shortly after we did and tried to take your bag when he saw the opportunity. He didn’t expect you to fight back. His coat is vile, I’ll grant you, but I suspect we’ll find a finer one in his possession. His shirt is of good quality, as were his breeches before we muddied them in our scrap.”

Lizzie dragged her gaze away from her victim, twisting around to look at Johnnie, instead. “Who is he?”

“I don’t know. But I suspect he’s an officer of Metternich’s secret police.”

Lizzie’s jaw dropped. She swallowed. “You mean I shot a policeman? Of rank?”

“Well, he’s not Baron Hager. He gets his hands dirty. But he’s not a ten-a-penny spy, either.”

“You can’t
know
this,” Lizzie protested. “It’s just as likely to be true as the story you made up about our elopement!”

“No,” Johnnie said with apparent regret. “Misha’s seen someone watching our rooms. And your house is almost certainly watched, from inside or out, because of your uncle’s position.”

“Oh no!” Lizzie stared at him. “Then he—this man whom I shot—knows all about the necklace and what we did?”

“I doubt he’s interested. State secrets are what interest him.”

“Well I have none of those and I very much doubt you do, either!”

“I think it’s our connection, from different camps, if you like, that probably drew his attention. I suspect we were seen in your carriage outside the theatre.”

“What do they think?” Lizzie demanded. “That I read all my uncle’s papers and pass the information to you?”

“Maybe.”

“Then who do you give it to?”

“Whoever pays me, I suppose.”

She frowned. “Where are you from, Johnnie? Which army were you in?”

For an instant she couldn’t understand, he hesitated, then he answered quite steadily, “The Russian army.”

She’d already suspected it. She seemed to have developed an unhealthy attraction to Russians of all ranks. Perhaps it made up for her un-Christian hatred of Ivan the Terrible.

“The thing is,” Johnnie said, “The Austrians have spies everywhere. The word is, no one of any importance in Vienna can sneeze at dinner without Metternich knowing about it by supper. So you need to be careful about your secrets.”

“I think I’ve rather blasted that one,” she said, turning back to the wounded man. “He’ll be missed, won’t he?”

“Eventually. Yes.”

“Who should I tell?”

“No one. Not yet. If and when he awakens, we can tell him we really were eloping. Shooting him by accident changed your mind. If he believes us, he won’t be interested in more.”

“And if he doesn’t?”

“He was trying to steal from you. The British will never let you be charged with such a crime in such circumstances.”

“But there would be a terrible scandal. Aunt Lucy would never forgive me.”

“Which is why it would all be hushed up. It’s very unlikely to get that far.”

“And if he dies?” Lizzie whispered.

Johnnie shrugged. “Then we stick with the elopement story to anyone who’s interested. It will be all right. You didn’t mean to shoot him. Anyone could see that.”

“To be honest, I was never that accurate,” she said tremulously. “I can’t hit a barn at fifty paces.”

“You’ve never had the right gun,” Johnnie said. “I’ll teach you with mine and you’ll be able to hit a silver penny in no time.”

Lizzie gave a wavery laugh. “I doubt it.”

Johnnie grinned. “We’ll see. Now, you’d better get back to Vienna with your bag.”

Lizzie blinked. “I can’t leave him like this. What if he has a fever?”

Johnnie exchanged glances with Misha. “We can be here most of the night.”

“It was I who shot him,” Lizzie said grimly. “The least I can do is nurse him.”

“And what of your sisters and brother? Your aunt will miss you.”

“The children will cover for me,” Lizzie said. “At least until noon tomorrow. We weren’t sure when I’d be back, you see, how long it would take us to—”

“Do you know how to deal with a fever?” Johnnie interrupted.

“Of course I do,” Lizzie said disparagingly. She wasn’t the Baroness of Launceton’s daughter for nothing.

“Then I’ll pay off the fiacre,” Johnnie said. “And give the driver enough to bribe him to silence. Here, we’ll split the night into three watches. Misha and I will take the first two, then wake you. Hopefully, by the time we have to go, we’ll have more idea how things stand with our friend here.”

Lizzie stood up. “You must have been a very good sergeant,” she observed.

Misha, in the act of drinking, spluttered.

Johnnie frowned at him. “If only I could rise so high,” he said quellingly, getting to his feet. “I’ll find the landlady and procure you a chamber.”

*

It was a
good plan, though, in fact, it didn’t work out quite like that. Since Lizzie wasn’t tired, she hung around in the patient’s bedroom. Eventually, Misha brought in another more comfortable chair for her, while he curled up on the floor and went to sleep, reminding Lizzie of Dog.

Johnnie sprawled in the hard chair a couple of feet away from her, leaning his elbow on the bed itself, and frequently resting his head on his hand while he watched their patient or spoke to Lizzie.