Teresa Grant - [Charles & Melanie Fraser 01]

by Vienna Waltz

  At last, Suzanne copied down the plain text with Aline and Schubert reading to her.

  My dearest P.,

  Just a few words to let you know I am well. How long it seems since I have seen you. The weeks drag on leaden feet. The world seems so dull, as though it had been drained of all its color and taste and fragrance. I think perhaps it was always like this before I met you, but I didn’t, couldn’t understand how gray and bland life was. Strange to think how clever I thought I was six months ago, and how little, I now realize, I knew of anything.

  You said once that I might have regrets someday, but I’m sure I never will. How could I? I wasn’t properly alive until I met you.

  Write to me soon.

  I am yours always,

  A.

  Aline frowned. “Perhaps it is from Aunt Arabella. But I can’t imagine why it should have mattered to Princess Tatiana.”

  Suzanne stared at the words and remembered Dorothée tracing the letters carved on the casket. A chill shot through her. A chill of recognition and of the myriad consequences of the connection she had just made.

  Because if she was right, this changed everything.

  36

  “You found the papers?” Malcolm grinned at Suzanne over the light of the tallow candle in his prison cell. “Castlereagh should turn intelligence operations over to you.”

  Suzanne smiled back at her husband. She had left him only a few hours before, but simply seeing him sent relief coursing through her the way whisky warms the blood. “I couldn’t have done it without Wilhelmine and Doro.”

  He lifted his brows. “Wilhelmine?”

  “We seem to have become friends.” Suzanne smoothed the cuff of her velvet spencer. She could see a smudge on the mulberry-colored fabric, probably acquired somewhere in their searching. “I gave Wilhelmine back her letter.”

  He nodded. “Her friendship can be useful.”

  “Yes. But that isn’t why I did it.”

  His mouth curved in a smile. “I didn’t think it was, sweetheart.”

  “Malcolm.” Suzanne studied her husband in the greasy candlelight. In the half hour since she and Aline and Schubert had broken the code, she hadn’t been able to determine how to break her theory to him.

  “What is it?” He stepped toward her and took her hands.

  She drew a breath, taking in the odors of dust and damp and candle grease. “I think I know who Tatiana’s father was.”

  His hands went still and cold in her own. “How—”

  “There was a piece of sheet music tucked inside the Courland casket. Aline recognized it as a code of your mother’s.” She opened her reticule and took out the sheet music.

  Recognition leapt in Malcolm’s gaze. “That is my mother’s hand. I didn’t know she wrote to Tania in code.”

  “She didn’t. At least this wasn’t written to Princess Tatiana.” Suzanne pulled the plain text from her reticule and handed it to him. “Doro showed me her father’s initials carved on the casket: PBC.”

  “Peter von Biron, Duke of Courland.”

  “Malcolm, on their journey across the Continent, did your mother and grandfather meet Peter of Courland?”

  His gaze froze on her face, though she knew his thoughts were miles and years away. Sifting, analyzing, combing through the evidence. “They must have. But—” He stared down at the papers as though looking for clues to his mother’s past.

  “Peter. Pierre in French, which is the language your mother would have used with him. For whom a daughter might be named Pierette. I don’t think the P on Tatiana’s locket was her own initial. The A was for your mother. I think the P was for Tatiana’s father.”

  Malcolm’s gaze jerked to her face. “Peter of Courland was almost forty years my mother’s senior.”

  “He was a powerful, charismatic man. You only have to look at Doro with Talleyrand to understand the fascination a brilliant older man can hold for an intelligent young woman. The kind of young woman who is likely to be bored by boys her own age.”

  Malcolm closed his eyes. “A man who was almost a sovereign in his own right. A man connected to the royal families of Russia and Austria. No wonder Mama was so determined to keep it quiet. If she’d so much as breathed Peter of Courland’s name to anyone, the gossip would have spread like wildfire.”

  “He must have kept the paper tucked into the casket. Tatiana must have discovered it when Bonaparte gave the casket to her.”

  “So Peter of Courland cared enough to keep a memento of my mother tucked into a bit of silver.” Malcolm’s voice cut with bitterness. “But not enough to help her. Or to seek out their daughter.”

  If Peter of Courland had stepped into the jail cell in that moment, Suzanne suspected her restrained husband would have slammed his fist into the duke’s jaw and sent His Grace of Courland flying into the stone wall.

  “If it’s true,” Suzanne said, “it would mean—”

  “That Wilhelmine and Dorothée and the other Courland princesses are Tania’s sisters.”

  “Or at least that Wilhelmine and Pauline and Jeanne are. Doro freely admits that by the time she was born her parents lived separate lives, and that Alexander Batowski was her actual father. But she still feels the weight of the Courland heritage.”

  “One of the most powerful families in Europe, and Tania was outside with her nose pressed to the glass.”

  “It must have been galling. Especially since she and Wilhelmine of Sagan were already rivals in so many ways.”

  Malcolm stared at the shadow patterns the window bars made on the stone floor. “I don’t think Tania was trying to blackmail the tsar and Metternich and me under orders from Bonaparte or Talleyrand. I think it was personal. I think she wanted to force Metternich and Tsar Alexander and Castlereagh, through me, to give her her heritage.”

  “The Courland estates?” Even after weeks of friendship with Dorothée, Suzanne could scarcely conceive of the fantastical wealth the Courland family possessed.

  “Part of them. We’re redrawing the map of Europe. Why not carve out a bit for Peter of Courland’s fifth daughter? A daughter who might be illegitimate, but who at least could boast that the duke had actually fathered her.”

  “Which would mean, if Wilhelmine and Doro and their sisters knew—”

  “They’d have a motive to get rid of her,” Malcolm said in a voice stripped of expression.

  “Or at least Wilhelmine and Doro and Pauline would. Jeanne was disinherited.”

  “Do you think the duchess and Dorothée knew?” Malcolm asked in the same voice.

  “Nothing in their actions thus far would make me think so. But we both know the power of deception.” Suzanne stared at yellow wax trickling down the side of the candle. “Malcolm, there’s someone else it gives a motive. If Talleyrand knew what she was planning—”

  “You think he’d have tried to silence Tania to protect Dorothée?”

  “I think there’s very little Prince Talleyrand wouldn’t risk for Doro.”

  Malcolm’s fingers clenched. “If only Tania had told me, I’d—”

  Suzanne scanned his face. “What?”

  “God knows.” He strode to the high, barred window. “I still remember her grilling me about the family history that first day my mother took me to meet her in France. Tania got me to sketch her a family tree. We had to burn it before I left, but she memorized the names. A family she couldn’t acknowledge, who couldn’t acknowledge her.” He stared up at the damp-spotted iron bars of the window. “The only family she could lay claim to were the Sarasovs Talleyrand appropriated for her. While I grew up with all the comforts of rank and fortune and legal legitimacy. And the truth is, Tania and I were no different.”

  It was the closest Malcolm had ever come to admitting to Suzanne a fear he had danced round in the past. That though acknowledged as the legitimate son of his mother’s marriage to Alistair Rannoch, he, too, might be a bastard, born of one of his mother’s many love affairs after her marriage. A bastard who happe
ned to exist on the right side of the blanket in the world’s eyes.

  Suzanne went up behind him and put her arms round his shoulders. She could feel the shudder of his breath through the silk of his waistcoat. “You have no control over the circumstances of your birth or how those circumstances are viewed. You were the best brother you could be to Tatiana once you knew the truth.”

  He turned in her embrace and took her face between his hands. “You’re a good liar, sweetheart.”

  “That was no lie.”

  “Perhaps not to you. All I can see are the things I might have done differently. If I could have made her believe she belonged—”

  He spun away and slammed his fist into the wall. “Damn this world we live in.”

  “I frequently feel the same myself.”

  He turned and gave her a crooked smile, though his gaze remained bleak. “Recognition. Power. It was all within her grasp.”

  “If the tsar and Metternich and you had refused her demands, would she have made the papers public?”

  “In spite?” He rubbed his knuckles. “I don’t think so. But if she thought releasing some of the truth would push us to give her what she wanted—Oh yes. I think that’s why she wanted you there.”

  “She asked you to arrive before Metternich and Tsar Alexander and me.”

  “I think she was going to lay out her plan in detail to me first and tell me what she was threatening. She wouldn’t have revealed what she was holding over each of us during the actual meeting. She’d just have mentioned that she had information that could make matters difficult for all of us. Metternich and the tsar would have been able to guess what she meant.” Malcolm stared down at the blood welling to the surface of his skin. “With you there, I’d see how very real her threat was. I’d merely need to look at you to be reminded of everything I had to lose.”

  Suzanne pulled a handkerchief from her reticule and wrapped it round her husband’s torn knuckles. “In some ways Tatiana didn’t know you very well.”

  Malcolm flinched, and she wasn’t sure it was because she was pulling at his hand. “On the contrary,” he said. “Tania was damnably acute when it came to reading me. She always warned me my marriage was a chimera. It took her deception to force me to be honest with you. In some ways my sister and I are remarkably alike.”

  Suzanne knotted the handkerchief. “There are different types of deception, darling. Tatiana was acting in her own interests.”

  “Hard to say that’s worse than deceiving people in the name of a country that’s quick enough to turn its back on those it should be helping.”

  Suzanne looked up at her husband in the gray light slanting in through the bars of the prison window. Clouds were massing outside and the air held the promise of rain. She considered and abandoned a number of possible responses. “We need to get you out of here. You have too much time to brood.”

  “You’re right. I’m leaving all the work to you and burdening you with my self-pity on top of it.”

  “Never that. Malcolm—” She laid her hand against his face. “We don’t know that she died because of this.”

  “No. Tania had herself in a web of danger. Not for the first time.” He took her hand and squeezed her fingers before he released it. “What about the other coded paper you found in the box?”

  “I gave it to Aline.”

  He frowned.

  “She isn’t a child anymore, Malcolm. And she’ll be faster at it than either of us.”

  “No, it was a wise choice. Allie has a good head on her shoulders. What are you going to do with Tsarina Elisabeth’s letters?”

  “You’re leaving it up to me?”

  “You found them. The investigation’s in your hands now.”

  “Darling—” She tugged at one of her gloves and saw that the ivory silk was smeared with black, though she had put on a fresh pair before she left the Minoritenplatz. The grime of the prison rubbing off on her. “I don’t know that we’re going to be able to keep your mother’s secrets.”

  “I know it.” His voice was low and rough.

  Her gaze flew to his face. “Malcolm—”

  “We’re beyond personal considerations.” He took her hands in his and looked down at them. “This all comes down to deciding whom we can trust. Like most of diplomacy.”

  “And a mistake can be fatal.”

  His fingers tightened over her own. “Quite.”

  Adam Czartoryski shook the rain from his beaver hat and bowed to Suzanne across a private parlor in the back of Café Hugel.

  “Thank you for coming on such short notice,” she said. “This was the safest place I could think of. I knew there’d be talk if you came to the Minoritenplatz. And we can’t even be sure we’re safe from Baron Hager’s agents there, despite Castlereagh’s care in choosing the servants. Hopefully if we’re noticed here, they’ll only think we’re having an assignation.”

  “Which would merely cause me to be the subject of envy,” Czartoryski said with a smile.

  “And me as well, Prince.”

  He shook his head. “You flatter me, Madame Rannoch.”

  Suzanne moved to the gateleg table in the center of the room and opened her reticule. “I asked you to meet me here because I have something for you.” She held out the letters tied with buff-colored ribbon.

  Czartoryski strode to the table and seized the letters. The silk ribbon shimmered in the candlelight in his shaking fingers. “Where—”

  “She hid them in Princess Bagration’s piano.”

  “Good God.”

  “She correctly assumed it was the last place we’d think to look.”

  Czartoryski tugged loose the ribbon. He unfolded the first of the letters with great care, as though he could still not quite believe it.

  “Is it the tsarina’s?” Suzanne asked.

  He nodded, staring down at the paper as though he were seeing into his beloved’s heart. Then he lifted his gaze to Suzanne’s face and inclined his head with the formality of a gentleman at court. “Words cannot express my gratitude to you, madame. I know full well you had no need to return these to me once you discovered them.”

  “And you have no need to continue to help us now you have them back.”

  “But you know that I will.”

  “I think I’ve come to read you that well, Prince.”

  He smiled. “I’m relieved to hear it.”

  “Sometimes the honorable course of action is also the prudent one.”

  “You have the sense of a diplomat and the courage of a soldier, Madame Rannoch.” Czartoryski tucked the letters inside his coat. His hand lingered, pressing the letters against his chest. “There’s no way, of course, to know if Princess Tatiana showed these to anyone. Or if she took them in the service of one of her masters.”

  “I think she took them in service of her own ends. And because of that, I don’t think she showed them to anyone.”

  Czartoryski frowned.

  A light rap sounded on the door. “Ah,” Suzanne said. “Good. It’s all right, Prince. These are expected visitors. And we all have reasons to keep each other’s secrets.”

  The door opened to admit two slender, cloaked figures. Raindrops clung to the dark fabric of their cloaks. The smell of wet wool filled the air. “I thought I’d got used to all the intrigues in Vienna, but this is like something out of a novel.” Wilhelmine of Sagan put back the hood of her cloak to reveal the burnished coils of her hair.

  Dorothée tugged at the ties on her own cloak. “I don’t think we were seen.”

  “Even if we were, it will only enhance Prince Czartoryski’s reputation,” Wilhelmine said. “An assignation with three ladies at once.”

  “Willie,” Dorothée protested.

  “You flatter me, Duchess.” Czartoryski bowed to her and then turned to do likewise to Dorothée. “Madame la Comtesse. It’s some years since we’ve had an opportunity for private conversation. I always knew you’d grow into a rare woman.”

  Dorothée flushed
in the candlelight under the gaze of her first love. “I wasn’t sure you remembered me.”

  “I could scarcely forget.” Czartoryski took their rain-splashed cloaks and draped them over the bench built into the red-tiled stove.

  Wilhelmine moved toward the table. “I can see by your face that Suzanne has returned to you what Princess Tatiana took. What I suspect she hasn’t told you is that Princess Tatiana was also in possession of a letter of mine that I would not have wished to fall into the wrong hands. Which I suspect is why we’re all here.”

  Suzanne moved to stand between Czartoryski and the Courland sisters. “I think I know why Princess Tatiana was in possession of these papers and what she meant to do with them. And it concerns all of you.”

  Wilhelmine regarded her with an odd smile. “And you’re trusting us with your theory?”

  “As Prince Czartoryski once said to my husband, at some point one needs to trust someone.”

  They drew up chairs and sat round the circle of light cast by the brace of candles on the table. Dorothée’s gaze was wide with curiosity and apprehension, Wilhelmine’s appraising. Czartoryski held himself as though in check, waiting for what was to be revealed.

  “Princess Bagration was correct at the Metternich masquerade. Princess Tatiana was not the daughter of Prince and Princess Sarasov.”

  “I suspected that was the case,” Wilhelmine said. “But how the devil did she pull it off?”

  “Prince Talleyrand helped her.”

  Dorothée frowned. “He—”

  “He turned her into his agent.”

  Wilhelmine nodded. “Well, we always knew they were—”

  Dorothée shook her head. “I don’t think she was his mistress.”

  “Doro—”

  “No, she’s right,” Suzanne said. “Prince Talleyrand was looking after Tatiana for family friends. My husband’s family, as it happens.” She explained about Lady Arabella’s travels on the Continent with her father and her subsequent pregnancy but said nothing about Peter of Courland.