CHAPTER TWO

“Revenge!” Peter Riesenbeck declaimed. He leaped to the top of a sturdy, wooden table, waving his wine glass threateningly at the inn patrons in the courtyard around him. “For the murder of my father, the theft of my inheritance—”

“What madness is this?” Marta cried. Fluttering an imaginary fan, she flung her free hand to her brow. “Oh, heavens, say my dear lord’s wits are not o’ercome!”

A third actor shouldered his way through the crowd of spectators who’d gathered around the impromptu rehearsal. “A messenger, my lord! The count, your father-in-law, approaches.”

“Ha!” Peter bellowed. “Now I have him at my mercy.”

Marta fell to her knees. “Husband, I beg you—”

“And you will all learn what comes of it tomorrow night, good people!” Peter said. He jumped down from the table and swept a bow to the gathering. “Behold the Riesenbeck company at your service, summoned from Prague for the noble Congress of Peace, for which only the finest theatrical companies are desired. Marta Dujic, my leading lady”—he lifted his wine glass to her, and she swept into a graceful curtsy—“Rudolf Griesinger, playing the messenger”—a bow—“and myself, Peter Riesenbeck, director of the company. Come see us at the Theater an der Wien any night of the week for theater performed in good honest German!”

A bevy of young men converged on Marta, and Peter stepped back, draining his wine glass. As he wiped the sweat from his brow, Marta’s husband, Karl, spoke grudgingly behind him.

“It went well.”

“Of course it did.” Peter pasted a smile on his face as he turned to face the older man. Even now, he saw, Karl was scowling—Good God, had the man no heart?

“Look at them all,” Peter said. “They’re in town for the Congress but too poor for the balls and royal entertainment. They know this city’s the center of Europe right now, but it’s all going on above their heads. What better time for theater? Much less our theater, eh?” He slapped Karl’s broad shoulder. “The best small company in Prague, isn’t that what the Wiener Diarium called us? The best acting, best direction—”

“Best acting.” Karl’s eyes, still focused on Marta as she flirtatiously accepted the accolades of the men who surrounded her, narrowed thoughtfully. “I think we should all have pay rises now that we’ve reached Vienna.”

“Pay—?” Peter nearly choked. “My friend, perchance we might wait on a ticket sale or two for that? All my funds went into our trip and the inn roof above our heads.”

Karl shrugged off his protest. “The Theater an der Wien should pay for that. They would, if you knew what you were about in dealing with them. They were desperate enough to get us, after all.”

“Well, naturally, and yet . . .” Peter took a breath. Desperate, he’d called the theater agents, to the rest of the company. In truth, it would have been a better description for himself.

With debts mounting up in Prague all around them, he’d fought and scrambled for the invitation to Vienna, and then only managed it by scraping his requirements so low it would be a wonder if they made any money from the theater at all. He could hardly have told the actors the truth of that, though—for the predictable effect on their performances, if nothing else. And they would never have understood. The looks of betrayal that he would see on their faces, if he ever told them the truth . . .

And the look he could imagine on his old mentor’s face, if he heard that Peter’s young, hopeful theater troupe had fallen apart after less than three years in existence . . .

“You’re no hero, boy, only a minor bit player.”

No. Peter drew a deep breath, forcing back the too-often remembered words. I’ll prove you wrong yet, Master Périgord. This is my chance.

Vienna was the center of the whole world just now, not only of the Austrian empire. If their performances went well—no, when they went well and achieved the success he’d always dreamed of—why, then they’d be offered contracts from every theater in the empire, even the Habsburgs’ Burgtheater itself, and Peter would only have to choose the top-paying offer to gift them all with infinite luxury.

Every dramatic hero took a few risks before gaining everything in the end. This trip was an investment for their future.

For their survival.

Peter forced his grin to hold. “Why, Karl, I do believe you have a point,” he said. “And I promise sincerely that I’ll think on it. Only let us play our first week in Vienna first.”

At five-and-twenty, Peter was one of the youngest theatrical directors in the empire. He’d pulled all of the actors into his company on the strength of his energy and dreams. He would not fail them now.

Peter turned away from Karl, ignoring the mutinous expression on the older actor’s face, and started back through the crowd toward the inn’s entrance, in search of a waitress. A tug on his sleeve stopped him just before the door.

“Herr Riesenbeck?” The man was about his own age, with a pleasant smile and unobtrusive air. If Peter hadn’t been hailed, he might never have noticed this fellow in a crowd, so sober was his dress and so quiet his voice. “An excellent performance, sir.”

“I thank you, sir!” Peter bowed. “Are you a keen theatergoer?”

“Not as much as I should like.” The man smiled ruefully. “I run errands for my employer, who often makes me work at night. I do have a friend who serves as theater critic for one of the local newspapers, though.”

“Really?” Peter brightened.

“Indeed.” The man pointed to the empty seats at the nearby table. “Won’t you join me, Herr Riesenbeck? I’ve already ordered more wine for both of us.”

“I’d be honored.” Peter sat down, relief flowing through him. The other patrons at the table were all engaged in a heated conversation on the new tariffs, which he was happy to ignore.

It was his first stroke of luck, and less than an hour since they had arrived. A good omen if he’d ever seen one.

“May I ask where you’ve performed in the past?” the man asked. “Your style is quite distinctive—I could have sworn I’d seen it before—yet I’m afraid I didn’t recognize the name of your company. As I said, I don’t spend nearly enough time in the theaters, so . . .”

“Unless you’ve been to Prague, I doubt you’ve ever had the chance to see us before,” Peter said. “Thus far, we’ve only toured in the provinces. But as for the style . . .” He paused, debating within himself, and then gave in to practical honesty. “I apprenticed to the director Paul Périgord.”

“Ah. Now that name I do know.” Peter recognized, with resignation, the sudden spark of real admiration in the man’s widened eyes and genuine smile. “You were fortunate indeed to have so distinguished a mentor.”

“Indeed,” Peter said, and stifled a groan. How Périgord would laugh if he overheard this conversation. Still, he would make himself known for his own achievements, and not only for his too-famous mentor. Soon.

“Might I have the pleasure of your name, sir?” he asked his new companion.

“Vaçlav Grünemann.”

“Aha. Another Bohemian, then.” Peter leaned one arm against the table. Through the inn door, the smells of roasting meat floated temptingly. Should he—could he—pay for Grünemann’s meal as well as his own? He had watched Périgord feast the reviewers and theater managers in Prague so many times. If Peter thought of it as an investment . . .

“Originally Bohemian,” Grünemann said. “But my family moved to Vienna a long time ago.”

“I understand.” A plump waitress arrived at the table, bringing a jug of wine and two cups, and Peter smiled at her as he spoke. “My family has been in Prague three generations now, but we’re of Austrian stock.”

“I wondered, actually . . .” As the waitress moved away, Grünemann leaned closer, still smiling. “I thought I might have recognized an old friend, when you first arrived.”

“Sir?”

“Another man rode with you, did he not? A man who wasn’t a member of your excellent troupe.”

“Ah . . .” Peter blinked. Michael had slipped away almost the moment they’d arrived in the busy inn yard, too worried about being sighted by one of his scheming brother’s acquaintances to linger. Grünemann didn’t look the sort to spread rumors, and yet . . . “I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter lied smoothly.

“No? I could have sworn I saw you help another man from your carriage—and not from any of the usual seats.” Grünemann sat back and began to pour wine. He handed Peter a full glass. “I only ask because he looked so familiar. I thought it might have been a game with him, to ride undetected through the city gates.”

“Mm.” Peter accepted his wine glass, thinking furiously. If Grünemann really wanted to know, what damage could it do? Yet, they’d sworn secrecy to their illicit guest, and Michael had seemed a good fellow. Moreover, if word came out that the Riesenbeck company had thwarted the customs checkpoint, even as a game . . .

No, continued secrecy was the best, as well as the most honorable, option. And after all, no matter how influential a friend he might be, Grünemann would hardly take offense at that. It couldn’t mean so much to him just to learn the truth of one small adventure.

“I’m afraid it must have been a trick of the light, my friend,” Peter said. “Only members of my own troupe traveled with me. We do cram ourselves within the carriages, you know, to save on space. Perhaps you saw me helping Karl.”

Grünemann’s gray eyes remained disconcertingly intent upon his face for a long moment. The guests around them continued their deafening hum of talk, and brassy music sounded from inside the inn, yet Grünemann was ominously silent.

“I do apologize for any confusion,” Peter said. “Is he a good friend of yours, this man you thought you saw?”

“Not particularly,” Grünemann said. “Ah well.” He toasted Peter with his wine glass. “Your health, sir.” He smiled again, yet Peter thought the smile had taken a wry turn. “You may be certain that we shall meet again.”

Twenty blocks away, Michael turned into a crowded tavern in the sixteenth district, smiling and confident but careful not to make eye contact with any of the other guests. His satchel swung in his hand as he strode through the haze of smoke and laughter to the back door. Two outhouses stood hidden behind the tavern. He ducked into the first, holding his satchel high above the filth.

Five minutes later, he stepped out remade. He’d removed the close black wig to reveal his own short, thick brown hair, styled with his fingers into waving disorder—last year’s style, alas, but still the only fashion he could manage acceptably on his own, without the aid of a mirror.

Far better, he’d changed his plain, dark-colored overgarments for a deep blue tailcoat and tight, fawn-colored breeches in the fashionable, English style. A carefully tied cravat around his throat, gleaming silver buttons on his butter-yellow waistcoat, a walking stick beneath his arm, top boots on his feet, and a great seal ring on his left hand completed the picture of a wealthy European royal in search of expensive amusement.

Not just the picture, Michael thought, as he slipped on the ring. The man himself. He closed his eyes and arranged his features, letting them gradually slide into the expression that felt most natural in this outfit, this new cloak of identity. The man who wore these clothes—the prince who wore these clothes—would wear them without a thought as to their cost, or to the reactions of those around him. When he walked through these familiar streets, he would expect others to make way for him.

He must look as far removed from a grimy printmaker’s apprentice as any creature on Earth could be. If anyone from Michael’s past saw him now . . .

But there was no one left to recognize, or to mourn. His beloved first master was gone. That much was certain. And the only other person who had ever known him well enough to recognize him in any disguise, the only person he had ever been foolish enough to let himself care too much for . . .

Michael took a deep, steadying breath. It had been twenty-four years, and he would never know what had happened to Karolina, for good or for ill. There was no purpose in torturing himself over possibilities, even as he walked the streets of the city that he’d shared with her.

The man he played now would never even speak to anyone from her class of society, let alone care about her fate. And in the gamble that lay ahead, that truth was all that Michael could allow to matter.

He set his shoulders and drew a deep breath.

His satchel, abandoned, sat in the back corner of the outhouse as Michael strode briskly back through the tavern, gratified at the careful berth the other men drew around him, now. A beggar approached him on the street—one of the few, perhaps, who had escaped the police purges during preparations for the Congress—and Michael flipped the man one of his few spare coins with an expansive gesture.

He couldn’t change the past and save the people he had once loved. But he could do his best now with what he had.

Why not be generous, after all? He was about to play the greatest gamble of his life, to win a fortune, a title, and a future. He could hardly quibble at mere florins now.

Caroline was still shaking as the crowd around her, freed from paralysis, rose to their feet and broke into a German hymn of thanks. Thank Heaven for her disguise; she wasn’t meant to be able to speak German. It had been a sensible precaution: French, the official language of the Vienna Congress, was a language she’d only learned after moving to England, so her French, at least, was inflected with a suitably British accent. Whereas her German . . .

Even if Caroline had been willing to admit to speaking Austrian German, one airing of her native accent—the Viennese inner-city tones of a printmaker’s daughter—would have ruined her disguise forever.

Now, though, the ruse served a different purpose. As the men and women around her, even the cynical Prince de Ligne himself, raised their voices in the German prayer, she gained a breathing space to calm herself in near-private. She clenched the thin skirts of her muslin dress as she waited for her hands to stop shaking. Steeling herself, she endured the chills that flooded her body, chills that felt only too familiar: she’d been eleven years of age the first time she’d felt this aftereffect.

Eleven and terrified, in a windowless room. And even after it had happened, leaving her shivering and weeping, she’d still begged the man who’d done it: Where is my father? When is he coming back? Worse yet, she’d even believed his promises: Soon. Only be a good girl . . .

Caroline’s teeth nearly pierced her bottom lip. She forced her lips open and made her shivering fingers relax their grip on her dress.

She was Lady Wyndham now, not helpless Karolina. She wouldn’t let herself break down in fear before her plots had even begun. She would not give her old jailers that satisfaction.

The ceremony came to a close with the ending of the hymn. As the archbishop signed a perfunctory blessing before the restive crowd of royals, the Prince de Ligne turned to Caroline.

“Well, my dear. Now that you’ve seen the Austrian way of celebrating peace, what do you think of it?”

Caroline’s smile cut like a knife through her face. “I found it most . . . enlightening, sir.”

“An interesting choice of words.” He cocked one eyebrow at her. “I must admit, I found it surprisingly moving at the end. It may have been my first taste of true religious fervor since, oh . . . 1752, perhaps?”

“And what happened then?”

“Oh, that was when I first read Voltaire. We were all very enlightened back then, you know. Even you might have been startled by our salons, I think—each of us trying to outdo the others in our heresy and freethinking. Not like these modern days.” The prince sighed faintly as he looked across the crowd. “It’s become fashionable now to act terribly moral. I fear I find it rather tiring.”

He did look tired, although Caroline would not insult him by pointing it out. No, more than tired . . . drained. Earlier, in his sparkling company, Caroline had nearly forgotten that the Prince de Ligne was eighty years of age already. But it could not be healthy to have so much energy sucked out of him now. And for such an object . . .

“But I’d almost forgotten—you desired an introduction to the emperor,” said the prince. “Will you take my arm?”

“Of course,” Caroline said.

The prince held out his thin arm and Caroline took it, careful not to lean any of her own weight on it. She felt it taut with suppressed exhaustion under her hand, but the prince’s face was clear and good-humored.

“I must warn you, my dear, that I am no favorite of the emperor these days. I made the mistake of publishing a series of letters a few years ago that debated some few points of public policy . . . forgetting, you see, that over the last few decades the criticism of the emperor’s peers has turned into a crime.”

“A brave move indeed,” Caroline murmured.

“I’m afraid our admired emperor did not find it so. I am too much of a public figure, even these days, to be openly punished for such an act, and yet . . .” The prince shrugged. “The atmosphere at court turned notably cold for quite some time.”

“A loss indeed. And yet . . .” Caroline aimed a slanted smile at her escort. “Might I hazard an impudent guess, Your Highness? When you attended the court functions anyway, did not you gather more friends and admirers around you than the emperor himself? And were not at least a few of them drawn by the scandal you’d provoked?”

The Prince de Ligne broke into laughter as infectious as that of a boy. “You are far too perceptive, my dear. And, of course, you are entirely correct. I could have eaten ten suppers a day for the next six months if I’d accepted a quarter of the invitations that suddenly came flooding in upon me.” He shook his head, his eyes gleaming with amusement. “But now that you’ve guessed so much, I have another riddle for you to solve.

“You remember how we spoke earlier of our new Robinson Crusoe out on his island Elba? Well, perhaps you may guess my secret name for our honored emperor, too, once we’ve spoken to him.”

Caroline laughed and answered and tried, as they walked across the field, to subtly support the prince’s weight herself as much as possible, without embarrassing him. As she saw the new lines on his cheeks and the fever-bright gleam of his blue eyes, though, rage seethed inside her. She forced it down. Not now, she told herself. But soon . . .

Silently, she added one more point to the list of misdeeds that needed accounting before she left Vienna.