Vienna Waltz (The Imperial Season Book 1) (30 page)

L
izzie felt the
blood drain from her face so fast she had to grasp the bedclothes to scare off the dizziness. “You met Cousin Ivan?” she whispered. “You sold
him
the document?”

“Not exactly…you know, despite evicting you all from Launceton so indecently fast, he’s not such a bad chap. In fact, he’s a great gun.”

Lizzie pressed both hands into her temples. “But this doesn’t make sense. He wouldn’t! Even if he would, why should he? Surely my uncle had already seen it?”

“If you ask me, it’s you who’s not making any sense. He didn’t
buy
the document from me. He made me take it back and he lent me five thousand to pay off all my debts in one. I’m going to work for him to pay it back.”

Lizzie, feeling like a fish gasping in the air, said, “As what?” in a strangled voice.

“We haven’t decided yet. Perhaps helping to manage one of the estates. Who knows? If he goes back to Russia, I might be able to sneak you all home to Launceton Hall.”

“Oh James, you idiot,” Lizzie said, going to him and throwing her arms around his neck in a brief, hard hug of sheer relief. After a second of stunned surprise, just as she released him, his arms came around her, just as the door opened and Aunt Lucy stuck her head in.

“James, I need you to—” She broke off, her mouth falling open in astonishment. “James?” she floundered. “Lizzie?” In horror, she leapt into the room and closed the door, leaning against it with both palms flat against the wood.

James’ arms, fortunately, had fallen away as soon as his mother had opened the door, but neither could pretend she hadn’t seen and grossly misunderstood.

“It’s not what you think, Mama,” James announced. “Lizzie and I are going to be married.”

“No you’re not!” Aunt Lucy exclaimed.

“No we’re not!” Lizzie uttered at the same time.

“You can’t,” Aunt Lucy declared. “You’re first cousins and neither of you has a bean!”

“We don’t care,” James insisted. “We’re engaged.”

“We are
not
engaged,” Lizzie said irritably. “Stop being so silly, James. You’re practically my brother and we are not compromised!”

“But Lizzie, I’m surprised at you,” Aunt Lucy raged. “What in the world are you doing in here cuddling James?”

“I wasn’t cuddling him!” Lizzie protested. “Exactly. It was just…we’d managed to solve a problem together and it was a great relief.”

“Well, there you are, you can’t marry a man because you’re relieved!”

“Of course you can’t,” Lizzie agreed and Aunt Lucy, although still a trifle bewildered, began to look mollified.

Until James said determinedly, “But the reason isn’t relief; it’s love. I love Lizzie and I wish to marry her.”

“Since when?” Aunt Lucy demanded.

“Since never!” Lizzie exclaimed. “James, you do
not
love me or want to marry me! Only last week you were in love with that awful Fischer woman!”

But if she’d hoped to fire him into defense of his first love with the insult, she was doomed to disappointment. James merely waved the beautiful Louise Fischer to one side as an unimportant fancy of his youth.

“Perhaps he’s still drunk,” Lizzie said to Aunt Lucy and left them to it. She had more important things to think about, such as what Vanya’s letter said.

It wasn’t much of a letter, more of a military instruction, asking for a list of all the British people she knew in Vienna, especially those who had visited the house or who were at all intimate with either James or his father. Clearly, Vanya, too, was trying to track down the mysterious Englishman who traded in state secrets and, knowing James’ moment of weakness with the purloined document, assumed her cousin knew him.

Two hours later, as she sat alone in the drawing room window, mending a pile of stockings, James stuck his head around the door and she beckoned him inside.

“I never had the chance to give you the letter from Cousin Ivan,” she said, low.

“I’m a bit worried about Cousin Ivan,” James confessed. “Papa’s just told me the Russians tried to arrest him and he escaped. They think he stole their document about the secret meeting with the Prussians. Apparently, he fought ten men to a standstill and then leapt bareback onto a horse and jumped it over a meat wagon to get away. Some people say he
killed
ten men, in which case I don’t see the tsar ever forgiving him.”

“Oh dear,” Lizzie said, pressing her hands to her cheeks, then lowering them decisively. “But then, it’s probably not true.”

Hastily, she repeated the gist of his letter. James sat down there and then to begin writing his list. He made two columns, one for Lizzie’s acquaintances and one for his own, so that he could write Lizzie’s down while she carried on sewing.

“Oh, you know Grassic, do you?” James said thoughtfully when she came to that name. “What do you think of him?”

“He’s good company, amusing and knowledgeable. Beyond that, I don’t know. Why?”

James wrinkled his nose. “He’s a friend of Cousin Cedric’s.”

“That certainly stands against him, but I don’t believe they’re close. Why do you ask? What do you think of him?”

“Well…” James shifted in the chair and took a deep breath. “It was Grassic told me about the money to be made from selling particular documents.”

Lizzie stared at him, letting her work fall into her lap. “
Mr. Grassic
put you up to it?”

“Well, he put me in the way of it, told me where to go and when to deliver it and get paid. But dash it, Lizzie, he’s a man of the cloth! I don’t think he’s the villain Cousin Ivan’s looking for!”

“Why not?” she asked baldly. “Just because he’s a clergyman?”

“No, dash it, because he’s a gentleman. He was just helping me out of a hole, not running some international spying organization.”

Lizzie gazed at him in frustration. “James. What sort of a gentleman suggests to a diplomat’s son that he steal an important document and sell it to strangers in the dead of night? If you have no concept of what your discovery would have done to your father, you may safely wager that Mr. Grassic does.”

James stared into space, digesting that, then brought his eyes back into focus on Lizzie’s face. “You think I’m a bit of a fool, don’t you?”

“I think your good nature combined with your lack of experience makes you too trusting,” Lizzie replied kindly, returning to her needlework. “I suspect it wouldn’t matter so much anywhere but here at this particular time. A better question is really what we do about Mr. Grassic?”

After a few moments of thought, she became aware of James’ gaze, still riveted to her face, as though he were seeing someone quite other than his familiar and slightly odd cousin, Lizzie.

She frowned. “You
have
stopped all this marriage nonsense, haven’t you?”

“Oh no. I think it would be a capital idea to be married, don’t you?”

“No! James, there is absolutely no need for this. My reputation is not in need of saving.”

“Oh, I know that. And I’ll not deny the words first tumbled out in a fit of chivalry, but do you know, I liked them as soon as I spoke them. The idea grows on me all the time. I’d very much like to marry you, Lizzie.”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she said flatly. “I’d drive you insane in an hour. And besides, I’m too old for you and I regard you in something of the same light as I regard Michael, so marriage would
not
be comfortable!”

“I won’t give up,” James announced, rising to his feet as the sounds of his mother and sister returning from some expedition drifted in through the door.

“James, how can I be clearer? I won’t marry you and I won’t change my mind!”

He only smiled in the annoying way of men who believe a mere woman can’t know her own mind. How could he have learned that and failed to grasp the basics of right and wrong as personified in Mr. Grassic?

James strolled out. Lizzie heard a brief exchange in the hall and then Minerva came in to show her the new trim for her best ball gown which she had already worn several times.

“It’s very pretty and will look most charmingly on that gown,” Lizzie approved, glad to see her taking an interest at last. It would please Aunt Lucy, although the reason might not. Minerva now wished to look her best for Mr. Corner.

“I want to be an asset to him in every way,” Minerva confided. “I quite understand that impressions such as appearance can be important, especially at the beginning of a diplomatic relationship.”

Lizzie smiled. “And a romantic one. Are you winning my aunt and uncle around?”

“Not exactly. Mama won’t listen to anything about it and I’m fairly sure she hasn’t even mentioned it to Papa. But I’m quite fixed upon it.”

“And Mr. Corner?”

Minerva blushed. “He wishes to marry me, but he believes we should wait until Papa receives his promotion after the Congress. Mr. Corner will surely rise with him and this will be an excellent time to ask Papa for my hand.”

Besides which, it gave the young people time to know each other better. Lizzie’s opinion of Mr. Corner’s good sense and his care of Minerva rose another notch.

“But what about you, Lizzie? You’re really going to marry James?”

“Of course I’m not!” Lizzie said irritably. “James said it in a foolish bout of misplaced chivalry. There is no engagement.”

“Oh.” Minerva began wrapping her trimmings back up. “Pity. It would have been nice to have you as my sister.”

Lizzie didn’t point out that she came with two sisters of her own, plus an illegitimate brother. And her own preferred independence in a cottage somewhere was less likely than ever now that she felt obliged to give Vanya the money back.

“Oh, and Mama thinks you will have to start coming out with us,” Minerva said brightly. “At least to some events.”

“Oh no. That was never in our agreement. None of us would enjoy my being the obvious poor relation and none of us can afford anything different.”

“Well, Mama has found a dressmaker who’s just starting out on her own so her prices are excellent. She thinks we could afford you a new ball gown. We can share trims to change the appearance.”

“You’re all so kind, but no, it wouldn’t be right.” Lizzie put away her work and stood, gathering up the mended stockings.

“But you are going to Mrs. Fawcett’s, so what’s the difference?”

Lizzie laughed. “Mrs. Fawcett is a force of nature.”

“And you go to the Duchess of Sagan’s.”

“I went once in the afternoon. Because Dorothée took us there. And talking of afternoon visits, I promised to go to Mrs. Fawcett early today…”

The drawing room door flew open to admit an angry maid. “Miss, the dog eats my washing!” she raged.

*

At Mrs. Fawcett’s,
Count Lebedev began to pass on what he’d learned from Vanya.

“Then you’ve seen him?” Mrs. Fawcett said eagerly.

“He accosted me in my rooms in the middle of the night,” Lebedev said wryly. “He’d been speaking to an Austrian policeman, who told him information is circulating like a plague. The same stolen documents are being bought and sold several times and everyone’s paying huge amounts of money in the belief that they’re buying something vital that no one else knows about. By now, they must have guessed the information isn’t always unique, but still they pay. And one man seems to be reaping the benefits. An Englishman.”

“Mr. Grassic,” Lizzie said. “He’s an English clergyman—or says he is. I’ve written to the Bishop of Gloucester, who was a friend of my father’s, to find out if he really has a living in his diocese, but it will be some time before we have an answer.”

Count Lebedev blinked at her in clear surprise. “So that’s it,” he said, incomprehensibly.

“I beg your pardon?”

“Nothing. So, we know who…but to save Vanya, we need to know who took the Russian document to sell to Grassic.”

“We could ask Grassic,” Mrs. Fawcett said grimly. “I have two
very
stout footmen.”

Count Lebedev, appearing to see nothing amiss with this plan, nodded thoughtfully. “I know a few Cossacks who’d be willing to hold him down, too.”

“I suspect if you beat a man enough he’ll tell you what you want to hear rather than the truth,” Lizzie said sternly. “Isn’t our best chance to – ah – persuade him to do it again and catch him?”

Lebedev eyed her with fascination. “How would we do that? Without opening the tsar’s government to further risk?”

“Well,” Lizzie said modestly. “I have a plan.”

*