CHAPTER FIFTEEN

There were some mornings, Caroline reflected, when her bed—hers alone, singular and private, buried in thick coverings, with a warming pan at her feet and a fire in the wood stove across the room—seemed the only safe place in the world to be. Mornings when the thought of facing other people, shadowed by her memories of the night before, seemed more effort than she could bear.

Unfortunately, this particular morning she had an early appointment. Groaning, she forced herself up. By nine o’clock, equipped with her public armor of clothes, coiffeur, and careful cosmetics, she was as prepared as she could be for the day ahead . . . and already well into her second pot of strong English tea.

“God, God, God, Lady Wyndham! Why, oh why, did you hire a third-floor apartment?” The Prince de Ligne collapsed dramatically onto a chair as Caroline’s butler closed the drawing room door behind him. The prince’s blue eyes sparkled with pleasure even as he waved his hat before his face in exaggerated distress. “Have you no pity for a weak old man’s bones?”

“I’ll summon up pity if you’ll show me in return a weak old man.” Caroline eyed the prince’s bright eyes and unlined face with a mixture of amusement and envy. “Your Highness, have you once had a proper night’s sleep since this Congress began?”

“Sleep? What use would sleeping be when the fate of Europe is being decided all around us? Do use your wits, dear lady. Do you think I’d desire any rest at a time like this?”

“I suppose not,” Caroline murmured. She restrained herself, with Herculean effort, from yawning.

The unnatural strength and energy that had flooded her the night before had taken their own toll in a buzzing alertness that had kept her awake until dawn . . . awake, wide-eyed, and full of sharpened wits to contemplate all the dire possibilities that might result from her mistake. Each time she’d forced herself to shut her eyes, though, and close her mind to the teaming worries that plagued her, something worse had taken their place.

The memory of another presence within her, using her—feeding through her . . .

Caroline quelled the sickening lurch of memory and forced herself to focus. It might well be the ungodly hour of nine in the morning—an hour most of Europe’s aristocratic circle knew only through rumor, rather than by personal acquaintance—and she might have had fewer than three hours of sleep, but there was still no excuse to let her wits wander in company.

Not when she had such an opportunity before her.

“May I offer you refreshments, Your Highness?” she asked. “Or would you prefer to begin our journey without delay?”

“Let us say . . . with very little delay?” De Ligne cocked his head. “I think—ah, yes, I do hear footsteps in the distance.”

“Your Highness?” Caroline straightened, frowning. “I don’t understand.”

“I’ve invited Prince Kalishnikoff to join us, my dear. We’ll have to be a cozy group indeed to fit within my small carriage, but I knew you wouldn’t object for such an old friend.”

Caroline’s jaw tightened, but her smile remained. “Indeed,” she said, with brittle cheer. “How could I?”

“A charming fellow. He reminds me of myself, when I was younger.” A reminiscent smile tugged at the prince’s lips as footsteps sounded in the corridor outside. “Ah, to be that age again and full of wit and fire. When I recall some of my own exploits . . .”

“All of them shocking, I am sure.”

“Why, Lady Wyndham.” The smile turned into a smirk. “Could you doubt it?”

The drawing room door opened, and Michael stepped into the drawing room. “Your Highness! Lady Wyndham.” He bowed sweepingly. “I told your butler I didn’t require any announcement. And how do I find you both this morning?”

Michael, Caroline saw with disfavor, looked quite as lively as the prince himself, despite the fact that he hadn’t returned to the building until the early hours of the morning. Caroline had had to expand her usual minimal touches of makeup in order to disguise the purple shadows beneath her eyes; Michael looked positively well rested and glowing with energy as he flung himself down onto the sofa beside her. She could actually feel his vibrant heat prickling against her skin through the air that separated them, irritating all her senses . . . and bringing them to tingling alertness.

She forced herself to ignore the sensation. “I trust you both enjoyed your evening last night?” she asked. “I did regret that I couldn’t come.”

“It was astonishing to witness. ‘A school for conversation,’ as Monsieur le Baron de Talleyrand rightly called it.” Michael raised his hand in a mock salute to the prince. “I believe you took the honors, though, Your Highness. There was some close cross-and-jostle work near the end between a few of the French diplomats and that Prussian countess—oh, yes, and Prince Metternich made a good point or two—but they all retired with honors when you hit them with that final epigram. I was afraid Talleyrand might suffocate from laughing too hard.”

“Prince Metternich,” Caroline repeated faintly. “Did you share much conversation with him, Prince Kalishnikoff?”

“Why do you ask, my lady?” Michael’s eyes widened in mock innocence. “Should I have passed on a personal message from you, perhaps?”

Caroline bit back a sharp retort as she recognized the mischief in his face. Curse him, he knew exactly what she was thinking.

The more he mingled with the head of Austrian foreign policy, the more likely he was to become the object of study by the Austrian secret police. And Caroline, as his publicly acknowledged old friend and landlady . . .

“Our friend here made quite an impression on the assembled company,” De Ligne said. “Although perhaps most strongly with the French side of the diplomatic contingent. I can hardly wait to find out exactly what you and my old friend Talleyrand were scheming about last night, Your Highness.”

“Nor can I,” Caroline said grimly. “Do tell me, when you can. I’m sure I would find it . . . intriguing, to say the least.”

“I am at your service, of course,” said Michael. He turned to her, his hazel eyes glinting. “Do feel free to join in my scheming any time.”

Caroline stood up, shaking out her skirts with a twitch. “Shall we start out, gentlemen?”

“An excellent idea,” Michael said affably. “May I escort you, my lady?”

As the prince walked ahead of them, winking roguishly at the maidservants and exchanging pleasantries with the butler, Michael drew Caroline’s hand around his curved arm. He held her back slightly until the prince was a safe distance ahead, then breathed his words into her ear as they walked.

“I wouldn’t tease you so often if you weren’t so easily provoked, you know.”

Caroline sighed pointedly. “What a comfort that is to know. Indeed, how kind you are to mention it, Prince Kalishnikoff.”

“I certainly thought so, myself.” He grinned as she glared at him. “You see? Easy.”

His breath was warm against her cheek as he leaned over her, helping her with scrupulous care into her tight, red Spencer jacket. As she closed the first button of the jacket, she looked up and met his gaze, startlingly close. Close and . . .

Caroline stepped back. Irritatingly, she found herself breathing quickly.

Stupid. Stupid and beyond stupid.

But the expression that she’d surprised on his face, warm and intent . . .

“You needn’t overplay your part,” she whispered tightly. “I’m not a fool.”

Michael stepped back, his expression closing against her. “Oddly enough, I never thought so.” A muscle twitched in his jaw. “But I suppose you won’t believe that, either.”

He waited in rigid silence as she finished. Her hands trembled on the buttons.

It was only exhaustion that made her muscles weak. Made her weak.

For just a moment, though—before her wits had stepped in to save her . . .

Caroline lifted her chin and took his arm. The prince was waiting for them at the doorway, his expression alert and dangerously curious. Caroline fixed a smile on her face.

“I’m ready now,” she lied.

It was a squeeze, as the prince had warned, particularly as the carriage had been crammed full of wrapped parcels. Caroline exercised all the control of posture that she’d learned in her first years of marriage to hold herself ramrod straight on the seat. Still, her arm brushed against Michael’s at every bump in the road, and she found herself irrepressibly aware of his warmth radiating through the half inch that separated them. With every accidental touch, a disconcerting jolt of energy sparked against her skin.

What was it about him that set her nerves so on edge? She’d handled the emperor himself well enough, for all her fears. Compared to the threat presented by Emperor Francis and his minister of secret police, Michael Steinhüller, for all his dangerous knowledge of her past, was still only an exasperation. A cocky, far-too-sure-of-himself exasperation. And even his threats that first night . . .

She sighed, sliding a secret glance up at him. He was listening to the prince with a genuine smile on his lean face, his hazel eyes narrowing with amusement.

Under pressure, she had panicked, but now—too late—she could see the bluff for what it had been.

Michael couldn’t turn her identity over to the police or to anyone else without giving up his own disguise . . . and it had been an empty threat from the very beginning. Truthfully, she didn’t believe that he would ever give her secrets to her enemies only to hurt her. Provoking though he might be, she couldn’t imagine any shred of real malice in him, even now.

No, the real and waiting danger lay not in any intentional betrayal but in Michael’s own exposure. This mad game he was playing couldn’t last forever, no matter what he thought. And once his masquerade was shattered . . .

She couldn’t count on him, she knew that much. He had proven it all those years ago. She knew better than to believe a word of friendship or loyalty that came from his lips now, no matter how much some secret, long-buried part of her wanted to break free and rise to them—to believe that, for the first time in decades, she might not be truly alone anymore.

But Michael Steinhüller’s friendship only went so far. The moment any true danger arose, he would fly away to safety without a single regret, exactly as he had the last time she had trusted him.

Still, sitting next to him now, listening to his laughing voice trading stories with the prince, and feeling his arm brush against hers with easy familiarity, she found herself as fidgety as a cat.

The carriage veered sharply to the left to avoid an erratic oncoming mail coach. Caroline lurched off-balance, into Michael’s side.

“Careful.” He helped her sit upright, his hand warm on her arm.

“Do forgive me.” She smoothed down the striped skirts of her walking dress, biting her lip with irritation.

The prince sat across from them with his arm laid protectively across a large wrapped package.

“A special gift, Your Highness?” Caroline nodded at the package, glad for a distraction from her thoughts.

“I hope so.” De Ligne’s lips quirked. “The other parcels all come from my esteemed wife, not from myself. Lace collars, little knick-knacks . . . She feels a grandmotherly tenderness for the boy, I believe—or, at least, for the romantic idea of him. This gift alone I chose myself. I think you’ll find that it’s appropriate.”

“Appropriate?” Caroline murmured. She eyed the bulky package speculatively as she considered the question.

What exactly would be an appropriate gift for the former king of Rome? The three-year-old boy to whom Napoleon Bonaparte had tried to pass on his empire through abdication, before the Allies—combined with his own betraying marshals—had forced him to abandon all hope and give over everything to the returning Bourbons . . . The boy who had gone from being a doted-upon king and the heir to an emperor to losing all of his titles, all of his potential . . . and all of his hope.

Caroline had heard that the original plan, as agreed with Bonaparte as a prime condition of his abdication, was for the young boy and his mother to join the former conqueror of Europe on Elba with all speed. Bonaparte had sailed in expectation not only of a generous fixed income—which Caroline doubted he would ever see—but of a speedy family reunion, too.

Now that Emperor Francis had regained control over his daughter and his politically provocative grandson, however . . .

The carriage drove between two great pillars, each topped by an avaricious double-headed eagle, the symbol of thrusting Habsburg power. As Schönbrunn Palace spread out in golden splendor before them, Caroline measured its capacity . . . as a prison.

Promises and signed contracts to the contrary, she couldn’t imagine that Napoleon Bonaparte’s son would ever be allowed to leave.

“And here we are at last.” The Prince de Ligne lifted his walking stick in anticipation of stepping outside, even as the carriage wound its way through the busy assortment of carriages, hurrying servants, strolling courtiers, and guards who filled the great paved courtyard between the palace’s outstretched golden wings. His keen gaze was already sweeping the crowd. “For all our much-vaunted technological advances, the journey from the city seems to me to grow ever longer, rather than shorter.”

“A pity,” Michael said. “It is grand indeed for a summer palace.” He slid a glance at Caroline and lowered one eyelid fractionally. “It quite dwarfs my own family’s small summer residence.”

It was too much. “However can you say so, Prince Kalishnikoff,” Caroline said sweetly, “when I remember it so very . . . fondly?”

Michael choked back a laugh, his eyes alight. “I think nostalgia may have clouded your memory, Lady Wyndham.”

“Hardly,” Caroline said. “My memories remain entirely clear.”

They had, after all, lived in the same tiny apartment all year round.

Across from them, the prince blinked and refocused his sharp attention on them. “I’d thought you only visited England yourself, Prince Kalishnikoff, rather than ever having our charming Lady Wyndham as your guest?”

Damnation. Caroline hadn’t thought to check with Michael on the history he’d invented for himself.

Well, it was his fault, not hers. Let him extricate himself from it. She turned to look at him in simulated surprise. “Did you not mention my own visit, Prince Kalishnikoff? I’m quite offended—it was such a highlight of my youth.” She lifted her chin. “Perhaps it was not so memorable for you . . .”

“On the contrary. It remains one of my finest memories—I had only forgotten to mention it yesterday. I can’t imagine how it slipped my mind.” Michael turned back to the prince. “Lady Wyndham and her husband did visit my humble palace for a month’s stay just before my country was invaded.”

“Ah. So that would be . . .”

“My second husband,” Caroline inserted. Her gloved fingers tightened around her skirts as bleak memory intruded into the game.

It had been childish and absurd to enter such a pretense only to score a point off Michael Steinhüller. He might treat everything as a game, but she should and did know better.

“Indeed,” Michael seconded. “A charming fellow. I always wished I’d known him better.”

“Mm,” said Caroline.

Wyndham wouldn’t even have condescended to nod in the street to a “damned Continental adventurer,” as he would most certainly have termed Michael on first glance . . . and he would certainly never have allowed Caroline to maintain such a connection.

Her past—and her secrets—had been no part of their bargain.

The carriage drew to a halt, and Caroline turned with relief to the opening door. Waiting footmen laid out the carriage steps, and the Prince de Ligne gestured gallantly for her to walk out first.

The air felt chill and bracing, despite the crowd of chattering nobles emerging from their own conveyances, royal guards marching across the courtyard with glittering dress swords on full display, and busy servants bustling around all of them. Caroline drew a deep breath as she looked across the swarming activity to the palace whose wings enfolded them all.

Schönbrunn’s three stories rose in golden grandeur before them, the large side wings bunching toward the great central building. Elegant half-pillars lined the façade in gilded cream stripes, alternating with arched windows against the deep gold walls. Stone spires rose in martial formations atop the roof of the main building; in the very center, above fanned-out swords and shields and the symbols of victory, a Habsburg double-headed eagle spread out its wings in conquest. Caroline felt her chest tighten in response, as if it would squeeze all breath and hope from her.

She had never seen Schönbrunn before, never been held captive here or anywhere else outside Vienna’s city walls. But in its elegant architectural assumptions of dominion, it represented all of the smug, unthinking power that had imprisoned her and her father and cared nothing for their fates.

How could she hope to stand against it on her own?

“Lady Wyndham,” Michael murmured. He stood beside her, his eyebrows drawing down with concern. “Are you unwell?”

“No, of course not.” She rearranged her features to serene lines, drawing away from him. “I’m quite well, thank you.”

And not quite alone, she corrected herself. She had been wise enough this time, at least, to hire a valuable ally, in the form of her secretary. Charles was loyal and—potentially—dangerous in his own right, just as she had hoped when she had chosen him.

And yet . . .

She remembered again the avidity in his voice and look the night before. The chill air swept through her thin, waist-length jacket, and she shivered.

Dangerous, yes, Charles could certainly be that. But—if she mishandled him by so much as a breath—dangerous to whom?

She knew better than to ply herself with false reassurances. Still, she was no green girl anymore, to be used and flung away without mercy. Caroline raised her eyes again to the cruel, curved beaks of the Habsburg eagle and set her jaw.

She, too, was a power to be reckoned with now. And she would not allow fear—or anything else—to hold her back.

“Aha.” The Prince de Ligne pointed. “I do believe . . .”

Beyond the larger side wings, low arches formed open walkways on each side of the palace, leading to the lines of stables and servants’ wings. Through one of the arches, a group of figures moved toward them—a small child flanked by a nursemaid and a tall, stooped man.

The prince strode forward, cutting through the crowd, and Caroline and Michael followed more slowly. Caroline bit back a reluctant smile as she saw the child’s impatient attempt at a run cut off by his nursemaid’s restraining hands.

“Too young for court manners,” Michael murmured, in her ear.

“He’s probably been at court since birth,” Caroline replied, low-voiced. The sounds of the crowd effectively hid their conversation even from the prince, five feet ahead of them. “Poor boy.”

“Fortunate boy, most would say, to be born into that kind of power and wealth.”

“Not so much power anymore.” Caroline lifted her skirts to step carefully over a pile of horse droppings. “And I wouldn’t say fortunate at all to be born into such a life. To be observed on all sides at every moment, forced into strict observances, always held under a magnifying glass of scrutiny and judgment . . .”

“As you are now, you mean?” Michael cupped his hand under her arm to steer her away from a second pile. “You’ve become one of the great ladies of the English aristocracy. Don’t tell me that was a mere accident.”

She tensed in his grip. “That . . . is none of your concern.”

“Come now,” Michael whispered, as they halted, along with everyone else, to make way for the line of marching royal guards, boots clicking and swords shining in the sunlight. “Don’t tell me you aren’t enjoying any of this. An honored guest at all the great palaces—a wealthy widow, admired by everyone—don’t tell me you wouldn’t do it all again, in a heartbeat.”

“If I could do it all again . . .” Caroline cut the words off with a snap as the last of the guards marched past, leaving the way clear to their destination.

They reached the end of the courtyard just as the Prince de Ligne sank down to one knee on a clean patch of pavement. The boy Caroline had glimpsed before, now revealed to have streaming gold curls and an adult’s courtly uniform, twisted free from his nursemaid’s grasp and raced across the pavement to land in the prince’s outstretched arms.

“Your Highness!”

Napoleon Bonaparte II’s chubby arms fastened around the prince’s neck. A pang of bittersweet emotion nearly staggered Caroline as she observed their embrace.

To feel such pure trust—such innocent certainty of returned affection, even after so much abandonment and loss . . .

“A charming sight,” said the boy’s companion, stepping out from the shadowed archway. He bowed. “De Ligne, always an honor—and, of course, any guest of yours . . .”

Caroline’s breath stopped in her throat.

Nausea raced sickeningly up her chest as the muscles in her legs gave way. If it hadn’t been for Michael’s hand on her arm, she would have fallen.

Count Pergen straightened from his bow and smiled directly at her.