Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1)

by Mary Lancaster

  “You are most welcome to both,” Mrs. Fawcett assured her. “Come and see me when you mean to leave. We can travel to Vienna together.”

  “That would be more comfortable,” Lizzie said gratefully. “If you’re sure?”

  “I insist.”

  With a quick smile, Lizzie left her inquisitive new friend and hurried back upstairs to the patient’s room. As she climbed the stairs, she caught sight of three inn servants carrying trays of food into the private parlor and couldn’t help smiling.

  The patient appeared to be still asleep, although more restless than during the night, as if he were trying seriously to wake up. Lizzie patted his good arm with a few soothing murmurs, then, taking the carpet bag with her, she went on to her own room to wash her face and comb her hair. It would, she thought, be some time before Mrs. Fawcett was ready to leave, if she intended to eat even half of the food put before her.

  So, carrying the bag once more, she returned to the patient’s room, and for the first time, counted out the money Johnnie had got for the necklace. A quick calculation in her head proved he was correct, too, about the value. For a moment, she wondered if her new wealth was enough to employ him and reluctantly abandoned the idea. Besides, he didn’t seem cut out for domestic service and she rather thought he could do more with his life, if he just left off thieving.

  Thoughtfully, she shoveled the money back into the bag. As she covered it with her mask and domino cloak, something made her glance toward the bed. Her victim’s eyes were open, glittering at her from the pillow.

  “You’re awake,” she said, relieved. Part of her had been afraid he would never wake up at all. Dropping the bag on the floor, she went to the bedside table and filled the cup there with fresh water from the covered jug.

  “Don’t,” he said hoarsely as she reached for the almost empty laudanum bottle. “Just water.”

  “Well, this time,” Lizzie agreed doubtfully. “But you must be in an awful lot of pain.”

  Although she placed her arm under his shoulder to help him into position, she was pleased he did most of the work himself—surely a good sign of recovery. He drank the water greedily, then lay back on the pillows watching her.

  The confusion of last night was not so apparent in his eyes now. On the other hand, they seemed to glitter in a way that tugged at her memory. On impulse, she brushed her hand across his forehead. His skin felt hot and tight.

  “Oh dear, I think you’ve developed a fever,” she said worriedly. Hastily, she went to the washing bowl and soaked the cloth before returning to bathe his head, hands, and wrists. For good measure, she pulled back a couple of the blankets covering him. “Sir, tell me where to reach your family,” she pleaded. “They must be worried sick about you.”

  He shook his head stubbornly.

  “Won’t you even tell me your name?”

  “You shot me,” he said deliberately.

  “Yes, I did,” Lizzie confessed, “and I’m so very sorry! I didn’t mean to. I was only threatening you with it because I thought you were a thief, but then when you were fighting with Johnnie, I got angry and clenched my fists…stupid thing to do when you’re holding a pistol. But we can talk about that when you’re well again. You must lie still now. I’ll order some gruel for you to keep your strength up.”

  *

  Her patient only ate a few spoonfuls of the gruel before shoving it away. Lizzie gave him some more water and this time he didn’t seem to notice when she put the last of the laudanum in it. In fact, he was muttering to himself in German and his skin felt even hotter than before. Taking her courage in both hands, Lizzie changed the dressing on his wound, which no longer looked so neat. Instead, it was red and puffy and weeping slightly. She washed it and applied a clean dressing, then drew the sheet back over him.

  For a few moments she stood anxiously over him, plucking at her lower lip with indecision. But she couldn’t leave him in this state. She’d done this to him.

  Hastily, she marched to the door. Encountering the flustered maid in the corridor, she asked for directions to Mrs. Fawcett’s chamber.

  She found the English woman with her maid, supervising two large footmen as they hefted a trunk onto their shoulders.

  “Ah, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Fawcett said, as if Lizzie were a pleasant familiarity in her life. She addressed the servants. “Miss Gaunt will be travelling with us—as usual,” she added significantly.

  The maid and the footmen didn’t even blink, merely nodded as if their mistress hadn’t just commanded them to lie if required.

  “But that’s what I came to tell you, ma’am,” Lizzie said hastily. “I’m afraid I can’t travel today, and I wanted to ask you instead if you would be so good as to carry letters to my sister…and to my aunt, I suppose.”

  “You must tell me all about it,” Mrs. Fawcett said comfortably. “Cartwright, make sure they stow the trunk safely. Take the dressing case and I’ll be down directly.”

  “I can’t keep this from my aunt any longer,” Lizzie said ruefully when the servants had closed the door behind them. “I hate to cause her this trouble, too, but I truly can’t leave here at least until the doctor has been. My patient has developed a fever and the wound looks so ugly I—”

  “When do you expect the doctor?” Mrs Fawcett interrupted.

  “Hopefully around noon, Johnnie said.”

  Mrs. Fawcett drew in a breath. “You had better let me see this patient.”

  “Truly, ma’am—”

  “I’ve nursed two brothers, a husband, and four sons, three of them from battle wounds,” Mrs. Fawcett said sternly. “All of them lived. Show me your patient.”

  Lizzie closed her mouth and meekly led the redoubtable Mrs. Fawcett along the corridor to her patient, who was now lying on the floor beside the bed.

  “Oh no!” Lizzie ran to him. “He must have tried to follow me…and now he’s gone back to sleep.” She straightened. “I’ll call the landlord to help get him back in bed.”

  “No need,” Mrs. Fawcett said from the window. “I’ll just call back my men.”

  Within five minutes, the burly footmen had lifted the injured man back between the sheets. Mrs. Fawcett peeped at the wound and sent the servants away to bring all her luggage back inside.

  “I have a few medicines and remedies that might help,” she said comfortably. “Take heart, Elizabeth, all is not yet lost. Now, let me think what is best… Yes, you must go to Vienna in my coach, while I stay here and watch our patient and speak to the doctor.”

  “That hardly seems fair.”

  “Well, I like to be useful and I think we should preserve your reputation if we can. Besides, your sisters—” She broke off. “You mentioned a brother as well. Why do you have a brother with you?”

  “He’s always been with us. His mother died, you see.”

  “And yours took him in.” A smile flickered across her face. “She could always deal with your father. I’m glad to see you are so like her.”

  “Oh, but I’m not,” Lizzie said earnestly. “It’s my dearest wish to learn to be, but I keep having accidents and, well, it’s difficult to be good and still look after people sometimes.”

  “Which is why we need to help each other now.”

  Lizzie smiled. “It’s you who’s giving all the help.”

  “Nonsense. You are supplying my entertainment. I shall write to your aunt, explain that I have been indisposed here and that, for your mother’s sake, I would very much like your company tomorrow. I’ll send the coach for you.”

  Lizzie regarded the older woman with considerable respect. Although she didn’t like to leave Mrs. Fawcett with her mess, she did owe it to her siblings—and to her aunt and uncle—to return to Vienna and make sure all was well. Besides, Mrs. Fawcett clearly had more experience than she with wounds of this nature.

  “You’re very, very good, ma’am,” she said fervently.

  “I’m very, very good at organizing people as I want them,” Mrs. Fawcett corrected. “C
all Cartwright, will you? Tell her I want my pens and paper.”

  Within a quarter of an hour, Lizzie was comfortably ensconced in Mrs. Fawcett’s well-appointed travelling coach, being waved off by the lady herself, the maid, and the landlady of the inn.

  At the last moment, Lizzie stuck her head out of the window. “Oh, Mrs. Fawcett! When I return, do you think I could bring my dog?”

  Chapter Nine

  Mrs. Fawcett’s coachman dropped her at the door of the Daniels’ house in the Skodegasse. She thanked him and he tipped his hat.

  “See you tomorrow then, miss,” he said cheerfully and urged his horses on.

  Lizzie let herself in with her own key and while she removed her cloak, listened carefully. The house seemed ominously quiet. Of course, it still lacked an hour until noon, so it was unlikely the ball-goers would be abroad—with the exception of her uncle who, presumably, had to attend to diplomatic business. But it wasn’t like her siblings, or Dog, to be so subdued.

  She ran upstairs to the room she shared with her sisters and Minerva, entering with some trepidation. Both beds were occupied, the smaller by Minerva, and the larger by an ungainly heap which was clearly her sisters’ representation of herself asleep.

  Minerva didn’t stir as Lizzie crossed the chamber on tiptoe. Crouching down, she drew the small trunk from under bed, replaced the carpet bag inside it, and pushed it gently back under. That done, she quickly smoothed and made up the bed, and quietly left the room. In the hallway, she encountered her aunt’s maid.

  “Good morning, Benson,” she said brightly, searching the maid’s face for signs of disapproval or any other unusual reaction to her presence. “Where are the children?”

  “I saw them go out to the garden, Miss. With the dog.”

  “Then that explains the quiet in the house. Is my aunt awake yet?”

  “Just about, Miss.”

  At least all seemed well with Benson and so, presumably, with her aunt. But before she could relax, she had to see the children.

  They were, indeed, discovered in the garden. As soon as she opened the garden door, Dog launched himself at her. Undeterred by the pole to which he was tethered, he continued to run at her in short, pointless burst that always pulled him up short and should have hurt him.

  Putting him out of his misery, Lizzie went to him at once, let him jump on her and lick her while she held on to him for self-preservation and the children ran at her with cries of relief and joy.

  “Oh goodness, calm down,” Lizzie begged. “You’ll give the whole game away.”

  “We were just discussing where to tell Aunt Lucy you’d gone,” Georgiana said. “I reckon we could have got you another couple of hours.”

  “Though I for one am very glad not to have to,” Henrietta said.

  “What happened?” Michael demanded. “Did you get it? Because they all seemed very cheerful when they came home.”

  “Really? Well, that is good, I suppose…although we may well have the panic tonight, instead. What is happening tonight?”

  “Prince Metternich’s ball,” Michael answered, and when his sisters gazed at him in astonishment at his being aware of any such thing, he added, “What? Apparently, it has a military theme.”

  “Ah,” Lizzie said, understanding. “Well, let’s sit down here around Dog’s pole so he can lie on top of me while we speak. I’ve had quite an adventure and it isn’t all good—although at least we have the money.”

  She told them nearly everything, including speaking to the tsar, although omitting her dance and subsequent passage with Colonel Vanya. She told them of her difficulty finding Johnnie in the crush and his unilateral decision to steal the necklace by some flim-flam that meant Aunt Lucy didn’t realize it had been stolen. When she got to the part at the inn and the stranger demanding her bag, they all gazed at her wide-eyed with shock. Michael and Georgiana both cheered Johnnie for hitting him and even when she described how she came to shoot the poor man, Michael declared stoutly that he’d deserved it.

  Henrietta, in her kindhearted way, was touched by everyone’s care of the wounded man, although Georgiana showed a disquieting interest in the gory details. For once, she appeared to agree with Michael that Lizzie had done the right thing in shooting him.

  When she came to her encounter with Mrs. Fawcett, they all scratched their heads, wondering if she was a true friend or an interfering busybody.

  “She seems to have known both Mama and Papa,” Lizzie told them. “And while she’s definitely most curious by nature, she does seem benevolently disposed toward us. She didn’t need to stay there to look after my victim or send me back in her carriage. To be frank, if it hadn’t been for her, our game would have been up. As to my reputation, my uncle’s fury and Minerva’s chances of a good marriage… I shudder to think. And she’s written to Aunt Lucy to ask if I might visit her at the inn tomorrow, so I’ll have an excuse to return to the patient.”

  “Can we come?” Georgiana asked as a knock sounded on one of the house windows. Lizzie looked up to see Benson summoning her from her aunt’s room.

  “I don’t see why not,” Lizzie said, standing up. “It’s a big carriage and I already have permission to transport Dog in it. You’re not much more destructive.”

  The children’s laughter following her back inside the house gave her the strength to face her aunt calmly. She had no doubt that her aunt had finally discovered the theft of the beloved necklace. But when Lizzie, heart thumping with guilt and not a little shame, opened the door, she found her aunt waving a sheet of paper around.

  “Did I know Eleanor Fawcett was your godmother?” Aunt Lucy asked.

  “Only unofficially,” Lizzie said. “You are my godmother.”

  “Yes, but it’s also true Eleanor and your mother were very close for a time…until Jane married your father, of course. Well, it’s very good of her to take an interest in you now. She’s on her way to Vienna, but was taken ill at an inn not far from the city. She’s asking that you visit her.”

  Lizzie said weakly, “How kind.”

  “I think you should go. It’s a very good connection. She’s an eccentric creature, of course, but she has a lot of influence in the fashionable world. She knows everyone. Everyone. Be kind to her and when she sets up her establishment in Vienna, we might all expect an invitation.”

  Her aunt had more to say on that subject and on the subject of last night’s ball before moving on to her expectations of tonight’s festivity at Metternich’s summer palace, but it all floated over Lizzie’s head. She was more concerned with how and why neither Aunt Lucy nor Benson had noticed that the necklace was missing.

  She didn’t discover that until the evening, when, as she was just finishing adjusting the hem of Minerva’s enchanting pale yellow ball gown, Aunt Lucy bustled into the bed chamber to see if her daughter was near ready to go. Resplendent in deep turquoise, her aunt looked every inch the elegant matron of birth, wealth, and influence. Lizzie couldn’t take her eyes off her aunt’s bosom, on which lay the glittering diamond necklace Johnnie had stolen last night.

  *

  It must be paste, she thought as she and the children turned out dutifully to wave the carriage off to its second ball in two nights. My aunt must have had it made up so she’d have something to keep when she hands the original over to Ivan the Terrible. She’s got muddled and assumed the fake is the real one…

  Or was it? What if Johnnie had sold the fake one and the buyer found out? She’d have to give the money back. Though surely any receiver of stolen goods, any decent jewelry fence, would be able to spot a fake…

  “Come on then,” Michael said. With their aunt and uncle’s permission, they were going to follow in a hired fiacre to watch the guests arrive at the ball. Reluctantly, Lizzie had vetoed taking the dog who could have caused untold carnage from one moment of inattention.

  When they arrived, there were already crowds of people outside Metternich’s palace and spilling onto the grounds themselves. In their usu
al manner, the children quickly latched on to a friendly Viennese, who good-naturedly pointed out the most important arrivals, including the enormously fat King of Württemberg and his handsome son, the crown prince, the long, lean King of Denmark, and the white-haired Emperor of Austria with his Empress who looked like everyone’s favorite aunt and uncle apart from the fortune in jewels sprayed around the empress’ person.

  “Where is the Tsar of Russia?” Henrietta asked eagerly. “Is he not here yet?”

  “This will be him,” said their unofficial guide. “Escorted by his Cossacks!”

  Michael jumped up and down with excitement, trying to see over people’s heads. Their kind guide pushed Michael in front of him and made a space, too, for the girls. The good-natured Viennese moved happily out of the way to let the children see.

  And the Cossacks were playing to the crowd. Although the tsar’s carriage was travelling relatively sedately in their midst, the horsemen were galloping ahead and doubling back in constant, circular motion. They looked rough and wild, with fine moustaches and some very eastern faces, their horsemanship unparalleled in terms of skill, discipline, and precision. Michael was enchanted.

  The tsar and the stunningly beautiful tsarina rode in an open carriage and were cheered as enthusiastically as the performing Cossacks. On either side of them rode brilliantly uniformed aides on horseback and, a little in front and farther to one side, rode another officer, resplendent in a green and gold uniform that she’d seen before.

  Her heart gave a funny little flutter, because it looked very much like Colonel Vanya’s. She looked up at his face as his part of the cavalcade approached, but she could see nothing to recognize – a hint of black hair beneath his tall hat, which covered a good part of his face, too. She saw only hollow cheeks and rather fine bone structure—the bits, mainly, that on Vanya had been hidden by his mask. She must have been wishing some kind of familiarity on him, for this man could have been anyone.