Song of Seduction (7 page)

Lord Venner was among the missing.

A bluster of chaos and worry filled the grand townhouse when he failed to return from a journey to Hallein. Runners to countless business establishments and private homes revealed no news of him within the city. Beside herself with worry, Ingrid proved nearly useless as Mathilda hastily organized a house in confusion and disarray.

And what ridiculous thought nagged her overoccupied mind? It was Wednesday. She would miss her lesson.

Guilt over her selfishness, even if in thought alone, made Mathilda work harder. The pattern proved familiar, reminding her of time spent working alongside Jürgen.

“How goes the repair, Herr Bruegel?” she asked.

The beefy, genial man in charge of maintaining the town home spoke past the tiny wooden pegs clenched in his teeth. “Shortly, Frau Heidel. Nailing the casement will make it sound again.”

Through the window, broad streaks of angry snow clouds painted every inch of blanched sky. She offered Bruegel her brisk approval. “Cook insists that something is blocking proper airflow in the kitchen chimney. Can you see to it when you finish here?”

At the servant’s answering nod, Mathilda left him to continue the hasty repairs and climbed to the second-floor kitchen. The wind shrieked, echoing up the stairwell as if no protective walls separated frail human bodies from the storm. She lifted a hasty prayer for Venner’s safe return. After talking to the cook, she went to find Ingrid.

Another flight up, in the ballroom, half a dozen men from the Venners’ retinue surrounded Oliver. They were busily outfitting themselves with enough supplies to search for their missing master. Torches, ropes, heavy outerwear, and wooden whistles would help protect the volunteers from becoming lost or stranded themselves. The swarming tempest of snow and ice obscured everything outside, and the search would be dangerous.

The alternative, however—leaving Venner to the mercy of the blizzard—was beyond contemplation.

The men dispersed, but Mathilda stalled Oliver’s departure. “Still no word?”

Shaking his head in silent dejection, he cast a glance at the marvelous grandfather clock at the far end of the ballroom. “He was supposed to return this morning.”

“He might not have reached the city boundary yet.”

Oliver yanked a solid knot into a guideline. Dark curls covered the tops of his ears and shook across his forehead. “I should’ve been with him.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” she said. “The trip is simple, one night gone and back again. He asked you to stay, to look after the household.”

“
Ja,
because he believes he is invincible.”

Mathilda drew back. She had never seen Oliver angered. That he spoke about Venner with such harsh censure surprised her to silence.

“My apologies, Frau Heidel. My frustrations—”

She shook her head, interrupting an explanation that would only embarrass him later. “Where is Lady Venner?”

“I haven’t seen her on this level.”

“Good luck to you, Oliver. And be careful.”

Mathilda tackled two more flights and worked to dispel her fruitless anxieties. She quietly knocked at her friend’s door.

Ingrid reclined on a mountain of pillows, her eyes closed. She had drawn the drapes against the winds and rattling windowpanes. Several candles decorated the room with flickers of gold.

Sitting gingerly on the bed, Mathilda took cold hands into hers. Emotion roughened her voice. “What can I do?”

Ingrid opened luminous green eyes and offered a wan smile. “You’ll miss your lesson, dearest. I’m sorry.”

“Nothing could be farther from my mind at this moment.” She happily realized that she spoke the truth. Finally. Ingrid’s distress over her husband’s safety overwhelmed every other consideration. “Moments ago, Oliver led a search party into the streets.”

“You must think me a silly goose,” she said. “Everyone else bands together while I sit here moping and fretting.”

“But you mope and fret very artfully. Talk to me, if it helps.”

“You are needed downstairs, no?”

“Venner would be most displeased if I attended to the house and your highly capable staff before comforting you.”

Ingrid placed trembling hands on either side of her gown and hoisted herself into a sitting position. “I grew into adulthood knowing Father would help choose a husband on my behalf. A beneficial marriage was my privilege as much as my obligation. But I worried about my future. Do you remember those months?”

“I remember.”

“I wondered what would I feel or do when I finally met
him,
whoever he was.” She sighed. “When Father introduced me to Christoph, he solved my mystery. I had a face and a name and a voice to complete the picture of my future.”

Smiling, Mathilda clung to the chance to relive happier moments. In the midst of searching for a mere entrée into the highest classes of European society, Ingrid had found Venner. Formal, unblinking and considered far too proper for the likes of an unequal marriage, he had been more intimidating than the fight to win society’s approval. For all of his political talent and good standing, however, Venner had proven a lonely and kindhearted gentleman. Ingrid’s entrée into good society had stolen her heart.

“But now…” Her voice trailed away, somber and terrified. “How did you cope when Jürgen was killed?”

A twist of sympathy loosened Mathilda’s tongue. “Although you didn’t agree with my choice, I married him with an open heart. When I learned of his death, I found myself bereft of more than just a husband. An entire way of living was stolen from me.”

Ingrid leaned closer, her expression intent. “For you, Tilda—is your life better or worse now?”

Like a skittish foal, she shied from Ingrid’s startlingly perceptive eyes and probing question. The answer should have been simple. After all, she was a widow one year removed from her husband’s murder. Almost every aspect of her existence had changed in the span of a single day. Jürgen Heidel had died. She was alone. Her protection from the world—from scandal and the history of her parents’ love affair—had vanished.

She should have been able to answer Ingrid with any number of harsh replies.

Of course, my life is worse today.

How dare you ask such a question of me?

My life ended with his death.

Any would have sufficed, but her tongue refused to form those lies. They stuck in her throat like carriage wheels lodged in the mud of a rutted springtime road.

To answer Ingrid’s question honestly would profane her husband’s death and the life Mathilda had tried to make with him. But neither could she deny the truth of her actions. Mere days after Jürgen’s funeral, she abandoned the home she had tended for three years. The idea of spending another day, another night—taking another breath—within those stultifying rooms had threatened her sanity. A quiet, long-suffering voice demanded she escape.

That same voice would have remained bound and silenced for the breadth of her life had Jürgen lived, had Mathilda continued building a partnership with him. She might have been able to keep her hands busy, attending the chores of a doctor’s wife and studiously disregarding her soul’s occasional yelp of protest.

Instead, and at the first opportunity to escape her fate, she had solicited Ingrid and her father, ostensibly seeking refuge from her grief by helping to prepare for Ingrid’s nuptials. The truth, that the unexpected freedom of her widowhood liberated her with an almost painful, directionless freedom, was too selfish to admit. Dangerous paths she had intentionally barricaded became clear to traverse, and Mathilda feared losing her way without the familiar, imprisoning safety of those obstructions. Guilt and an ingrained fear of whispered rumors had driven her blind with the need for protection.

“Life isn’t better or worse,” she said at last. Even that grudging degree of honesty sickened her like the iron aftertaste of blood. “It is merely…different, and must be endured.”

“You have your music now.”

Mathilda smiled at her friend’s attempt to offer consolation in the midst of her own anxiety. “Yes.”

But at what cost?

With Ingrid dozing sporadically, Mathilda sat beside her friend and tossed around useless questions. Evening darkened the room as her thoughts transformed, becoming melodies. She lost track of the long hours creeping by, following music through tunnels and mysteries, diligently ignoring the shadowed corners of mind.

Shouts and the raucous barking of dogs echoed from the street and throughout the lower levels of the house. An anonymous male voice announced the news. “The search party located Lord Venner!”

Ingrid jerked upright on the bed, but Mathilda was already at the bedchamber door. “Is he well?” she called.

Oliver’s hard command climbed the vast stairwells. “Bring Ingrid and your medical bag!”

“I’ll be right there.” She turned and smashed into Ingrid. Feminine skulls bounced off one another, sending them both reeling. Starry lights danced behind Mathilda’s clenched eyes. She rubbed the lump forming on her forehead. “Did you hear?”

Ingrid’s hands splayed across the pad of skin encasing her right cheekbone. “I heard.”

“Are you all right?”

“I will be.” The younger woman staggered to the stairs.

Mathilda retrieved the bag from under her bed, its heavy weight quickly washing her with memories. Each evening she had taken the bag from Jürgen’s hands upon his homecoming. As an apt and curious student, she had learned many uses for its contents. Eventually, even her husband admitted that she was an astute and clever physician’s assistant.

Since taking residence with the Venners, she was the one to tend members of their household. Anyone who made mention of the heavy leather case referred to it as “Frau Heidel’s bag.” Its contents and a tiny fraction of Jürgen’s medical knowledge constituted her marital inheritance.

Both hands clasping the carved wooden handles, she followed Ingrid to the fourth-floor guest suite, a room that doubled as a makeshift sick room. Bundled and frosty servants climbed from below, gingerly hauling the prostrate body of Lord Venner between them. Ingrid led the procession, her face ashen, and Oliver took up the rear with a candelabra raised high. Those wavering flames tossed disconcerting shadows along the damasked walls of the stairwell.

The four servants deposited the unconscious nobleman onto a wide bed before hastening from the room. Oliver stood at Mathilda’s side. “Tell us what to do,” he said.

“Klara, fetch boiling water—a great deal. Have Cook help you.” She stepped around the bed, angling the candelabra to better see her patient. Venner’s waxy skin looked as Jürgen’s had on that long night spent preparing his body for burial.

“Tilda?”

Ingrid’s plea yanked her from the past. “Get these wet clothes off.”

The pair complied, removing layer upon frigid layer of sopping wool. Snow-encrusted garments littered the floor, slicking the hardwoods with burgeoning puddles. Ingrid covered her husband’s nude body in blankets as Mathilda checked his weak but steady pulse. His torso was warm, almost hot, while his extremities were icy. She detected no overt signs of frostbite. Upon twisting a toe with a sharp tug, his jerking response lifted her hopes higher.

Klara and the cook arrived, their hands wrapped in towels and each carrying a vat of water just off the boil.

“Sponge his limbs with the water,” Mathilda said. “We must get him warm. Cook, if you could—soup, broth. Anything.” She administered a small dose of a pungent restorative tonic by dribbling tiny drops of the liquid along his motionless lips. “Oliver, what happened?”

Sight turned inward, he did not look at Mathilda. “The cobblestones are like wet glass. His mare broke her leg on the road to Nonnberg. She must’ve slipped. We found him in the snow, just short of the convent.”

Ingrid paused in her duties, a wet cloth poised above Venner’s exposed arm. She whispered his name. A look of nausea twisted her mouth. “Oliver, I cannot thank you—”

Her voice cracked. She sagged. Oliver moved to catch her but she did not fall. Ingrid righted her trembling body without his aid, holding him at bay with a wobbly hand. She hunched her back, inhaled and lifted a young face flooded with determination.

She cleared her throat. “Oliver, I cannot thank you enough. You have done Venner a tremendous service.”

Mathilda flashed a quizzical glance to Oliver, but he appeared equally taken aback by Ingrid’s hard-fought resolve.

When the clock tolled eleven times, Venner briefly regained consciousness, groggy and sore from the damage winter had wrought on his body. Through the night, his fever flared and then broke. He even managed reassuring mumbles of protest as Ingrid spoon-fed him broth.

Mathilda peeked into the guest room. On top of the bureau, a half-consumed bowl of soup awaited its return to the kitchen. Pale candlelight suffused the scene with hues of gold, obscuring the edges of the room and bringing focus to its paired occupants. Ingrid was reading aloud from
The Divine Comedy.
Venner’s slack eyelids suggested that he had drifted back to the realm of slumber, floating on the cadence of his wife’s singsong Italian.