She’d often wondered if it had been a trick of fate that had turned Thomas Merritt’s footsteps toward her in the park, brought him to her betrothal ball. What if, like Dorothea and Dr. Bowen finding joy in each other after such a dreadful introduction, her meeting with Thomas Merritt had been a kind of salvation?
She heard Stephen following her, his footsteps matching hers as he caught up. “Julia, wait, please—this isn’t what I wanted to speak to you about at all,” he said, and she shut her eyes. Yes, she thought, as she waited for him to speak, if the chance to love someone came along, she would take it. She wanted a man to love her, a father for Jamie. She did not want to spend her life alone after all.
“Julia, I’m sorry. I cannot bear to see her hurt anymore.”
“But that isn’t your choice. If you chase away any chance for happiness that comes her way, she will be hurt, don’t you see?”
He studied her face. “I think that perhaps I should—”
If he was intending to apologize, the shout that rang out stopped him.
The thunder of hoofbeats trampled the quiet afternoon, and the air filled with the objections and surprised cries of those who suddenly found themselves dodging a pack of unruly riders.
“Stand!” screamed a voice in German, and Julia gasped at the sight of the gray afternoon light glinting on the barrel of a pistol pointed at a coach. The person holding the gun was masked, clad in black like death himself. Only a pair of ferocious dark eyes showed. His horse danced nervously as the vehicle’s occupant, a woman, screamed.
Two horsemen wrested the reins from the frightened coachman’s grip and pulled the team to a stop, and the woman’s scream rang out again as the black rider pulled the door open and pointed the pistol inside. She began to sob and plead, but he yelled for silence in German.
Other riders trained their pistols on the crowd.
Julia gaped in stunned silence until Stephen gripped her arms and thrust her behind him. He reached for his sword, drew it from the scabbard, but the hiss of the metal made one of the gunmen swing his pistol in Stephen’s direction, point it at his chest.
“Raise your hands!” he screamed in English. The gun shook in his grip.
Stephen did so, dropping his sword. “Julia, don’t move,” he muttered.
“Money, jewels, everything!” a guttural German voice shouted at the occupants of the carriage, and the woman pleaded for mercy.
A robbery? Julia stared at the scene before her, at the guns, the masks, the frightened faces of the bystanders, the hard eyes of the thieves. She drew a breath—highwaymen, here in Vienna’s most elegant city park, the park where Jamie walked with his nurse, where Dorothea strolled with Peter Bowen, where countless others spent pleasant hours in the sunshine. She stared at the gun pointed at Stephen’s chest, saw the gunman’s pale eyes through the ragged holes of his makeshift mask. Would he shoot? She had no doubt he would.
The woman screamed again, and a bystander cried out as one of the other riders cuffed him for daring to protest. The gunman holding Stephen looked away for a moment, his gun wavering in his hand, his finger twitching on the trigger. Julia felt a flash of anger. The damned fool was going to shoot someone by accident. Or entirely on purpose. This was not a play or one of Dorothea’s gothic novels. It was real, and dangerous. She looked around at the faces of the bystanders, saw only numb fear in their eyes. They would do nothing, could do nothing without risking their own lives. She looked down the path, but there was no one coming to the rescue. The lady in the coach was begging for her life in German as they tore the jewelry from her throat, demanded her wedding ring.
Indignation burned in her breast. Someone had to do something.
Behind the cover of Stephen’s back she reached into her reticule for the pistol he had given her in case this very situation should occur on their journey here. She’d kept it, carried it still, in case she happened to run into Lord Stewart again, or someone else who imagined a fallen woman might be easy prey for a little rough seduction.
She’d never imagined that she would actually meet a highwayman—or seven highwaymen. She wasn’t afraid—anger and indignation filled her. How dare these men put people’s lives at risk, terrify them, steal from them? It was not to be borne.
She felt the solid weight of the pistol in her hand, the cold metal radiating through her thin leather glove. She took a breath as she stepped out from behind Stephen and aimed at the nearest rider.
Everything happened at once. Stephen called her name as she pulled the trigger, turning toward her, diving for his sword with one hand, grabbing for her with the other.
She heard the rider scream, saw the mist of blood fill the air as the bullet hit his leg. His horse lifted him into the air, kicking out in fear, and he was tossed like a bag of meal in the saddle, holding on but dropping his gun.
She was lying on the grass, breathless, Stephen stood over her, his sword in hand, shouting orders to stop, to surrender, and suddenly everyone was moving. Gentlemen drew their swords as the riders set their heels to their horses and fled pell-mell, desperate to escape now that everything had gone wrong.
Julia watched the chaos, her hand aching from the recoil of the gun. The man she’d injured was clutching his leg, blubbering and bleeding, trying to turn his horse, to ride after the rest. One of his fellows grabbed his reins and dragged the horse away. Within seconds they’d vanished into the trees as quickly as they’d come.
“Are you hurt?” Stephen asked, helping her to her feet, but she shook her head.
“The lady in the coach—” she began, and he nodded, then ran to the vehicle and looked inside.
People were crowding around Julia now as well, looking into her face, touching her, speaking to her. She couldn’t hear a word.
Stephen helped a portly woman in a fur-lined cloak out of the coach. She was crying, tears flowing over her red face as she clung to his hand. Her neck was bruised where her missing necklace had cut into her skin. Her maid followed, crying hysterically, her mouth bloody. The pitiful sight started several other women wailing too, realizing the danger they had all been in.
Julia stared at the pistol, then at the blood on the grass, and tasted bile. She felt light-headed but resisted the urge to faint. An arm came around her, holding her upright, and she was bundled toward a bench. “Sit down,” a man ordered in French. “I doubt I could catch you if you fainted.” He pressed a flask into her hands. “Drink,” he commanded, and she did so. Her eyes watered and she coughed as the heat of the spirits crept down her throat and through her limbs. He patted her back. “Well done, mademoiselle. Very well done,” he said. “This could all have ended rather badly, if not for you. If you were not English, I would compare you with Joan of Arc.”
She looked up at the gentleman leaning on an ornate cane, wearing a heavy cloak lined with thick fur. His sharp eyes took in her face, her clothes, everything, in a single sweeping glance.
“Merci, monsieur,” she said as she handed back the flask, and her voice came out a hoarse croak.
He pursed his lips. “You are thanking me?” He looked around. “Now that the excitement of the afternoon is over, I believe I shall go back to my lodgings and enjoy a hot cup of something well laced with brandy. I suggest you do the same, mademoiselle.” He bowed and walked away with a heavy limp.
Stephen came to find her, his face filled with concern. “I’m quite all right,” she managed. “Is everyone . . . ?”
“Yes, thanks to you.” He looked around the park. “Five of these people are actually Austrian policemen, all sent to snoop for secrets, and yet they were of no bloody use at all for anything else, it appears.” He held out a hand and she took it, surprised at how wobbly she felt. He tucked her hand under his arm and smiled, and she read pride in his eyes, admiration, and felt her cheeks flame. “The lady in the coach wishes to thank you,” he said, leading her i
n that direction.
“It isn’t necessary,” Julia said. “I just want to—” She wanted to go home and hold her son, kiss his soft curls, curl up and sleep, thankful it was over and everyone was safe. She looked at Stephen. “You weren’t hurt?”
His mouth quirked to one side in a wry grin. “No. You were very brave.”
“Was I? Foolish, perhaps,” she murmured.
“It’s what James might have done, if he’d been here,” he said, scanning the activity in the park as they walked toward the coach. “It seems I am beholden to yet another heroic Leighton.”
“James?” She felt her heart contract.
A liveried servant bore down on them over the grass, a man who had been on the coach. “Madam, the countess is most grateful,” he said stiffly in accented English. His eyes roamed over Julia as if she were one of the wonders of the world.
Like James.
“She begs you to name your reward,” the servant said, taking out a notepad and a stub of a pencil. He beamed at her hopefully, his brows raised in readiness.
Julia stared at the end of the pencil. Did he expect—hope—that she would ask for rubies, diamonds, emeralds? A king’s ransom in gold? Wasn’t that what the highwayman had demanded? She shook her head. “Nothing,” she said.
His face melted and his jaw dropped. “But my lady is the wife of the Bavarian ambassador! You must!”
There was blood on the gray November grass, bright as roses.
Julia felt tears spring into her eyes. “The man I shot, is he—” she began. Stephen and the servant both turned to look in the direction the thieves had fled.
“No, unfortunately, they all got away,” the servant said. “There are men looking for them, have no fear, dear lady.”
“I’m not afraid!” she said fiercely. She was relieved. She had not taken a life. She turned to Stephen. “I must get back. Dorothea will be waiting and I have duties to see to.” She simply began walking, ignoring the quivering of her legs.
Stephen caught up with her. “Are you quite all right?” he asked. “You’re as pale as a sheet.”
“Yes,” she said. “At least, I think so. I have never shot anyone before.”
He chuckled. “You did very well. What did Prince de Talleyrand say to you?” he asked.
She looked up at him in confusion. “Who?”
“The gentleman with the cane. He’s the French ambassador. Lord Castlereagh refers to him as the Old Fox.”
She blinked at him. Bavarian countesses, the French ambassador—was there anyone in Vienna who hadn’t been in the park this afternoon?
She swallowed, tasted the brandy on her tongue. “He thanked me, and gave me brandy to drink, said it would calm my nerves.”
He guided her homeward in silence, too stunned, perhaps, to speak of ordinary things now.
The palace came into view, yellow light spilling out over the blue shadows of twilight. She would go in, ask for a hot bath, see her son, and do all the ordinary things that needed do be taken care of. Dorothea wanted a pattern book from Paris. She wanted pastries ordered from a little café where she had taken coffee with Peter Bowen . . . She glanced at Stephen Ives’s shadowed profile, felt the warmth coming from his body next to hers in the chill evening, watched the way their footsteps marched together. Had she fallen in with his pace, or he with hers? Like soldiers, marching, as he might have marched with James. She realized that he had not told her what he’d wanted to say to her, that the events of the afternoon had interrupted him. That conversation had been the point of their excursion, the reason why they were in the park at all. It suddenly seemed very important to know what he wanted to discuss.
“What did you wish to speak to me about, my lord?” she asked as they reached the steps of the palace. She held her breath, hoping it was a task that would take her mind off the events of the afternoon, something mundane and dull and—
Stephen turned to look at her in the soft blue light of the evening, his eyes in shadow. “I—” he began, then swallowed audibly. “I wanted to say—oh, bugger it!” He pulled her into his arms, and his mouth descended on hers, his lips warm against her wind-chilled skin. His mouth slanted over her as if he were starving. Surprised, she held onto his lapels and allowed the kiss, felt relief in it, the antithesis of fear. Their warm breath rose around them, misty in the cold. He kissed her until they heard footsteps coming along the street toward them and he was forced to stop, and reluctantly stepped back. She stared at him in the light from the doorway, too stunned to even nod as Stephen tipped his hat to the passerby. She raised her gloved hand to her lips. Why on earth would he—
He brushed a lock of hair out of his face and watched the figure disappear into the twilight. “We’d better go inside.”
She hurried up the steps and into the warm glow of the foyer. Servants arrived at once to take their coats. “I must see Castlereagh,” he murmured to her. “Make a report of what happened. Go upstairs and rest. I shall see you at dinner.” He paused. “No wait, I have an official engagement this evening. Later, perhaps? Or at breakfast?”
He looked boyishly eager, his eyes and cheeks and lips bright with the cold, and the kiss.
She nodded, still unable to trust her voice not to shake. It had been the stress of the moment, the aftermath of the frightening events in the park. He’d wanted to soothe her, offer her his thanks. It was the shock that had made him kiss her like that.
He was probably mortified he’d gone so far, kissed a ruined lady, a servant.
But when she met his eyes, she read his desire to kiss her again—a warmth in his eyes, a longing that made her breath catch in her throat and stick there. He turned to the servants, asking them to fetch tea and sherry and send it upstairs to her room at once, before he strode off down the hall toward the ambassador’s study.
“Was it cold outside, miss? Cook says it’s going to snow tonight. He says his bunions are never wrong,” the footman said, and chuckled.
Was it cold out? She felt hot all over. Couldn’t they tell he’d kissed her?
But everything was perfectly normal, exactly as it had been when they’d left, scarcely two hours earlier.
How was that possible?
Chapter 21
Thomas arrived at the dowdy inn on the edge of the city just as Donovan screamed as they dug the bullet out of his leg. The valet had sent a tavern wench to fetch him, and she’d babbled the incoherent message that the Irishman was dying.
It turned out the shot had simply ruined Donovan’s boots and buried itself in his calf muscle, but missed the bones and vital tendons. He was laid out on a table, writhing in pain as they removed the ball.
“A pint of rum. Half on the wound, half down his gullet,” the rough surgeon said, and the barkeep had laughed.
“Aye, listen to Hans. He’s the best vet in town!”
“Vet?” Donovan moaned, and fainted. Thomas winced as he watched them pour the rum into the wound and bandage it.
“What the hell was he doing?” Thomas demanded, looking at the blank faces of the men who sat around the scarred table that had served as a makeshift operating theater.
Another man came into the circle of lamplight that surrounded the table, wiping his hands, his face freshly shaven, his clothing clean, an eagle among vultures. “A robbery in the park, gone wrong.” He made it sound like a child’s prank, a skinned knee.
He held out a hand to Thomas. “My name is Erich. I’m glad to meet you at last, Herr Merritt, even under such circumstances. I have been waiting for a chance to speak to you for some weeks, and you have refused all my invitations. I am sorry it took this to bring you here.” Erich looked down at Donovan’s unconscious form without an ounce of pity in his gaze.
Thomas felt unease prickle at his scalp. Of course, he should have recognized the man from Donovan’s descriptions. Vienna’s King of Th
ieves, and his merry men, though not one of the mongrels surrounding the table looked merry in the least. They were downtrodden, whipped dogs. He didn’t bother to take the man’s hand. “You’re Donovan’s Robin Hood,” he muttered. “Is this how you thought it best to get my attention, to shoot my valet?”
Erich’s lips quirked as if Thomas had said something funny, but his eyes remained cold. He repeated the comment to his fellows in German, which Thomas didn’t understand, and there was a brief round of forced laughter at Thomas’s expense.
“I didn’t shoot him. A woman did, in the park. She had a pistol in her purse.” He indicated a seat. “Is this a usual habit with English ladies? Come and sit down, have a drink.”
Thomas’s skin prickled again. “She was English?”
Erich shrugged. “She was with an English officer, so I assume she was. Anyone you know?”
Thomas frowned. Would the lady who owned the watch, such a sweet, sentimental token of love, carry a pistol? It didn’t fit. Lady Castlereagh herself would be well guarded, with a whole platoon of crack shots, meaning she wouldn’t need to carry a gun. “No.”
Donovan stirred, groaning. “Give him the rum now,” the vet ordered, and took a swig from his own pint of grog. The tavern wench propped his head on her shoulder and fed him sips of rum.
“Merritt. You came. I wasn’t sure you’d bother,” Donovan muttered. “Shall I make the introductions?” His face was white and drawn with pain. A slick trail of rum flowed over his chin.
“We’ve all met,” Thomas said. “What the devil were you doing? Do you even know which end of a pistol the bullet comes out of?”
Donovan managed a pained smirk. “Someone’s got to earn a living. Did Erich tell you?”
“Tell me what? That you’ve traded your valet’s coat for a bandit’s mask?” he said. “It doesn’t suit you, Patrick.”
Donovan smiled wanly at the use of his first name. “Ah, so we’re friends again. You’ve barely spoken to me for weeks, and after I made all the arrangements you wanted.”
The Secret Life of Lady Julia Page 14