Vienna Woods (The Imperial Season Book 2)

by Mary Lancaster

  “I would,” Esther muttered, following Garin as he strode purposefully toward the door from which Dietmar had emerged. It led into a surprisingly warm kitchen, with a wooden table and five chairs and a large stove at one end. “Sit down,” she said briskly, “before you fall down.”

  “That was my intention,” he said, easing himself onto a chair with obvious relief. “Please, make yourself comfortable.”

  “In the circumstances,” she snapped, “comfort is hardly an option.”

  *

  For the last hour, Zelig had known he was going to fall asleep. Others might have said “fainted.” Only willpower had kept him going this long. He just wished Dietmar would hurry and take the girl away, so that he could patch himself up and sleep like a dog for several hours.

  The girl—he had to keep calling her that in his head to maintain any kind of distance from the personal, from the only too close memory of holding her in his arms. And the revulsion in her voice when she’d said, “Not you.”

  The girl took off her cloak in the sort of business-like manner with which other people rolled up their sleeves for hard work. It didn’t help. Beneath it, she still wore the soldier’s costume which did little to hide her delectable shape. He dragged his gaze away from her legs, but since he didn’t want to look at the cloak either—he was sure the documents he needed were in there—he gazed at the darkened window instead.

  He was vaguely aware of her moving around. He liked that. He liked her presence. And although it would make things harder, he wanted her to sit at the table with him so that he could look at her again, so that he could soak her up and imagine…

  Imagine what? That she’d never said, not you, that her face would light up at the sight of him coming home, that they’d sit happily together at some table very like this one.

  He blinked away the ridiculous fantasy. He’d known long ago that he’d sacrificed that kind of happiness for duty. And for ambition, that, too. But still, it was sweet to look…especially when she sat beside him, her rich, shining brown hair still tumbled around her shoulders. With an effort, he prevented his fingers from reaching out to touch it.

  But he jumped when she touched him, stared as she stretched out his arm, untied the bloody makeshift bandage he’d wound around it while riding, using his handkerchief, one hand and his teeth. Carefully, she cut away the sleeve with a kitchen knife. His fingers curled in distress, and yet although he knew he should, he didn’t pull away. He didn’t get up and walk away to deal with it himself. A warm fuzziness seemed to have crept over him. Perhaps he was asleep already. If he was, it didn’t matter that he gazed at her so fixedly, drinking in every fine contour, her soft, slightly-parted lips and smooth, perfect skin. Her clear, hazel eyes concentrated on his wound as she bathed it clean.

  What the hell was he doing? As he’d thought, the ball had clearly shot straight through the fleshy part of his arm, missing the bone. Although it had left a larger tear than he’d imagined, he’d dealt with worse on his own. He had to do this on his own. It was the only way he knew how.

  Almost panicked, he made to rise, jerking his arm to free it.

  “Will you be still?” she said crossly, pinning his forearm to the table with one of hers. He was so surprised, he obeyed.

  From the doorway, Dietmar laughed. “Who’d have thought it?” he remarked, depositing a needle and thread on the table together with a bottle of brandy.

  “Thank you,” Esther—the girl—said. Unexpectedly, she glanced up, catching his fixed stare on her face. “I’m afraid this will hurt a little. Do you want a glass of brandy?”

  He shook his head. “Just pour it over the wound.”

  Without fuss, she picked up the bottle and splashed brandy over his arm.

  He sucked in his breath sharply. Pain. He needed more pain to make himself think of something other than how she’d look without that uniform on.

  “Hold still,” she said again as he tried to draw free, and once more, he obeyed, watching steadily as she held the needle in the candle flame and made two neat stitches to close the wound.

  Across the table, Dietmar grinned.

  “Do you have some clean drinking water? And maybe some soup?” Esther asked.

  The girl. Not Esther. Not even Miss Lisle. The girl.

  “Yes, as it happens,” Dietmar replied.

  She released Zelig’s arm at last. He reached for the brandy, and held up the bottle by way of offering. She shook her head, and he shrugged and set it down again, pushing it toward Dietmar by way of invitation.

  “Don’t worry, Miss, I’ll warm the soup,” Dietmar said as she rose.

  “Put her in my chamber,” Zelig said.

  They both stared at him in mingled outrage and alarm. It wasn’t quite funny.

  “Calm yourselves,” he said dryly. “I won’t be there.”

  Her gaze fell and she spun away from him. He must have been very tired and delusional from pain and blood loss, for he could almost imagine he’d seen surprised disappointment on her face. He closed his eyes. He couldn’t trust her, or himself.

  However weary, though, he still felt her movement as she reached for the cloak on her chair. From pure instinct, he shot his good arm out across the chair back, trapping the cloak beneath.

  Over it, she met his gaze. The contempt in her eyes withered him. He was too tired, too weak, and far too rattled to do this properly. He didn’t know how to deal with this. With her.

  “Dietmar,” he said again.

  Wordlessly, she swung around and walked away in front of Dietmar’s politely extended hand.

  *

  Esther woke to the soothing patter of rain on her window. It reminded her of long ago days in Scotland, a warm fire burning under a high mantel shelf, with her mother sitting before it sewing, and with her father gazing restlessly out of the window while Esther chattered and played. The only half-remembered scene faded and she opened her eyes on the bare, clean chamber without shutters or curtains that she’d stumbled into last night. Exhausted, she’d waited only for Dietmar to close the door before she’d simply tumbled into the bed in all her clothes and gone to sleep.

  Now, she acknowledged that the sheets were fresh and clean. They didn’t smell of Garin. They were, in fact, as clean and impersonal as the rest of the room. Apart from the bed and one tall, solitary cupboard, there was no furniture at all—which was fine since she had nothing with her to put in cabinets or wardrobes—and there was certainly no fire or ornamentation of any kind.

  Nevertheless, it felt curiously peaceful, although she knew better.

  She sat up, relieved to find no traces of last night’s dizziness or nausea. He’d kidnapped her, stopped her struggling by forcing her to breathe oil of vitriol, and brought her to his bizarre, hidden ruin in the Woods.

  And yet, she had a quiet chamber to herself and had not yet been harmed.

  Across the room, she could see out the window over wooded hills and valleys. She thought she recognized the shape of one hill, which gave her a vague idea of the direction of Vienna.

  She threw off the covers and leapt out of bed, pausing for a moment to examine her theatrical soldier’s uniform, with some embarrassment. But there was little she could do about that. A couple of pins, which must have clung to her hair when the rest scattered, had fallen onto her pillow while she slept, so she did her best with them, at least pinning her hair back and away from her face.

  At the foot of the bed, she discovered her cloak; the one he’d refused to release to her last night. Trying not to imagine who had brought it to her while she slept, she hastily swung it around her shoulders. At least it would preserve something of her modesty. A quick delve into the inside pocket told her the reticule was indeed gone, and with it, Otto’s thrice-damned documents.

  There was nothing else for it, now. She had to escape whatever this place was, return to Vienna, and do what she should have done in the beginning—tell her father and go with him to Baron von Hager. Any unpleasantness, any il
l reflected on the general or on Britain, was surely better than Metternich’s death. And whatever other crisis might be prevented by knowledge of the documents’ existence.

  Decided, she marched across the room to the door, lifted the latch and tugged hard. To her surprise, it flew open at once so easily that she staggered backward. No one had locked her in. Nor was the hallway guarded, so at least no one witnessed her indignity.

  The building seemed completely silent, as if she’d been abandoned here. She just hoped she’d been left with a horse, but if not, she was sure she could walk. She stepped out of the room and along the stone corridor to the staircase she’d climbed last night in Dietmar’s wake.

  As she descended, she at last heard sounds of life—muffled clattering and bumping, men’s voices. There was a short, gloomy hallway at the foot of the stairs, leading to a single, closed door to the kitchen. This appeared to be her only way out and it was blocked by people.

  She hesitated, wondering whether to go back up and look for another exit. But now that she was close enough to distinguish the voices, she was sure none of them belonged to Garin. Unless one of them was his murderous ally with the pistol, she was sure she could get past anyone else quite brazenly with a show of hauteur.

  She lifted the latch and went in.

  The first thing she saw was a large arc of water thrown from a bucket by a very young man. The arc sped toward a second youth, who ducked. The first lad yelled. So did a third standing by the outer door with another bucket in his hand. Esther lunged aside at the last possible instant and the water coming straight for her hit the door instead.

  “No water fights!” she cried. “I’ve got no other clothes!”

  The youth who’d ducked, an angelic looking blond lad, stared at her in shock. The one who’d thrown it, dark and skinny, seemed to have gone pale. The bucket fell from his hands with a clank. “Noble lady, forgive me, I never meant to hit you—!”

  “I know exactly who you meant to hit,” Esther assured him. “Um…shouldn’t you have water fights outside?”

  “No,” the blond, young man said. “We promised to stay inside to meet you and give you breakfast and serve you any way we could.”

  He was so obviously repeating instructions that Esther paused in surprise. They weren’t exactly the instructions—or the welcome—she’d expected.

  “You’re very kind,” she said gravely. “But I believe I’ll be on my way. Perhaps you would saddle me a horse? Or arrange some other conveyance for me?”

  The three young men exchanged glances. The burly youth by the outer door set down his bucket.

  “Sorry, we can’t do that just yet,” the blond lad said in what he clearly imagined was a clever and conciliatory manner.

  Esther lifted one eyebrow. “Oh?” she said, pleasantly—but not too pleasantly.

  “No,” the burly youth by the door confirmed. “Zelig—Herr Zelig said you weren’t to go outside without him.”

  “Did he indeed?” She strove to sound amused. “Well, if this Herr Zelig ever obtains any authority over me, I will be sure to inform you.”

  She walked directly toward the door and the boy standing there began to look alarmed.

  “Herr Zelig,” the blond youth repeated more urgently, as if the name would stop in her in her tracks.

  She kept walking. “Who, pray, is Herr Zelig?”

  “Zelig!” the skinny youth responded. “The man who brought you here! Agent Z!”

  She paused. “But the man…” The man who brought me here is called Garin and he isn’t a police agent at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure he murdered my betrothed and tried to kill me last night.

  “You need to speak to Zelig,” the skinny youth said seriously. Something about him seemed vaguely familiar, though she couldn’t place what or why. “Come on, I’ll take you to him.”

  “Don’t trouble,” she said at once. “I think you should probably mop up this water instead. Just tell me where to find Herr Zelig.”

  “Along this passage to the end door,” the blond, young man said eagerly, pointing to an arched gap in the wall at the back of the kitchen. “It’s the old library, where the monks used to copy documents.”

  “Is this place a monastery?” she asked in surprise.”

  “Used to be,” said the blond lad. “The monks moved on when Napoleon came. Never returned. Can’t blame them, really, there isn’t much of the place left.”

  She paused again, looking from one to the other of the boys. There was something rascally about all three of them. “Enough of the place for you to live in? Is this your home?”

  “Sort of,” said the blond lad uncomfortably. “We stay here a lot of the time.”

  Which begged the question what they did and where for the rest of the time. However, if they thought she was going in search of their Herr Zelig, it would be much easier for her to find a way outside and bolt.

  “Thank you for your help,” Esther said politely, and walked briskly along the passage leading out of the kitchen, toward what seemed to be living quarters. One half-opened door allowed her a glimpse of an untidy bed chamber.

  Just before the closed door at the end of the passage, a narrow, spiral stone staircase led downward. It was the only way that didn’t involve the noise of opening doors, or of facing Zelig or Garin, or whatever really was the name of the man who’d lied to her. Had he lied to the young men, too? Surely he couldn’t be the police Agent Z if he’d tried to kill her? On the other hand, there was a reason people dreaded the secret police. They were deceptive and ruthless.

  Her mind skidded away. She knew she needed answers. But she needed to be away from here more. And so, after a quick glance back along the empty hall to the kitchen, where the youths appeared to be arguing once more, she veered onto the staircase and descended as quickly and as silently as she could.

  Below, there was a long row of austere, open cells. They must have been where the monks slept on their hard pallets, with barred gates as their only pretense of privacy. Hastily, Esther walked the length of the cells without discovering a door or any other way out, so she turned and walked back, going past the stairs and deeper into the building.

  A strange, sudden noise paralyzed her. It was a guttural snorting sound, like someone—or something—was breathing with difficulty.

  Her blood ran cold. She halted again, rigid, listening until the sound was repeated, echoing around the bare, stone chambers with their iron bars.

  Snoring, she thought blankly. Someone is snoring!

  Garin, she imagined, walking swiftly toward the sound. Finally, she would have him at a disadvantage.

  It took some moments for her eyes to adjust to the deeper gloom down here, but by the time she reached the farthest cell, the gate of which was actually closed, she could make out well enough the familiar figure lying, snoring on the bed with blankets pulled up to his chin. Not Garin.

  Otto, Crown Prince of Kriegenstein.

  Chapter Ten

  For a moment, the world swayed and then righted itself. With one hand grasping the bars of the closed cell, she stared at her betrothed in total disbelief. She’d seen his body! She’d seen the blood. He’d undoubtedly been shot in the chest, and yet here he lay, snoring without an obvious care in the world. Was she dreaming? Some result of the foul vitriol she’d been given last night? Or had she been dreaming in the Woods that day when she’d been struck unconscious and Otto had been shot?

  She gripped the cell bars so tightly that it hurt. She wasn’t dreaming. Instinctively, she pushed at the door, but it didn’t budge. Frowning, she stepped back onto someone’s toes and spun around, gasping.

  Garin stood before her in his shirt sleeves. One arm bulged with the bandage she’d wrapped around his upper arm last night. As usual, his face gave nothing away. Uncomprehending, Esther stared at him.

  He said, “Come with me,” and turned aside for her to precede him back to the stairs.

  She did so almost mechanically, as her mind whirled with thi
s amazing discovery. Inevitably, sheer anger at his deception overpowered all her confused feelings of bafflement and relief. She marched upstairs and all but threw open the door at the top, where the young men had told her she would find Herr Zelig, the mysterious Agent Z.

  Inside were old, mainly broken desks, much like she’d seen in schoolrooms. One of them was strewn with papers, writing materials, and a pile of books. She recognized the documents easily enough. She’d been carrying them around with her for days, which only added fuel to the fire.

  She understood none of it, and never had.

  As the door clicked shut, she rounded on him, arm raised, and dealt him a ringing slap across the cheek. “You told me he was dead!”

  His eyes never wavered. His expression gave nothing away. Only the growing redness of his cheek where she’d hit him betrayed what she’d done.

  “You even made me wonder if I’d killed him and somehow forgotten!” she raged. “I feared that I was at least responsible! You had me looking for his murderer!”

  “Sit down,” he said calmly.

  “I will do no such thing. I’ll be leaving just as soon as you answer me. I repeat—” she broke off, for quite suddenly, his eyes were like flint, his whole person not merely overwhelming but terrifying.

  “You mistake me, Miss Lisle,” he said icily, and for the first time, the sound of his voice made her blood run cold. He snagged a chair from the nearest desk, placing it on one side of the table covered with all the documents. “It was not a request. Sit.”

  She sat because her knees gave way, and then hated herself for cowardice. She, who’d once outfaced two escaping French prisoners. Knowing that he could change character at will as she’d seen him do at Prince Metternich’s ball, didn’t relieve the instinctive, fear-induced obedience.

  “The time for games is over,” he said shortly, throwing himself into the chair opposite. “Someone almost killed you in the Hofburg last night. What were you doing there?”

  She lifted her chin and laughed. Although her voice shook slightly, it wasn’t a bad effort. “I was looking for you, Herr Garin, Herr Z, whatever you wish to call yourself today. Mistakenly as it turned out.”