by Vienna Waltz
“I think it’s more than a veneer.”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” Castlereagh spun round to face Malcolm. “If Czartoryski has his way, we’ll be facing a Russian empire that reaches its tentacles west through Poland.”
“Czartoryski wants freedom for his country, with its own constitution. In our concern about Russian influence, we’ve rather lost sight of what the Poles want.”
“Dear God, you sound like the Opposition talking at home. Czartoryski was trained in intrigue in the court of Catherine the Great. He can be as ruthless as anyone in Vienna, and he’s pushing Tsar Alexander in a ruinous direction.”
“With all due respect, I’m more worried about Count Otronsky and his dreams of Russian empire.”
“That’s because Otronsky doesn’t pull the wool over your eyes by going about quoting Locke and Paine.”
Malcolm gave a short laugh. “You seem to think I’ve lost perspective about more than just Tatiana.”
“Not entirely. You’re still the best brain I have at my disposal. Just try to remember the truth may take you places you don’t wish to go.”
Malcolm drew a breath. The air smelled of damp and candle smoke. “If Tatiana did stumble upon a plot, I presume you want to learn what the plot was. Unless—”
“Yes?”
The sound of rain lashing the window echoed through the room, punctuated by a faint hiss from the porcelain stove.
Malcolm stared at the blue tiles of the stove and the flickering flame within. He turned his gaze back to the foreign secretary. “Unless, of course, you already knew of this plot.”
“What the devil—”
“My mysterious source warned me to trust no one.”
Castlereagh’s lips whitened with an anger he had not displayed when Malcolm nearly struck him. “You’d trust your mysterious source over me?”
“My dear sir, you’ve always said you value my tendency to question everything.”
Eithne’s maid was setting a Vaughn family tiara on her mistress’s head when Fitz came into the room. At the sight of his reflection in the looking glass, every muscle in Eithne’s body tensed.
“That will be all, Mary,” she said, as the weight of her tiara settled against her scalp.
Mary, who had grown up on Eithne’s father’s estate and had been with Eithne since she was a bride, smoothed the lace at the neck of Eithne’s gown and twitched her sash straight, then curtsied and withdrew.
Eithne sat very still, conscious of Fitz’s gaze upon her in the mirror.
“You look lovely,” he said. “I’m sorry, I know I’m late.”
“Your costume for the Carrousel was sent round this afternoon.”
“I’ll dress quickly.”
“Fitz.” Eithne turned round on the dressing table bench, smoothing her heavy embroidered skirts. “I don’t know if this makes it easier or harder for you. But I know.”
“Know?” His gaze moved over her face.
“That you were Tatiana Kirsanova’s lover.”
He went as still and cold as an image carved in ice. Then he took a half step forward. “Darling—”
“Don’t.”
“Oh, Eithne.” He seemed frozen to the spot. “I never meant to hurt you.”
“Which doesn’t alter the fact that you did.” She got to her feet, conscious of Fitz’s mother’s sapphires heavy round her throat and the matching earrings swinging from her ears. “I still remember the day we met. That evening at Almack’s. I’d had my toes trod upon by one too many recent undergraduates, and then I turned round and saw you coming across the room toward me. I thought you were the most handsome man I’d ever seen.”
“Eithne—” Her name was a harsh rasp upon his lips.
“But that wasn’t when I fell in love with you.” She picked up one of her embroidered evening gloves from the dressing table and began to pull it on. The French kid was smooth and cool against her skin. “A fortnight or so later my brother and I met you riding in the park. Johnny hung back to allow us time to talk. You told me you’d taken up fishing to give you something to share with your stepbrother. So many people resent intrusions into their family, and here you were, looking for a way to make it easier for him. I thought then that you weren’t just the handsomest man I’d ever met but quite possibly the kindest. I wrote in my diary that night that I was sure I’d love you forever.” She reached for her second glove. “It’s amazing how long I went on believing that.”
She saw Fitz swallow, saw the thoughts chase themselves through his brain. “And now?”
“I can’t believe I was ever so naïve as to believe love existed.”
He took a step toward her, then checked himself. “I have no right to ask anything of you. Least of all that you believe I speak the truth when I say I can’t imagine a life without you.”
She tugged her gloves smooth. “You’re used to me, and change is difficult, particularly for men.”
“Don’t, Eithne.” His voice slammed against the silk-hung walls with sudden force. “Call me any names you will but don’t cheapen what I feel for you.”
“Why not? You’ve already cheapened it yourself.”
He strode forward and stopped, a handsbreadth from her dressing table. “My God, do you really think that of me?”
“I think you cared deeply for Tatiana Kirsanova. Perhaps I’m giving you too much credit, but I’d like to believe you wouldn’t have acted as you did if your feelings weren’t engaged.”
Fitz scraped a hand through his hair. “I did love her. Or I thought I did. But it was entirely different from—”
“The comfortable, prosaic, domestic love you feel for me?” The words were like acid on her tongue.
“Of course not. But there’s no denying we’ve—”
“Grown used to each other.” The unaccustomed rage drained from her body, leaving her winded. Perhaps this was how prize-fighters felt after sparring. She dropped back on the dressing table bench. “Even all the time you were in the Peninsula, it never occurred to me that you would—Perhaps it should have done.”
“No.” He crouched down beside her, his gaze level with her own. “There wasn’t anyone else. Though I don’t expect you to believe me.”
His eyes had that expression that always tugged at her heart. She was disgusted to find that it was still so. And at the same time oddly relieved. “I do, though I fear I’m being a fool.” She reached out and pushed his hair off his forehead, then pulled her hand back.
“Never that, Eithne.” He reached for her hand, then he, too, let his own fall to his side. “I’m the one who wasn’t worthy of your trust.”
She plucked at the satin of her gown. “It must be horrible for you. Losing her.”
“I—Yes.” He drew a rough breath. “Thank you for understanding.”
“I seem to be able to hate you and yet at the same time—” She shook her head. “I told Suzanne I knew about the affair.”
His gaze shot to her face.
“Oh, I’d worked out that they’d already discovered the truth. I knew they were bound to do so. You should have realized that, Fitz. You can be far too naïve.”
“Malcolm suspects—” Pain swept over his face. “I never thought one of my closest friends could think such a thing of me.”
“How could he not?”
Fitz’s gaze froze on her face. Cold horror filled his eyes. “You aren’t sure, are you?”
She looked back at him. The man she had loved and trusted without question now seemed as much an illusion as a prince in the fairy tales she read to her children. “How could I be sure? I’ve been so willfully blind in so many ways.”
“But you must know I’d never—”
“I can’t finish that sentence anymore.”
He pushed himself to his feet. “I never wanted to turn you into—”
“A cynic? More a realist. My dear, are you really sure you can say with confidence that you don’t suspect me?”
Blanca adjusted the diamon
d clasps on Suzanne’s black velvet overdress, then twitched her slashed sleeves so they fell to show a glimpse of the white satin beneath. “You look like a princess.”
Suzanne laughed. “I’ll look more like a lady-in-waiting when I’m in company with all the other belles d’amour.”
Colin, sitting on the carpet with his wooden blocks, stretched up his arms to Suzanne. “Pretty.”
“Thank you, darling.” Suzanne scooped him up. A twinge ran through her shoulder, though it was already much improved since last night. She pressed a kiss to her son’s forehead. “I’m glad you appreciate all the time it takes to create an elaborate toilette. It’s an excellent quality in a gentleman.” She glanced at the clock on the escritoire. “I’d best get Malcolm. The carriage will be round soon.”
Malcolm had dressed first and then gone to the attachés’ sitting room to review some papers while Blanca helped her into her Carrousel finery. Suzanne gave Colin to Blanca, picked up her long veil, and made her way down the passage to the sitting room. She turned the handle without knocking, but as she started to push the door panels open, a sound turned her blood to ice. A cry of naked anguish, sharper than a sob.
She eased the door shut and waited the length of several heartbeats, her mouth dry and her chest tight with bitter acknowledgment. At last she drew a steadying breath and rapped loudly on the door panels. “Malcolm? I’m dressed at last. The carriage will be round in a few minutes.”
She waited another second or so, then pushed open the door. Her husband was sitting at the desk, his hands flat on the ink blotter, as though through an effort of will. The candlelight glittered against telltale traces of damp on his cheeks, though she might not have noticed if she hadn’t known to look.
He got to his feet. “You look beautiful.”
She had completely forgot for a moment about her Carrousel costume. She looked into his eyes. His smile was kind, his gaze a world away from her. “Thank you. You make a very handsome knight yourself.”
He reached for the candlesnuffer and began to put out the tapers. “I’ve been reading David’s latest update from the House of Commons. More Whig criticism of Castlereagh’s lack of concern for the self-determination rights of everyone from the Poles to the Genoese. Much of which I find it hard to argue with.”
“Remember you’re a diplomat, darling.” She subdued every impulse to go to his side and touch him. “That includes being diplomatic with your own foreign secretary.”
He grimaced and she wondered just what had transpired at his interview with Castlereagh this afternoon. “Sometimes one of my greatest challenges.”
“Well, tonight for a change you can journey back a few hundred years and tilt at your opponents.”
“Instead of at windmills, as I usually do?” He moved to her side and offered her his arm.
“Nonsense, darling.” She tucked her arm through his own, curling her fingers lightly round his velvet sleeve. “I’m sure you can tell a windmill from a handsaw.”
His eyes glinted, though their depths were still opaque. “At least when the wind is southerly.”
They moved into the candlelit passage. That cry of anguish might have been a figment of her imagination. But she knew it had not been. That broken, desperate sound would echo in her memory forever.
She kept her fingers steady on her husband’s arm and her gaze fixed straight ahead. She had known Tatiana Kirsanova meant a great deal to Malcolm. She had been almost sure they were lovers. But until now she hadn’t realized how very strong the bond between them had been.
22
Dorothée fingered the end of the long veil draped over her arm. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I kept going over and over all the things that might go wrong.”
“Dearest, it’s probably inevitable that something will go wrong.” Suzanne squeezed her friend’s shoulders, careful not to crush the black velvet of Dorothée’s overdress. “The trick is carrying it off when something does.” Just as one could maintain a bright tone when one’s husband’s grief over another woman still reverberated in one’s ears.
Dorothée gave her a quick, dazzling smile. “You’re a splendid friend, Suzanne. And I think you must be the perfect diplomat’s wife.”
“Hardly. I’m still learning the language. It isn’t my native tongue.”
Dorothée cast a glance round the twenty-two other women gathered in this anteroom outside the Spanish Riding School’s arena. Their gleaming velvet and satin gowns, in the style of the early seventeenth century, divided them into groups representing four countries. Hungarian green, Polish crimson, Austrian blue, and French black. “I do think the costumes turned out well.”
“The fabric should be splendid beneath the lights.” Suzanne smoothed her full Louis XIII skirts. Like Dorothée, she was in black French dress. After all, Dorothée had said, you are half French. You’d have grown up there if it weren’t for the Revolution. Which was more or less true. Suzanne’s father had been French, her mother Spanish. That much of Malcolm’s knowledge of her past was accurate.
“Thérèse Esterhazy always forgets her place in line,” Dorothée said. “I keep worrying we should have had one more rehearsal—”
“It’s a pageant, Doro, not Shakespeare.” Wilhelmine of Sagan joined them in a swirl of green velvet and white satin, sparkling with diamonds. “Do you think Tsar Alexander is really ill, or is he boycotting the Carrousel for reasons of his own?”
“You’d have more reason to know than any of us,” Dorothée said.
Wilhelmine lifted her chin. “He’s called on me a few times. I can hardly claim to be in his confidence.”
“He looks at you as though it’s more than that.”
“Looks can be deceiving.”
“I don’t think we’ll lack for an audience,” Suzanne said.
Wilhelmine adjusted her jeweled toque. “Metternich isn’t here, either.”
“Relieved or sorry?” Dorothée asked.
Wilhelmine shrugged, fluttering her green velvet oversleeves and the embroidered white satin beneath. “It’s his name day today. I sent him a new candlestick yesterday to replace the one on his writing table and he wrote me quite a civil note of thanks.”
“Civil or impassioned?” Dorothée asked.
Wilhelmine smoothed the veil draped over her arm. “I’d have thought he’d have come tonight to see Marie. Whatever his failings, he’s a devoted father.”
Dorothée cast a sidelong glance at her sister. “He probably couldn’t bear watching Alfred von Windischgrätz act as your champion.”
Wilhelmine’s gaze was on Marie Metternich, who was practicing a step of the minuet. “I never desired to make anyone unhappy.”
“But it seems to happen regardless,” Dorothée said.
“I don’t believe I’ve ever worn quite so many jewels at once.” Suzanne stepped between the Courland sisters, literally and metaphorically. A pearl-and-diamond necklace, on loan from Aline’s mother, hung heavy round her throat, and the diamond earrings Malcolm had given her for her recent birthday (reparations for their life in Vienna, she often thought) swayed from her ears. “I feel positively weighted down.”
“I think we’re wearing every pearl and diamond to be found in Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria,” Dorothée said. “I still can’t believe you broke up Metternich’s Order of the Golden Fleece to trim your gown, Willie.”
Wilhelmine glanced down at her jewel-encrusted bodice. “Yes, well, we were on better terms when I started work on the costume, and you made such a point of wanting everything to be lavish. Besides, I loaned out some of my own jewels. I even offered Laure Metternich the choice of my emeralds or sapphires.” Wilhelmine cast a glance round the antechamber. “One could fund a small kingdom with the jewels in this room alone.”
Dorothée twitched a fold of her skirt smooth. “The Festivals Committee want this to be the most dazzling event of the Congress.”
“I wasn’t criticizing the event, Doro. I daresay it will be a great triumph. You’r
e quite right, at the Congress nothing succeeds like excesses.”
Sisters. They always knew just how to wound. Suzanne touched Dorothée’s arm. “It’s a marvel, Doro. You should be very proud.” She felt Wilhelmine give her a sidelong glance and suspected a good part of the duchess’s sharpness was due to the aftereffects of their conversation the previous day.
A side door opened and the thud of boots and jangle of spurs announced the arrival of the knights. They wore velvet doublets and plumed hats, six each in green, crimson, blue, and black to match the ladies. Malcolm crossed to Suzanne’s side and swept his hat from his head.
“You do know that knights dressed in these clothes would have been cut to ribbons at Agincourt, don’t you?” he said.
Looking into those mocking, ironic eyes, one would never guess he’d been lost in grief a mere hour ago. “Oh, what it is to have a husband who read history at Balliol.” Suzanne took the scarf she’d been holding along with her veil and tied it near Malcolm’s sword hand. The other belles d’amour were doing the same with their cavaliers. “We aren’t recreating a proper medieval tournament, we’re recreating the days when young men played at recreating the mythical days of chivalry. Very appropriate. You’re supposed to put on a good show, not really go about bashing each other.”
Malcolm looked down at the bow of gold-embroidered fabric. “Doesn’t it rather defeat the idea of a favor that you’ve given us all such similar scarves?”
“Don’t be difficult, dearest.”
A man in a harlequin-patterned tunic hurried into the anteroom and bowed to Dorothée. “It lacks but two minutes to eight, Madame la Comtesse.”
Dorothée straightened her spine, an actress about to step onto the stage. She draped her gossamer veil over her head and signaled to the other ladies to do likewise. The twenty-four belles d’amour and their cavaliers lined up in their predetermined order. A bouquet of lustrous velvet, brilliant white satin, and sparkling gems. A trumpet fanfare sounded from the arena, just as two footmen in tunics and hose pulled open the double doors. They stepped through into the glare of candlelight.