“Lord Launceton,” the countess said repressively.
Trelawny straightened from his last bow looking baffled, but Dunya laughed with delight. “Of course, I had forgotten that! Vanya is an English baron now, too! Oh Vanya, where is your wife?” She looked around, as though expecting the woman to be hiding behind a sofa.
“In bed,” Vanya retorted. “Which is where I would be at this devilish hour if it weren’t for your damned starts. Mother, do you have any coffee in this establishment? Sit down, Captain, and tell us the worst.”
Anastasia rang the bell, but the captain didn’t move any farther into the room. Instead, he inclined his head by way of acknowledgment. “Thank you, I won’t. But before I take my leave, may I just say…”
He paused, glancing at Dunya, who smiled at him, nodding encouragement. Obviously he didn’t yet know her well enough to get his words out quickly, for during the pause, she simply clasped his arm and announced, “I wish to be engaged to Captain Trelawny.”
Chapter Four
Trelawny metaphorically shrugged his shoulders and waited for the axe to fall.
Dunya’s family had turned out to be even more exalted than he’d imagined, possessing a large apartment in a palatial residence, titles in two countries, and an excess of strong characters. One of whom—the wild and reputedly dangerous Vanya—now turned out also to have the military rank of colonel, though in whose army was anyone’s guess. He wore expensive civilian clothes with careless inattention to such details as the knotting of his cravat.
At Dunya’s impetuous announcement, they all stared at him with varying degrees of consternation, suspicion, and fascination. Interestingly, there didn’t appear to be much surprise.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” her mother said scathingly at last. “You’ve known the man five minutes, and he certainly hasn’t spoken to myself or Vanya.”
“Well, she hasn’t exactly given him the chance,” Vanya drawled, with a hint of mockery. “Go on, sir, how much do you wish to marry my sister, and why?”
“Bearing in mind,” Nikolai Lermontov said contemptuously, “that she has no fortune of her own.”
It might have been Vanya’s knowing mockery of his sister, as though he understood exactly what she was up to and imagined he could stop her whenever he chose to lift his finger. Or it might have been Nikolai’s vulgar words which managed to insult both Trelawny’s character and Dunya’s attractions. But mostly, it was the girl’s suddenly desperate grip on his sleeve. Women had very little control over the course of their own lives. Dunya was only trying to exert a little—by underhanded means since overt ones clearly hadn’t worked in the past. And now she obviously saw that sliver of control slipping away from her. She thought Trelawny would cave in to them, or to the world, as Etienne had.
Trelawny smiled. “Countess Dunya’s fortune, sir, or lack of it, is quite immaterial to me. I grew up with none and require none.” He shifted his gaze from Nikolai to Vanya. “Sir, since you ask, life could hold no greater happiness for me than to call this lady my wife.”
He could feel Dunya’s gaze burning into his face.
Vanya said, “Are you asking my permission to address her?”
“God, no,” Trelawny said easily, clamping Dunya’s hand between his arm and his body as she tried to snatch it back. “You don’t know me from Adam. I merely give you notice that I will ask, and that I consider myself engaged to her.”
Dunya’s hand relaxed in his arm. When he risked a quick glance, she bestowed another of her blinding smiles.
Vanya’s gaze flickered between them.
Nikolai said audibly, “What rot!” And Dunya stiffened with understandable outrage.
“Seems reasonable to me,” Vanya said cheerfully. “Expect we’ll see more of you, then. Certainly, we owe you a debt of gratitude for Dunya’s safe return. I shall never forget that. For now, I’ll walk you to your carriage.”
“Vanya!” Countess Savarina wailed.
“I’ll be back to take my coffee,” he said with surely deliberate misunderstanding.
As Dunya detached her hand with visible reluctance, Trelawny took it in his, raised it to his lips and kissed it. “Au revoir, Countess.” He smiled, closing one eye for the tiniest instant, and was gratified to see an instant sparkle of response.
“Au revoir, Captain,” she said breathlessly. He suspected she was trying not to laugh, which broadened his smile as he released her fingers and bowed to her mother and the rest of the room before marching out.
In the passage, a rush of feet and whispers told him the servants had had their ears pressed to the drawing room door. In fact, they hadn’t retreated far. Faces peered out from behind other doors and from what he took to be a servants’ staircase.
“They’re waiting to see if I challenge you to a duel,” Vanya murmured beside him as they walked to the front door.
“Don’t hold back,” Trelawny begged. “I still shoot damned straight with one arm.”
“I’ll bear it in mind,” Vanya assured him. “But at the moment, I’m more concerned about this other Englishman, the one you were obliged to scare off. Will he cause trouble?”
Trelawny glanced at him. “Do you mean gossip about your sister? I would doubt it. It hardly reflects well on him from any angle.”
“Damned right,” Vanya said forcefully. “But, away from my mother, what is the truth of the affair? Do I have reason to kill the bastard?”
“No,” Trelawny replied. “If you had, I believe I would already have done it for you.”
Vanya, pausing by the front door, gave him a long look. “I believe you might. Who is this character?”
Trelawny hesitated, then shrugged. Dunya would tell him anyhow, and he probably needed to know. “Niven.”
Vanya blinked. “Lord Harry?” he said in amazement.
“Sebastian,” Trelawny corrected. “I don’t know any Harry.”
“Wait though.” Vanya scowled. “I’ve heard of him. How the devil did you stop him? Just with a pistol?”
“That,” Trelawny conceded. “And…he isn’t actually a bad man. You just have to find the code he lives by and use it against him.”
Vanya opened the door. Beyond it, the rickety inn carriage awaited. Jenkins stood by the horses’ heads. “And what code do you live by, Captain Trelawny?”
“I’m sure you’ll find out, Colonel Savarin. Good day.”
He left Vanya standing on the doorstep and entered the inn carriage in leisurely manner. This time, Jenkins jumped in beside him and the vehicle pulled away. The ground floor curtains twitched.
“Well?” Jenkins said.
Trelawny didn’t answer for a few moments. He was gazing out of the window.
“I think…you need to find us rooms for a few days.” He refocused his gaze on Jenkins’s hopeful face. “I need to rest and get well.”
*
In the end, they dismissed the carriage opposite the Hofburg. Trelawny sat on a bench in the open park, with his feet on his trunk, and dozed in the winter sunshine while Jenkins set off on foot to find them accommodation.
He woke to vaguely familiar swearing, and the feel of the sun on his face. For a moment, the fresh air and the voice disoriented him and he tried to think where in Spain he’d fallen asleep and what the probable dangers were.
He opened one eye, shielding it from the sun with his arm, and gazed up into a grinning face he’d once known very well indeed.
“Rich Trelawny, as I live and breathe! I might have known it would be you making the place look untidy, masquerading as a vagrant.”
“I am a vagrant,” Trelawny said, pushing himself into an upright position while he gathered himself. He hadn’t really wanted to meet anyone from his old life, let alone one who had been the closest of friends. After the smallest of hesitations, he reached up his hand. “How are you, Rosie?”
“All the better for seeing you.” Captain John Ambrose gripped his hand, then threw himself onto the bench beside him. “How long hav
e you been in Vienna?”
“Only just arrived. Old Jenkins has gone off to find us some quarters.”
“Good luck to him,” Ambrose said doubtfully. “The city’s bursting at the seams. Any attic still left will be vacant for a reason—an over-priced midden.”
“That’s what I thought,” Trelawny sighed. “Where are you staying?”
Ambrose grinned. “In an overpriced midden.”
Trelawny couldn’t help laughing. In spite of himself, it seemed he was glad to see Rosie.
Captain Ambrose’s smile froze. “Wait, though, there are some rooms above that just became vacant. Too steep for us, but if you chip in, too, we might just rise to it!”
“Us?” Trelawny repeated. “Is Julia here, too?”
“Of course. Seeing Europe without a war is quite a treat for her. For all of us, don’t you think?”
“Do you know,” Trelawny said slowly, lifting his gaze to the Hofburg palace, to the teeming, colorful streets before it. “I hadn’t really noticed. But I suppose you’re right.”
Ambrose sprang to his feet. “Come on. I’ll give you a hand with the trunk. We’ll nip home now and speak to the landlady.”
“Actually, you’d better speak to Julia first. I’m sure she’s had her fill of living in a barracks.”
“Nonsense.”
“No,” Trelawny said firmly. “I’ll wait here for Jenkins. Then we’ll call on Mrs. Ambrose and have a drink together.”
*
Dunya was quite prepared to dislike Vanya’s wife, Elizabeth, until she met her.
The couple was bidden for a quiet family dinner, and as soon as the English girl walked in, smiling distantly, Anastasia murmured. “Too stiff.”
“Nonsense,” their mother breathed, rising from her chair. “The girl is a hoyden with far too good an opinion of herself.”
Dunya, although perversely well disposed toward hoydens, tended to agree more with her sister as she watched Elizabeth greet the countess and Anastasia. Her words and her smile appeared easy, but there was indeed a certain stiffness in her posture which Dunya put down to haughtiness until she caught the odd expression in Vanya’s eyes. It looked almost like…anxiety. And then it was her turn to greet the new family member.
There was no hesitation in Elizabeth’s embrace; her eyes remained friendly. But up close, Dunya glimpsed the tiniest hint of something else behind the mask, a plea she was already resigned to being denied. And taken with Vanya’s unprecedented anxiety, Dunya suddenly understood.
Against all the odds, Vanya loved his wife. And Dunya’s mother was being…well, Dunya’s mother. Already, before even laying eyes on Elizabeth, Anastasia and Dunya had been disposed to dislike her, assuming Vanya had married her through some ridiculous sense of duty, because his inheritance of the English title had displaced and dispossessed the old baron’s children. The idea of their irrepressible and heroic brother tied to a dull and haughty woman who despised him and the Russian branch of the family was repugnant.
But, annoyingly, Dunya suddenly saw her own family through this woman’s eyes and realized how daunting, how uncomfortable it must be to walk into such hostility. Dunya’s heart was touched.
“Avdotya Petrovna,” Elizabeth murmured, repeating the formal names by which the countess had introduced her.
“Call me Dunya,” Dunya blurted, giving her an impulsive extra hug. “Everyone does.”
“Then I am Lizzie,” her new sister said with a flash of something like relief. And as Lizzie was next introduced to Nikolai, Vanya caught Dunya’s eye and winked his approval.
“You have brothers and sisters here in Vienna, too,” Dunya said as they walked side-by-side to the dining room.
“Yes, I do. You must come and meet them. They were staying with my aunt—as was I until our marriage—but now that we have our own attic, we took them with us. My aunt’s house was terribly cramped, especially with the dog.”
“You all live in an attic?” Dunya asked, intrigued as she took her seat beside Lizzie.
“It’s a most superior attic,” Lizzie assured her, with dancing eyes.
The countess sniffed. “I told Vanya you should remove here now that we have this apartment instead of the hotel accommodation. We have a spare bedchamber since Cousin Anna went home.”
“And it was most kind of you,” Lizzie said, with rather careful regret. “But I know you certainly don’t have room for my siblings, let alone my dog.”
“And you do?” Anastasia asked, clearly interested in spite of herself. “In an attic?”
“It’s a huge attic and well divided up. You must come and see us. We even have a tiny patch of garden which the landlady let us fence off for Dog.”
For an instant, Anastasia’s eyes danced as she glanced at Dunya in clear invitation.
“We’d love to,” Dunya replied at once. “May we come tomorrow?”
“Of course,” Lizzie replied, flushing with pleasure.
“We must go shopping tomorrow,” the countess reminded her daughters. “You both have need of new gowns. We’re holding a ball only days from now, and there’s the Beethoven concert, and the theatre, and many other events between!”
“Well, I’m sure we can spare an hour to visit Vanya and Lizzie in their attic,” Dunya said, and hastily changed the subject before anyone could actually forbid her.
Later, as conversation grew more relaxed, Lizzie said, “Vanya tells me you have become engaged.”
Aware of her family’s eyes all watching her with varying degrees of covertness, Dunya lifted her chin. “I have, and to a most gallant English gentleman. Perhaps you’re acquainted with him, Lizzie. Captain Trelawny.”
“No, I don’t believe I know the name.”
“He was wounded in the late wars. Besides which,” Dunya declared for her whole family’s benefit, “he has such kind and engaging manners that I fell in love with him instantly.”
“And what of poor Comte Etienne de la Tour?” Nikolai enquired sarcastically.
Dunya waved her fork in dismissal. “A childish infatuation. As you said.”
“Comte de la Tour?” Lizzie repeated. “On Talleyrand’s staff? I am acquainted with him.”
Dunya could have hugged her. In fact, she had to shift in her seat to disguise her sudden movement to do so. “Really?” she said in a deliberately nonchalant voice. “We knew him well during his exile in Russia.” She forced herself to take a mouthful of beef, chew, and swallow it, before asking casually. “How do you know the comte?”
“Through M. de Talleyrand’s niece, Dorothée, who is a friend of mine. I see him at their house sometimes.”
The conversation moved on. While the others were distracted, Dunya murmured to Lizzie. “Then Vanya is also acquainted with Etienne—the comte?”
“Not particularly, I don’t think. Why?”
“No reason,” Dunya said hastily. “How many sisters do you have, Lizzie?”
“Two, and one brother.”
In all, the evening passed much more pleasantly than Dunya had imagined. No one, even Nikolai, told her off any further about her ill-judged and potentially ruinous escapade to the Emperor Inn, or questioned her as to the nature of her ridiculously quick engagement to Captain Trelawny. On top of which, she rather liked Lizzie, especially when engaged in banter with Vanya. Her brother, it seemed, had met his match. The laughter was almost like old times, when the whole family had last been together, when her father had been alive and Vanya hadn’t yet been to war.
Vanya and Lizzie didn’t stay late. The countess, after ordering her daughters to bed in order to be prepared for an early start tomorrow, left shortly afterward to attend some party or other.
Nikolai picked up a newspaper. Anastasia returned to her embroidery, and Dunya sat on the rug by the fire at her sister’s feet, gazing into the flames.
“I like her,” she pronounced.
“Lizzie? Yes, she is not at all what I imagined.”
“She’s fun. Like Vanya.”
“A spirited lady,” Nikolai pronounced. “Though perhaps she reveals a little want of delicacy.”
“By marrying Vanya?” Dunya said dryly. “I must say I look forward to seeing the attic and meeting the siblings. And Dog.”
Anastasia smiled.
“We’ll get Mother to drop us there after shopping,” Dunya proposed.
“Yes, let’s do that,” Anastasia agreed.
Nikolai lowered his newspaper. “Actually, I don’t think that would be a good idea.”
“Why ever not?” Dunya demanded, while Anastasia frowned at him in consternation.
“It sounds a ramshackle establishment to me,” Nikolai said with dignity. “An attic! There is no one to care for the children save Vanya’s servant, and besides, her brother isn’t even legitimate. It is not a suitable place for you.”
Anastasia’s eyes sparked with indignation. Dunya bit her lip only long enough for her sister to have first bite. When she didn’t take it, Dunya did.
“Are you really trying to forbid us to visit our own brother? Since when did my brother’s house become unsuitable? Because if it is, we must leave right away! This is rented with my brother’s money, too!”
Nikolai flushed. “That is not the same thing at all and you know it. Your mother has taken a most respectable apartment—”
“Free of illegitimate children?” Dunya snapped. “Have you checked the servants?”
“Dunya,” Anastasia warned.
“What?” Dunya said aggressively. “You can’t let him say things like that!”
“Like what?” Anastasia said. “That Vanya is ramshackle? He is.”
“Oh, you have grown as dull as each other,” Dunya exclaimed, jumping to her feet and stalking from the room.
*
The morning’s shopping restored a modicum of sisterly understanding. Frustration with their exacting mother and awe at the vast array of garments displayed for their delectation soon bound them together. Although Dunya’s head spun with gowns, hats, pelisses, shawls, dancing slippers, and jewelry as they climbed back into the carriage at last, she generously admired her sister’s purchases.
Vienna Dawn (The Imperial Season Book 3) Page 4