Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

  He pressed the loaded pistol into her hand. “If we’re attacked, hang back and try to wait until you have a clean shot. But look after yourself. I’ll do the same.”

  She nodded, though she knew perfectly well he wouldn’t leave her. It was one of the reasons she’d risked herself and lied to the tsar, and that she’d risk herself again now. She tucked the pistol beneath her cloak and gave him the wire clippers. Their eyes met in the darkness. Something wild and fierce sparked between them, drowning out for the moment all the poisoned questions.

  Malcolm bent his head and pressed his lips over hers again in a brief, hard kiss. “I deserve some of the things you think about me, sweetheart. But not nearly all. Try to trust me until we get out of this.”

  A door at the back of the shop gave onto a cobbled alley. A few lights shone down from first-floor lodgings. Malcolm glanced to either side, then jerked his head to the right, the longer, more shadowy way. They stepped into the alley. A casement was flung open above. They jumped back against the wall just as the contents of a chamberpot spattered onto the cobblestones.

  A half dozen paces from the mouth of the alley, two dark forms hurtled at them out of the shadows. Malcolm had a split second to step forward and take the brunt of the attack. The impact sent him crashing into the wall behind him. One man drew back his fist and struck Malcolm a blow to the jaw. The other turned toward Suzanne. She leveled her arm and shot him in the shoulder.

  The man screamed, clutched his arm, and stumbled into the street beyond. The shot had made his compatriot cast a quick glance over his shoulder. It was enough opening for Malcolm. Seconds later he had spun the man round and was holding him against his chest, a length of piano wire clamped round the man’s throat.

  “Who sent you?” Malcolm’s soft voice held an edge of naked steel.

  “Don’t know—”

  “I advise you not to trifle with me. I might overlook an attack on myself. But you had the bad sense to attack my wife as well.”

  “They’ll kill me.” The man’s voice was a harsh whisper.

  “So will I. Sooner.” Through the darkness, Suzanne saw Malcolm tighten the piano wire round his captive’s throat.

  The man was stone still in Malcolm’s grip, but his gaze shifted to the street. “Fool. You don’t know them. You’re as good as dead yourself.”

  “I’m rather good at protecting myself. I can protect you, too, if you’ll talk.”

  The man gave a desperate laugh. “There’s no such thing—”

  Another shot ripped through the night air, this one from the street beyond. The man went limp in Malcolm’s arms. Malcolm staggered, eased his captive to the ground, and put his fingers to the man’s throat. He looked up at Suzanne and gave a quick shake of his head. Then he caught her hand and raced to the opposite end of the alley.

  He stopped at the house on the corner, gaze on the rococo balcony. “Burgos,” he said.

  His eyes glittered in the shadows. Suzanne nodded, her memory of their escape from the medieval Spanish city fresh in her mind.

  She returned the spent pistol to him. He stuck it in the waistband of his breeches and lifted her in his arms, as though they were dancing a highland reel at a regimental ball. She gripped the balusters. He boosted her higher, and she pulled herself up, grasped the railing, and half levered herself, half fell over the balustrade.

  She landed with a thud on the cold, hard stone of the balcony. She stripped off her cloak, twisted it into a rope, and held it down to Malcolm, bracing her feet against the plaster balustrade. Malcolm had shrugged out of his greatcoat and the tightly fitting coat beneath. He caught the end of the cloak and pulled himself up, hand over hand. Her muscles screamed in protest. She tightened her grip.

  His fingers scrabbled against the edge of the balcony. She released the cloak and caught his hand. He grasped a baluster and then the railing, got a booted leg over the balustrade, and collapsed beside her on the balcony floor.

  “How the devil Romeo ever managed to do that and spout poetry is beyond me,” he said in a hoarse voice. “Not to mention that he’d have needed Juliet to haul him up.”

  “I think it was easier last time we did it,” she said. Softly, because the occupants of the house were probably sleeping behind the French windows.

  “We were younger last time.”

  “Speak for yourself. I’m only one-and-twenty.” And he was just six years her senior. She forgot sometimes that he was barely twenty-seven.

  Malcolm had gone still. Booted footsteps thudded against the cobblestones a street over. “No way to be sure it’s our pursuers,” he said. “Still, better safe than sorry.”

  She removed the brooch from her cloak and stuck it to her bodice. He pushed himself to his feet and steadied her as she climbed onto the railing and pulled herself onto the slick, red-tiled roof. The spider gauze of her gown caught on the tiles. Oh well, it wouldn’t be the first gown she’d ruined. Or the last, no doubt. She crouched on the edge of the roof and stretched down a hand to help Malcolm up after her.

  His shirt tore on the tiles as her gown had done. For a moment they both crouched on their hands and knees, breathing hard. A blast of wind cut against them. Suzanne looked at her husband and found him grinning at her, eyes glinting in the moonlight. She grinned back, laughing with a crazy, wine-sweet rush of exhilaration.

  Vienna’s old town was spread before them beneath cloud-filtered moonlight. Shiny roof tiles, candlelit windows, glowing street lamps. The gleaming pillars of palaces and the grimy white walls of lodging houses. Winding medieval streets. Columned monuments, broad, tree-lined squares, tiny courtyards. All surrounded by the many-times-rebuilt medieval walls that, according to legend, had originally been constructed with the ransom payment the Austrians exacted for the release of Richard the Lionheart. The glittering city in which the future of Europe was being decided. And in which Tatiana Kirsanova’s murderer lurked. Not to mention other unseen enemies.

  Their first attacker’s crumpled form lay at the other end of the alley. Two shadowy figures bent over him, as though conferring. As she and Malcolm watched from their perch, one man ran back into the street, while the other ran down the alley, directly beneath the balcony they had just climbed. He passed within a few feet of Malcolm’s discarded coat and greatcoat, a dark blur against the wall of the house, but he didn’t stop to examine them.

  She and Malcolm stayed stone still until he had passed, then moved to the darkest part of the roof and crept over the sloping tiles, crouched low. Up the slope and then down and over to the next roof, which was slightly higher. She pulled off her gloves. She scraped her palm on a broken tile, but bare hands gave her better purchase.

  They made their way to the next corner, turned and went along another line of roofs, jumped a narrow gap between buildings, turned again.

  At last Malcolm paused, gripped her arm, and leaned down over the edge of the roof they were on.

  “Where are we?” she asked.

  “The Minoritenplatz. The British delegation’s lodgings. I hope.” He swung his legs down, lowered himself onto another balcony, and reached up to her. She slid down into his arms. His palms were damp when he took her hands. Blood, she realized. He’d scraped his hands raw. She looked down and saw a gash on her own forearm.

  Were they at their lodgings? The plaster curlicues over the French window looked familiar, though from this angle she couldn’t be sure. Malcolm unlatched the French window with his picklocks and pushed aside the curtains.

  An unexpected flare of candlelight greeted them.

  “Malcolm, thank goodness you’re back.” The decisive tones of Lord Castlereagh, the British foreign secretary, came from the room beyond. “We’re in the devil of a fix.”

  4

  “Good evening, sir.” Malcolm drew aside the curtains and handed Suzanne through the window. “My apologies for the inopportune entrance.”

  “Never mind about that. I’m used to them. We need—Good God! I thought you’d gone to B
aroness Arnstein’s after the opera, Suzanne.”

  Robert Stewart, Viscount Castlereagh, Britain’s foreign secretary and representative at the Congress of Vienna, stood by a round table that held a single lit taper, the only illumination in the room other than the coals glowing in the porcelain stove in the corner. His fair hair gleamed smooth, and he wore a dark blue dressing gown beneath which his cravat was still impeccably tied.

  “I was at Fanny von Arnstein’s.” Suzanne breathed in the sweet relief of level ground beneath her feet and warm air coming from the stove. “I was called away.”

  Castlereagh stared at her in the dim light as though he could not make sense of what he was seeing. Suzanne looked down. Her gauze overskirt was in tatters, the satin beneath was torn to reveal her corset and chemise, and in addition to the gash on her arm, she had scrapes on both her hands.

  “What in God’s name were you doing dragging your wife into this?” Castlereagh asked Malcolm.

  “I wouldn’t precisely say I dragged her.” Malcolm pulled a handkerchief from his breeches pocket and wiped the dirt and blood from his hands, then walked through the shadows to a table with decanters. Suzanne heard the clink of crystal and the slosh of liquid. “Do you mind, sir? I think Suzanne and I are both in need of fortification. It’s a bit of a strain having someone try to kill you.”

  “Someone—” Castlereagh’s finely arced brows drew together. “Who the devil tried to kill you?”

  “I’m not sure. There were several of them. The man we tried to question was killed himself. After that the first imperative seemed to be to get out of there alive.” Malcolm crossed back to Suzanne and gave her one of the glasses. He squeezed her fingers as he put the crystal in her hand.

  She took a sip. Cognac, of the best quality, available to the British without the need to resort to smugglers now the war with France had ended. It rushed to her head with welcome warmth. She looked down at the glass and saw blood smeared on the crystal from the cut on Malcolm’s hand.

  Castlereagh struck a flint against steel. A lamp flared to life. “My dear Suzanne, you must be exhausted after your ordeal. I’m sure you are eager to go down to your room. I fear I need to speak with Malcolm before I can send him after you.”

  Malcolm took a long drink from his own glass. “She needs to stay for this.”

  “Rannoch—”

  “She knows too much.”

  Castlereagh fixed Malcolm with a hard gaze. “You’re invaluable, Malcolm. But not indispensable. You’d be wise to remember that.”

  “Believe me, sir, I’m well aware of it. But at the moment we both need each other.”

  Malcolm’s gaze clashed with the foreign secretary’s across the room. All the wellborn young men Castlereagh had brought to the Congress of Vienna as attachés were expected to have myriad talents. To make small talk in five languages, to dance the waltz into the small hours, and then return to the embassy and draft the third revision of a white paper before dawn. They were also expected to comb though diplomatic wastebaskets for discarded laundry lists and boot-maker’s bills that might be code for something much more serious, and to break those codes and pass them on to the foreign secretary. Every diplomat at the Congress was something of an intelligence agent. But Malcolm’s skills were more formidable than most. Though Malcolm and Lord Castlereagh frequently disagreed, Suzanne knew the foreign secretary had a great deal of respect for her husband. He gave him far more latitude than any of his other attachés.

  Now Castlereagh inclined his head a fraction of an inch. “Start at the beginning.”

  Malcolm drew a shield-back chair forward and handed Suzanne into it. Then he paced across the room and leaned against the drinks table. He took another deep swallow from his own glass. “Tatiana Kirsanova is dead.”

  “I know,” Castlereagh said. “Why do you think I said we were in the devil of a fix?”

  Malcolm’s head snapped up. “My compliments, sir. I didn’t realize your sources of information were quite so efficient.”

  “You’re an excellent agent, Malcolm, but not the only one in my employ.” Castlereagh dropped into a wing-back chair. “Given Princess Tatiana’s role, I’d be remiss if I didn’t have a source among her staff. One of the kitchen maids sent the news an hour since. Deuced inconvenient.”

  Malcolm slammed his glass down on the drinks table. “She’s dead.”

  “And I’m sorry for it. It’s still inconvenient.”

  “God damn it, sir—”

  “No time for personal feelings, Malcolm.” Castlereagh rested his fair head against the blue velvet of the chair. “How did you learn of it?”

  Malcolm reached for his glass. The light bounced off his signet ring. Suzanne, used to reading the signs, knew her husband’s fingers were not quite steady. “I discovered the body.”

  “Good God. The princess—”

  “Sent for me tonight.” Malcolm stared at a bloodstain on his cuff that might be his own or Princess Tatiana’s. “At least the message seemed to come from her. I begin to question if it really did. She also seemingly sent for Tsar Alexander and Prince Metternich.”

  “At the same time?”

  “Quite. And she sent for Suzanne.”

  Castlereagh’s gaze shot to Suzanne, then back to Malcolm. “You got there first?”

  Malcolm nodded. “Her throat had been cut. Seemingly by someone she knew and trusted.”

  He took another sip of cognac. For a moment, his gaze was raw as an open wound. Suzanne’s own glass nearly tumbled from her fingers at the naked pain in her husband’s eyes. “I saw a man in the street in front of the house a few minutes later,” she said, a little too quickly. “I couldn’t make out any more than that he wore a greatcoat and top hat. He looked up at the window of the room in which the princess died. Then he disappeared.”

  Castlereagh regarded her, his fine-boned face set in harsh lines. “What did the princess write to get you to call on her?”

  Suzanne fingered a fold of tattered gauze. “Just that she had something important to tell me.”

  “All things considered,” Malcolm said, his gaze armored again, “we’d better tell Castlereagh the whole truth. We can trust him as far as we can trust anyone.”

  “Thank you,” Castlereagh said in a dry voice.

  Suzanne swallowed. “Princess Tatiana wrote that she had something to say to me concerning Malcolm.”

  Castlereagh grimaced. His gaze moved to Malcolm. “It can’t be coincidence. This must be connected to her other activities.”

  “Probably. The question is how.”

  “I hate to seem inquisitive,” Suzanne said, “but if you want me in this discussion, it would help if I knew what was going on.”

  Malcolm regarded her. The moment of vulnerability was so completely gone she might have imagined it. Wariness was written in the lean, elegant lines of his body. His white shirt, splotched with blood and soot, gleamed in the shadows. “Princess Tatiana has been supplying us with information.”

  Suzanne stared at her husband. “Are you saying Princess Tatiana was a spy?”

  “She dealt in information,” Malcolm said. “Most people at the Congress do, one way or another.”

  Prince Talleyrand glanced at the porcelain clock on the mantel for the third time in the last five minutes. It went without saying that he wouldn’t sleep tonight. He had learned long since that betrayal was a fact of life. But that didn’t make it any easier to accept, in others or in himself. Some might consider that a vestige of conscience. He found it damned inconvenient.

  He stared at his empty glass of calvados, considered pouring more, decided against it. He needed his wits about him. He drew the folds of his dressing gown closer round his throat. The coals still glowed in the stove, but the room seemed to have grown colder as the night dragged on.

  The door opened as soundlessly as it had earlier in the evening. Talleyrand was on his feet before his visitor stepped into the room.

  “Well?” The question came out more
quickly than Talleyrand intended. “Is it done?”

  “Not precisely.” His visitor closed the door. “I’m afraid someone else got there first.”

  5

  Suzanne looked at her husband. “You were Princess Tatiana’s contact?”

  Malcolm nodded.

  It explained some of his relationship to the princess. It did not begin to explain how far his work as her contact had gone.

  “For a long time?” Suzanne asked.

  “Off and on for several years.” Malcolm turned his glass in his hand. The crystal sparked in the lamplight. “Tatiana spent some months in Spain during the Peninsular War. Before I met you.”

  Suzanne took a sip of brandy. Her image of her husband’s life before she knew him shifted and changed before her eyes, fragments of mosaic forming a picture that remained tantalizingly unfinished. “Was the princess particularly loyal to Britain? Because given her connections to the Russian delegation, not to mention her past connection to Prince Metternich—”

  “I think Tatiana decided we paid the best,” Malcolm said.

  “Though I was under no illusions we were the only delegation at the Congress she was supplying with information.”

  “A welcome admission,” Castlereagh said.

  Malcolm met the foreign secretary’s gaze. “Believe me, sir, I saw Tatiana for what she was.”

  Castlereagh got to his feet. “My dear boy, you’ve always been entirely too trusting where she was concerned. But”—his gaze slid briefly to Suzanne—“that’s neither here nor there for the moment. What matters is that she was an agent for us, and very likely others as well, and she may well have been killed because of what she knew. We have to learn the truth of what happened. You have to learn the truth, Malcolm.”

  Malcolm took a sip of brandy. “Baron Hager will launch an official investigation into Tatiana’s murder.”

  “This won’t be the first time we’ve run a parallel investigation. Or the last. Baron Hager is an able man. But I have every confidence in you, Malcolm.”