How can I know any such thing? He’s as much a mystery to me now as on the morning we met.
*
The bizarre dinner party did not begin well. When Lizzie returned to the kitchen, it was to ask if she’d dropped a brooch there.
“I don’t want to make a fuss, but it was a wedding gift from Vanya. I hate to lose it so soon!”
Zelig, just then receiving a glass of wine from Vanya, who seemed to have brought a supply from Vienna, turned back to the table where the boys were already seated, and grasped Lutz’s collar, hauling the boy to his feet.
“Go and get it,” he said shortly.
Lutz opened his mouth, closed it again, and effaced himself. Wide-eyed, Lizzie looked from his vanishing back to Zelig.
“I don’t think he can help himself,” Zelig said. “Unless I expressly forbid him from robbing a particular person by name, he just pockets whatever shines. I’ll add your name and the colonel’s to the list.”
“I must say, Herr Schmidt,” Lizzie said, regarding him with fascination. “You never cease to amaze me.”
“Don’t be angry with Lutz,” Kai said anxiously. “Herr Zelig is right. He can’t help himself, but he always does what Herr Zelig tells him.”
“Doesn’t he know right from wrong?” Lizzie asked with more curiosity than irritation.
“He does,” Zelig replied before Kai could speak. “But it’s a compulsion with him. I’m afraid I rather muddy the waters, too, with the use I occasionally make of his peculiar talents.”
“Maybe you should get yourself a different thief,” Lizzie suggested.
A cry from the arch greeted them as Lutz all but hurled himself across the kitchen to Zelig. “Don’t! Don’t,” he begged. “I’ll thieve anything you want, don’t get anyone else. Here, noble lady,” he added, holding out the brooch in his palm. “Sorry. I won’t take anything else, I promise.”
“See that you don’t,” Zelig said sternly, though he mitigated it somewhat surprisingly with a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “I’m not sending you away, Lutz,” Zelig murmured. “Just don’t steal from Lady Launceton, or Lord Launceton.”
After the inauspicious start, dinner was surprisingly convivial. Lizzie teased Zelig about finally discovering his secret name, and Esther was both surprised and slightly hurt to discover he was more relaxed with the Launcetons than she’d ever seen him. That there was some story behind this very odd friendship, she had no doubt.
It certainly revealed another side to his character. When dinner was over and the boys were ordered to clear up, Menno inevitably made a face.
“It will only take a few minutes,” cajoled Lizzie, since she had three younger siblings. “And then we may play jackstraws!”
“What’s that?” Kai demanded, and the others looked equally baffled.
“Herr Schmidt—Zelig!—has never taught you to play jackstraws?” Lizzie exclaimed.
“You can play jackstraws?” Esther asked Zelig at the same time.
“Oh, he’s the champion,” Vanya drawled. “Steadiest hand I ever saw.”
“All the better to shoot you with, Colonel,” Zelig responded, flexing his fingers.
“Frightened of losing?” Vanya inquired, stretching out his long legs and reaching for the bottle.
“Terrified,” Zelig assured him.
There followed several increasingly hilarious games of jackstraws. The boys, once they got the hang of it, turned out to be excellent players, especially Lutz who was particularly dexterous. It brought a lump to Esther’s throat to realize they’d grown up without trivial games like this; without innocent fun.
They sat on kitchen chairs or on pillows by the stove for warmth. At one point, Esther observed Vanya on the floor in front of his wife’s chair, leaning back quite naturally into Lizzie’s legs. She touched his shoulder easily to attract his attention to the game, and when he’d played, he threw his head back into her lap and grinned in triumph.
Esther’s heart twisted. I want that, she thought suddenly. I want that kind of companionship, the ease and the sweetness of such a marriage… And without meaning to, she imagined herself into Lizzie’s place. Only the face gazing up at her was not Vanya’s. It was Garin Zelig’s.
The image quickened her heartbeat, spread heat through her body, and up into her face. She tried to scold and laugh at herself, but though she blinked the silly fantasy away and took her turn in the game, the feeling stayed with her, growing in clarity and importance. She felt she was on the verge of some huge, overwhelming discovery, and it didn’t frighten her. It thrilled her.
Slowly, almost daringly, she lifted her gaze from the straws on the floor to Zelig. He was watching her rather than the game, and his gaze was on her lips. She wanted his kisses there again. She wanted to kiss him back and give solace to his lonely, tormented soul, just to touch him, be with him, because…because she wanted to be.
God help me, do I love him?
His eyes moved, catching her gaze. Her heart seemed to stop.
I do. Stunned, she stared back at him. I do love him…
He was guarding his expression—didn’t he always?—and yet an echo, surely, of last night’s turbulence remained. There was an instant when a flicker of something very like desperation, or even fear, flashed in those cool, grey eyes, and then his lashes dropped, veiling them, and he bent his head over the straws to take his turn.
There was something bizarre about giving one’s physical attention to so trivial a pastime as a game of jackstraws, when inside this massive, all-consuming feeling deprived her of breath. She could no longer concentrate on the conversation, so she just smiled at everyone, and played when they told her to, and tried not to look at Zelig again; except with quick, furtive glances when she could no longer stop herself.
Chapter Thirteen
When everyone had retired, Zelig went out and checked the gates and the stables before returning to the kitchen and locking the outer door. What he really wanted to do was take one of Vanya’s bottles and go off by himself into the Woods, as far away from her as he could get.
But that wasn’t true. At best, it was his second-favored option. The first was to go upstairs right now and crush her in his arms, and make her love him.
It didn’t matter. Neither option was viable. Right now, he needed to speak to Otto for quite different reasons. Picking up the lantern once more, he made his way past the boys’ room and Josephine’s, to the staircase, and went down to the monks’ cells.
The candle they’d left him with was guttering. Prince Otto, sprawled across his bed half-asleep, opened his eyes at the brighter lantern light and blinked several times.
“The spymaster himself,” he sneered. “I’m honored. Have you come to let me go?”
“No.”
“I promise I won’t let Metternich cut you into a thousand pieces.”
“Right now, it’s you Metternich wishes to chop up. You, the King of Prussia, and the Tsar of all the Russias.”
Otto stared at him for a moment, then shrugged. “I suppose you took the documents from Esther. I thought it would take you longer. I was assured the cipher was unbreakable.”
“No, just several different breakable ones. Time-consuming but no ingenuity required. At the moment, I’m more interested in your exchange of correspondence with Herr Weber – shouldn’t you have coded that?”
Otto smiled. “You’re shooting in the dark, spymaster. There is no such document.”
“I was referring to this one,” Zelig said, drawing it from his pocket and spreading it across the bars for Otto’s perusal. Even in the lantern light he could see the prince’s face whiten and his pupils dilate. Otto lunged at the document as though to snatch it. Zelig stepped back out of his reach. “I see you recognize it.”
“No! Not at all,” Otto said desperately. “I’m just curious, because it has to be forgery. It is a forgery! Of course it is.”
“Please,” Zelig said disparagingly. “Do you imagine I don’t know my colleague’s se
mi-literate scrawl? Or your vulgarly, over-ornate one? I have to tell you that Weber has been…neutered, so to speak.”
Otto turned his head away.
“You didn’t even know it was there, did you?” Zelig taunted him deliberately. “It must have got caught between the pages of a larger document without you noticing – unforgivably careless of you, though helpful in this case. But you must know even kings and princes aren’t allowed to behave this way, not in someone else’s country at any rate. You are no longer acceptable as a delegate to the Congress, should it ever begin in earnest.”
“I decline to accept your opinion on that or any other matter,” Otto said loftily. “In fact, I’m so disgusted with my treatment that I will quit this country and go home immediately.”
“Gratified as I am by your kindness,” Zelig said wearily, “that is by no means decided. The Emperor may wish you to be escorted to the border. He may decide to have you tried.”
“I am the Crown Prince of Kriegenstein!” Otto blustered, “the heir to a kingdom!”
Zelig shrugged. “Maybe. That is not decided either, and even if you were, who do you imagine cares? Do you really think Prussia will stand up for her new ally in such circumstances? She’ll already have a lot of strained friendships if she truly seizes Saxony… Do you know, that’s one of the things I don’t understand about you, Your Highness. Your position in the world is precarious in the extreme, and yet you choose to make so poor a marriage. What on earth did the general have on you?”
“Nothing,” Otto muttered. “I chose Esther.”
“Yes? Well, you haven’t done much about keeping her. Even among princes, I never heard that neglect, indiscreet philandering, and attempted rape were recommended tools of persuasion, nor bashing the lady over the head.”
Otto flushed, flouncing away to his bed once more.
“Why did you accept her?” Zelig asked.
Otto gave him an obscene suggestion that had nothing to do with Esther.
“Very well, let me guess,” Zelig said when the prince’s gaze fixed on him once more, contemptuous and sneering as he’d always been. Zelig leaned his head slightly to one side. “The general discovered somehow that your father had made an early, secret and quite unsuitable marriage to his mistress Emilie Garin. His marriage to your mother was not valid, with Emile still being very much alive.”
If Otto had been white before, he was livid now. And then the blood surged back into his face so fast it should have made him dizzy.
Zelig had everything he needed to know. There was proof in existence, proof that the general must have found of the King of Kriegenstein’s earlier marriage, and therefore of Otto’s illegitimacy.
Curling his lip, Zelig picked up the lantern and walked away.
What he didn’t know, of course, was exactly how he meant to use the discovery. That was something he should mull over far away from Esther and the fantasies that kept popping into his head whenever he saw her, heard her, or even thought about her. Damn, even now, entering the arch to the kitchen, he could smell her.
That was because she stood bent over the stove, closing the door on the burning wood. A kettle sat on top. He stopped dead, but it was too late. She’d already heard him. Straightening quickly, she froze, then grasped her cloak more tightly around her. Just as last night, he was sure she wore it over little more than her chemise.
He swallowed. “That is a bad habit.”
“Night time coffee?” she said brightly. “I know. It’s one I developed in Spain whenever I couldn’t sleep, even though everyone assured me it was precisely the wrong thing to drink in such circumstances. I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
“Not at all. I meant your other habit of wandering the house in the dark like that.” Stupid to draw attention to it, it made everything harder for him and was bound to embarrass her.
“Well, that was still Spain,” she said candidly. “I got used to being roused in the middle of the night, and if it was urgent, I simply put my cloak over whatever I was wearing and went to investigate.” She flushed so adorably he wanted to make her keep on doing so. “I thought everyone had retired.”
“I don’t sleep much.”
“Would you like coffee?” she asked, then her flush deepened, just as he wished. “You needn’t drink it with me.”
“Are you commanding me? Or letting me off the hook?”
“Just giving you a choice,” she said with a hint of hauteur. “It’s all the same to me.”
“What a fuss,” he observed, more to himself than to her, “about a cup of coffee.”
A glutton for punishment, he sank into the nearest chair at the table and watched her, wondering what it was about this woman that affected him so. He tried to analyze the problem as dispassionately as he approached those of his professional life. She was pretty, though perhaps not conventionally so. Her nose showed a tendency to turn up, and critics might consider her mouth too wide. In truth, she had as much character as beauty, and judging by her popularity, men seemed to like that, like Lord Harry, for example. Zelig had seen the way the Englishman looked at her. On the other hand, while Niven and the others might be intrigued by her being just a little different, he suspected they still didn’t appreciate what made her so special.
Well, what was it? Her compassion and friendliness? Her strength in dealing sensibly with whatever situation she was flung into, however bizarre, however dangerous? Her willing acceptance that she should be useful to her neglectful father and to the country she could barely have seen since she was a child? Her naturally trusting spirit that saw the best in everyone and gave her the strength to pick herself up and move on to the next challenge, untroubled by the cynicism he himself seemed to have been born with?
Her every mundane movement seemed to fascinate him. Although she seemed composed and graceful, there was an odd quirk of nervous energy about everything she did, almost as if something trapped inside her were trying to get out. Passion.
He closed his eyes, trying hard to recapture his own dispassion, to lose the memory of the moments he’d held her in his arms, where he felt, surely, an involuntary fluttering of response.
He couldn’t bear this. Wrenching open his eyes, he stumbled to his feet just as she set down the coffee in front of him. A thick, woolen cloak was virtually all that covered her, and was all that separated her from him. For an instant, neither of them moved, then her eyes fell and she went round and sat opposite him. He sank back into his chair.
“Thank you for bringing me Lizzie,” she said.
He shrugged. “Thank her if you must, but I think she regards it as an adventure and is quite happy. They both like you.”
“I hope so. I like them, too, though I wasn’t too sure of the colonel at first. Apparently he has a bad reputation.”
“He’s no angel, but there’s no real wickedness in him. And once he accepts you, he’s unflinchingly loyal.”
She picked up her cup, her fingers curling delicately around the rough handle. “Loyalty is important to you.”
“It’s rare. I don’t expect it.”
“Maybe you should. Maybe you’d be surprised.”
He searched her eyes for her meaning, until she looked away and sipped her coffee. He watched her lips, shapely and curving ever so slightly upward at the corners.
She lowered the cup. “When you first told me your name, it was your Christian name you gave me. Garin.”
“Was it?”
“You know it was. Why? Just to avoid my connecting you to the notorious Agent Z?”
“Perhaps.” He remembered only too well the circumstances of that confession, the feel of her shocked and awakening body against his as he’d kissed her; and then he stole her reticule.
She took a slightly longer drink of coffee. “Do you know I actually connected your name, Garin, with Otto’s half-brother, whom Meyer asked you to find? I wondered if you were the missing brother.”
He held his breath, then forced himself to drink a mouthful of
coffee. “Did you want me to be?” he asked, as casually as he could.
But she shook her head and his stomach twisted in self-mockery. Why should she care about his rank in life? Why would she look on him as more than the policeman who lied to her, used her for his own ends, and exposed her to such danger that he had to drag her away from her life to this place?
“I liked that you worked for your position and your living,” she said in a rush. “So much more worthy than being born into them.”
He blinked. “No one has ever called me worthy before.”
She smiled. She had a lovely smile that lit up her eyes, her whole face into heart-stopping beauty. “It does sound dull, doesn’t it? Which you never are…”
“Is that a compliment, Miss Lisle?” he asked sardonically.
The fading smile intensified again. “Actually, yes,” she said, and took another sip of coffee.
Zelig’s heart drummed. Despite the demeanor he showed the world, he was not a passionless man. Far from it. He cared deeply for his work and for the peace of the world, though, personally speaking, for very few people in it. He’d known women, but none like her, none who threatened to consume his heart and his life. He could deal with that, if she kept her distance, but this intimate situation, this conversation which she led…
He took another gulp of coffee to give himself time, observing as he did that her fingers twisted on her own cup, the only sign of nervousness she betrayed. Nervous of him. And yet she stayed and made no effort to change the subject to safer ground. The hunter in him surged, astonished but fierce. I could win this woman. I could…
He set down his cup and sat back in his chair. “Did your duenna never tell you the dangers of complimenting men while dressed in no more than a cloak?”
She flushed, as he’d meant her to, but still she didn’t flee. Instead, her head lifted. “In the company of a gentleman, what dangers are those?”
“That even a gentleman might risk coming around the table to sit closer.”
Vienna Woods (The Imperial Season Book 2) Page 14