by Vienna Waltz
Her gaze shifted away to focus on the faint remnants of a wine stain on the white tablecloth. “I like Fitz and Eithne. I suppose I liked believing two people could be so happy.”
“Scratch the surface of most marriages and one’s likely to be surprised by what one finds.”
Her hand went still beneath his own. “Sometimes your cynicism surprises me, Malcolm.”
“Realism.” Images of his mother on the arm of a lover and his father flirting with a mistress came to mind, too commonplace to be shocking. “I don’t assume anyone is what they appear to be.”
“Nor do I, in theory.” She withdrew her hand from his clasp and took a sip of coffee.
“Even in this very public life we lead, it’s difficult to really understand what goes on between any two people.”
A waiter brought him a cup of coffee. He took a sip that sat bitter on his tongue. “Annina told me Tatiana had begun seeing another lover recently. Someone she was secretive about, probably because of Tsar Alexander’s jealousy. It must have been Fitz.”
“Was he working with her for Castlereagh, too?” Suzanne spoke in the cool voice of an investigator.
“As far I know, I was the only one in the British delegation dealing with Tatiana.”
Her winged brows drew together, dark against her pale skin. “It gives Fitz—”
“A motive. Bloody hell.” Fitz, perhaps more than most husbands, would not want to lose his wife’s good favor. He cared for Eithne—Malcolm would swear to that. And his political ambitions rested on the influence of Eithne’s powerful father, who would not take kindly to his daughter being hurt. “Did you learn anything else from Dorothée?”
“Princess Tatiana and the Duchess of Sagan quarreled two days ago. Dorothée heard her sister say something about ‘exorbitant.’ Could Princess Tatiana have been blackmailing the duchess?”
Malcolm turned his cup between his hands. “I wouldn’t put it past her.”
“Meaning she’s blackmailed people before?”
“I suspect so.” Why, after all that had passed between them, did he feel this perverse loyalty to Tatiana’s good name? More loyalty than she’d felt herself, he’d dare swear.
“What did you learn from Annina?”
He briefly recounted their interview, omitting mention of the letters Annina had returned to him.
“Do you think the killer took this box in which the princess kept her secret papers?”
“Perhaps. But it’s also possible Tatiana decided to move the box away from her lodgings for safekeeping.”
“If Princess Tatiana was blackmailing the duchess, any material she had damaging to the duchess was probably in that box. Blackmail could account for Princess Tatiana acting as though she was making a high-stakes wager.”
“Perhaps. But the Duchess of Sagan isn’t precisely secretive about her love affairs. It’s difficult to imagine what Tatiana might have been blackmailing her about.”
Suzanne turned her head toward him. He caught a whiff of her perfume, roses and vanilla and some other scent that remained tantalizingly elusive. “Everyone has secrets,” his wife said.
“Especially in Vienna.” Malcolm took a sip of coffee. “The duchess should be at the Metternichs’ masked ball this evening. Can you contrive to talk to her?”
“I should be able to, though she won’t confide in me the way Dorothée does.”
“I need to talk to Fitz.” Malcolm grimaced at the prospect of the interview. “But I want to call on Talleyrand first.”
Suzanne tightened the ribbons on her bonnet. “I’ll have our things laid out for the Metternichs’ ball.”
He stretched a hand across the table but stilled it before his fingers met her own. “You were right last night. Dorothée Périgord would never have confided in me about Fitz and Tatiana’s affair.”
Suzanne nodded. “I’m trying to muster my wits and courage to face Eithne. I can’t imagine what she must—” She made rather too much of a show of tucking a strand of hair beneath the rose-colored velvet and white satin of her bonnet.
“Suzanne—”
She straightened her shoulders.
He knew it would be best not to speak. Far better for her to suspect what she did about his relationship with Tatiana than the truth. Besides, he doubted she’d believe even the most fervent denial. And yet—
“I happen to take vows rather seriously,” he said.
“Malcolm, you needn’t—”
“I worked with Tatiana. I was fond of her. But I wasn’t her lover.”
Suzanne’s gaze remained on his face, but he couldn’t read what she was thinking. Her defenses were as well constructed as his own. “You don’t owe me an explanation, darling.”
“Do you believe me?”
She took a sip of coffee. “Of course.”
He smiled with equal parts affection and regret. He wouldn’t have believed a similar denial. “Liar.”
She shook her head. “I know what our marriage is, Malcolm. And what it isn’t. I don’t want to turn into a clinging wife.”
He touched her hand, lightly, afraid it was an intrusion. “I don’t think you could if you tried.”
Her answering smile was sweet and bitter and cut straight to his heart.
“Herr Rannoch?”
The tentative voice came from a short distance away. A slight young man stood a few feet from the table, fingering the brim of the worn top hat he held in his hands. Dark hair curled in disorder about his face and wire-rimmed spectacles shielded his eyes.
Malcolm pushed back his chair. “You have the advantage of me.”
The spectacled man stepped closer. He was very young, Malcolm saw, probably still in his teens. “Can you tell me—are the rumors about Princess Tatiana true?”
Malcolm swallowed, his throat scorched. “I’m afraid so.”
A spasm of grief crossed the young man’s face. Malcolm touched his arm and pressed him into an empty chair. “Sit. It’s a shock to everyone.”
Tears welled behind the young man’s spectacles. He pulled off the spectacles and dashed an impatient hand across his face, then dug in his pocket and tugged out a handkerchief, covered with pencil scratches. Musical notes, Malcolm realized. He pulled out his own handkerchief and put it in the young man’s hand instead. “How did you know the princess?” Tatiana’s tastes hadn’t tended to run to schoolboys, though with Tania one never knew.
“She did me the kindness to take an interest in my music.” The young man dried his face with Malcolm’s handkerchief and hooked his spectacles back over his ears.
“Ah.” Malcolm glanced at the handkerchief with the musical notations, dropped forgotten on the table. “You play the pianoforte? Or the violin?” He signaled a waiter to bring a cup of coffee.
“The pianoforte.” The young man stared at the interwoven white threads of the tablecloth, as though looking into a reality he could not accept. “And I compose. When I’m not teaching in my father’s school.”
“Tatiana loved music.” For a moment, Malcolm could feel the warmth of Tania’s arm gliding across his own as they played a cross-hand duet.
The waiter brought the coffee. Malcolm stirred a generous amount of sugar into it and put it into the young musician’s hand. The boy stared into the steaming cup for a moment, then took a quick swallow. “Last month she attended the premiere of a mass I composed. My first.”
“Of course,” Malcolm said, the pieces falling into place in his head. “You must be Franz Schubert.”
The young man blinked. “How do you know?”
“Tatiana mentioned the mass. She was very moved.” Malcolm turned to Suzanne. “My wife, Suzanne.”
Schubert inclined his head. “Frau Rannoch.”
“Princess Tatiana spoke to you after the mass?” Suzanne asked.
Schubert nodded, flushing. “She said she had little interest in religion, but that the music—that it transported her.”
Malcolm smiled. “That sounds very like Tatiana.”
The young man looked up with a quick answering smile. “She could say the most outrageous things. And yet she always knew just how to put one at ease. She was one of the kindest people I’ve ever met.”
“Yes, she could be kind,” Malcolm said, though it wasn’t a word he’d often heard associated with Tania. He could feel Suzanne’s gaze on him.
“She asked me if I had any music of a more secular sort, and I brought her some of my songs.” Schubert took another fortifying sip of sugar-laced coffee.
Malcolm folded the handkerchief with the musical notes, careful not to smudge the pencil, and handed it back to Schubert. “How did you know I was acquainted with Tatiana?”
“She spoke of you, sir.” Schubert tucked the handkerchief into his pocket. “Frequently. She said you were the one man in Vienna she knew she could—” Schubert hesitated. Though he didn’t look at Suzanne, Malcolm knew he was wondering at the wisdom of speaking so freely before Tatiana’s friend’s wife. “The one man in Vienna she knew she could rely upon.”
Malcolm leaned back in his chair. “Princess Tatiana was an old friend.”
“Of course.” Schubert cast a quick glance round the café, then hunched forward. “The last time I saw her she was most anxious for you to return to Vienna, sir.”
Malcolm’s fingers stilled on his coffee cup. “When was this?”
“The afternoon she—The afternoon of the day she was killed.” Schubert tossed down a swallow of coffee so quickly it must have burned his throat. “I’d stopped by the Palm Palace to bring her some new songs. I found her—not in the best humor.”
“In a temper, was she?”
Schubert flushed. “There were shards of porcelain on the floor. I think she’d smashed a comfit dish.”
“It wouldn’t be the first time.” And more than once, the smashed objects had been hurled at Malcolm’s head. He caught Suzanne’s gaze out of the corner of his eye and suspected she’d divined as much.
“I asked her what the trouble was,” Schubert said. “I told her I was at her service. She shook her head and said it was just that she’d learned something disquieting. Then she said—” He hesitated again, then spoke in a rush, capturing Tania’s accents to the like. “Why the devil does Malcolm have to be gone from Vienna just when I need him most?”
In the quiet precincts of the Johannesgasse, Malcolm rang the bell at the yellow plaster façade of the Kaunitz Palace. Less luxurious than the British delegation’s lodgings in the Minoritenplatz but a handsome building all the same. A footman in gray livery took his card and said he would inquire if Prince Talleyrand was at home.
Malcolm waited on a green velvet bench beside one of the stucco-festooned windows in the hall. Whether or not Talleyrand would consent to an interview was an open question. Malcolm was bargaining on the prince’s need for the support of the British delegation but also on his own personal history with the French foreign minister.
His first memories of Prince Talleyrand went back to the age of five. He and his brother had been riding in their mother’s barouche in Hyde Park, a rare treat. An elegant gentleman leaning on a walking stick stopped to speak with their mother. A cloud of powder rose from his hair as he bent in a courtly bow. Malcolm could still remember how the powder had tickled his nose (powder was becoming a rare sight in London by 1792). Talleyrand kissed their mother’s hand. When she introduced the two boys he nodded with a serious acknowledgment adults rarely afforded them.
“I know who you are,” Malcolm said, studying this interesting new acquaintance clad in the sort of full-skirted coat his grandfather wore. “You helped overthrow King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette.”
His mother drew a sharp breath, though a hint of laughter showed in her eyes. “Malcolm, that isn’t precisely—”
“On the contrary, Arabella. He is a perceptive boy. Just what I would expect from a son of yours.” Talleyrand inclined his head toward Malcolm. “You are quite right, Master Rannoch. Though I fear matters have taken a sad turn in France just now. That is why I am enjoying the hospitality of your lovely country.”
Talleyrand was nothing if not a survivor. The son of an aristocratic family, he had been unable to follow the family tradition of a military career due to his clubfoot. Instead, his family had sent him into the church. Thanks to their influence, he had quickly risen to become a bishop, though according to Malcolm’s mother he had been an atheist even then.
Talleyrand, as Malcolm had pointed out at the age of five, had been a key player in the French Revolution, though he had left France and taken refuge in England and then America during the Reign of Terror. He returned to France, having avoided the most violent days of the Revolution, to play an influential role in the Directoire. As the Directoire collapsed under corruption and infighting, Talleyrand helped guide the young general, Napoleon Bonaparte, to power. He had been France’s foreign minister through much of Malcolm’s childhood, though eventually he fell out with Bonaparte over the Russian campaign and Bonaparte’s dangerous (in Talleyrand’s view) ambitions, and retired from official power. Even then, as Malcolm had told Suzanne the previous night, he’d continued to play a role in Napoleon’s government, while at the same time talking to Bonaparte’s opponents. Now Napoleon Bonaparte was banished to the island of Elba, and his former mentor represented France at the Congress.
The footman returned with the news that the prince had soon to prepare for the Metternich masquerade but would be pleased to accord Monsieur Rannoch an interview. He conducted Malcolm up an imposing limestone staircase to Talleyrand’s study. The warmth of a porcelain stove and the scent of eau de cologne greeted him. Talleyrand sat in a red damask chair, dressed much as he had been when Malcolm first met him twenty-two years ago, in a gray velvet frock coat, a starched satin cravat, and red-heeled, diamond-buckled shoes. The atheist, excommunicated bishop, now possessed of a wife (not to mention a succession of mistresses through the years), was also a former revolutionary who dressed like a pattern card for the ancien régime.
Talleyrand closed the book he had been reading. “Ah, Malcolm. A pleasure as always. A glass of calvados? You’ll forgive me if I ask you to pour? My foot is a bit troublesome at present, and I think I can make allowances, having known you since you were learning your letters.”
Malcolm went to a gilded boulle cabinet and poured two glasses of calvados. With a few easy words, Talleyrand had put the scene on a convivial footing and reminded Malcolm that he had known him since childhood. Which gave Talleyrand the subtle edge of elder statesman and family friend. The man was a master tactician.
“I’ve been expecting you,” Talleyrand said as Malcolm put a glass of calvados into his hand.
Malcolm looked down at the prince. “For how long?”
“Since I got the news about Tatiana.” Talleyrand took a sip of calvados. “I’m sorry. I know what she meant to you.”
Malcolm’s fingers hardened round his own glass. “You were fond of her yourself.”
“She was a fascinating and very talented woman.”
Malcolm pulled a ladder-back chair up beside the prince. “She was your creature.”
“My dear boy, if you believe Tatiana was my mistress—”
“Not your mistress.” Malcolm dropped into the chair. “Your agent.”
“She worked for me occasionally. She sold information to a number of people. Including you.”
“You recruited her.”
“I’m more than thirty years your senior, Malcolm. It’s not surprising that she worked for me first.” Talleyrand leaned against the high back of his chair. “Castlereagh’s asked you to learn who killed Tatiana, hasn’t he?”
“You’re very quick.”
“I can still add two and two and get four. If I had to put money on it, I’d wager on your uncovering the truth before Baron Hager. He has the weight of the Austrian state on his side, and he’s no fool. But you were quite exceptional, even as a boy.”
“You flatter me, sir.”
“I don’t think so. When I met you, I regretted that your nationality made it unlikely I’d ever be able to employ you. I could see even then what you’d grow into. You’ll learn who murdered Tatiana because you’ll have the wit to see beyond the obvious. And because you care so much you won’t let matters rest until you uncover the truth. It’s what you’ll do with that truth that interests me.”
“Are you saying you know what it is?”
“I’m as much in the dark as anyone. But I can see that the answers won’t be pretty, and they may put you in an uncomfortable position. You’re remarkably like your mother, Malcolm. A first-rate mind with the ability to understand the need for cool-headed decisions. Sometimes ruthless ones. But you let your emotions get in the way.”
Malcolm took a sip of calvados. Delicate and superb—better than Castlereagh’s cognac—but it burned his throat. “I appreciate your reputation for omniscience, Prince, but I think you presume to know a bit too much about me.”
“Any seeming omniscience I possess is because I’m a keen observer of my fellows. I’ve had a good many opportunities to observe you these past weeks in Vienna. You’re tougher than you were, but not yet tough enough, I think. Becoming emotionally entwined with an agent is a dangerous thing, Malcolm.”
“You know damn well—”
“There’s more than one way to be entwined. I noticed your wife watching you and Tatiana only last week at the Zichys’. A clever and charming woman, Madame Rannoch. But I don’t think she’s quite the brittle society wife she manages so artfully to appear.”
Malcolm’s fingers tightened on the etched crystal. “I don’t see any need to bring my wife into this.”
“On the contrary. Your wife is very much a part of the equation. We were discussing the way you’re still entwined with Tatiana. Just as Tatiana stayed entwined with Metternich even in the interval when their affair stopped.”
Malcolm’s senses quickened. “Are you implying her affair with Metternich had resumed?”
Talleyrand took a slow sip of calvados. “Metternich was always more in love with Wilhelmine of Sagan than she with him. Any love affair in which the balance of passion is unequal is bound to run into difficulties. Wilhelmine turned her back on Metternich. Metternich was desperately unhappy. Who else would he turn to for comfort? A woman he had loved, a woman he still cared for.”