Vienna Woods (The Imperial Season Book 2) Read online

  She breathed a sigh of relief at sight of the younger man, on whom she must now rely.

  Lord Harry—otherwise, Lord Henry Niven, one of the numerous younger sons of the Duke of Kelburn—leapt to his feet as she entered the room. Although officially on her father’s staff, his connections and the instructions that came from the British government via the Duke and Lord Harry’s eldest brother, gave him a subtle and mysterious importance well beyond his duties.

  Esther had felt quite out of charity with him recently, since it was largely he who’d talked her into accepting Otto’s offer of marriage. However, the agreement she’d made then with Lord Harry bound her to pass on any information she gleaned from Otto pertaining to Britain. One of the reasons she’d consented, in fact, was that Harry had appeared to trust her to know what pertained to Britain, which was more credit than her father gave her. She could only presume Lord Harry would know what to do with her new information. Only, she had to be careful how she told him, since she couldn’t admit that Otto was dead.

  When had life become so complicated?

  “Sit, Esther,” her father said cheerfully, “and get some food down you. You look peaky.”

  “A little pale,” Lord Harry allowed gallantly, “but just as beautiful. Excuse me, Miss Lisle, I have appointments to keep!”

  Drat! But since she could hardly chase after him without her father suspecting something—and probably the wrong thing—she was forced to sit and eat breakfast while an important man’s life, and the entire peace of Europe, hovered in the balance.

  *

  Esther remained in her hotel room for the rest of the day, admitting to a headache, if not to the cause. Fortunately, Mrs. Juana MacVey, who acted as her duenna, was not the type to fuss. She merely summoned Gretel to make a cordial recipe, before retreating to her own room for another siesta.

  Juana was definitely unhappy. Esther hoped Major Belling would arrive in Vienna or at least write very soon and relieve the lady’s sadness.

  Esther sat mostly by the window, from where she would be able to see Lord Harry’s return. She did receive welcome word that her mare, Blanca, had been found and returned to her stable. But by the time Juana joined her, and Gretel and the hotel maid had set the tea table in her room, she’d still seen no sign of the elusive Lord Harry.

  Her one hope was that when her father joined them for tea—which he’d intimated he would—Lord Harry would be with him.

  He wasn’t. Instead, the general brought a much less welcome guest, Count von Meyer, the chief minister of Kriegenstein.

  The count was a tall, distinguished man of middle years who’d served his king for a long time, from the days before he was a king, in fact. Meyer had always disapproved of Esther’s engagement to Otto. She’d forgiven him for that since she’d come to agree with him. But she could neither like nor trust the man. There was a lack of…empathy, which repelled her.

  However, she rose to greet him with civility. “Count, how agreeable! I didn’t know you were in Vienna.”

  “I only arrived last night.” He bowed over her outstretched hand, not quite touching it to his lips. “How are you, Miss Lisle? The general tells me you’ve been suffering a bit of a headache today.”

  “It’s almost gone,” she said truthfully. Providing she didn’t touch it. “Mrs. MacVey gave me a tonic which has quite scared it away. Please, sit down.”

  “Thank you.” Meyer sat, gracefully accepting a cup of tea from Juana and choosing the daintiest cake. “And how is our wayward prince?”

  Juana snorted. She never troubled with her own rudeness or other people’s opinions.

  The general guffawed. “Still wayward. Haven’t you seen him yet?”

  “Yes, I called on him last night, annoyed him by going through his papers while he slept.”

  That, Esther thought, could explain why Otto had hidden certain papers with her. To avoid Meyer seeing them. Only, why do it while she was unconscious? And after antagonizing her completely?

  “He didn’t tell me his plans for the day,” Count von Meyer finished.

  “He’ll certainly go to Prince Metternich’s masquerade tonight,” the general said. “Everyone will.”

  “A good reason to miss it,” Juana grumbled.

  “Oh no,” Esther said anxiously. Apart from anything else, Lord Harry was bound to be there. “The ladies are all bidden to wear the national costume. It will be a wonderful sight!”

  “Metternich’s last hurrah?” Meyer suggested.

  Esther stared at him. “What do you mean?”

  “I mean the rumor is that the Congress is failing, and that contrary to achieving peace, Europe will be at war again before the end of the month.”

  “Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as that,” the general said comfortably. “Though I have to say the Tsar is behaving badly, and encouraging the King of Prussia to do so, too. In fact, I’m not sure Prince Otto hasn’t also encouraged the King of Prussia! I’ve tried to keep him in the fold, but he seems to think he knows best.”

  “It’s one of the reasons I came,” Meyer said ruefully. “And his correspondence bears out your concerns. I believe I can nip it in the bud.”

  Esther set down her tea cup before she dropped it. Was this what her police agent had meant? Could Count Meyer have simply killed Otto as the only means to prevent him riding roughshod over the king’s policies? Yet, surely he would never kill the king’s son and heir.

  Still, Meyer had been here since last night. He could have followed Otto and herself up into the Woods…in which case, he would know she’d been there, too, and that she must be aware Otto was dead.

  A quick glance showed her his attention was on the general rather than on her. But she’d only let herself breathe a single sigh of relief before his gaze swung around to her.

  “Tell me, Miss Lisle, has Otto ever mentioned his half-brother to you?”

  “No,” she said in surprise. “I didn’t know he had any brothers.”

  “They haven’t seen each other since they were children,” Meyer said. “Young Garin and his mother moved away some fifteen years ago. But recently, the king heard a rumor that the boy was in Vienna. I wondered if he’d been in touch with Otto.”

  “Not that I know of,” Esther said. “But then he wouldn’t necessarily tell me.”

  “Actually, I can’t imagine he’d seek him out,” Meyer said. “But the king is anxious to locate him. I’ve asked the Austrian police to help.”

  The general gawped. “Rash,” he pronounced. “You’ve invited spies into your own nest!”

  Meyer touched the side of his nose. “It’s a double bluff. They’ll leave me alone if they imagine I’m so open.”

  Remembering her intense police agent of the morning, Esther doubted it.

  *

  Returning to the Hofburg after taking tea with the Lisles, Count von Meyer was quickly annoyed to discover nothing very interesting in Otto’s currently unoccupied bedchamber. Perhaps he’d given the little rat too much reason to hide his most interesting enterprises. For the first time ever, Meyer began to wonder if he had, perhaps, underestimated his crown prince.

  Emerging from the bedchamber into the study, the first thing he saw was a man seated at the big, ornate desk. For an instant, he thought it was Otto, and in spite of himself, his step faltered. Then he realized it was a complete stranger, a much more quietly dressed man, and he almost laughed.

  “Who the devil are you?” he asked with more amiability than the intrusion warranted. After all, the lout hadn’t even risen with basic civility, let alone the respect due to Meyer’s rank.

  “Baron von Hager sent me,” the man said briefly.

  “Ah, the baron’s agent. That was quick! Do you have a name?”

  “You can call me ‘Z’.”

  “The baron said you would be shy,” Meyer mocked.

  The man didn’t blink or smile. His expression didn’t change in the slightest. He was younger than Meyer had expected, less brutish, even g
ood-looking in a quiet kind of way. Straight brown hair, cut short. No freckles, scars, or blemishes. Neither tall nor short. The sort of person you wouldn’t remember or recognize. Meyer wasn’t fooled. When combined with the intelligence of those sharp, gray eyes, it all made the mysterious Z extremely good at his work.

  “You’re looking for the King of Kriegenstein’s natural son,” Z said in a neutral voice. “Do you have a likeness, any other information apart from his name?”

  Meyer walked across the room and rummaged in his open but unpacked trunk in the corner. He straightened, holding out the only painting of Emilie Garin and her child that anyone could find. Z made no move to take it from him, so Meyer went to him. After all, he needed the man on his side.

  “He was a child when this was taken,” Meyer said. “So I’m not sure how much use it will be.”

  Z took the picture and cast a quick, disinterested eye over it. “And the woman?”

  “His mother, Emilie Garin.”

  “Is she still alive?” Z asked. “With her son?”

  “I have no idea. But if she’s alive, she won’t look like that anymore. She’d lost her looks before she left the palace, and that was seventeen years ago.”

  Without glancing at it again, Z pocketed the photograph. “Why do you seek him now, after seventeen years?”

  Meyer shrugged, spreading his hands to imply that neither he nor the policeman could fathom the whims of royalty. “The king wishes it. I suppose he’s reached the age when he wants to set things right.”

  The man’s steady eyes gave nothing away. “I see. How will he do that? Make this son his heir?”

  Meyer laughed. “My dear sir, Prince Otto is his heir! Nothing can change that.”

  “Death can.”

  “I beg your pardon?” Damn the man, did he never blink?

  Z stirred. “If Prince Otto were dead, would the king legitimize this bastard? Make him his heir?”

  Meyer stared back, frowning. “That is not your concern or mine.”

  “On the contrary, if you want him found, everything about him is my business.”

  “Then assume he will never be heir to the kingdom. After Otto, the king’s younger brother is next in line. That does not mean the king will not do right by his son, and so you might say in your—ah—inquiries.”

  “Thank you,” Z said, barely bothering to hide his mockery. “And now, in return for my inquiries on your behalf, I’d like some information from you.”

  “What do you want to know?” Meyer asked with resignation. After all, he’d invited the spy into his life.

  “Do you like Miss Lisle?” the agent asked unexpectedly.

  Meyer blinked rapidly. “Miss Lisle? As a lady, I find her unexceptionable. As the future Queen, I find…I thought the Crown Prince could do better.”

  “And yet the king approved.”

  “I suppose he wanted his son to be happy.”

  “Then it was the prince himself who desired the match?”

  “It was his idea, yes. Why are you so interested in Miss Lisle?” He didn’t need to ask of course. He knew perfectly well. Miss Lisle was suspected of murdering her betrothed, and that suited Count von Meyer perfectly.

  But Z didn’t trouble to answer. He merely rose to his feet and nodded, as though to an underling, and walked out of the room without farewell.

  When the door closed, Meyer smiled.

  Chapter Three

  The wound in her head was not really something she could keep from her maid for very long. For one thing, she couldn’t dress her own hair in an elaborate enough style for a ball. And even if by some miracle Gretel failed to notice the lump, it was still too tender for Esther to feel happy about anyone wielding a hairbrush anywhere near it. So as she prepared for Prince Metternich’s ball, she did most of the brushing herself, while Gretel laid out her dress for the evening.

  Then, as Gretel approached her, their eyes met in the glass. Gretel was a tall, thin woman of severe demeanor and indeterminate age. Although her previous employers included several high born ladies, including one countess, she was not the sort of person Esther herself would have chosen. Esther had always been sure the maid was Otto’s creature, there to spy on her. And since Otto paid her, Esther couldn’t dismiss her. Until now.

  Esther’s stomach twisted with confused guilt. Gretel’s prince, her true employer, was dead.

  “I’ve hurt my head a little,” Esther blurted. “So you will be careful just here, won’t you?”

  “Of course, Miss.” Business-like as always, Gretel lifted the brush from the dressing table and parted Esther’s hair to examine the injury. Her breath caught. “How did that happen?” Gretel barked, almost as if she blamed her mistress for the inconvenience.

  Esther’s hackles rose, but she forced herself to reply evenly, “I fell during my ride. So silly…but that is why the riding dress is so soiled, too.”

  Without a word, Gretel took a bottle from her apron and a thin little brush which she dipped in the bottle and aimed at Esther’s head.

  Instinctively, Esther caught her hand. “What is that? What are you doing?”

  Gretel stared at her. “It’s my grandmother’s recipe. Used it since I was a child. It will help the healing and numb it for you just a little.”

  Feeling foolish, Esther released her. “Thank you,” she muttered.

  As Gretel worked, Esther watched the maid’s frowning face in the glass until, when she was finished, their eyes met once more. Gretel was clearly displeased as she dropped the bottle back into her apron pocket and set about dressing Esther’s hair.

  “And this happened on your ride this morning, Miss?” Gretel asked abruptly.

  “Yes, but I—”

  “I don’t think you should ride anymore,” Gretel interrupted.

  Esther blinked. “I beg your pardon?” she said coldly.

  “Until this is healed,” Gretel explained at once. But her gaze didn’t fall before Esther’s. Because she knew more about the incident than she should? Or was it just common sense?

  “Your concern is noted,” Esther said. “Could you arrange the hair so that it covers any sign of that unsightly lump?”

  “Of course, Miss.”

  *

  Prince Metternich’s masquerade ball was a triumph.

  With negotiations on a knife-edge and most probably about to fail, the Austrian Chancellor had clearly gone out of his way to provide the most memorable festivity of all.

  All the ladies wore the national costume, and it tickled Esther’s sense of humor to see countesses in peasant garb with diamonds sparkling in their quaint dresses as they danced. Esther, with other things on her mind that day, had merely donned her favorite white silk ball gown with an old tartan sash of her father’s, artfully arranged around the gown’s high waist and over one shoulder so that it hung down her back.

  Even so the unusual and simple adornment was enough to make her feel like a little girl dressing up again; a reminder of less complicated times, which raised her spirits delightfully. It seemed she wasn’t alone. As she entered Metternich’s home among the unlikely Greeks, Persians, Venetians, gypsies, and even Native Americans, she caught the conspiratorial gleam in many female eyes. Like Esther, they were having fun.

  Her father escorted Esther and Juana to the ball, and even went so far as to find Juana a chair, before vanishing immediately into the card room.

  “Where is the unspeakable Otto?” Juana asked in Spanish, staring after the general with unblinking, dark eyes. She looked particularly magnificent that evening in her tall, Spanish head dress and black lace veil. “I don’t understand your father in this. I don’t like the prince. I don’t like him for you.”

  “Hush, Juana,” Esther said hastily, glancing around the nearest multi-lingual guests to see if anyone was likely to have overheard. In truth, there were so many people crowded noisily together, it was really something of a miracle that even Esther had made out the words.

  Juana heaved a sigh. �
�What does it matter what I think? Or your father? Young women will go their own way if they are allowed such license.”

  “As you did?” Esther said at once.

  Juana, who had run away from her extremely noble family to marry a penniless British officer, now sadly deceased, cast her a surprisingly clear look. “Our situations are not the same.”

  “Of course not,” Esther soothed. She cast her chaperone a long look. “Juana, doesn’t it ever strike you that the quicker I’m married, the quicker you’d feel free to take up your own life again?”

  Juana closed her fan and tapped it on Esther’s cheek. “You are my life, querida.”

  “But I’m spoiling it,” Esther said bluntly. “And I don’t want to. You are still young and beautiful. I want you to be happy.”

  “We want that for each other as friends do,” Juana said tartly. “Which is why I don’t want you to marry that brute of a prince. I have tried to warn the general what is said, but he won’t listen. He claims all young men are wild, and that they treat their wives differently from…but I’ll stop talking now. Why don’t you fetch us some lemonade? It’s so hot in here, and I am quite exhausted.” Juana sat back comfortably to face one of her matronly friends who’d taken the place at her other side.

  Although Juana was supposed to be Esther’s chaperone—and despite carping constantly about Otto or the freedom allowed to unmarried British girls—neither of them took the details of such duties terribly seriously. Juana roused herself to attend evening parties with her charge, and glowered menacingly at anyone who even threatened to step beyond her own strict line of propriety. And somehow, she always knew exactly who those young men were. But for the rest, she was quite happy to be set down in a corner with a drink and lose sight of Esther, whom she regarded as exhausting, for most of the evening.

  Which had always suited Esther, and never more so than tonight, when speaking to Lord Harry was her one priority.

  So Esther slipped through the masked crowds to find a glass of lemonade, and even some elegant nibbles for her chaperone. Seizing a glass and a couple of canapés at random, she fought her way back through the crowds to Juana, who always made it easy to be found by never moving.