Vienna Dawn (The Imperial Season Book 3) Page 3
Dunya remained with her gaze glued to the window until the colors began to fade into a more simple clear blue. Then she sat back in her seat and sighed. “They’ll be worried to death about me, won’t they?” she said ruefully.
“Look on the bright side,” Trelawny suggested. “Etienne may already be scouring the countryside for you.”
She brightened instantly. “There is that. I won’t mind him scolding me, for I deserve it. But my sister will cry and Nikolai will lecture, and Vanya…” She broke off, shuddering.
“Who is Vanya?” Trelawny enquired.
“My brother. He has an uncertain temper and a terrible inclination to wildness. He’ll probably tear Europe apart to find Lord Sebastian and challenge him to a duel.”
“Bad idea,” Trelawny said. “Niven is a crack shot and quite merciless.”
“So is Vanya, even in his cups. But there, perhaps his dull English wife will forbid it.”
“You sound disappointed.”
“Well, I am angry with Lord Sebastian, even though I know the situation was my fault.”
“It wasn’t,” Trelawny said, almost irritably. “You made a naive mistake and Niven must have been in his cups not to see it. None of it gives him an excuse to insult or abuse you, whatever your rank or his.”
Dunya stared at him. So did the maid. He shifted uncomfortably and Dunya’s face broke into one of her dazzling smiles that caught at one’s breath. “Thank you, Captain,” she said warmly. “Though perhaps it’s not the best argument to use with Vanya. I wonder if he’ll tell me off? He never used to, but perhaps he has grown staid and proper. Oh!”
She broke off, some new idea breaking through her mercurial mind.
“Are you married, Captain Trelawny?” she asked abruptly.
Surprise lengthened the pause before he answered. “No.”
“That saddens you,” she observed with unexpected perception.
For some reason, he flushed, giving an awkward little shrug of his good shoulder. He never meant to reveal so much.
“What happened?” she asked.
He rubbed an imaginary spot on his pantaloons. “I was engaged but the lady called it off.”
“Why?” Dunya asked, frowning, as if inclined to take issue with the faithless lady.
“In order to marry someone else, I believe.”
Dunya considered him. “Why?” she asked again.
Trelawny wanted to smile. “Thank you for that. In truth… I believe some people need what you and I might call dullness but they call stability in their lives. Jane could never have followed the drum with me. It is best we discovered this before the deed was done.”
“She could if she loved you,” Dunya said stoutly. “Where is she now?”
This time, he did smile. “In Vienna, I understand, with her betrothed and his family.”
Although it must have shed new light on his dislike of Vienna, Dunya surprised him again by visibly brightening once more. “Then she isn’t yet married!” Her eyes glazed over, before she turned her head, gazing out of the window.
He watched her for several minutes before she drew in her breath sharply and turned back to meet his gaze. “I have a plan,” she announced.
“Go on,” he invited, waiting to be amused.
“You and I should pretend to be engaged,” she said blithely. “To each other.”
With difficulty, Trelawny prevented his jaw from landing on the carriage floor. “We should?” he asked in fascination.
“Of course! It’s a perfect solution.” She raised her hands from her lap, counting off the reasons on her elegantly gloved fingers. “Firstly, it would help with the problem of my chaperone—at least my lack of one!—last night, with both my family and the world. Indeed Anastasia and Nikolai—and maybe even Vanya—will be terribly grateful to you. And best of all, we shall make both my Etienne and your Jane jealous! When they see us together, they’ll realize they’ve loved us all along and can’t bear us to be married to each other. In this way, you and I shall win our true loves again and be happy.”
Trelawny regarded her with awe. “You make it sound so sensible, not to say inevitable. But you flatter me, you know. I am not really the sort of suitor to make anyone jealous. Apart from being somewhat battle-damaged, I’ve no rank or fortune or prospects.”
“But that’s what makes you so perfect,” Dunya said, sparkling with eagerness. “Etienne will know I haven’t chosen horrid stability over charm, and that worldly possessions mean nothing to me.”
“Thank you for the charm,” Trelawny said, amused. “But I still can’t believe your family, let alone the world, would ever believe in such an unlikely love match. To be frank, Niven would be a better tool, if only he would play fair. But I’m afraid your family would never let you become engaged to me, even from gratitude.”
“Well they don’t need to agree to it,” she said reasonably. “The point is that Jane and Etienne believe it. Besides, you know, I hear wounded war heroes are all the rage in Vienna.”
Trelawny blinked, startled.
“What do you say?” she cajoled. Her large, blue eyes shone with mischief, her delicate lips curving into a persuasive smile.
Trelawny laughed out loud. “I say you’re mad as a frog, but why not?”
*
Dunya’s sister Anastasia had barely had any sleep. The hour’s exhausted doze she’d finally slipped into before dawn had only happened because Nikolai, her husband, had promised to keep watch for Dunya’s return. Which hadn’t occurred. As a result, the sight of her brother Vanya striding into her mother’s drawing room looking exactly as he had three years ago, made her weep as she hurled herself into his arms.
“Oh, Vanya, what have I done?” she wailed.
“Damned if I know,” Vanya said cheerfully, pushing her away after the briefest embrace in order to look at her. “You don’t look so good on it, though. Have you taken to rakish ways and all night debaucheries?”
Inevitably, a snort of shocked, involuntary laughter escaped her before she slapped both palms on his chest in frustration. “Of course, I haven’t! How can you laugh at a time like this?”
“Like what?” Vanya demanded, looking around the room until his erratic gaze found Nikolai. “Aha. You must be my poor brother-in-law. I’m Vanya.” He strolled toward Nikolai with his hand held out in a casual fashion. Anastasia doubted that Nikolai would guess he was being evaluated by a very perceptive eye. “You shouldn’t let her go to all-night parties, you know,” he said provokingly. “Too much bad blood in our family.”
Nikolai, looking entirely baffled—one could never truly warn someone about Vanya—took the outstretched hand mechanically just as her mother, the countess, burst into the room.
“If you’re referring to your sister, Vanya,” she began in clear outrage.
“Well, she does look very peaky,” Vanya pointed out, giving Anastasia another glance, “but I agree bad blood is a bit of a jump.”
“Not Asya!” exclaimed their mother. “Dunya! Didn’t you get my message?”
“Of course I did. Why else would I be here at this ungodly time of the morning?”
“Then she is with you?” Anastasia said eagerly, grabbing at her brother’s arm.
“Dunya? Why the devil would she be with me? She doesn’t know where I am, does she?”
“I wouldn’t put it past her to find out,” said their fond parent grimly. “You always indulged her wilder starts so we hoped she’d sought refuge with you.”
About to throw himself into the nearest chair, Vanya froze, a sudden frown tugging down his brow. “Refuge?” he repeated, for the first time sounding uneasy. “Refuge from what?”
“From me!” Anastasia said tragically. “I was too severe with her—”
“You can’t be too severe with that girl,” Nikolai said grimly, and when Vanya glanced at him in surprise, he added, “I’m sorry for it, sir, but your sister Dunya has run away from us quite deliberately and upset my wife terribly.”
“For God’s sake, what other kind of missing is there?” the countess demanded. “Why do you think I sent for you?”
“Because she’d wandered off on her own during some shopping expedition and got lost,” Vanya exploded. “You’ve only been in Vienna a few hours! How long has she been gone?”
Anastasia exchanged looks with her mother and husband. She couldn’t meet Vanya’s fiery gaze. “Since yesterday afternoon,” she whispered. “Since before we even reached Vienna.”
Vanya whitened.
“We thought she’d just ridden ahead to spite me,” Anastasia explained, hating the pleading note in her own voice. “For I did give her a dressing down and you know what she’s like, Vanya, I should have known she’d defy me any way she could. Besides, I was so sure it was all about Etienne de la Tour… But when we got here, there had been no sign of her. So we thought, perhaps she’d got lost, and was just behind us by an hour or so, but still…”
“She’s been missing all night,” Vanya said grimly, latching on to the salient point in her explosion of words. “Tell me exactly where she left you.”
“Two hours from Vienna,” Nikolai said quietly. “On the main carriage road.”
Vanya threw himself to his feet, just as the door opened once more and the Austrian servant announced, “Herr von Zelig.”
Von Zelig appeared to be a police commander who had somehow become acquainted with Anastasia’s normally fastidious mother. She’d sent for him as soon as she’d learned of Dunya’s vanishing, but they’d heard nothing.
“Just the man,” Vanya said with clear relief, striding toward him. “Come on, Z, we’re looking for my sister.”
“As to that,” the expressionless officer said before Vanya could drag him off, “I believe she spent the night safely at an inn. The Emperor Inn, in fact.”
“We stopped there!” Anastasia exclaimed. “Dunya disappeared while the servants fetched refreshments and changed the horses. She took ages, and we had to send everyone looking for her, which was why I was so angry with her and quarreled…”
“She must have gone back,” Nikolai said grimly.
Herr von Zelig coughed. “During your stop, I believe she encountered a man there who seemed inclined to help her. She came back to meet him and dined with him. The landlady assured my man there was no impropriety, and that the young lady left the inn perfectly well and happy…er, with two other gentlemen.”
“Oh, dear God,” moaned the countess. “What did I do to deserve such a hoyden for a daughter?”
“Over-indulged her,” Nikolai muttered.
“She’s ruined!” the countess exclaimed. “Running around the country unattended with all these men! She has lost her innocence.”
“Oh poppycock!” Vanya said impatiently. “If I know Dunya, she’s just wrapped them all round her little finger! Where did she go with these men?”
“Their carriage took the road back to Vienna.”
“Then where is she?” Anastasia demanded. “Your man had time to bring you this news after she left. So why isn’t she here? Who were these men she left with?”
There was a pause during which everyone glared at Zelig, who didn’t appear remotely put out, although he did meet Vanya’s gaze.
“English soldiers,” Zelig said at last. “One of them had only one arm.”
“Then they shouldn’t be hard to find,” Vanya returned with just a hint of savagery that made Anastasia’s stomach churn with memory, half-thrill, half-anxiety. She turned away, walking to the window and gazing out without seeing. Vanya said, “Zelig, are your men still looking for her?”
“Of course.”
The street was quiet at this time of the morning, while Vienna slept off its late night revelries, so the sound of a carriage pierced Anastasia’s bubble of anxious misery. It looked like a hired coach, though definitely not one of the Imperial green carriages designed for Congress visitors. Neither the vehicle nor the horses were of the best quality, but when it pulled up in the street by her mother’s door, Anastasia’s heart began to beat with hope. The man beside the driver on the box jumped down and let down the steps. He wore an old military style great coat, which gave her hope that this was one of the English soldiers.
Anastasia’s heart sank again when another man emerged—a pale young man in a grey cloak. But he turned and handed down a female occupant whom Anastasia would have known anywhere.
Her knees gave way and she sank on to the window seat. “It’s Dunya,” she croaked. “She’s back.”
The competing voices in the room cut off like a tap. Suddenly she was crowded by her mother and Vanya.
“She has a maid,” Vanya said admiringly. “How did she manage that?”
“You are not to encourage her!” their mother commanded severely. She let out a sob. “My baby is returned to us…I don’t know how I’ll keep my hands off the wretched girl!”
Vanya laughed. “They’re all coming in, so let’s hear her story. I’ll bet it’s a whopper.”
Their mother favored him with a glacial stare. “What in God’s name is a whopper?”
“Whatever it is Dunya’s about to tell us, I imagine.”
Catching Vanya’s suppressed excitement, just as Anastasia did, the countess said uneasily, “You’re not going to kill the man, are you, Vanya?”
“Not unless he’s hurt Dunya.”
“How will you know?” Anastasia demanded.
“I’ll know,” Vanya said grimly, straightening as the noisy flurry of weeping Russian servants beyond the drawing room doors gave way to the staid Austrian who entered and announced, “Countess Dunya and Captain Trelawny, Madame.”
And then the room filled with the natural force than was Dunya, rushing across the floor and throwing herself into her mother’s arms before reaching out to Anastasia.
“I’m so sorry, Asya! I was angry, but I truly never meant it to be like this!”
“You never do, do you?” Anastasia said bitterly. But around their mother’s body, she gripped her sister’s hand.
“Well, it’s nice to see you both following in the family traditions of excessive revelry and rakish behavior,” Vanya said with apparent admiration. Anastasia glowered at him.
With a gasp, Dunya pulled herself out of her mother’s hold. “Vanya!” she squeaked and hurled herself at him instead. But he allowed her only the briefest instant to hug him before he pushed her back, holding her by both arms while he scanned her too-innocent face.
Slowly, he raised his eyes over the top of her head and met those of the silent man who’d accompanied her and now stood just inside the room. Anastasia and everyone else looked, too.
Tall and straight and very pale beneath a shock of fair hair, he still wore his cloak over one shoulder. Beneath it, his clothes appeared decent rather than expensive or fashionable. He could, Anastasia reflected, benefit from a haircut, but his countenance was not unpleasing. Although currently impassive, it bore signs of good nature around his eyes and mouth. His eyes seemed direct, and yet she was sure they veiled some secret or other…or perhaps just pain. In all, she couldn’t tell if he was quite dashing enough for Dunya’s attention, or her schemes… Though he did possess a sort of interesting wounded hero attraction, hinting at formidable strength only temporarily weakened.
“Captain…Trelawny, is it?” Vanya said, switching to English and setting Dunya to one side. “I do hope I have to thank you for my sister’s safe return.”
“Of course you do!” Dunya exclaimed.
The English captain, however, didn’t bat an eyelid. “I don’t require gratitude,” he said. “I stayed merely to reassure you as to her safety throughout her…adventure.”
“And that is all due to Captain Trelawny,” Dunya said warmly, almost dancing across the room to clasp the stranger’s arm. “You will all say I am very foolish as well as thoughtless, but I was never so mistaken in
anyone as in that English gentleman who turned out to be no gentleman at all but a wicked seducer.”
“Asya, my smelling salts,” the countess said, shuddering.
“Oh, he didn’t lay a finger on me in the end,” Dunya said blithely, though she kept a weather eye upon Vanya. “But only because Captain Trelawny threatened to shoot him. He went away after that and the captain made the innkeeper give me a room of my own and even engaged the chamber maid for me for the journey. Isn’t he wonderful?”
His pale face flushing slightly under Dunya’s accolade and the company’s stares, Captain Trelawny detached his arm from Dunya’s grasp, casting her a quick glance that was half-quelling and half-amused.
The countess sailed across the room, graciously offering the Englishman her hand. Clearly, she had decided in his favor. “We are deeply in your debt, sir, for looking after our wayward Dunya. I shudder to think what might have happened to her without your care. You must let me reimburse you for all the costs you have incurred on her behalf.”
“That won’t be necessary, ma’am,” he said, bowing curtly over her hand. “It was my pleasure.”
Dunya actually nudged him. “Yes, but—”
“Wait a minute,” Nikolai interrupted, speaking for the first time since the explosion of Dunya’s arrival. “You aren’t telling us the full truth here, Dunya. Is this yet another gentleman? What happened to the one-armed soldiers?”
“Oh, Nikolai!” Dunya said irritably.
The Englishman only smiled and pushed his cloak off his shoulder so that it all hung fully down his back instead. One sleeve of his coat dangled, clearly empty. “That would be me.”
It was Nikolai’s turn to blush while Dunya, Anastasia, and their mother all glared at him.
Only Vanya seemed unembarrassed. “Peninsular campaign?” he asked, with interest.
Captain Trelawny inclined his head.
“Come and have a drink with me,” Vanya invited. “We can swap wound stories.”
“You’re not taking him away, Vanya,” Dunya said firmly. “For one thing he doesn’t know who any of you are. Mother, Captain Trelawny of the British 95th Rifles. Captain, my mother, Countess Savarina and my sister, Anastasia Petrovna. My brother in law, Nikolai Ivanovitch Lermontov, and my brother, Colonel Ivan Petrovitch Savarin.”