CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Caroline directed a freezing stare at Count Pergen. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about, but I don’t care to find out, either. I’m leaving now.” She turned, head high, and stalked toward the door. Two steps, three steps . . .

“I think not.” The emperor’s voice brimmed with quiet satisfaction. “Perhaps you didn’t notice, Lady Wyndham, but I locked the door behind us when I entered.”

Caroline came to a halt, staring at the door handle. She hadn’t faced the emperor as he’d entered; he could have locked it all too easily. If she tried the door and it was locked, she’d look a fool and forfeit the appearance of cool confidence; but if he was lying and she didn’t even make an attempt . . .

She pressed her lips together and crossed the last few feet in two quick steps. The handle refused to move beneath her hand.

“Very sensible,” Pergen approved in German, from across the room. “But then, you were always my brightest subject, Karolina.”

“Enough.” Caroline turned to face them both. Cold panic bubbled up within her chest, but she kept her voice steady, her left hand gripping the stem of her wineglass. “I demand to know the meaning of this strange prank you’ve chosen to play. You cannot imagine the British embassy will tolerate such mistreatment of a peeress of the realm.”

The emperor’s narrow eyebrows rose. “Mistreatment of a peeress of the British Empire? Indeed, no one would ever dare take such an act lightly. But the arrest of an Austrian native citizen on suspicion of conspiring against her true government? Well, that is an action no ruler could condemn in these perilous days. Particularly . . .” He smiled and toasted her with his wine glass. “Particularly when it can be proven that she’s lied to all her English acquaintances these past twenty years at least, and no doubt taken in her poor deluded husbands as well.”

Caroline stared at him. “Are you mad?”

“Mad? I think not. I believe when the facts of the case are disclosed to the public, your government will be both grateful and deeply relieved by our actions . . . particularly as the possessions and wealth of a known traitor are invariably surrendered to the Crown. Your former friends, of course, will no doubt be shocked and horrified—but only by your outrageous audacity and their own gullibility in accepting you as one of them.”

Caroline tried to speak. No words would emerge from her throat.

The emperor regarded her quizzically. “Do you not agree with my assessment, Lady Wyndham?”

Caroline gathered up her scattered wits. “If my lands and wealth are turned over to the British Crown, you’ll have none of them for yourself. Why forfeit a fortune only to exact some paltry revenge?” She stepped closer, fighting to keep her tone as sweetly reasonable as the emperor’s own. “If you release me now, I’ll leave Austria within the day. You’ll be safe from any schemes of mine, and your treasury will be the richer by tens of thousands of pounds. Why—”

“Your concern is touching,” the emperor said, “but sadly misplaced. I cannot imagine the British government being any less than generous when we relieve them of such an embarrassment. I feel confident they will agree to share your wealth with us quite willingly.”

“But—”

“Moreover, you seem to hold an entirely false impression of me.” The emperor stepped close to her and breathed his last words directly into her ear. “Why on earth would I desire you to leave Austria?”

Caroline stared into his triumphant face and felt her rippling panic stilled by cold certainty.

There would be no chance of negotiated escape. She had lost . . . and she would be forced to pay, over and over again, for the wound she’d inflicted to the emperor’s precious pride.

“I’m sure you’ll find a way to accept your fate, in time,” he whispered.

Caroline gathered up the last of her shattered confidence. She reached up to stroke his cheek caressingly. He leaned forward . . .

And she spat directly in the emperor’s face.

“You are worth even less than your lackey,” Caroline snapped in the Viennese German of her youth. “Pergen is a monster, but you ride on his back to enjoy his leavings. What exactly do you think that makes you?”

The emperor staggered back, scooping a handkerchief from his pocket. He wiped off the spittle from his nose and cheek, still staring at her. His thin lips worked, but no sound came out. Had no one ever dared speak so to him before?

Pergen stepped forward, and a wave of cold air swept around him, brushing against Caroline’s skin. “That,” he murmured, “was most unwise of you, Karolina.”

The emperor shook himself and stepped away, his narrow face contorted with anger. “You know how to deal with her,” he told Pergen. “Lady Wyndham . . .” He jerked a mere caricature of a bow. “By the time I see you later, you will be ready to apologize. Of that I have no doubt.”

Caroline only looked at him. Her whole body was trembling with rage and fear, sending rippling waves through the red wine in her glass, but she met his glare with a gaze of icy indifference.

She had never given up in all her years of imprisonment. She would not give him the satisfaction of witnessing her surrender now.

The emperor paused, his face working. “Perhaps . . .” He flung a glance at Pergen. “I hear you came to Vienna looking for your father. Is that correct?”

Caroline’s breath caught in her throat. She steeled her spine and closed her lips to keep any words from spilling out.

The emperor smiled as if he’d received response enough. “Well, then. You may be interested to learn that he died of influenza ten years ago, in a prison cell outside Pressburg. Apparently it was a particularly cold winter that year . . . and his radical fervor wasn’t quite enough to keep him warm after all.”

The world compressed into a shimmering bubble around Caroline. She couldn’t make herself take a breath.

The emperor’s final words seemed to come from a great distance. “Pergen’s men researched his fate for me this afternoon. A pity that you should have come all this way for nothing, is it not?”

Michael’s vision blurred as the enormity of it struck him.

Caroline had walked into a trap. And he . . .

He could have resigned himself to his own failure, with her escape as consolation. But he would not walk into captivity without a fight, knowing that she needed him.

He would not abandon her again.

Michael relaxed his arms within Riesenbeck’s grasp. Slowly, carefully, he linked his fingers together into a double fist.

“I don’t understand,” Riesenbeck said to the policeman. “What are you both talking about?”

“He seems to know the answer.” The policeman nodded at Michael. “An interesting point, that. I’m sure we’ll find out more about it later.”

Nearby, the closest carriage horse shifted and let out a muffled snort. Michael slid a sideways glance.

The coachman, inured to urban life, hadn’t shown a jot of interest in the fight that took place beside his carriage. Whether that reflected cynical wisdom or pure lack of interest, Michael couldn’t even guess.

However, there was one other man on this street, only fifteen feet away, who might actually come to his aid—who had been instructed, in fact, to follow all of his orders. Earlier, Michael had been unwilling to risk giving away Caroline’s identity to his pursuers.

Now, though . . .

“Come.” The policeman jerked his head. “We should start off. I’m needed back at the gala, and you . . .” His lips twisted into an unpleasant smile. “You’ll need to prepare for tonight’s performance, Herr Riesenbeck.”

“Very well,” Riesenbeck muttered. “But don’t think I’m going to—ah!”

Michael gave a sudden jerk of his arms, pulling his captor off balance. Then he smashed one booted heel down onto the actor’s toes, grinding down with all his strength.

Riesenbeck’s grip loosened for barely half a second, as he let out a muffled grunt of pain.

It was enough.

Michael was already shouting as he yanked his hands free. “Henry! Lady Wyndham needs you now!”

What the hell was the man shouting about in English? And why?

Peter lunged to recapture the slippery bastard just as Michael leaped at Grünemann, knocking the policeman backward onto the cobblestones.

Caught off-balance, Peter hit midair instead of solid flesh and flailed for balance. The wrestling bodies lurched across the cobblestones and knocked into Peter’s feet. He stumbled backward, panting. He couldn’t tell who was winning in the scuffle at his feet, or how to help Grünemann without getting in his way.

Perhaps—

A heavy weight slammed against the back of Peter’s head. Consciousness fled, and his half-formulated strategy vanished with it.

Michael let out a groan of sheer relief as the policeman suddenly slumped against him, his fingers falling away from Michael’s throat.

“Thank you for that.” Michael struggled out from beneath the policeman’s limp body, grunting with effort. He massaged his bruised throat as he stood to face Caroline’s stocky, solidly built coachman. “You’re a good man in a fight.”

“Thank you, Your Highness.”

The coachman regarded Michael steadily, still holding his whip half-coiled in his hand. The head of the whip was solid bronze—a handy feature indeed. Michael wondered whether Henry had chosen it for that purpose. Whether or not the whip was a mere tool for driving, Michael had a strong feeling that Caroline had chosen the man himself for more than his ability with horses.

“And what does Your Highness want done with these gentlemen?” asked Henry, apparently imperturbably.

“Hmm.” Michael glanced down at the cobblestones. “We can’t leave them here, certainly.”

“Do you want me to dispose of them?”

“Dispose—?” Michael blinked. “Ah, no. Not yet.” He took a breath.

Perhaps he wouldn’t inquire too closely into the other man’s background, after all.

Henry coughed. “I only meant, Your Highness, to drive them out and drop them on the outskirts of the city. It would take them a few hours to walk back, and if you need to buy a bit of time for Lady Wyndham . . .”

“Ah. Yes, that is a good idea.” Michael gathered up the wits that had scattered in the fight. “Thank you, Henry.” He nodded with just the right degree of royal condescension. “We’d better tie them up first, though, just in case they wake up at an awkward moment.”

“That one already is.” Henry jerked his chin at the actor, whose head was shifting. Riesenbeck mumbled something unintelligible, and Henry asked, “Shall I give him another tap?”

Michael opened his mouth to agree, but a sudden stab of reluctance startled him. It was the tug of his instincts, and he paused to think the impulse through.

It would be another gamble, certainly—and at the most dangerous possible moment. If it was only his newfound and highly inconvenient guilt that pressed upon him now, he might well be sacrificing his only sliver of a chance. Yet, when he weighed up everything he knew, and tallied it against the odds . . .

“Not yet,” Michael said. “I want to talk to him first.”

Caroline put all her effort into holding herself upright and not letting herself faint as the door closed behind her. The emperor’s words rang through her head, repeating themselves over and over again until they merged and became only one word, inescapable and without end.

Died . . . died . . . died . . .

“You look unwell, Karolina.”

Pergen’s voice pierced the fog, but she could barely see him as his footsteps approached. Her vision refused to focus on the room around her; only his blurred outlines appeared before her, even as his chill surrounded her.

Died . . .

“I hope you haven’t turned missish in the years since you left this country. The girl I remember wouldn’t have fainted away when things went badly. She would have been screaming and fighting by now, no matter how futile she knew it to be. Aren’t you even going to make one last escape attempt?”

Escape? Caroline almost laughed. If the laugh had escaped her lips, she thought it might have contained blood.

Michael had been right. She had been mad ever to think that her plan could have worked. That she could still save her father after all these years.

So many years . . . all the years of her two marriages, waiting for her independence. Then the long years when travel between England and the Continent was blocked by the endless war, and she had been forced to wait and wait, gathering her plans, hiring informants and throwing all her frustrated energy into scheming for this moment. This moment, when everything she’d gone through, everything she’d chosen or been forced to do over the years, would all be redeemed and made worthwhile . . .

And her father had been dead these past ten years.

“Can you even hear me right now, I wonder?” Pergen sounded distantly amused. “Never mind. I imagine you’ll wake up soon enough.”

What had Caroline been doing when her father died shivering and alone? Had she been writing letters in her warm, cozy morning room in her elegant London townhouse? Or had she been staying at a glittering country house party full of innuendos and falsehoods, hailing the blanket of snow outside as a charming Christmas touch?

“I’d thought it might be difficult to subdue you enough to be carried to your cell,” Pergen murmured, “but perhaps I misjudged you after all. I wonder, if I simply steered you by the arm, would you walk quite quietly back to your old cage?”

Caroline didn’t answer. She couldn’t. The chill that emanated from Pergen wrapped around her completely now. It felt right. It felt like the cold that had killed her father, years before she had even managed to cross the English Channel on her way back to him.

It had all been so hopeless. When Pergen’s thin fingers closed around her arm, Caroline didn’t even attempt to struggle.

There had been no point in coming here tonight. Michael had been right, but she’d been too driven by need to listen to him. Now that it was finished, though, and she had failed . . .

Michael. Horrified realization lanced her body, breaking through the fog.

Michael didn’t know what had happened to her. He might wonder, but it hadn’t been long enough since she’d left the Great Hall for him to be certain that her meeting with the emperor had gone wrong. And the emperor would know—must know, by now, as he knew who Caroline was—that Michael himself was a fraud.

The emperor, whom she had spat on and insulted, who had left the meeting room seething with rage.

When he found Michael waiting for Caroline . . .

Caroline’s vision focused into painful clarity. The little room closed in around her—five steps to the door, six steps to the opening in the wall through which Pergen had first emerged—and Pergen’s hand was firm on her left arm as he turned her toward that dark passageway. Caroline staggered, as if overcome by faintness, and red wine sloshed out from the glass she still held.

“I have to—I must—” She drew a ragged breath.

“Take a moment to compose yourself, certainly,” said Pergen. “We have all the time in the world, now, you and I.”

Caroline closed her eyes and raised her free hand to massage her forehead, pulling Pergen’s hand with her arm. He released her, and she stumbled back a pace. She stopped there a moment, leaning her head forward into her hand, then raised her other hand—and mimed surprise as her cool wine glass touched her face.

“I forgot—I really ought to . . .” Trailing off, she staggered the last few steps to the table where the half-full wine decanter sat, its facets sparkling in the candlelight. She set her own glass down carefully beside it, shadows shifting on the wall beside her.

“You have grown over-nice in your habits,” Pergen said. “The servants would have carried it back, have no fear.”

“I don’t,” Caroline said. She straightened, and managed a wavering smile. “I am coming now. I only—” She broke off again, raising her left hand back to her forehead. “I feel—I feel as if I might swoon, if I move even a step.”

“Then allow me to assist you.” Asperity tinged Pergen’s voice as he started toward her. “But I beg you not to imagine that these delaying tactics are going to do you any good.”

“Oh, I don’t,” Caroline said. “Truly.”

She waited, poised, her left hand limp against her forehead, as he crossed to her. Two steps . . . three steps . . .

Now. Caroline grabbed the heavy glass decanter with her right hand and swung it against Pergen’s face with all her strength.