Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1) (10 page)

“You wait here,” Vanya said, as the fiacre pulled into the yard. “Stop the driver from abandoning us and heading back to Vienna without us.”

“Just don’t pay him,” Lizzie advised with unexpected worldliness. She prepared to rise. “I’m coming with you.”

“That’s not a good idea,” Vanya said. “Unless you want to get a lower price once my buyer sees the aristocracy’s involved. Or worse, connects you to the crime.”

Lizzie paused, her hand already on the door.

“I won’t run away with it,” Vanya assured her. “This is the only way out, so you may watch just as well from the comfort of the carriage.”

With obvious reluctance, Lizzie sat back down. “You won’t be long, will you?”

“A quarter of an hour, no more.” He winked at her. “Hold on to your hat. It’s nearly finished.”

He jumped down from the fiacre, gave the driver instructions to wait for him and to have a care for his passenger still inside, and strolled across the courtyard to the house. He crossed with the ostler who approached to see what the horses’ needs were.

Vanya entered the inn and turned into the taproom. Misha rose silently from the table nearest the door. Vanya nodded to him and jerked his head toward the door. Still wordless, Misha went out to keep watch on Lizzie as they’d agreed in this eventuality. There was another plan for Misha to play the buyer, should Lizzie have insisted on accompanying him inside.

Vanya stretched out his legs, smiled at the buxom girl approaching him, and ordered a beer.

*

Lizzie was only
too aware that she was out of her depth. Worse, her mind had developed a wayward habit of slipping away from the present to dwell on the unsettling encounter with the masked Colonel Vanya at the ball. An odd way to receive her first kiss. Well, her first serious kiss. She didn’t count the rather embarrassing lunge of Maurice, the vicar’s son, when they were both eighteen. She’d boxed Maurice’s ears and that had been the end of the matter. But for some reason, she’d had no inclination to slap Colonel Vanya or, indeed, to stop him at all.

The Russian officer had been fun, cloaked in an air at once dashing and self-deprecating, experienced and devil-may-care. And although he’d taken liberties, there had never been any doubt that she could dismiss him whenever she chose. When she finally had, he’d stopped. Her heart smote her at the memory of his eyes at that moment. She touched her lips, wondering…

Outside, the inn door creaked open again and a man mooched out. Not Johnnie, but a smaller, fair man with exotic whiskers and a leather jerkin. He leaned against the wall of the house and lit a pipe. Getting some air, perhaps, because he’d drunk too much ale? Or…Lizzie’s heart beat at the thought….a lookout making sure no police interfered with the transaction Johnnie was making on her behalf.

Another vehicle bowled quietly into the courtyard, an undistinguished trap driven by a nondescript man in a peaked cap. He got down, gave the reins to the ostler and walked toward the inn. Without any obvious interest, he spared a glance at Lizzie’s waiting fiacre, then went inside, ignoring the smoking man who watched him.

Lizzie was aware she had too great a tendency to trust. And now that she thought of it, she knew no more about Johnnie than she did about the stranger who’d just entered the inn after him—the buyer?—or the man who propped up the inn wall near the door.

Would Johnnie just take the money and run? He owed her nothing.

At any rate, it simply wasn’t in her nature to sit here and do nothing. With sudden decision, she opened the fiacre door, clutching her carpet bag, and jumped down.

“All good, Miss?” the driver asked.

“Oh yes. Just getting some air,” she said. “I won’t be long.”

Just long enough to walk around the building and make sure Johnnie wasn’t lying about there being other exits. She hurried out of the lit courtyard around the side of the house. Some of the light followed her, more shone out from the inn windows, so it wasn’t pitch dark. On the other hand, she couldn’t see very much as she blundered around the building.

Behind her, something cracked and shuffled, and the hairs on the back of her neck stood up. Was someone following her? If so, she couldn’t go back for fear of running into them. Trying not to panic, she hurried on her way as fast as she dared, hugging the wall of the house.

She did, at least, discover one other door, apparently leading out from the kitchen. A pig was asleep in a small pen with a pile of her babies. The mother opened one eye and snorted. Lizzie hurried on, looking around her. If Johnnie did come out that door, there was nowhere obvious for him to go except over the back wall into fields, and she couldn’t really imagine there was much point in him doing that. So it seemed her suspicions were unjustified. Only…

Behind her, she heard nothing. She wondered if her sense of another presence there was pure imagination. When she finally fought her way through a large rose bush back into the front yard, the fiacre was still waiting. The new arrival’s pony and trap had been taken into the stable, and the smoking man had vanished—back inside? Or behind her, following her…

Another crack, a swish and a breath of annoyance from the rose bush at the side of the house, told her what she needed to know. Someone
had
followed her. With sudden decision, she swerved away from the fiacre and inside the inn. She was undoubtedly safer among people.

*

The man known
as Agent Z was, in fact, a police officer, who had risen through the ranks to be one of Baron Hager’s most trusted lieutenants. He’d done so by a mixture of intelligence and diligence and an instinctive perception that led him to the heart of most cases. Since the Congress had come to Vienna, this perception had been vital in cutting through the mountain of information dumped on him by his many spies, new and old, to those few snippets of information that actually mattered to his country and his Emperor.

Major Blonsky’s accusation against Colonel Savarin was one of those few which interested him enough to merit further investigation by himself. He was only too aware that getting such a thing wrong could cause havoc, not to mention embarrassment. But if it were true, then Austria needed a countermeasure.

Agent Z doubted that it was true. Blonsky’s personal hatred of Savarin was obvious and the choice of an indiscreet, womanizing Cossack commander as the tsar’s go-between to the British didn’t make much sense either. On the other hand, many of the tsar’s choices baffled Agent Z and no one had ever questioned Savarin’s loyalty or bravery. Discreet inquiries had revealed that he was something of a hero in Russia, considered an intelligent commander by both his superiors and his men, which was rare enough to make him worthy of further investigation.

So, although Z suspected Blonsky’s accusation came from a desire to say
something
to earn his fee and get Z off his back, while at the same time paying off old scores, the connection between Savarin and Jeremy Daniels’ niece did give it a certain vague credence.

The niece was certainly up to something. She’d been observed leaving her home alone and had been followed to the Hofburg where Z had himself seen her with Colonel Savarin. He’d watched them vanish together into an alcove, which may have been an amorous assignation, as perhaps was this.

Z had witnessed the couple meet again outside the Hofburg and hurry into the fiacre, which he’d followed in his own waiting vehicle, throwing off his domino and mask and donning a peaked cap and a tatty overcoat, instead.

The inn was an odd place for a lovers’ tryst…and he’d seen at once that the girl waited alone in the fiacre. As if they were returning to Vienna tonight. On the other hand, Z clocked the colonel’s servant leaning against the wall outside, smoking, as if keeping watch. So what the devil was Savarin doing in the inn?

Drinking beer. He sat alone and looked perfectly comfortable, his elegant legs stretched out in front of him, ankles crossed. Z did what he did best, melted into the crowd, insignificant and unnoticed, while he observed his prey.

He learned nothing, until the girl came in. Savarin glanced up without interest, as did everyone else, then leapt to his feet with almost comical speed. The surrounding noise of talk and laughter died down as the other denizens of the taproom blinked at the sight of a clearly noble young woman, however ill-dressed, in their midst.

The girl halted inside the door, her eyes searching the room. They skimmed over Z, glimmered with rather worrying recognition—Z wasn’t used to being recognized by anyone—and moved on to Savarin with some relief.

Savarin was already starting toward her.

“What is it?” he demanded in English, taking her arm and spinning her around to face the door once more.

“Someone was following me,” she hissed.

“Following you where?”

“Around the building in the dark.”

“I thought we’d agreed you should stay put in the fiacre.” The colonel sounded harassed and more than a little frustrated.

“It was hardly a solemn and binding oath,” the girl retorted.

“Well, never mind, we can go now.”

“Really? Is it done?”

“Of course it is. I was just finishing my beer.”

That definitely interested Z.
What
was done? And when? Z couldn’t have been more than a couple of minutes behind Savarin and the Russian hadn’t said or done
anything
in that time. Z could almost have imagined he’d been escaping for five minutes from a nagging wife, only the man’s posture was all wrong: hovering, protective rather than truly annoyed to be discovered. And yet, Z was fairly sure Savarin had just lied to her.

His nose told him
something
was going on here. And he needed to know if it was important or just some amorous intrigue that hurt no one but the participants.

“Where is it?” the girl whispered.

Savarin patted his pocket once and Z knew he had to see whatever was there.

“Put it in my bag,” the girl instructed.

“Yes, but not here.” Savarin sounded more amused than harassed. “Have you no concept of discretion?”

“I suppose I lack your training,” she said with a faint curl of her lip.

“And common sense,” the colonel retorted, all but bundling her out of the door. Z was already moving quietly and quickly enough to catch the door before it shut completely. Thus he was able to slip out, slouching to blend with the place he’d left, and unseen by his quarries.

The colonel’s servant still leaned against the wall. In the shadows, without looking, the servant passed something to Savarin who pocketed it unobtrusively. Whatever it was, it weighed down the colonel’s pockets.

This interesting transaction, of course, had the added advantage of distracting the servant from Z’s presence. Z, more determined than ever to get to the bottom of this intrigue, flitted through the shadows and behind the fiacre, unnoticed by anyone in the courtyard.

“I
’m sure that’s
the man who followed me,” Lizzie hissed as they hurried across the courtyard to the fiacre.

“Him? You don’t need to worry,” Johnnie said hastily.

“Then he’s an ally?” Lizzie asked with some relief.

“You could say that,” Johnnie replied, glancing up at the snoozing fiacre driver. He opened the door himself and handed Lizzie in with an unconscious grace and civility she was sure must be rare in a thief.

However, her speculations got quickly lost when he climbed in after her, saying, “Open your bag.”

Lizzie obliged, carefully shifting the pistol she’d brought to one side, protecting it under her hand as Johnnie took handfuls of banknotes and silver coins from his pockets and dropped them into the bag. She felt her eyes widen.

“How much did you get?”

“More than you hoped,” Johnnie said. “Have a look. I’ll just have a quick word with—um…my ally there, and then wake the driver so we can be off.”

As Johnnie jumped down, she gazed in wonder at the money piled in her bag. It was in Austrian gulden, so she’d have to take it to a bank and calculate its worth in pounds, but it seemed an awful lot. Her heart warmed with gratitude to the thief as well as with relief that she finally had something, some security for Michael and the girls that would surely last until Henrietta could come out and catch a wealthy paragon of a husband to make her happy and provide for Georgiana and Michael as she would never be able to.