by Carrie Lofty
Another cannon blast rocked above the human din. They were so close now. A reflexive worry made him think of Christoph and Ingrid. He could almost envision their harried push across the Salzach. But his brother was strong, smart and exceedingly protective. Oliver’s commitment now was to his own heart—to Greta.
His face was covered with sweat and his shirt soaked through as he reached the Dom’s high towering walls. A whole other town square separated him from his destination. He kept a feeling of calm high and center in his mind. Steady going. Keep moving.
Compared to Kaigasse, where so many nobles and wealthy burghers made their homes, Judengasse was relatively quiet. Not everyone, it seemed, was fleeing to the east side of the river. Their lives had not changed much for better or worse since Duke Ferdinand came to power three years before. Why would it change much now, if Napoleon installed a new leader?
Oliver guided his horse past the groups of gossips. He came to the glassmaker’s shop and tied the animal to a post.
A woman in a red apron stood outside smoking a rolled piece of tobacco. Her smile was youthful and welcoming, but her teeth were tinted an ugly yellow. “Well, hello,” she said.
“I need to get into the storeroom above your shop.”
Before the woman could protest or decline, Oliver dragged a bag of florins out of his pocket. He simply handed them to her, then stalked into the shop.
“Stairs are in the back on the left,” she called as he pressed on.
His doubts were compounding now. What if she wasn’t here? What if Karl had already harmed her?
He shoved that possibility aside as he climbed upstairs. The muffled sound of a struggle urged him to action. Oliver drew his pistol from its holster and kicked the door in.
What he found…he had never seen anything more hideous. Karl, his trousers gaping open at the waist, knelt over Greta. She was bound. Her backside had been bared.
Oliver aimed the gun and fired.
The bullet pierced Karl’s right shoulder, just above the lung. The force of it spun him back and away from Greta. He rolled to face the ceiling, hands clutching his wound, blood and curses oozing out of him.
Oliver had his sword in hand as soon as Karl hit the floor, bypassing Greta in favor of checking the fallen man for weapons. A few quick seconds later, Oliver was satisfied. Karl was unarmed.
Resisting the urge to kick the man in the head, Oliver returned the pistol to its holster and his attention to Greta. Tears had made a wet mess of her hair. The bright blue eyes he adored so much were rimmed with red. A new surge of anger made his hands shake as he covered her nudity. The ropes took longer than usual, he knew, because his fingers refused to cooperate. Numbness made each knuckle clumsy. The raw red scrapes on her wrists and ankles inspired a killing rage.
Freed, she dove into his arms, saying his name over and over.
“I knew you’d come.” Karl’s breath was choppy. Perhaps that bullet had found his lung after all. Oliver could not find it in himself to be sorry. “I only hoped it would be later.”
“Why do this?” Oliver asked. “Why hurt an innocent woman?”
“Do you remember that winter, Oliver?”
Shivers and hunger, pain and hopelessness. Of course he remembered. It was one of the few things he had ever actively tried to forget. But some events became as much a part of a body as bone and skin.
“You know I do,” he said.
“Then you know why I wanted to hurt her.”
Oliver shook his head sharply. “Explain it to me and I’ll send for a doctor.”
“At this hour? With the little French butcher on his way? Unlikely.” Karl’s eyes had started to glaze over. “You really don’t know.”
Greta had dragged her head up from Oliver’s chest. She pushed the tangled hair out of her face. “What is this about? What happened?”
“He stayed behind, my lovely.” Karl coughed and sputtered as his breath became less dependable. Blood dribbled from one corner of his mouth. “On that last mission. You were still too sick. I had to go alone.”
Oliver frowned. Could it be?
“If you’d gone with me, I wouldn’t have been captured.” Another wracking cough. “Do you know what I endured in that prisoner camp? Two years of hell.”
“You blame me for that? Karl, I was ill. In bed. Fighting for my life. That you and your team were captured was no fault of mine.”
“You weren’t there for me! Just like you’ve abandoned me now!”
“I’m sorry.” Oliver’s voice was tight like a vise. “I’m sorry you were captured. I’m sorry that whatever you endured in prison turned you into…into this. But I will not bear the burden of your agony. And I certainly will not allow you to hurt Greta, some warped means of punishing me.”
“You were never who you claimed, you know.” Karl was becoming more pale by the second. His legs twitched. “You ran around like a commoner, like the rest of us. Now look at you. You’ll take your place with Venner and marry this strumpet and forget about me. Traitor,” he spat.
The scream of another whizzing cannon blast cut through the tension. Greta flinched in Oliver’s arms.
“We’re going,” Oliver said. “And you’re wrong. I won’t forget you. I will simply try to forget what you’ve become.”
He stood and slowly helped Greta to her feet. “Numb,” she whispered.
“Lean on me.”
He took the slight weight of her body against his own, grateful beyond belief that he had arrived in time. They were halfway to the door when Greta made him stop. “The paintings,” she said.
“Paintings?”
“The missing originals. He had them.”
She crossed the room with staggering steps. Her arms were not steady enough to hold what she found there. Oliver bundled the dozen rolled paintings in the nearby tarp, securing it over his shoulder. There was no time to free the rest from their frames.
Oliver looked upon his dying friend once more. Karl’s eyes lolled back in his head. But then he blinked once more and turned the full force of his mad hatred at Oliver.
“Good-bye, Karl.”
“Burn in hell, mein alter Freund.”
Turning away, Oliver promised himself he’d mourn later. Right now he had to get Greta out of the city before it crumbled.
They emerged into the semi-darkness of late afternoon. Greta coughed on the stink of gunpowder, so potent now. Her feet were shredding with pain as circulation returned. But Oliver…Oliver held her upright and urged her to keep moving.
“The horse is gone,” he muttered.
But he didn’t stop moving. He turned them toward the river, where people still surged over the inadequate bridges. She felt as if her mind had left her body. It was hovering somewhere over the water, watching as she and Oliver maneuvered through the crowd. A deep coldness crept up from her fingers and toes. Soon she was shaking so badly that she could not walk.
“Greta?”
How had she wound up sitting on the pavement?
“Greta, look at me.” Oliver’s warm hands framed her face. His icy blue eyes were distant, mesmerizing stars. “Greta, stay with me, Liebe. You’ve weathered a great shock.”
Her teeth chattered. “Was…so…scared.”
“I know you were. I know.”
He pulled her close against his chest. His heart beat steadily, quickly. She concentrated on that speedy rhythm, but it seemed too fast, too far away to follow. Darkness lined the edges of her eyes, pushing inward, until it blotted out the yellows and oranges of sunset. What was the use of a blind painter? Better just to sleep.
At first she could not make sense of his words. Oliver’s voice was just another part of a dream. But he kept talking. And soon his words cut through her fog.
“When I went back to where you’d been…and found you gone…Greta, I cannot tell you how I panicked.”
The darkness had receded, only just. She gripped the open fabric of his shirt. A huge explosion ripped to life only a few bui
ldings away. The force of the cannonball tore apart a town home. People screamed as rubble rained into the street.
“Can you walk?” Oliver asked, his expression determined. “I know it will be difficult, but I need you to do this.”
She nodded. She would not die. Not now.
With Oliver’s help she made it to her feet. Dizziness still washed across her vision, but she blinked it away like the last wisps of sleep. She clung to Oliver’s arm and followed his every move. Little hidden alleyways, back gardens and crevices between homes ushered them toward the river. More cannon fire, lobbed from the south, hurtled onto hapless buildings and screaming people. Bits of debris showered through the air, stinging Greta’s cheeks and arms.
They reached the river. The nearest bridge was half a mile north and almost entirely impassable.
“We’ll never make it that way,” Oliver said.
“We have to try.”
An explosion was near enough that heat climbed up her back. He took her hand and ran. They headed north, no matter how hopeless the bridge appeared. Greta sent up a quick prayer and gripped Oliver’s hand all the tighter. The sky was beginning to darken. Every flare of munitions turned the night into a warped, flame-colored version of day.
The push onto the bridge took all Greta’s strength, all her resolve, but she could not stop. They were so close. She caught Oliver’s eye and offered him a tired but determined smile.
Greta had never been so fatigued, so weary, so utterly drained. Every bone was made of glue. Her head felt too light, as if it might float away and leave her that melted creature she’d been when collapsed on the pavement.
Oliver held her. She leaned her back against his chest. Their bodies staved off the evening chill. Together they stood like that, overlooking the city from high atop a nearby mountain. Fires dotted the streets. Explosions continued to buffet the helpless buildings and the people huddled inside. Exhaustion shook her shoulders. They had made it out, but what of those left behind? Had Oliver made any mistake, she could be one of them—bound, raped, left for dead in that anonymous storeroom. Even Oliver’s strong arms, the solidity of him, could not stave off a shiver.
“Oliver!” came a man’s voice.
Atop his horse, Venner galloped toward them. Oliver shouted his brother’s name and raced toward him on foot. The men met on the slope of a hill, where Venner dismounted. They exchanged a fierce embrace.
Oliver’s smile was bright and wide. “Verdammen Sie, I’m glad to see you.”
Venner pointed up the road he’d traveled. “The carriages are two miles farther on the road toward Linz. I came back in the hopes of finding you both.”
“Worried about me, brother?”
“Intolerably.”
Wearing a frown, Greta walked to meet them. Oliver scooped her into his arms and twirled her around. “Everything’s all right,” he said. “They’re all safe.”
It couldn’t be…
“You…you didn’t know where they were?”
More soberly now, Oliver regarded her with those clear, perceptive eyes. No painter, no matter how masterful, would ever capture that shade of blue. “As soon as I discovered you missing, I left them to find you.”
After a painful swallow, she touched his cheek, his mouth, his hair. “Dear God, you chose me.”
“And I’d do it again.”
Delight unlike anything she had ever felt threatened to make her giddy. The Venners were safe. They had all escaped the city. And Oliver…
“You chose me,” she whispered again.
His mouth opened but he did not speak. Instead he kissed her—such a gentle, unimaginable sweetness. Greta did not urge him toward a deeper intimacy. Not then. Not when the simple touch of lip to lip was more pleasure than the entire whole could summon.
“I love you,” he said. “I put you second to my duties because I knew what loving you would mean. I would have to admit to my past, admit who I am. Maybe I would even have to live up to something greater than I’ve grown comfortable being. My family will always be very important to me. They’re all I’ve had for so long. But Greta…” His voice broke. He kissed her on the temple and held her in trembling arms. “I don’t know how I would’ve survived had Karl—”
“Shhh.” She covered his mouth with her fingers. “Don’t. Please. Leave all of it in that room. I never want to go back there, even in memory.”
Rather than revisit those terrible moments, Oliver gathered her close and held her tightly. Her champion and protector. The man she loved and who loved her in return. No reservations now. No doubts.
Venner gently cleared his throat. When Greta emerged from the shelter of Oliver’s embrace, she found Venner looking out across the river, his attention carefully averted. “The guards have orders to continue on to Anhalt without me come dawn. We must hurry to catch up.”
Oliver’s frown showed his concern. As always. It warmed her heart, making her the safest woman in the world. “Greta, do you think you can make it?”
“We can make it, mein Lieber.” She smiled softly. “Just promise we’ll be together.”
“I promise.”
Epilogue
Principality of Anhalt
Two Months Later
The sounds of an orchestra tuning shouldn’t have been enough to make Oliver’s mouth go dry, but it did. For years he had endured the terrible sounds of battle, and for years after that he had crept through the shadows to keep the Venners well-positioned. Nothing should frighten him now. Yet he knotted his fingers behind his back, barely staving off a nervous jitter.
Around him men in formal attire smoked fine cigars and swirled cognac in crystal glasses. They smiled and talked, lounged and laughed. Men of privilege, wealth, influence. Oliver had to stop himself from cringing, or asking outright, “Why am I here?”
This was his life now.
He wondered what the valets were doing. Where were they congregating, sharing stories and the rare plug of tobacco? They would be tucked away in some little anteroom, like he had been on the night of that fateful opera. Only now, instead of a soprano’s soaring voice echoing through the walls, it was a twenty-piece orchestra.
Christoph slid into place beside him. He wore a most uncharacteristic grin, one that actually turned his lips fully upward. Funny how he still managed to look grim and stern, despite the smile. “You look uncomfortable,” he said.
Oliver squelched a reflex to check his livery for correctness, from the proper alignment of his coat buttons to the perfect placement of his blasted wig. He wore no such uniform now. Instead he sported a brand new suit that was worth more than he’d made during all four years in the army. The cravat was so starched and precisely tied that he wondered how he would remove the thing. After all, he had not been the one to tie it.
Oliver had a valet of his own now.
He had felt the same way about the cravat he wore as a bridegroom. But Greta had managed to remove it with her usual aplomb and enthusiasm—using only her teeth.
His own grin sprang to life, surpassing even that of his teasing brother. “Rather uncomfortable, yes. The wedding was one thing. But this…” He waved his hand discreetly toward the assembled peers and nobles. “This feels much more conspicuous.”
“Probably because your wedding was attended by only six people, including one fussy newborn.”
“Probably.”
He had been a married man for all of five weeks. The idea of Greta well and truly sleeping by his side every night—as his wife, no less—still humbled him with a flushed sort of pride. His chest could not help but swell, and his body jerked to life. He loved her more than was sane.
Which explained why he had agreed to this particular torment.
“It’s not truly necessary, you know,” Christoph said. “There is no need to lead the first waltz of the evening. Cousin Ludwig will not mind if you decline. I know for a fact his oldest son is quite eager for the privilege with Lady Hildholtz.”
“True,” Oliver said
under his breath, “but Lady Hildholtz is quite eager to spend time with his younger brother.”
“Fact?”
He merely shrugged. “Some habits die hard. But shall I always be burdened by such honor?”
“I don’t see why not. The alternative is telling Greta that you’d rather back down from your promise.”
Oliver could think of no more effective threat. Greta had her heart set on leading the first waltz, since having been asked to do so by Count Ludwig’s wife. “To celebrate you and your new husband,” she had said.
He would have preferred, of course, to remain a quiet new addition to the family. Christoph had proclaimed him his brother, which silenced any overt discussions of Oliver’s parentage, but what if the stigma remained? What if he was never truly accepted into this world of finery? He feared ever being able to give Greta the life she deserved. No matter that he had become Christoph’s paid political advisor, part of him remained the hurting, thieving boy who’d been called before his father in shame.
Marrying Greta, in some small way, still felt like deception. He feared the worst of Karl’s last sputtered accusations.
“Look around you,” Christoph said solemnly. “Look.” The men in the smoking room chatted among themselves. No one paid them any mind. “You know how Lord Brunnen came into his title.”
“By blackmailing his mistress’s father, yes,” Oliver said in a low voice.
“And Baron Wiltheizer.”
“By selling the most exquisite cakes in Vienna and winning the heart of a widowed baroness with an uncontrolled sweet tooth.”
“So tell me you don’t belong here. Our father was our father, Oliver, and he was wrong to treat you and your mother as he did. But it’s time to put that all behind us.” He leaned nearer, his expression serious. “I’d be bored to pieces without you.”
“And ill-informed to boot.”
“Exactly.”
The doors to the ballroom opened. The count’s majordomo cleared his throat. “My lords and distinguished guests, the ladies await your company for the first waltz.”