by KJ Charles
He had been preparing an apple as we spoke. Another man would have thrown the fruit at the wall, perhaps, or stabbed it with the silver paring knife. Michael slipped the viciously sharp little blade under the skin, then slid it against ripe, yielding flesh with a whisper of a sigh, cutting away a long strip that he let fall upon his plate, disregarded.
“Then,” he said, “we strike.”
CHAPTER THREE
The waiting was a lengthy business. The old king stubbornly clung to life, as though he imagined he could avert the discord that would follow his death. Red Rudolf made no effort to pay court to Flavia, I suppose because he was used to women being there for the taking, perhaps because he was a fool. He simply let it be known that he expected her to marry him, and a party in the Senate pushed for an early wedding to “settle him down.” Flavia had none of it, and since she was a princess of the Blood, only the king could oblige her to obey.
A school of thought among the duke’s partisans argued that Michael should set himself to overcome her obvious dislike and secure her hand under Rudolf’s nose. I have never known a man to win an unwilling woman’s heart by persisting against her wishes, and indeed, I have been paid a few times to make that point to suitors who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Some men need that lesson hammered into their heads, sometimes literally. Michael refrained from the attempt. He said his interest would serve only to spur Rudolf’s and he did not wish to bring the matter to a crisis. That was doubtless true, although one might also observe that Michael did not like to lose, or to be seen to lose, so much that he would rather not fight than risk failure.
And there was also the matter of de Mauban.
Antoinette de Mauban was a strikingly lovely woman in her early thirties, graceful, sensual, and charming. She had been the mistress of the Duke of Strelsau for four years, and Michael’s attitude to her was a mixture of a man to his dog, and a dog to his bone. He was proud to display her, as any man of conventional tastes would be. He ran no risk of his carefully crafted public face by having her reign as his acknowledged mistress in Zenda. There was considered to be no shame in a man keeping a mistress; the populace applauded him because she was beautiful, and monklike virtue rarely wins hearts. He was intensely possessive, too, flying into a rage if reminded of the existence of her previous protectors. He didn’t love her, but he took pleasure in owning her, and own her he undoubtedly did, body and soul. That much was made clear to me on the first occasion I encountered her, three weeks into my stay in Zenda, once she returned from a lengthy trip away.
I was summoned to Michael’s private chambers on the first floor of the chateau. The drawing room I entered was a most elegant affair of drapes and gilt and marble, all white and gold like a church. Michael, in his habitual black, stood against it like a stain, and on the couch sat a remarkably beautiful woman, dark of complexion, dressed in the latest Parisian fashions. She gave me a blank look and an incline of her lovely neck. I gave her a blank look and a bow.
“Detchard,” Michael said. “This is Mademoiselle de Mauban. My mistress. Detchard, my dear, is my new killer, and your new bodyguard.”
Her eyes widened. “Michael—”
“I think you need one, don’t you, my dear?” he said, with a lash in his voice. “And, to avoid any embarrassment, you should know that Detchard would be entirely resistant to your charms. He has no interest in female blandishments, isn’t that right, Detchard? It must be a great freedom to you not to be enslaved to the wiles of womankind.”
I cast about for an answer and settled for, “Your Grace.”
“You will ensure that Mademoiselle de Mauban passes freely without molestation. I do not wish her to be bothered by importunate men, say, or unwanted friends, or persistent servants. And never by such things as secret letters and passed notes. That is beneath my mistress, and Detchard will ensure you are spared all that, my dear.”
“Thank you, Michael,” de Mauban said tonelessly.
“If you wish to walk or ride, he will accompany you—unless I have other use for him, in which case you will simply have to stay inside. I trust that’s clear enough?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” I said, and “Yes, my dear,” she said.
Michael smiled. “Beautiful, isn’t she?” he asked me, as though she were not there.
“Very.”
“But wilful. A woman is like a horse: she must be broken before she will bear you as you need. Antoinette is mine alone, her affections only for me, and I wish her guarded until I can trust her to remember that.”
“It would help to know what you want her guarded from,” I said. “Someone else, or herself?”
His lips pressed white a second, and then he laughed. “Oh, you plain-speaking English. Antoinette adores me—don’t you, my dear?—and yet she must needs struggle against her bonds. I have, shall we say, a hold over her, which she would remove if she could. I don’t choose for her to do so, and she has been a little naughty in trying. A little disobedient, a little deceitful.” He spoke playfully, as though recounting a shared jest. “So you will act for me, Detchard, and if anyone should be fool enough to attempt private communication, you will hurt them. Badly. I think even the most faithful of servants would be put off by a broken arm, don’t you?” De Mauban shot a swift glance at me. Michael inclined his head, as though answering a question. “Indeed. Don’t underestimate Detchard, my dear. He is a notorious man, and I should hate to see you weeping over the consequences of disobedience. There, now; I think all is clear. I hope you will get along.”
I bowed again and withdrew, and took an exceedingly long breath as I stepped outside that gilded cage.
It was a couple of days before I was called upon to escort my new charge. The weather had been bad, confining us all to the chateau or the Tower, but at last the howling winds dropped. Michael was busy with ducal responsibilities, and a servant was sent to inform me that Mademoiselle wished my attendance.
She wore furs that looked like ermine, but sturdy boots. “I should like to walk,” she said coldly. “And since I may not go without you, you must come with me.”
“As mademoiselle wishes,” I said, and fetched my own warm things.
I accompanied her out into the grounds. They were not extensive, since Zenda is hilly, but big enough that one could take a path well away from the castle, and see clearly in every direction of the snowy, empty landscape. There was not another soul out there, and though we could be seen for miles, we could not be heard.
We walked a few moments in silence, until at last my lady said, “You may as well speak.”
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “Toni. What the devil have you got yourself into now?”
“The devil is right. The absolute rotten-hearted shit. The son of a bitch. I hate him, I hate him so much. Christ, I hate him, the motherfucking shit-eating utter God-damned horse’s arse. Thank you for coming, by the way,” she added. “I didn’t even know if you’d got the message. I’ve spent the last month wondering if I’d see you, or if it would be some other thick-necked brute, or if Michael had found out what I’d done and was going to torture me over it for Christ knows how long. God, I was glad to see you walk in.”
“How long did it take you to set this up?”
“Months,” she said bitterly. “Bloody months.”
I had had the message back in Dresden from a mutual friend in the Berlin police, telling me that I would be approached for a job by a grand gentleman and that Toni Mauban begged me to accept the work “in the name of Paris.” She didn’t have to add that I owed her for saving my neck from the guillotine there; we both knew it. I’d sent back the message that I was at her disposal but heard nothing more, and had spent the last weeks in Ruritania kicking my heels and wondering why I was at the beck and call of a half-mad grandee in a tinpot country.
“I suppose you supplied him with all the information he had on me?” I enquired. “I ask purely out of interest, since he could quite easily have me hanged with what he knows.”
&nbs
p; “Franz arranged it,” she said, naming our Berlin acquaintance. “I had to stay out of the business. Michael would never have allowed a friend of mine into the chateau—you would scarcely have been permitted into the country.”
“He seems to be somewhat possessive,” I agreed. “Shall I cut his throat for you?”
“God, yes. No, not yet,” she amended. “You can’t for now. Eventually, please do.”
“And before then, can you tell me what’s going on?”
The tale that emerged was a sorry one, and all too familiar, and it boiled down to one schoolgirl mistake. Toni Mauban—professionally the grande horizontale Antoinette de Mauban—had encountered Michael Elphberg in a salon several years back, and fallen deeply and passionately in love.
“Stupid,” she said. “Stupid. I can’t believe it now; it seems like a dream. Love, for God’s sake. And yet I did.”
“I can’t see the attraction.”
“I couldn’t see the attraction when you were running all over town for that en travestie singer. How much did that affair cost you?” she sniped.
“Not as much as this has cost you, apparently.”
She glared at me, and then her shoulders dropped. “Too true. There’s no sense to it, is there? And Michael can be charming, utterly. He was fascinating, he didn’t fall at my feet, but he watched me, and I . . . It’s ridiculous. I haven’t loved since I was sixteen. I thought I had learned my lesson then; I wish I had. Twice now I have destroyed my own life, and for what? Love. Love. There’s a reason tennis players use that when they mean to say ‘nothing.’ Christ, I’m a fool.”
“Amantes sunt amentes,” I observed.
“What?”
“Lovers are deranged. Latin.”
“Shove your classical education up your arse. Anyway, I fell in love with him. And that was my mistake.”
She spilled it out, in far more detail than I needed, talking with the urgency of someone who had been too long silenced. She had loved him as he swept her away from the demi-monde and installed her with all honour as mistress of his Zenda chateau and Strelsau townhouse. She had loved him enough that it made her vulnerable, and slowly, as it so often does, the balance had shifted.
“I can’t put my finger on it,” she said, pacing on. “When the charm started to wear thin, when he began to order instead of ask, when I realised I was striving to please him and fearful I wouldn’t and that nothing I could do was enough.”
She had kept loving him, though, not with the practised passion of the courtesan, nor with the whole-hearted love of a woman who has found her mate, but with a passion that both fed and sickened her, like opium hunger. She loved him, and hated to love him, and hated herself for doing so. She had gone from commanding men’s adoration to being the one who adored, and that was a fall she found very hard to stomach. And then she had fallen prey to the great curse of women’s nature.
“I carried his child,” she said. “He resented it, said my belly spoiled my beauty, but I had the baby. A girl. Her name is Lisl, and she changed everything. I loved her. Not when she emerged, all sticky and squalling and wrinkled—have you ever seen a newborn?”
“I have not.”
“They’re revolting. And the whole thing hurt dreadfully, and I dare say you don’t want details, but the birth—”
“I don’t want details.”
“But it was worth it,” Toni said softly. “Not at once, not for several days. But I held her, and her hands, so tiny, they clutched at me, and— I can’t describe it. Something changed, inside me. Do you know those pictures, when you look at a black vase on a white paper and suddenly see two white faces against blackness? Like that. Everything shifted. I held her, and I felt myself loving her, and I looked at Michael, and he was like some poor paper cut-out of a man. He meant nothing to me any more, and I wanted none of him. I just wanted my daughter. He would have liked a son, you know; he looked down at her and said, quite casually, ‘No use to me, then,’ and I was so glad when he said that because I thought he’d let us leave.” She took a deep breath. “So I told him that I wanted to take her and go. It was a stupid thing to do, but everything seemed so very simple and clear. I would go away with my daughter and never see him again, and everything would be perfect. I didn’t think.”
“I take it he didn’t respond well to your request.”
“Michael cannot bear to be left,” she said. “He must be duke of our hearts, centre of the world, and if you let him know he’s not, you might as well slap him in the face. He’s spent his life being a poor second to his brother, and it makes him sick with rage. He won’t have married servants, you know, because everyone in his service must put him first. That’s why there are no women living here, to avoid affairs.”
“Some of us don’t need women to have affairs.”
“He wouldn’t like that any better, believe me. It is Michael first, last, and always. I knew that. I should have thought, and slipped away, but all I could think of was Lisl. So, yes. I told him I wanted to leave, and he took it poorly.”
“Where is your daughter now?” I asked, and it was one of the harder questions I have ever asked, because I feared the answer.
“I don’t know.” Toni’s face crumpled in a way I had never seen before. She looked small and fragile, and I wanted to hold her but could not risk it for fear we would be seen, and I scratched a long, deep mark on Michael’s tally for that. “I don’t know, Jasper. He took her away. I’m allowed to see her every couple of months if I behave, but never here. We meet in different locations every time, and she has a new nurse, a new set of men with her, so I can’t make friends and it’s not worth their while to help me. I tried bribing them last time and they reported back to Michael. That’s why you are set to guard me, because I have been trying to find her. She’s one and a half now, and I don’t know where she’s kept, and if I leave him I’ll never find out—and I’m afraid.”
“Of what?”
“He’ll hurt her if I leave him,” Toni whispered. “He said he would.”
“His own child?”
“He doesn’t care, she’s just another Elphberg bastard. He says things—he’ll scar her face, or he’ll sell her to a brothel so she can grow up like her mother. Maybe it’s only threats, but I can’t take the risk. He’s as mad as Rudolf, or as evil, whichever it is; he just hides it better. Oh God, what have I done?”
Made a bloody mess of things, it sounded like, but I was hardly the man to rebuke her for that. “So I’m here to find her?”
“I don’t know what you can do. I’m exhausted, Jasper. If I only had myself to consider I could cope, but my daughter— I can’t do this alone any more.” Her voice cracked. I knew that note; one often hears it in people who have endured too much when help finally seems to be at hand. The prospect of a burden lifting does tend to make one aware of quite how heavy it is.
But it wasn’t lifted yet, and this was no time for tears. “Well, you don’t have to, so pull yourself together,” I said briskly. “Come, Toni, act the woman. What is it you want?”
She shot me a lethal glare, set her lips as she composed herself, then said, quite clearly, “I want my daughter back, and then I want Michael Elphberg fucking dead.”
“Noted,” I said. “Perhaps somewhat on the challenging side, since he’s a royal duke with a set of heavily armed henchmen, but I’ll see what can be arranged. Who knows where Lisl is kept?”
“Nobody else in the castle, I’m sure of that. He sends instructions directly to someone, but I don’t know who. I tried to bribe a servant, and he found out; I set my maid to search for me, and he dismissed her. He spies. The whole house is full of spies. He trusts nobody, because nobody can possibly love him enough for his liking.”
“Have you tried going through his desk?” I took her withering look as a yes. “And do you believe she’s safe for the moment?”
She nodded. “I have just come back from a visit. She’s beautiful. She didn’t know me, but she’s beautiful.”
“Then we’re not on an urgent deadline. All right. If nothing else, I’ll see if I can accompany you to your next meeting. When will that be, three months? Then I have time to ingratiate myself, to search, to see what the hell I can do. In the meantime, hold tight, don’t provoke him, and keep smiling. Remember our agreement at the old place, the division of labour?”
She grinned at that. The duke’s mistress Antoinette de Mauban was all elegant grace, but my old partner in crime Toni had a grin so filthy it brought men to their knees. “‘I’ll smile at them, you stab them.’ Thank you, Jasper. God, it’s good to have a friend here at last.”
CHAPTER FOUR
We had to tread carefully. Toni was a bright woman, and Michael knew it; he in turn was no fool, and he had no intention of making it easy for her to escape. He wanted her broken to his will until she would obey his every whim because nothing else seemed possible any more. In the end he would not even have to restrict her movements or hold a threat over her head, because he would have put fetters on her soul. I did not delude myself that Toni was too strong for him, strong though she was; anyone can be broken if you go about it the right way.
We had two advantages: she was not broken yet, and he didn’t know that she and I were friends. The second was a fragile strength, since all it would take would be a single slip, or a casual mention from Franz, his German police contact, that Toni had had him put my name forwards in the first place. Well, I had worked under greater threats than that, and if push came to shove, I intended to shove back with a blade.
I was coldly respectful to Toni in public, and she treated me as she did the others, with quiet dignity and reserve. Meanwhile, I worked hard to make myself invaluable to Michael. The easiest way out of this would be to make myself his trusted lieutenant. If he sent me to accompany Antoinette when next she was permitted to see the child, we could simply take Lisl and walk away over whatever bodies might be necessary. It would take time to manoeuvre myself into that role, but we had time, and it seemed to me safer than torturing the information out of Michael. He was a duke, and a stubborn bastard, and it hardly ever works anyway.