Vienna Dawn (The Imperial Season Book 3)

by Mary Lancaster

*

  He was saying goodbye, she realized, as the hired carriage carried her and her family the short journey home. Kissing her for the last time, because he’d grown to care for her a little, and probably because he realized she’d fallen in love with him. After all, Dunya always wore her heart on her sleeve. She never learned…

  But Jane was his first and most important love. He was the one who did not care anything about her circumstances or deceit—or fickleness—because he’d always known and loved her anyway.

  Tears threatened to choke her. She stared out of the window at the passing buildings, seeing none of them. How did she live with this? At least she didn’t need to take part in conversation. No one asked her anything. In fact, no one said anything at all. Anastasia and Nikolai sat in rigid silence at opposite ends of their seat, while the countess seemed weary and unusually thoughtful.

  Once, fixing Nikolai with a glare, she said abruptly, “Am I unkind to my daughter-in-law?”

  “Yes.” Nikolai, Anastasia, and Dunya all spoke together in chorus, but for once, it didn’t elicit any smiles. The countess’s frown deepened into a scowl, but she made no further comment than an unladylike grunt.

  When they entered the apartment, Nikolai immediately shut himself in the dining room with the brandy, and Anastasia retired to her bedchamber.

  “Do you know, I think I’ll retire, too,” Dunya said listlessly.

  “You’ll be tired after all your capering,” her mother replied, curling her lip as she walked into the drawing room, where the fire and the lamps still burned.

  “I suppose I am,” Dunya allowed. “Good night, Mother.”

  In her own chamber, she opened the shutters to let in the moonlight and didn’t bother lighting a candle, or ringing for Maria. Sinking down on the bed, she stared unseeingly into the night. Her mind was full of Richard and loss and a self-pity she recognized as pathetic, even if she could do nothing about it.

  Stupid. She’d always known she was playing a dangerous game, in pretending the engagement to Captain Trelawny. But this was one danger she’d never foreseen. Falling in love with the man when his priorities were elsewhere. He’d never pretended anything else. She was to win Etienne, and Richard was to have won back his Jane. Which he clearly had…although it was a very odd letter she’d left for Fawcett. If Dunya had been eloping with Richard Trelawny, she certainly wouldn’t have left a letter like that behind. Jane must want to have her cake and eat it, too.

  She realized she was rubbing distractedly at her heart, as though easing a constriction there. She couldn’t even wish the evening hadn’t happened, because at least she’d been given something of Richard. A few precious kisses.

  Was this how Anastasia felt? Quarreling, drifting away from Nikolai whom she’d genuinely loved, did she feel this aching, unbearable sense of loss? Almost like a death… And surely it was worse for Anastasia, because she was married to Nikolai. There was no escape for her. She had to live with it, with the everyday sight of her lost love, forever.

  On impulse, Dunya rose and left her chamber, walking across the hall to her sister’s. She was sure she hadn’t heard Nikolai’s step. She scratched at the door. “Asya.”

  Getting no response, she knocked again and warned, “I’m coming in.”

  But the room was in darkness. And Dunya knew at once it was empty. Still, she ran back into the hall, lit one of the candles waiting there and went back. No one was there. A candle on the dressing table was still smoking, though, so she hadn’t been gone long.

  She could have gone to join their mother in the drawing room, or to the dining room to make things right with Nikolai. Dunya prayed it was the latter, and yet something drove her to the window, to gaze down at the street.

  It was quiet. She could see no one below, no movement. An old pony and trap stood still in the light of one street lamp some yards down the other side of the road. Someone collecting household rubbish or night waste perhaps. The pony seemed to be munching from a nosebag. In the other direction, in the shadows between the lamps, something stirred. Two horses harnessed to a phaeton at the side of the road. A gentleman driving himself, no doubt, stopped to make a quick call.

  Another movement caught her eye. A figure directly below, flitting out into the street from the area steps. From this building. Muffled in a cloak, she was, nevertheless, quite distinctively Anastasia. She must have slipped down the back stairs, much as Dunya had done earlier in the day dressed as the wood seller. And she was hurrying toward the waiting phaeton, a carpet bag swinging from one hand.

  “Oh God,” Dunya whispered. “Oh no…” What was the matter with everyone tonight? Did everyone have to elope and scandalize Vienna at the same time? Even as the frustrated thought passed through her brain, she was rushing out of the bedroom and down the hall to the dining room.

  “Nikolai, you have to come right now,” she said urgently, leaning her back against the closed door.

  Nikolai, sprawled in a chair by the table, a brandy glass in one hand, scowled at her. “Go away, Dunya.”

  “I’m serious!” She rushed across the room, snatched the glass from his hand, and almost threw it on the table even while she used her other hand to grasp Nikolai’s and tug him to his feet. “It’s Anastasia! She’s doing something really dangerous and we have to stop her!”

  Nikolai stopped resisting, instead propelling himself to his feet. “Where? What?”

  Dunya dragged him to the door, holding one finger to her lips. “Call to my mother that you’re going out.”

  Striding across the hall to the stairs, Nikolai obeyed, his voice grim, like a man set on drinking himself under the table. Or pursuing an errant wife. Dunya paused only to snatch a couple of travelling cloaks at random from the hall stand and then ran downstairs beside Nikolai.

  The phaeton and horses passed them at a swift trot just as they opened the front door. Nikolai blinked owlishly. “Was that…?”

  “Oh yes,” Dunya said grimly, pushing him out of the door. “Quick, follow them! We can steal that pony and trap.”

  It said much for Nikolai’s state of mind that he didn’t raise the smallest objection to this blatant theft, instead, sprinting beside her toward the vehicle. He leapt onto the seat, turning to pull Dunya after him, but before she could grasp his hand, someone else entirely gripped her shoulder and yanked her roughly back.

  “No, you don’t, Miss! Get out of my way now and go home. I’ll bring her back.”

  Dunya stayed her right hand which was already raised from instinct to hit him. She peered at him. “Jenkins?”

  Jenkins was already removing the nosebag from the pony. He stepped forward, leaping up on the seat and shoving Nikolai aside with a laconic, “Shift.”

  Nikolai drew himself up. “What? Who the devil…? Is this yours? I’ll buy the blasted rig from you, pony and all.”

  Dunya used the opportunity to dive up into the trap. “Go, Jenkins,” she commanded. “Nikolai, this is Captain Trelawny’s man, Jenkins, though I’m not quite sure what he’s doing here.”

  “Watching your house,” Jenkins said, setting the pony forward at a swift gallop. “And the captain will tan me for letting you come, so do us both a favor and jump down.”

  “I can’t,” Dunya said disingenuously. “It’s moving too fast. And you mustn’t slow or you’ll lose her.”

  “Why are you watching our house?” Nikolai asked, baffled.

  “The captain was afraid something might happen, and he was right.”

  Nikolai bridled. “He thought something might happen to my wife and he didn’t think to tell me rather than send his servant to watch?”

  “Didn’t want to worry you, sir, not without good reason. He just thought this cove might be using your wife for a wager.”

  “A wager? What kind of bloody wager?” Nikolai demanded.

  “You’ll have to ask the captain,” Jenkins said stolidly.

  “Where is he?”

  Dunya’s stomach twisted unpleasantly. He’s gone,
left Vienna, surely, with Jane Reid who won’t even make him happy. Whatever his motives, obligations, or feelings, he’s making a terrible mistake…

  But she couldn’t dwell on that. She had to concentrate on preventing Anastasia making an even worse one.

  “He won’t be far away,” Jenkins said. “He needs to be back by dawn.”

  Dunya frowned. “Why?” And what did he plan to do with Jane? Somehow she’d imagined he’d take her right away from Vienna, to Paris, perhaps, or back home, once they were married.

  “Ask the captain,” Jenkins said again. “Pull your hood up, Miss. You don’t want anyone recognizing you.”

  Dunya obeyed, drawing the hood forward like a cowl.

  “Does it matter?” Nikolai demanded impatiently. “My wife has been abducted! It’s for me and the Austrian police authorities to sort out, not your captain!”

  “Well, we’re here now and we don’t want to lose sight of her,” Jenkins observed, as the trap swung dangerously around the corner into the wider street. Dunya hung on to the back of Nikolai’s collar. There was more traffic here, despite the lateness of the hour, and Dunya could no longer see the phaeton.

  “Where is it?” she demanded.

  “I’ve got it in sight.”

  “Why aren’t you going faster? We need to save my wife from abductors!”

  “She ain’t in any danger,” Jenkins said roughly. “Leastwise, not till they stop. Can’t really drag the lady off in this vehicle, so we need to be able to speak to her, sensible like.”

  Nikolai turned his head to stare at him. “Drag her? Away from her abductor?”

  Jenkins cast a slightly panicked glance at Dunya, who said carefully, “What Jenkins means is that she walked willingly up to the phaeton. She wasn’t exactly abducted.”

  “Not abducted?” Nikolai floundered. “Then what…” He dragged his fingers through his hair, the gesture somehow desperate. “Are you saying…she’s left me? Run away from me? Why?”

  There was such anguish in the last word that Dunya wanted to fling her arms around his neck and hug him. Instead, she gripped his shoulder and spoke in Russian.

  “Because she doesn’t think you love her anymore and she can’t bear it.”

  Even in the dark, she was sure his face whitened. “How can she possibly imagine such a thing?”

  “Because you won’t forgive her,” Dunya said simply.

  “She was seeing another man behind my back! I know she was! And when I told her off she treated me as if I were some illegal jailer!”

  “She had hysterics, a tantrum, whatever you want to call it. You must know she never means what she says when she’s like that. She’s always sorry.” She gave his shoulder a little shake. “Nikolai, she’s been trying to be so good, but you…constrain her with propriety. You won’t even let her go to Vanya’s, for reasons that are, frankly, nonsensical. You are too careful of her! She needs to…burst out, sometimes! In a harmless kind of way, like this evening when she played for me and Vanya. If she felt more able to have fun, she wouldn’t do it behind your back.”

  Nikolai’s gaze slid away. “I don’t want her to see other men in front of me either.”

  “She was only riding with him. And because of how you were, she couldn’t tell you when he overstepped the mark of propriety.”

  “But she told you,” Nikolai said bitterly.

  “No,” Dunya admitted. “I’m guessing. But I know her very well.”

  Nikolai’s hand shook as it dropped back into his lap. “Then is there any point in this? If she doesn’t love me—”

  “Of course she loves you,” Dunya said disparagingly. “She wouldn’t have run away if she didn’t love you.”

  “I don’t understand any of this. Oh God, who is she with? Is it some swine who’ll hurt her, physically? Or bandy her name around like—”

  “Major von Wahrschein,” Dunya said, and broke back into English. “I think you know that. You probably know better than I how much of a cad he is.”

  “Don’t worry,” Jenkins said. “We’ll stop his mouth.”

  “You’re a good fellow, Jenkins,” Nikolai said, suddenly appreciative. “Can you still see them?”

  “Yes, they’re headed onto the Graben.”

  Ten minutes later, they were following the phaeton into the suburbs of Vienna and beyond, into the country.

  “This seem a familiar road to you, Miss?” Jenkins enquired.

  Dunya, her whole body rattling with the trap over increasingly bad stretches of mud and rubble, managed to reply, “Not in the dark…oh dear, is this how we came into Vienna?”

  Jenkins pushed the pony to a gallop. “Watch for a turning on your right. He could turn off to the inn or go straight on. We’ll need to get closer.”

  Dunya, feeling as if her bones were breaking one-by-one, merely nodded. But rounding the next bend, they came upon a vehicle in bits by the side of the road and had to slow. The horses which, presumably, belonged to the broken carriage, had been freed from their harness, and were cropping from the hedgerows, ignoring everything else.

  “Is it them?” Dunya demanded, peering anxiously through the wreckage for signs of Anastasia.

  Someone leapt out of the darkness in front of the pony which neighed in frightened protest. Jenkins calmed it down and brought it to a halt.

  “Don’t scare the poor beast, mate,” Jenkins said. “What’s your problem?”

  “My problem, my good man, is that my vehicle lost its wheels and I need a lift to the nearest village. Or even back to Vienna.”

  Dunya’s mouth fell open. She pulled herself into a kneeling position and peered between Nikolai and Jenkins. “Mr. Fawcett?”

  His mouth fell open. “Countess? What the devil are you doing there?”

  “Get up,” Dunya commanded. “We’ll lose them if we wait any longer.”

  Jenkins reached around and almost heaved his fellow Englishman into the trap before setting off once more at a fast clip. Fawcett clawed his way to a sitting position.

  “What about my horses?” he demanded.

  “Send someone to catch them later,” Dunya advised. “They’re happy enough for now. But why were you driving out here in the first place?”

  “Trying to stop her! Like you said.”

  Nikolai twisted around to glare at him. “Stop my wife? What do you mean by that, sir?”

  “Your wife?” Fawcett clutched his head between his hands. “My Jane is married?” He groaned. “How much more am I to forgive?”

  “Who’s Jane?” Nikolai asked, thoroughly bewildered.

  “Mr. Fawcett’s betrothed,” Dunya explained.

  “Ah, then he is looking for a different lady altogether.”

  “Indeed yes. But only consider, Mr. Fawcett,” Dunya said anxiously, “how unlikely that both should travel by this out-of-the-way road when—” She broke off, frowning.

  Richard had said something about a wager between Etienne and Wahrschein. Her heart began to beat faster. Would they have planned elopement to the same inn to check up on each other? Perhaps, she thought wistfully, Richard had merely taken Etienne’s place…No, that didn’t make her feel better either. For one thing, it didn’t make any sense.

  “I’m clutching at straws,” Mr. Fawcett said, clinging to the side of the trap as the pony pulled it round a corner she hadn’t even seen, onto an even worse road. “I merely asked my aunt—who, you must know, is something of an eccentric and is an expert in all sorts of unlikely areas—where one would go in the first stage of an elopement. She told me about an inn, the Emperor Inn, out here.”

  Jenkins spared him a glance. “Was she laughing?”

  “Actually, yes.” Fawcett sighed. “I don’t believe it either, yet here I am. And perhaps not so far wrong if you are looking for another runaway there.”

  Dunya’s stomach twisted. Unlikely as it was, she truly didn’t wish to come across Richard and Jane, as if she were pursuing them rather than her sister… Oh God, had she really imagined
that tenderness, that intense warmth in his eyes? Misunderstood it so badly? Pain washed through her all over again and by the time she’d wrestled back control and could concentrate once more on her sister’s plight, the pony was trotting through the familiar inn gates.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Lizzie, Lady Launceton, had just persuaded her siblings to go to sleep after a spirited description of Vanya and Dunya’s dance at Dorothée’s, when a note from Mrs. Fawcett was delivered by one of that lady’s formidable footmen.

  “Does she want an answer?” Lizzie asked him.

  “Don’t think so, ma’am. She said she wasn’t even sure if it was important.”

  Lizzie smiled. “Well, if it is, I’ll send Misha. Good night!”

  Closing the door on him, she unfolded the note, which hadn’t been sealed, and sat down to read it by the light of the fire. It was clearly written in haste and not easy either to decipher or follow.

  My dear Lizzie,

  I’m not one for storms in teacups, as you know, and I have no desire to alarm you, suspect there is no need for alarm at all. My nephew, after all, is the staidest of men but even they can act quite out of character when under the influence of who knows what. I’d send this to Vanya, only you know what he’s like and I don’t want Thomas’s body delivered to my door! In the absence of any true alarm or evidence of the need of alarm, I’ll just ask you discreetly if your sister-in-law, Dunya, is well and with her mother.

  I know this is silly, but my nephew has just asked me where one would go on the first stage of an elopement from Vienna. I couldn’t imagine he was serious, so I laughed, and remembering our first encounter, Lizzie, I said the Emperor Inn. I’d have thought no more about it except that he left the French embassy immediately like a scalded cat. I went on to another party… And then I remembered that Thomas has been making a bit of a cake of himself over Dunya Savarina, despite being engaged to Miss Reid. And while I don’t truly believe he would do anything foolish, I can’t quite rest either until I’ve told someone discreet about this vaguest of possibilities. I certainly don’t wish to cause trouble by sending Vanya round to his mother’s house to check on Dunya’s whereabouts. Nor do I wish to alarm my sister-in-law, let alone Miss Reid, whom I have left to go home while I attend another party. Only I can’t settle here for this nagging worry and so I’m writing to you.