Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1)

by Mary Lancaster

  “You’re not very good at this, are you?” the thief said. “You should offer me two.”

  Lizzie brightened. “Will you take two?”

  “No, but I’ll take five.”

  “Done,” Lizzie said, impulsively offering her hand to shake on the deal. The thief’s stretched out of the darkness and grasped hers. His fingers felt warm and rough. A faint scent of horses emanated from him, along with alcohol, which gave her pause. “How foxed are you?” she inquired.

  His breath of laughter ruffled the back of her hand. “Drunk enough to make a bad deal for a pretty face,” he said, suddenly dipping his head and kissing her fingers.

  Her skin flushed under his lips and she snatched her hand back in outrage. “But not so drunk that you’ll forget our agreement in the morning, I trust?”

  He sighed. “No. Though I may regret it.”

  Approaching voices from the street jerked Lizzie out of her isolation. Wilhelm, her aunt’s coachman, was returning.

  “Oh dear, the performance must be just about over!” she exclaimed. She slid along the seat, reaching for the door on the road side of the carriage. “Can you escape now without being caught?”

  “Easily,” the thief said. He moved quickly, opening the door before she could reach it and jumping down. He didn’t lower the step, but simply seized her round the waist and spun her out of the carriage. Her feet barely hit the ground before he propelled her across the road behind a passing carriage.

  Lizzie, unexpectedly shocked by such careless treatment, could think of nothing to say except, “Don’t you have a coat?”

  His teeth gleamed in the light from the carriage. “Yes, of course. I just left home in too much of a hurry.”

  “To go thieving?” Lizzie asked, with more interest than condemnation. After all, she was making use of his services, but she’d never thought of it quite like a position one could be late for, like her uncle’s at the Foreign Office.

  “Exactly. Didn’t want to miss my chance.”

  Lizzie suddenly had a lot more questions about the theft of the beautiful lady’s necklace, but she had run out of time and all was not yet settled between them.

  “Twenty-five Skodegasse,” she said hastily. “There’s a lane that runs behind the houses. I’ll speak to you there tomorrow, when it’s quiet. Noon.”

  As she hurried away from him, she couldn’t prevent a quick glance over her shoulder to see where he went. But there was no sign of him. He’d vanished like the proverbial thief in the night.

  *

  “That girl,” Wilhelm the coachman said, pointing to the young English woman’s ill-dressed back scuttling into the theatre against the flow of the rest of the audience, “met with someone in her own coach. A man. The police were chasing him.”

  He spoke to the shadowy figure he knew only as Agent Z, who lounged against his coach door, watching the world go by as only the Viennese could. Though Wilhelm doubted Agent Z was a true Viennese, he’d never ask. At once bland and chilling, the secret policeman was not someone Wilhelm wished to get on the wrong side of, hence his new double employment with the state police and Mr. Daniels. He’d been afraid to say no. Besides which, the double pay was good.

  “And she is…?” Agent Z prompted.

  “Niece of my master, Jeremy Daniels, one of the British diplomats, if you remember. He arrived yesterday. Don’t know who he is, though.”

  “I’ll find that out easily enough,” Agent Z said, with a nod. “Good work. Keep your eyes open.”

  Chapter Two

  On her way to bed, Lizzie found herself snatched into her brother’s chamber. Well, she thought of it as Michael’s, though, in fact, he shared it with the currently absent Cousin James, much as Lizzie shared with Minerva as well as her two sisters. The house was much more cramped than they were used to. However, at this moment, her sisters were with Michael, waiting to ambush her.

  “How was the theatre?”

  “Did you see Herr von Beethoven?”

  “Was the tsar there? Or Emperor Francis?”

  “Did you see the Duchess of Sagan? She’s meant to be the most beautiful woman in the world.”

  “Did Minerva attract many admirers?”

  Bombarded with questions, she had to admit to seeing none of the famous personages and allow that Minerva had seemed to attract respectful interest.

  “Sounds pretty tame,” Georgiana, her youngest sister, said with clear disappointment.

  “Not in the least,” Lizzie assured her. “In fact, there was a robbery in the box right next to ours. A lady—one James admired excessively—had her necklace stolen quite blatantly, in full view of anyone who happened to be looking at her rather than the stage.”

  “What a coincidence!” Michael exclaimed. “Did you observe his methods?”

  “Better than that,” Lizzie said modestly. “I followed him out of the theatre and engaged his services.”

  “Oh goodness, Lizzie, how brave of you!” Henrietta breathed. “Was he terribly fearsome?”

  “Not fearsome exactly,” Lizzie said doubtfully. “Though I had the impression he cares for nothing and is afraid of nothing. In truth, he wasn’t really anything like I imagined a thief would be. But he’s agreed to steal the necklace for us and will come at noon tomorrow to receive his instructions.”

  Henrietta said, “You don’t think we’ll be ruining Minerva’s chances by stealing the necklace?”

  “Not in the slightest,” Georgiana said stoutly. “Why should the fact that Aunt Lucy’s wearing a particular necklace have any bearing at all on who does or does not offer for Minerva?”

  Lizzie, who was of a similar opinion, merely nodded. She rather thought her aunt liked the added consequence of wearing such a fine piece of jewelry for its own sake.

  “Where is the dog?” she asked, frowning with the sudden realization she hadn’t had to fend the animal off since returning from the theatre.

  As if on cue, the dog hurled itself through the bedroom door, lunging at Lizzie with insane delight. The children, who all understood that old and unfashionable as it was, this was her best gown, all threw themselves at the dog to save the garment from the inevitable muddy paw prints.

  “Well done!” Lizzie approved.

  “Well done to you, too,” Michael said. “Very clever of you to find us someone so quickly!”

  *

  In the morning, since Lizzie needed to be free at noon to meet her newly engaged thief, she made herself particularly useful arranging the house and organizing the servants to her aunt’s liking. Aunt Lucy complained of the tiny size of their accommodation and the number of stairs, but in truth, they were lucky to have a whole house at all in the overcrowded inner city. Most diplomats of Jeremy’s rank had to make do with an apartment or even a couple of rooms in someone’s attic. No doubt, Aunt Lucy’s rank and influence had pulled a few strings.

  Fortunately, such activity excused Lizzie from accompanying Aunt Lucy and Minerva on their shopping expedition. New gowns were apparently required to prevent Minerva living up to the reputation the British had already managed to acquire in Vienna of being ill-dressed, and most especially needed for the masked ball at the Imperial Palace which would formally open the Peace Congress.

  As she bustled about the house, her cousin, James, kept leaping out of his bedroom door to ask her opinion on coats and the style of his cravat, until his anxiety finally penetrated her own distracted thoughts.

  “Are you going somewhere special, James?” she asked.

  He flushed, making his appearance even younger than his years. “Madame Fischer invited me to her salon this afternoon.”

  “Well that was amiable of her! Um…who is Madame Fischer?”

  “The lady in the box next to ours at the theatre!”

  Lizzie, about to hurry on her way, held still, instead. “The lady whose necklace was stolen?”

  “Yes, wasn’t that shocking? But she is a great sport, didn’t let it upset her evening at all. She wasn’t
even frightened.”

  “Well, I suppose she’d no reason to be frightened since the thief ran off with several stout men after him. Leaving you to guard her,” Lizzie added hastily. “Have a pleasant afternoon.”

  Leaving him, she hurried downstairs to join the children in the garden, where they were setting up a picnic in the midday sunshine and squabbling over who should be fending the dog off the food.

  “Tie his leash to the clothes pole,” Lizzie advised. “That way he won’t reach the food, but he can still sniff around a bit.”

  Michael duly dragged the dog a few feet away and tied his long leash around the pole. “We’ve been talking,” he said over his shoulder. “And though you’ve been very clever finding a thief, we think I should go with you to meet him. Just to show him you’re not alone.”

  Lizzie didn’t have the heart to tell him that the presence of a twelve-year-old boy was unlikely to intimidate a hardened criminal like her blatant thief.

  “Actually,” Georgiana interrupted her brother’s reasoning, “we decided we should all come, but Michael thinks it’s the male presence which is important. Rot, if you ask me.”

  “No one would ask you,” Michael retorted.

  “Because I’m a girl?” Georgiana fired up.

  “No,” Michael said at once. “Because you’re—”

  “Enough,” Lizzie interrupted. “I don’t want to scare him off, so I’ll go alone. Besides, I need you here to cover for me if anyone else comes into the garden – and to keep the dog quiet if he hears a stranger’s voice.”

  “But we’ve never met a thief before,” Georgiana objected, clearly disappointed.

  “Well, that’s one of the desired, if unwritten, accomplishments of a lady,” Lizzie assured her. “Do not, under any circumstances, number thieves among your acquaintance.”

  The children giggled, although, sobering first, Henrietta pointed out in her soft voice that Lizzie had already ruined this accomplishment in herself.

  “It doesn’t matter if I’m going to be a governess instead of a lady,” Lizzie claimed.

  Georgiana crowed with laughter, but Michael said sternly that it would matter more. “What respectable family would employ a governess who associated with thieves?” he demanded, not unreasonably.

  “Don’t be silly. Of course I won’t associate with him again once he’s stolen the necklace and sold it.”

  “Indeed, why would you?” Henrietta said supportively.

  “All very well,” Michael said, throwing himself down on the rug beside his sisters. “But what’s to prevent your thief from just taking off with the necklace and keeping all the money himself?”

  “I thought of that,” Lizzie admitted. “But in truth, I’d find it hard to sell it myself. I think the only solution has to be that I stick with him from the moment he steals the necklace until we have the money.”

  “Oh no,” Henrietta exclaimed. “What if he murders you in a back alley?”

  Lizzie thought about the thief jerking the necklace from Madame Fischer’s elegant throat, then their rather odd conversation in the dark carriage. Although he hadn’t harmed his victim, there had been suppressed violence in his casual gesture and, she thought, in his hard, turbulent eyes. Drunk as he’d undoubtedly been, his true nature was difficult to guess.

  “I can’t see him murdering me,” she said judiciously. “But all the same, I shall take Papa’s pistol with me.”

  The dog began to growl as she spoke, pulling against his leash toward the back of the garden, where a gate in the wall led to the alley.

  “What is the time, Michael?” she asked, her stomach twisting with excitement.

  “Almost noon. Do you suppose that’s—”

  The gate in the wall opened and a gardener in a big, floppy hat came in and immediately began raking fallen leaves into a neat pile. The dog stopped growling.

  Lizzie rose to her feet. “Remember your parts,” she urged her siblings and tripped down the lawn to the main path that led to the gate.

  The gardener pulled his rake out of her way and tugged the brim of his hat. She spared a glance to thank him because she was still getting to know the servants here and the breath seemed to flee from her body.

  The gardener tipped his hat back on his head and smiled.

  Lizzie’s heart jolted as the blood drained from her face. Although it was a rather charming smile, making his eyes gleam beguilingly, it only emphasized the recklessness she’d read in him last night.

  “This wasn’t our agreement!” she hissed.

  “No, but it looks much less suspicious than skulking in the lane, don’t you think?”

  “No!” In fact, her main objection was to prevent him being near her siblings, though he did have a point about lurking.

  “Are they your brother and sisters?” he inquired, casting a quick glance over the children.

  “They’re just orphans,” she blurted, without much hope that he would believe her. “And their dog. Listen. I want you to take the necklace from my aunt in public, just as you did last night with Madame Fischer.”

  “Couldn’t I just walk into the house and steal it now?”

  “No! I can’t have suspicion falling on us and, besides, there’s no guarantee that the maids will see you do it.”

  His lips twitched. “I have to be seen doing it? You know, for that kind of risk my percentage should be higher.”

  “We have an agreement,” Lizzie said sternly. “And yes, the robbery has to be seen, just in case Ivan the—the vile cousin accuses my aunt and uncle of hiding it from him.”

  The thief blinked. “You’ve thought of everything, haven’t you? So where am I to steal it from?”

  Lizzie drew in her breath, glanced around at the children and then back to the thief. “The Emperor’s masked ball the night after tomorrow. Do you think you can get into the Hofburg?”

  “Anyone who likes will get in,” the thief said wryly. “Austrian security concentrates on much less tangible threats than thievery.”

  “Good,” said Lizzie. “Because I have to get in myself without an invitation.”

  “Why? If you’re to be nowhere near the theft?”

  “I need to point out my aunt and the necklace to you,” Lizzie said. “But I shall be in disguise. Like everyone else, I’ll have a mask and domino. Oh, do you have such things?”

  “I can borrow them,” the thief said blandly.

  In the circumstances, it was hardly Lizzie’s place to quibble. She merely nodded. “Very well. So, you must steal the necklace—without hurting my aunt,” she added anxiously, “or the whole deal is off.”

  “I’ll strive to control my violence.”

  Lizzie frowned at him. “You know, you sound very educated for a thief. Your English is excellent.”

  “So was my grandfather’s. And I haven’t always been a thief.”

  Intrigued in spite of herself, Lizzie opened her mouth to ask more but fortunately a burst of laughter from the children reminded her that she needed to get rid of him quickly.

  “Once I’ve pointed her out to you, I’ll leave and wait for you in a hired carriage. We’ll go straight to your buyer and split the money as agreed.”

  The thief blinked. “Selling it may not be as simple as that,” he warned.

  Lizzie narrowed her eyes. “You had best make sure it is, because I shall be with you until the deal is done.”

  To her surprise, a half-smile sprang to his lips and hovered. “Is that supposed to be an incentive?”

  She frowned with incomprehension then began to flush as an unlikely meaning filtered through. “Oh for goodness’ sake, I don’t have time for such nonsense and I’m certainly not foolish enough to fall for your flim-flam. Five percent as we agreed. And only on the terms I’ve just stated.”

  “You had really better do some gardening,” Henrietta’s soft voice said behind her. “James is at the upstairs window.”

  A swift glance upward showed her James, back in his original choice of co
at, his hair exceedingly well brushed. Catching her eye, he grinned and posed, pointing to his cravat. Lizzie gave him a hasty thumbs-up sign.

  “You are Lizzie’s thief, aren’t you?” Henrietta asked.

  “Oh dear,” Lizzie said faintly. “Henri—” She was about to tell her sister to go away while casting a quick, forbidding glare at the thief, who, like most people on first acquaintance, was staring at Henrietta’s incomparable beauty.

  But at that moment, Michael and Georgiana both yelled as the dog, having finally broken his rope, launched himself across the garden toward Lizzie and the gate, which he was more than capable of jumping.

  Resigned to the indignity, Lizzie leapt into the dog’s path and spread her arms wide to catch him. But it wasn’t the first time Dog had played this game either. He swerved, bounding between her and the thief. Michael darted after him and Georgiana ran wide to begin the hemming in process. Dog skidded to a halt in the corner and turned. He knew this ploy, too, and understood he had to bolt fast before Georgiana got too close. So he did.

  The thief took something from his pocket, saying something casual in a language Lizzie had never heard before. As everyone readjusted their angles of approach to close in on the animal, Dog skidded to a halt and turned to face the thief, wagging his tail. The thief held out a piece of biscuit and Dog trotted up to him, happily taking it from his right hand while his left closed around the dog’s collar.

  “Oh, well done!” Michael exclaimed. “Thanks!”

  “Pleasure,” said the thief, clearly amused as he surrendered the dog to Michael’s charge.

  “We were sure he’d go for the food,” Georgiana said, waving one hand toward the picnic. “Instead, he bolts for freedom and is then distracted by a much tinier amount of food than he could have wolfed up there!”

  “He’s not very bright,” Michael agreed, pulling the dog’s ears. Dog licked his hand.

  “He’s been cooped up for too long in carriages and inns and now this house,” Lizzie said guiltily. “We need to take him out somewhere and let him run. Somewhere we can actually catch him again before he exhausts us.”