Masks and Shadows Page 18

  “Then how did he find you out the first time, for aiding his wife?”

  “He didn’t. It was someone else. They sent him a letter.”

  “Mm.”

  “It must have been a stableboy. Someone who saw me take the horses. Or—I don’t know! Not Delacroix. He couldn’t sniff out a conspiracy if his life depended on it.”

  “Which it may.” The hand tightened. “Yours certainly does.”

  Franz’s vision blurred. Stars formed in front of his eyes. He couldn’t breathe—couldn’t—

  Abruptly, the hand released him. “You’re a fortunate man, Herr Pichler. I’ve decided to give you one more chance to redeem yourself.”

  Franz stumbled back, rubbing his throat. “How? When?”

  “You’ll find out after tomorrow night’s masked ball. Once the royal visitors arrive.” The voice hardened. “In the meantime, stay away from Esterházys. Irritate no one. Be a paragon of public virtue. Do you understand?”

  Franz’s throat throbbed with pain when he spoke. “I understand.”

  “Good.”

  The hedge rustled. A moment later, Franz was alone in the beautifully laid-out garden.

  He stood for a long moment staring at the peaceful Greek sculptures in the fountain six feet away. The water was still and smooth as glass, and lit by moonlight.

  He’d never thought to come so close to death on this adventure.

  A cool night breeze blew against the nape of his neck. He shook his head and turned to leave.

  When he turned the corner of the hedge, he walked straight into Fräulein Dommayer.

  Anna stumbled back. At first, Herr Pichler didn’t even seem to recognize her. Then he laughed, in a tone that frightened her.

  “You’re too late, Fräulein. He’s already gone. You shouldn’t have let your officer delay you so long.”

  Anna stepped forward, frowning. “I was looking for you.”

  “Me?” He backed away, into a patch of grass illuminated by the moonlight that glanced off the water of the fountain. His face looked pale as death. “Why look for me? It hardly fits with your plans to play at romance with another singer. Not when you have an Esterházy to reel in.”

  “What?” Anna’s cheeks flooded with heat. “I have no plans, Herr Pichler. Nor instructions, either, unlike you. And I—I would never—!” She shook her head, too angry to speak. She’d crept all the way across the gardens in the darkness, terrified by every noise—for this? “How dare you say such things?”

  He blinked. “Then—”

  “I have no intention of reeling in anybody, no matter what their name might be! I’m not so—so—I just wouldn’t. And I am not playing at romance with you, either!” She lifted her chin. “You may think yourself very wonderful, sir, but I am not so easily taken in by playacting.”

  He stared at her. “Then what in the name of God are you doing here, Fräulein?”

  “I followed you, of course.” Her cheeks burned, but she lifted her chin defiantly. “I’m not in love with you, but I do have eyes. You’re in some kind of trouble, aren’t you?”

  He rubbed his throat and looked away. “Are you seriously telling me that you don’t know?”

  “Well . . .”

  “And you aren’t involved in it at all?”

  “I have no idea what you mean,” Anna said.

  He dropped his hand from his throat and began to laugh. “Oh, sweet Christ and all the saints . . .”

  “Sir?” She stepped forward, but he put his hand out to stop her.

  “It’s nothing. I’m only a fool beyond compare.” He shook his head and glanced at the thick hedges that rose up beside her. “If he is still here watching us . . .”

  Anna jumped back—then moved forward, neck prickling, to peer into the black depths of the hedges. Nothing. Only the night breeze rustled through the thick branches. She let out her held breath.

  “We’re alone,” she said.

  “Thank God.” He slumped down onto the low stone wall of the fountain and put his head in his hands.

  Anna felt her chest tighten as she looked at his crumpled figure.

  She’d spent half her time, as she crept after him—when she wasn’t imagining demons out of the shadows that surrounded her—berating herself for her own foolishness in falling prey to a handsome face and romantically injured figure, when she’d known full well he wasn’t interested in her in that way. Now, though, as she looked down at the lead singer she’d been so struck by, all that she could feel was compassion.

  “You were trying to charm me this morning,” she said. “Why?”

  He shrugged. “Does it matter? It’s naught to do with you. Not anymore.”

  “Herr Pichler . . .” Anna felt the whispering night breeze on her neck and shoulders. She fought down the urge to glance behind her in search of watching eyes. “You’ve been drawn into some dangerous endeavor,” she said softly. “Can’t you take yourself out of it? I would help you, if you’d let me. I would like to be your friend.”

  His lips twisted. “You’re very kind, Fräulein. But it’s far too late for me to escape it now.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  “I can’t,” Charlotte said. “Sophie, see reason! I’m a widow.”

  “Of nearly five months. And this is a masked ball, Lotte! No one will even know who you are.” Sophie’s eyes were alight with mischief. “It’s too late for you to find another costume, anyway.”

  Charlotte glanced at the windows and sighed. The sky outside was already shaded with twilight. “All I wanted was a plain domino. Black. Nothing too—”

  “No more black!” Sophie’s ankle bracelets and necklaces jangled as she pounced on Charlotte and dragged her back toward the bed, where Sophie’s maid had laid out the bright blue officer’s uniform. “You’ll make a charming captain of the guard. The gloves might not fit, but everything else should work perfectly.”

  Charlotte groaned. “You’re impossible!”

  “And you’re provincial. Haven’t you ever dressed up as a man before? I must have done it a dozen times at least.”

  “I didn’t attend many masked balls in Saxony.”

  Sophie rolled her eyes. “Am I surprised? Now, put it on!”

  “No. I can’t—”

  “Lotte, it’s perfectly proper here. I promise! Everyone dresses en travesti sometimes. Niko did, at our last ball. He made a magnificent old lady. I giggled for weeks over it!”

  “I’m sure. But that’s not—”

  “I’d wager Signor Morelli has dressed as a woman often enough. Can’t you just see it?”

  Charlotte blinked. “I . . . yes, I can.” Almost too easily, actually.

  Sophie echoed her thoughts. “A well-cut gown, a bit of padding around the chest . . . Niko and the other gentlemen have to plaster on cosmetics and flirt and preen to carry it off, and even then, it’s all a great joke. But I don’t think I’d be able to tell that it was a masquerade, with Signor Morelli. Could you?”

  Charlotte sank down onto her bed. “I don’t think so.” Sickening discomfort crawled through her stomach. “Sophie, I don’t—”

  Sophie sat down next to her, her forehead scrunched in thought. “What do you think a castrato really is, anyway? I mean, I know we call him ‘signor,’ to be polite, but maybe it should really be ‘signora.’ Or—how else could you say it? If someone isn’t a real man or a woman, then—him? Her? It?”

  “Sophie!” Charlotte leapt up, staring at her sister. “How could you be so cruel? Of course Signor Morelli is a man. How can you say such things?”

  Sophie shrugged. “It’s an interesting question, is it not? He started life as a boy, truly. But the operation came before his voice could change, and after that—I mean, without the, ah, entire parts that make you a man or a woman—”

  “He is a man, and one of the most admirable ones I’ve ever met!”

  Charlotte would have given anything to swallow back her words the moment they escaped her mouth. Her younger sister’s
eyes widened in surprise—and then, horribly, in mischievous comprehension.

  “Lotte! I am shocked. Why didn’t you tell me before?”

  “There is nothing to tell.” Charlotte was hideously conscious of both her own maid and Sophie’s maid watching them from the corners of the room. This would certainly provide fodder for gossip in the servants’ hall, and probably in the Princess’s chambers, as well.

  “I never even imagined it. My prim and proper older sister falling under the spell of an Italian castrato—”

  “I haven’t done any such thing. I only meant—”

  “He’s very experienced, you know. He’s probably slept with hundreds of lovers.” Sophie’s eyes narrowed. “Women and men. That’s what they all do, you know.”

  “And what of it?” Charlotte swung around, turning her back to her sister. “If everything you say is true, then you need hardly worry that he would take any interest in me, would he? As you’ve pointed out many times, I’m far too unsophisticated for courtly life.” Tears stung behind her eyes, but she made her voice cool. “Now, if you don’t have anything better to discuss, I think you’d better leave.”

  Sophie’s small hand tugged at her shoulder. “Oh, Lotte, don’t be such a prude! I was only teasing you.”

  Charlotte gritted her teeth. “It isn’t amusing.”

  Sophie sighed. “Don’t you ever get tired of being so dull and serious all the time? Don’t you ever just want to enjoy yourself?”

  Charlotte pressed her lips together to hold back the stream of words that pushed against them.

  Not the sort of fun you have. Not the sort that dishonors your family and your marriage. The sort that doesn’t care whom it hurts.

  “Of course I know you aren’t truly attracted to Signor Morelli, silly. I’m not a total fool! I was only mocking you a little. You do set yourself so high, Lotte. It’s a bit intimidating.” Sophie’s laugh held an edge. “Can’t you ever be just a little bit wicked, for my sake?”

  You wouldn’t care for it, if I did.

  Charlotte took a deep breath, quashing her anger. What good would it do to spew venom at her own sister?

  She turned and met Sophie’s pouting look. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’m not made that way.”

  “Well, pretend that you are, for tonight. For the ball!” Sophie grabbed her hand. “This is your chance to be someone else for one night. Someone daring and wild. Do it, Lotte! For me.”

  The gardens of Eszterháza had been transformed into a fairyland. Chinese lanterns glittered in the hedges and trees and found a thousand sparkling reflections in the curving, mirrored walls of the Bagatelle. Orchestral musicians, dressed in rustic peasants’ outfits, played jangling Turkish music in a nearby clearing, under Herr Haydn’s direction. Servants mingled in the colorful crowd, carrying tall glasses of imported French wine and trays filled with exotic fruits.

  Carlo swept back his short velvet cape and moved through the crowd of sultans, gods and goddesses, peasants, priests, magicians, and mysteries.

  The masquerade had begun.

  Charlotte hesitated at the edge of the clearing, wiping her bare hands on the white uniform breeches that encased her thighs. They felt extraordinary against her skin, tight and indecent above the knee-high boots. Without the usual wide padding around her hips, the weight of layers of skirts and petticoats or the tightness of a whalebone corset, she felt half-naked—and amazingly light. If she took but one step, it might carry her all the way across the clearing.

  “Swagger,” Sophie had ordered her. “That’s how they all walk! You need to throw your whole body into it.”

  Swagger, Charlotte told herself. She swaggered forward experimentally—and came to a dead halt, fighting down helpless laughter. It was too ludicrous! She couldn’t do it. She shook her head and switched back to her normal pace. Hopelessly ladylike, no doubt. Ladylike and dull, just as Sophie had said.

  Charlotte stepped forward into the light, grateful for the thin, shaped leather half-mask that covered her forehead, nose and cheeks. She took a glass of wine from a hovering servant and faded into the sidelines of the crowd.

  A tall, imposing figure mounted the steps of the Bagatelle—Prince Nikolaus, clearly, although his face was fully covered by an ivory mask, and he was dressed in the robes, turban, and glittering jewelry of an imaginary pasha. Sophie wiggled beside him in Ottoman rose-pink, her blonde hair free of powder but lushly feathered and piled high above layers of jewelry. Her tiny mask, covering only a thin band around her eyes, could not conceal her open delight.

  Prince Nikolaus’s voice boomed out behind the ivory cherub’s mask.

  “Let the dancing begin!”

  The finest part of any masquerade, Carlo thought, was the high-handed freedom it gave to ignore the rules of polite society. At any ordinary ball, one had to play a finely measured game of hierarchy and social expectations in choosing whom to partner. Without masks, he’d have been forced to play the dutiful guest by approaching first Frau von Höllner and then the Prince’s giggling, gossiping niece, and so spend his evening being supremely bored as he partnered them around the ballroom floor. Masked, he could pretend not to recognize them, and was thus set free to seek out his own diversions.

  He sipped his wine, walked the pathways of the fairy-lit gardens, and told himself, as he searched through the glittering throng of dancers, that he wasn’t looking for any one woman in particular.

  The jangling, exotic music shot tingles straight through Charlotte’s fingers. Cymbals and triangles added an infectious edge to the sound, while a shrill piccolo piped a warning of danger—or was it only adventure? She moved closer to the orchestra, drawn inexorably by the sound.

  The night sky was cloudless, filled with stars. It was a night for reckless adventure and romance, for anyone exotic and brave enough to snatch it . . . anyone utterly unlike the Baroness von Steinbeck, Ernst’s dutiful young wife, her parents’ dutiful oldest daughter, Sophie von Höllner’s proper, prudish older sister.

  Within the stiff, unfamiliar military boot, her foot was tapping to the music. She wanted to spin into it, to dance, to find her own partner instead of waiting to be asked.

  It had to be this strange music that gave her such wild ideas, inchoate, impossible longings for adventures she’d never have, a daring that she’d never feel. This music, this night, the masks and costumes whirling past her in the steps of a frantic dance . . .

  She sighed, spun around to walk away—

  —And found Signor Morelli watching her.

  She would be wearing a domino, he’d decided. Not that it was his concern, but still, it was always diverting to construct costumes in his mind. It would be a plain domino—black, of course. Some masquers wore great enveloping, soft hats over Venetian beaked masks to complete an all-encompassing disguise when wearing simple dominoes, but not the Baroness. That would strike too hard and close against the grain for her, that frightening ambiguity—of sex and of rank—that total anonymity gave. No, she would wear a plain black domino over her usual black gown, a black half-mask on her face, and her hair would be powdered and piled atop her head, as usual. And no doubt, if she danced, it would only be with the most suitable Hungarian or visiting Austrian nobles.

  He turned away from the dancers. What did he care whom she chose to partner? He would look at the orchestra instead and enjoy the fine music.

  He wasn’t the only one to do so. Ahead of him, a slim officer stood watching the orchestra intently, his back to Carlo. One knee-high boot tapped to the Janissary rhythms. Something about the man’s posture looked disconcertingly familiar. That intense concentration of attention . . .

  The officer swung around, and Carlo blinked. Not a man after all, despite the uniform and the thick brown hair pulled back into a military queue. No man could have that chest, bound down though it appeared to be. And that mouth . . .

  Recognition tingled through him, mixed with a jolt of sheer erotic awareness.

  All day, he’d
cherished the anger that had lingered from their words the night before. He’d held the memory of his injury like a shield, to protect himself from any rash actions too tempting to resist. But now, as he looked at her transformed . . .

  The Baroness’s eyes widened behind her leather half-mask. She took a breath, and her chest moved underneath her military uniform.

  Run, Carlo ordered himself. Turn around. Now!

  Instead, he walked straight toward her.

  She would have recognized Signor Morelli in any costume, Charlotte thought, for his height and his build, if nothing else. But in the toga of a Roman emperor, he looked startlingly natural. A wreath of laurels balanced on his shining black curls. Below his half-mask, his smooth, hairless cheeks looked, for once, only appropriate—like the dazzling neutrality of a god in a Greek statue.

  Tingling, percussive music surrounded them as he walked toward her.

  She’d ordered herself to avoid him tonight, after his behavior during the day. But her feet wouldn’t move to carry her away.

  “Baroness.” He bowed, flipping back his short cape. “Would you care to dance?”

  Charlotte had to stifle the automatic impulse to curtsey—absurd in her tight breeches.

  “I . . . don’t know if I can. In this outfit, I mean.”

  His lips curved. “Would it be easier if I let you take the lead?”

  “No!” She flushed. “That’s not what I meant.”

  “Did you never take the man’s role, when you and your sister had dancing lessons?”

  “That was many years ago,” she said. But she could imagine—couldn’t stop herself from imagining—doing it now. Leading him through the steps of the dance, crossing the square with the other men to greet him in the women’s line—

  No. She swallowed hard, fighting down the vivid images. The wine and the music must have gone to her head.