The Diamond Slipper (8 page)

The sounds of music still came from the ballroom as Cordelia jumped the last two of the sweep of marble stairs rising from the entrance hall. She didn’t pause to catch her breath but hastened into the anteroom. She stopped in the doorway beneath a torch in a wall sconce and curtsied with formal deliberation.

“I trust you find nothing to object to in my costume, Lord Kierston.” She raised her eyes, and the flaming torch was reflected in the dark irises.

“I would call it a vast improvement, madame,” he replied with a cool bow.

“I have it in mind to instruct the seamstresses to fashion me one of those garments women wear in the sultan’s harems,” she said. “Something that covers every inch of my skin, with a veil over my head, so no one can see anything of me but my eyes. Would that suit you, sir? That way I could never be a temptation or—”

“Put a bridle on your tongue, Cordelia!” he interrupted, trying to hide a bubble of amusement, lowering his eyelids to conceal the glints of laughter he knew were alive in his eyes. Cordelia could cover herself in horsehair and she would still be a temptation, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.

“Do I tempt you, my lord?” She glanced up at him with demure eyes, long black lashes fluttering in a perfect mockery of flirtation.

“Cordelia!” exclaimed Christian yet again. He’d never seen his friend behave in this manner. “Have you had too much champagne?”

She shook her head, her eyes still fixed upon the viscount. “Well, do I tempt you, my lord?”

“To many things,” he replied dampeningly. “Few of them pleasant.”

“I was only funning,” she said, although she knew she hadn’t been, but some devil inhabited her when she was in
the viscount’s company, and she couldn’t seem to help her-self. “I don’t think you have a sense of humor, sir. If you had, you wouldn’t wear that boring and unimaginative costume.”

Leo glanced at his reflection in the mirror. “What’s wrong with it?” He sounded chagrined.

“It’s dull. I would have dressed you as a Roman legionnaire instead … in a short toga and leggings, and those sandals with the crossed laces that go up to the knee. Now, that wouldn’t have been boring in the least. Oh, and a circlet of gilded laurel leaves around your head.
Very
appealing.”

Leo was so occupied trying to sort out this image of himself so blithely presented that it took him a minute to realize that she’d thrown him off balance again. He glanced at Christian and saw to his further chagrin that the young man was grinning.

“Cordelia’s very good at costumes, my lord,” Christian volunteered. “She designs all the costumes for the plays the royal family put on in the theatre at Schonbrunn. I know what she was wearing tonight was shocking, but it
was
very clever.”

Leo glanced again at his image in the mirror and caught himself reflecting that it
was
a very boring costume. A legionnaire’s regalia would have been much more imaginative and exciting.

Dear God! What would he be thinking next? “She was as conspicuous as a flamingo in a dovecote,” he stated repressively. “Now, could we get to the matter in hand? If Poligny is pirating Christian’s work, then he must be exposed.”

“Yes, but even if we do that, Christian’s position here will be impossible, even with the empress’s support. Poligny has so many friends, so much influence.”

“That’s what I told
you
,” Christian pointed out, “and you accused me of being a pessimist.”

“Well, I thought about it a bit more.” Cordelia wandered over to the table and the bottle of champagne. “Is there a glass for me?”

“I’m afraid not.” Leo sipped his own wine.

“Never mind. I can share Christian’s.” She suited action to words, taking Christian’s glass from his unresisting fingers. “This is what I have in mind. Christian should expose Poligny in a broadsheet that will hit the streets the day we all leave Vienna.”

Leo’s gaze sharpened. The musician was leaving too?

“But won’t that look as if I’m afraid to defend my position?” Christian took the glass back and sipped.

“It might, but not if your evidence is incontrovertible.” She held out her hand for the glass, talking rapidly but succinctly. “It’ll cause a stir at the very least, and the news will reach Paris, so that when you arrive there you should already be a celebrity and it shouldn’t be difficult to find an influential patron. Everyone knows you’re a genius. And if they don’t, they’ll discover it immediately, as soon as you begin to play. What do you think, sir?” She turned to Leo, who had been watching the interplay between the two with a degree of amusement. Their ease with each other was completely free of loverlike undercurrents; it reminded him of the way he and Elvira had been together.

Sorrow, as fresh as it had ever been, washed through him. He picked up the bottle and refilled his glass.

Cordelia, seeing the sudden shadow in the viscount’s eyes, looked over at Christian. But Christian was frowning, absorbed in the business at hand.

“Do you think my husband might be prepared to sponsor Christian?” she asked, as the viscount took a sip of his wine and seemed to emerge from whatever black landscape he’d been inhabiting. “Just initially, I mean. Just to introduce him to the right people.”

Leo stroked his chin and considered this. Embracing the cause of an impoverished young musician, even if he was a genius, didn’t sound at all like Michael. “I wouldn’t pin my hopes on it,” he said eventually.

Christian looked crestfallen, but Cordelia said impulsively,
“But supposing I asked for it as a wedding present? It wouldn’t be a big thing.”

Leo couldn’t help laughing. “My dear girl, a bride doesn’t march up to her husband at first meeting and demand a wedding present.”

“I suppose not,” she said glumly.

“Besides, I don’t have the money for the journey,” Christian pointed out.

“Oh, I have money, that’s not a problem,” she said with a return of enthusiasm. “I can lend you whatever you need.”

“I don’t wish to borrow money from you, Cordelia.”

“Pshaw! False pride,” she said dismissively. “You’ll pay it back when you’re rich and famous and known the world over. But you must have a sponsor in Paris. Perhaps the king …” She glanced interrogatively at Leo.

“It’s not impossible. The king is a generous patron, but it’s not easy to gain his notice.”

Cordelia chewed her lip. She could think of the solution, but she wondered if it would be impertinent to suggest it. It would, of course, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. However, it would be unforgivable to put both men on the spot in front of each other.

“The champagne has made me very thirsty,” she said. “I wish I had some lemonade.”

“I’ll fetch you a glass,” Christian said instantly, as she’d known he would. He set the champagne glass on the table and hurried from the room.

Cordelia picked up the discarded glass and sipped, trying to think how to approach the delicate subject.

“I thought the champagne made you thirsty,” Leo observed, leaning back against a pier table, folding his arms, regarding her with an ironical eye.

“I want to ask you something private,” she said.

“Why do I have the sense of impending trouble?” He reached behind him for his own glass.

“Will you sponsor Christian?”

Leo closed his eyes briefly.

“Please. It wouldn’t be that much trouble, would it?” She came up to him, touching his arm again. “He really is a genius. You’ll see.”

He opened his eyes and looked down at her. Immediately, he regretted it. She was gazing up at him, her cheeks flushed, her hair tousled around her heart-shaped face. His eyes became riveted to the deep dimple in her chin, the full sensual bow of her lips. She brushed her hair impatiently from her face, tucking it behind her ears, and his gaze fell upon the small shells lying flat against the sides of her head. Her earlobes were long, begging for the grazing caress of his teeth.

“Please,” she said softly. “It would mean so much to me. Christian can’t waste his genius here. It’s not fair to the world!”

“How can I possibly be responsible for depriving the world of genius?” he said, his lips curving in an involuntary smile. “You could charm the birds out of the air, the fish out of the sea, Cordelia.”

Her eyes glowed and he knew he’d blundered again. “Could I, my lord?” Her little white teeth clipped her bottom lip.

He caught her face in both hands, his fingers pushing into the tangled ringlets. His mouth on hers was hard, as if he wanted to punish both of them for this craziness that he couldn’t help. His tongue forced her lips apart, probing, ravaging her mouth, almost as if he would thus penetrate her body to the obstinate, irresistible spirit that drove it. His hands were hard on her face as he fought through the mists of madness to control his surging arousal.

But unbelievably, she laughed against his mouth, her breath a moist and sweet whisper, and her tongue danced with his. Her body moved against him, her own hands moving unerringly to his buttocks, pressing his loins against her.

Leo started back, his hands falling to his sides. He stared at her, her flushed face, her smiling mouth, the dreamy arousal in her eyes.

“Get out of here.”

Cordelia stood her ground. She ran her hands through her hair, pushing the disordered curls off her face. “Don’t you think you could love me at all, Leo? Not even one little bit?”

With a savage execration, he pushed past her and strode from the room.

Cordelia snapped a thumbnail between her teeth. At least he hadn’t said no. But perhaps simply following her instincts as she was accustomed to doing was a mistake. Perhaps honesty put him off because he was accustomed to playing the sophisticated games of flirtation before the glittering mirrors of Versailles. But she didn’t know how to play those games. She didn’t know how to be anything but herself.

Too keyed up to go to bed and in too much turmoil to manage to be coherent in company, she made her way to the formal baroque gardens of the palace, the night air cooling her cheeks. That explosion of passion had shaken her. There had been a moment when he had frightened her, when she had sensed in him a force that could sweep her away into some maelstrom in which she would lose all sense of her own identity.

She shivered, wondering with a deep liquid surge in her loins what it would be like to experience that unleashed force.

Chapter Five

F
OR THE HUNDREDTH
time that day, Cordelia took up the miniature of her husband-to-be and scrutinized it. It was as if each time she stared into that calm, expressionless countenance, she expected to find some clue to the man himself. She knew that her own miniature was a fair likeness of herself, but that somehow it didn’t capture any sense of the person she was. Presumably Prince Michael was as frustrated by this as she was.

The clock chimed five. In one hour she would be married by proxy to the man whose face gazed out at her from the lacquered frame. And she knew herself to be woefully unprepared for marriage, for wifehood, for motherhood—either to mother the prince’s two little girls or to bring forth her own child. The idea of going blind into the unknown made her skin prickle with anxiety.

Mathilde bustled in, her arms full of silver cloth. “Come, come, child. Time’s hurrying along and you must be downstairs to meet your uncle at five minutes to six.” She laid the gown on the bed, panting slightly, her cheeks flushed. The gown was so heavily stitched with silver thread and seed pearls that it weighed almost as much as Cordelia herself.

Cordelia put down the miniature and stood up. The gown she would wear for her second wedding was already packed in the leatherbound chests she would take to Paris. It was made of cloth of gold and was even heavier than this one.

She shook off her wrapper with an impatient gesture that masked her sudden apprehension, and stood still as Mathilde laced her and fastened the tapes of her panniers. They were so wide she would have to slide sideways through
all but the widest double doors. She stepped into the first of her six petticoats.

Twenty minutes later she was finally hooked into the gown. Her hair had been powdered and dressed hours before, and when she examined herself in the cheval glass, she saw a woman who bore no relation to herself. A painted, powdered doll, with jeweled heels so high and clothes so stiff and heavy she could walk only with the smallest steps. She’d endured ceremonial dress on other occasions since she’d left the schoolroom, but familiarity didn’t lessen its discomforts.

Duke Franz Brandenburg was leaning heavily on his cane, his watch in his hand, when his niece entered the small salon in the imperial apartments of the Hofburg Palace.

“You are late,” he pronounced in his customary irascible manner. “I cannot abide unpunctuality.”

Cordelia curtsied and offered no defense. It was four minutes to six, but a minute was as bad as an hour in her uncle’s book.

“Come.” He limped to the door. “It’s the grossest incivility to keep Viscount Kierston waiting. He’s being most generous in taking on such a charge, and there’s no need to make it more irksome than it already is.” Belatedly, he offered her his arm at the door. “He must be a very close friend and confidant of Prince Michael’s to do him such service. Unless, of course, he’s in his debt,” he added waspishly. “That’s probably it. No man in his right mind would voluntarily take on such a burden.”