Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

“I would not wish to put anyone through what I fear myself,” Elisabeth added.

  “Princess Tatiana had come into possession of papers which could damage Wilhelmine of Sagan. Papers Prince Metternich would go to great lengths to recover. She could have used those papers to blackmail Prince Metternich. She was apparently going to try to blackmail Malcolm. And she could have planned to use your letters to compel the tsar to do as she wished.”

  Czartoryski’s eyes widened. Elisabeth gasped, a dozen scenarios racing through her gaze.

  “You think Princess Tatiana was planning to blackmail Metternich, the tsar, and your husband?” Czartoryski said. “To what purpose?”

  “I don’t know,” Suzanne said. “Yet.”

  Malcolm stared at the cloudy light trickling through the barred window set high in the wall of his cell. Mildew clung to the rough stone walls and clogged the air. A single tallow candle burned on a three-legged table beside a narrow bed covered with a gray blanket.

  He’d known worse. Mud huts in Spain. Field tents that leaked like a sieve. Patches of snow-covered ground with only his greatcoat for a blanket. On more than one occasion he’d known his odds of death were more than even. Several times he’d not been sure he cared very much. But he’d never been deprived of his liberty by his supposed allies. And he’d never had so much leisure to dwell on the sins of his past and their implications for his future.

  A key rattled in the iron lock. Hinges groaned.

  “Malcolm?”

  He turned toward the familiar voice. His wife stood just inside the open door. She wore a dark hat and spencer, but the meager light clung to the white stuff of her gown. The jailer pulled the door to behind her and slammed the bolt home.

  Malcolm stood frozen. Less than twenty-four hours and he was parched with longing for the sight of her. And for all the reasons that had been echoing through his head since he’d been brought to the prison, she had never seemed more out of his reach.

  She hesitated a moment. He could feel her gaze moving over his face. Then she rushed forward. His arms closed about her with a need stronger than any qualms. He slid his fingers into her hair, pushing her hat and half her hairpins to the floor, and sought her mouth with the hunger of one who’d feared he might never touch her again.

  When he lifted his head, she took his face between her hands. Her fingers trembled against his skin. “Darling. Are you—”

  “I’m treated much better than the poor bastards in Newgate.”

  “I was afraid—”

  He covered one of her hands with his own. “Odd, the tricks one’s mind can play.”

  “Frightful.” She gave a quick, defensive smile, and he knew she felt as awkward as he did at their unwonted display of emotion. “Radley must have lingered outside the Palm Palace after I glimpsed him,” she said. “He told Baron Hager he saw me going in alone. Which takes away your alibi.”

  He bent to retrieve her fallen hat. “I should never have put you in this position.”

  “I put myself in it.” She took the hat from him and smoothed its brim.

  “What about the letter that supposedly proved Tania was blackmailing me?” Malcolm took her hand and drew her over to the bed.

  She sat beside him and continued to speak in a matter-of-fact voice, though she retained hold of his hand. “I think Radley took it from Princess Tatiana’s room the night of the murder. So she never sent it, and you could never have seen it.”

  “Unfortunately we have no way of proving that. And the contents?”

  “Hager showed it to Castlereagh. I haven’t seen it, but I got a few details from Castlereagh.” She looked into his eyes, as though searching for the right words. “Apparently Tatiana threatens to reveal something if you don’t do as she wishes.” She brushed the mulberry velvet of her hat with her free hand. “Something you would not wish me to learn.”

  “Dear Christ.” He jerked his hand from her hold and turned his head away.

  “Malcolm.” She touched his back with cautious fingers. “I’d have no right to pry under ordinary circumstances, but I need to know. I assume Tatiana wasn’t just talking about the secret of her birth?”

  “No.” He turned back to face her and brushed his fingers against her cheek. Those wonderful sea green eyes held a concern that cut him like broken glass. “In some ways, it might be better for you if I don’t get out of here.”

  She grabbed his wrist. “Don’t be ridiculous, Malcolm.”

  “You don’t know, sweetheart. And it was criminal of me not to tell you before you married me.” He pulled the table closer, so the light from the tallow candle fell between them. “As I said, Talleyrand sent Tatiana to work with us in the Peninsula. I was her chief contact.” Late nights sketching decoding tables. Laughing as they devised aliases. An exchange of glances across a room to agree on an escape plan. “Our minds seemed to work in a similar way.”

  “Your mother’s legacy.”

  “I suppose so. It made for good teamwork.” His fingers tensed on the coarse gray wool of the blanket. “In the late summer of 1812, Wellington had scored a victory at Salamanca and was meeting with other allied leaders in Madrid to try to coordinate our next moves. As usual, gold to pay the army was sorely needed. A shipment was being sent overland from Rothschild’s in Vienna. Tatiana and I were on our way to rendezvous with a contact near Palencia when we intercepted a letter. One of the most challenging pieces we ever decoded.” He could still hear his sister’s crow of delight when they unlocked the final piece. “It told us the French had got wind of the shipment of gold. It was critical that the gold get through. The only solution seemed to be to deceive the French as to the route of the shipment.”

  He could still remember the exhausting discussions, the plans made and discarded, the hours poring over maps of Spain. “We wrote another message that supposedly revealed the path of the shipment. Tatiana, posing as the vengeful ex-mistress of a British officer, dropped a hint to a French agent. Later that evening I allowed my pocket to be picked.”

  “Clever. It worked?”

  Guilt squeezed his throat. “All too well. Our false message sent a French patrol to Acquera.”

  Suzanne, usually five steps ahead of him, hadn’t seen it coming. He forced his gaze to remain steady on her face, watching as realization dawned in the eyes that had looked on him with such trust.

  “The French captain must have been angry when he failed to discover the gold. He torched the village. He attacked the family that lived on a nearby estate.”

  “My family,” Suzanne said. The words were flat as tempered steel.

  “Yes.” Images flooded his brain and cut at his soul. “It wasn’t until I stumbled across you in the Cantabrian Mountains and heard the story of your family’s death and the destruction of your home that I realized what must have happened. It was criminally negligent of Tania and me not to have foreseen how events might play out.”

  A cool mask settled over his wife’s features. She sat very still, as though afraid if she breathed she’d shatter in pieces. “You couldn’t have known the French officer would react so violently. You had to do something to protect the gold.”

  “The actual gold shipment ended up falling into the hands of bandits, so it never reached Wellington. Irony on top of bloody irony.”

  “Civilian casualties are a fact of war.”

  “One should never learn to tolerate them.” He saw Suzanne as he’d first seen her in the Cantabrian Mountains, hair tangled, eyes vibrant, face smeared with blood. “It shouldn’t have taken seeing you to bring home the truth. The truth of those nameless victims who suffer every time Castlereagh and Metternich redraw a border. There’s real blood behind the bloodless decisions being made in Vienna’s council chambers.”

  “Dear Malcolm.” Her gaze moved over his face as though he were retreating into the distance. “Always so compassionate. So that was why—”

  He studied her drawn face. “Why what?”

  She drew a breath that had the scrape o
f a dagger against rock. “Why you asked me to marry you so chivalrously when you found me. You were trying to make amends.”

  “No. That is, yes, in a way, but that wasn’t—” He looked at the woman he had taken under false pretenses. “What’s the use? I should never have offered for you without telling you the truth. It was criminal of me to entrap you in a marriage to a man you had good reason to hate.”

  “Malcolm.” She curled her hand over his shoulder. A dozen unspoken words raced through her eyes. “Surely you know I could never hate you.”

  “That’s because you’re much too good a person, sweetheart. It doesn’t lessen my crime. I should have told you the truth, seen that you were looked after, and let you make a life for yourself. Instead I behaved no better than Radley.”

  She gave a harsh, incredulous laugh. “You can’t compare yourself to—”

  “No? Radley took advantage of your predicament to get you in his bed. I did much the same by making you my wife. I had no right to take advantage of you.”

  “Take advantage of me—” Her fingers tightened on his shoulder. “You gave me your name, your fortune, your protection. All when by your own admission you’d never thought to marry.”

  “Because I knew what a poor bargain I made.”

  “Dozens of matchmaking mothers and their daughters would disagree with you. Clever, handsome, wealthy, connected to Britain’s most powerful families—”

  “Liable to disappear in the middle of the night at a moment’s notice, ill-equipped to share a home, let alone a life, dangerously likely to disappoint—”

  “You’ve never disappointed me, Malcolm.”

  He stroked his thumb against her cheek. “Liar.” He’d seen the look in her eyes when he retreated behind his habitual mask.

  She squeezed his hand and pulled it away from her face. “No time to dwell on that now. None of this explains why Tatiana was threatening to reveal to me that you were behind the attack on Acquera. What did she want?”

  He shook his head.

  Suzanne fingered the brim of her hat. “Tsarina Elisabeth came in last night when I was talking to Adam Czartoryski. She told me what’s in the letters Tatiana took.” She leaned forward, put her lips to his ear, and whispered a short account of what she’d learned from the tsarina.

  A few brief words that could shake a nation. “No wonder she and Czartoryski were so desperate to recover the letters,” Malcolm said.

  “And if Tsar Alexander had known, he’d have been desperate as well. Darling. I don’t think you were the only one Tatiana was blackmailing. I think she summoned you and Metternich and the tsar that night because she was planning to blackmail all of you.”

  “Why in God’s name would she—”

  “Not for money. For something she wanted.”

  He checked his instinctive denial and forced himself to sift through the facts. “Dear Christ. I should have seen it.”

  “Easier to see the pattern when one’s standing a few feet off. Could Talleyrand be behind it?”

  “You think Talleyrand was using Tania to blackmail Metternich, the tsar, and me?”

  “You have to admit, he’d have a great deal to gain from all of you. Or—” She twisted the satin ribbons on her hat between her fingers. “We know she was still in contact with Bonaparte.”

  “God in heaven.” For a moment Malcolm heard his sister’s silvery, mocking laughter echo in his ears.

  “You don’t think it’s possible?”

  “I think it’s entirely possible—that’s the hell of it. Difficult for a man who’s ruled so much to accept that he’s powerless. If Bonaparte thought he had a way to force concessions on Metternich and the tsar and Castlereagh, if he even had delusions about a return to power—”

  “You don’t think he could be successful—”

  Malcolm drew a breath. “With Metternich’s tendency to think kingdoms are clay when it comes to the Duchess of Sagan and what you told me about the tsar—God knows. The one thing I’m sure of is that even if I’d acceded to Tania’s demands, I could have brought no influence to bear on Castlereagh.” He clasped his hands together and stared down at them, rubbing the place where he normally wore his signet ring. “I knew she was capable of blackmail. But somehow I never thought—”

  “That she could use it against you?”

  He could hear his sister’s ironic, affectionate voice. Dear Malcolm, your illusions will be the death of you. I think you even have illusions about me. “Utterly deluded of me. Blackmailing me is no worse than blackmailing anyone else. But I thought—”

  “That she cared for you.” Suzanne gripped his hand, her touch warm and firm. “I think she did, Malcolm. I saw you together, remember. If what was between you hadn’t been so palpable, I wouldn’t have been—” She bit the words short. “But that’s hardly of any account now. Your sister was a complicated woman, but I do think in her fashion she loved you.”

  “Perhaps. We’ll never know.”

  “You don’t know what pressure she was under when she wrote you this blackmail letter.”

  “Pressure from Bonaparte?”

  “Well, no, I suppose in that case she’d have been driven by dreams of glory.”

  “Very like Tatiana.”

  “Bonaparte gave her the Courland casket. Perhaps there’s more to it than an art treasure. Something hidden inside it?”

  “It’s probably with her papers.”

  “Which we have to find. Addison and Blanca are still checking all the tradesmen she might have trusted, talking to the servants of the friends we’ve been able to think of—”

  Malcolm stared at the circle of light the candle cast on the stones of the wall. “I keep trying to think which of her friends we could be forgetting—”

  Suzanne froze. “I saw Schubert last night. He said the last time he saw Tatiana she told him sometimes enemies could be more useful than allies. She was about to blackmail two of the most powerful men in Vienna. Two of the most powerful men on the Continent. And her brother, who she was well aware could be a formidable antagonist. She’d know you’d all try to recover the papers. She’d know you’d think of all her friends, anyone obviously connected to her. She’d be too clever to hide it with them. But her enemies—”

  The triumph of a puzzle piece locked into place glinted in his wife’s eyes. “Darling, I think I know where to look.”

  35

  “Madame Rannoch. Suzanne. Thank goodness.” Wilhelmine of Sagan, clad in a jaconet muslin round gown, came forward as the footman showed Suzanne into the duchess’s rose and gold salon in the Palm Palace. She pressed her scented cheek to Suzanne’s own. “You find us quite running out of sisterly confidences.”

  Dorothée stood behind her sister. Her face was shadowed as though she had received difficult news, but she came forward and gave Suzanne a hug as well.

  Wilhelmine waved her sister and Suzanne to the sofa. “We owe you a debt of gratitude,” the duchess said, pouring Suzanne a cup from the Meissen chocolate service that stood on the sofa table. “If it weren’t for you, I doubt Doro and I would ever have had the conversation we were just engaged in.”

  “Willie—” Dorothée said.

  “A bit late for caution, Doro. Suzanne already knows more of my secrets than you do. Or more than you did, at any rate.” Wilhelmine handed Suzanne a pink-flowered cup. “I’ve told Doro about Vava.” Her voice was steady, but the cup rattled against the saucer in her grip.

  “I’m glad.” Suzanne took a sip of the rich drink. It lingered, bittersweet, on the tongue. “Troubles are sometimes more easily borne when shared.”

  “I can’t believe I liked Baron Armfelt.” Dorothée scowled into her own chocolate cup. “It’s beastly that you had to bear this alone, Willie. Though I don’t suppose I’d have understood it properly until I had children of my own.” Her gaze darkened. Suzanne could see her remembering her little daughter, who had died last spring. “There’s nothing worse than losing a child.”

  Wilhe
lmine reached across the sofa table and squeezed her sister’s hand. “At least Vava is still alive.”

  Dorothée looked up and met Wilhelmine’s gaze. A silent understanding passed between the sisters. Despite the painful subject matter, there was an ease between them that Suzanne had not seen in all her weeks in Vienna.

  “But I don’t imagine this is a social call any more than the last time you called on me, ma chère Suzanne.” Wilhelmine settled back against the cushions on the sofa across from the one Suzanne and Dorothée occupied. “Have you been to see your husband?”

  “Earlier this morning.”

  “He’s well treated?” Dorothée asked. “That is—”

  “He’s not kept in a dungeon.” Suzanne set her cup on the table. “Duchess—”

  “Wilhelmine.”

  “Wilhelmine. I don’t think you were the only one Princess Tatiana was holding information over. And I think I know where to look for it.”

  Wilhelmine went still. “Where?”

  “When was Princess Tatiana last in your rooms?”

  “What’s that to say to—Good God, you don’t think she hid them here?”

  “I think Princess Tatiana knew that a number of very powerful people would be trying to discover where she’d hidden the papers. And the Courland casket. She’d know they’d look in her rooms. She’d know they might think to search the lodgings of any of her friends.”

  “So where better to hide them than with an enemy,” Wilhelmine said.

  “That was my thinking.”

  “Princess Tatiana was at your salon the Wednesday before she was killed,” Dorothée said. “I remember her standing there, by the stove, talking with my uncle.”

  Wilhelmine sprang to her feet, the light of the chase in her eyes. “Where to begin?”

  “It would have to be somewhere she could hide it easily in company,” Suzanne said. “But somewhere she could count on being secure.”

  They opened the cabinets, turned back the carpet, pulled the cushions from the sofas, looked in the stove. Suzanne reached up the chimney, scraping her knuckles and turning her arm quite sooty. In the library they pulled the books from the shelves and removed every drawer from the desk. Wilhelmine snatched up a crumpled paper stuck behind a drawer and muttered that it was a good thing this letter hadn’t fallen into the wrong hands. In the duchess’s bedchamber—“She could have slipped in here during the evening, it was empty,” Wilhelmine said—they pulled the feather bed from the bedstead, rummaged through the wardrobe and chests of drawers, turned open hatboxes and portmanteaux.