Tasha Alexander - A Fatal Waltz

“You don’t need to tell me,” he said. “It’s perfectly understandable.” He put down his charcoal and held up his sketchbook.

I gasped. “It’s as if I’m looking in the mirror!”

“Very well done.” I started at the sound of a familiar voice, and looked behind me to find Mr. Harrison, whose gray eyes were fixed on Friedrich. “Will you excuse us?”

“Selbstverständlich.” He went back to his own table, taking the sketchbook with him.

Mr. Harrison leaned close to me. “Coming here was a mistake.”

“You prefer a different café?” I asked. “I find that I’ve already grown quite fond of the Griensteidl.”

“You should not have come to Vienna.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Is that so?”

“I know why you’re here. You can’t help him, and trying to do so will put in jeopardy not only yourself, but the man whom you hold most dear.”

“And who is it that I should be afraid of?” I asked.

“Me.” He reached into an inside pocket of his jacket, and I saw that he still carried the gun he’d had at Beaumont Towers.

“Take this, and remember every time you see one like it that I’ve been there. I can get to you, Lady Ashton, and those you love, whenever the fancy strikes me.” He rolled something across the table, a small object that I did not identify until it had stopped moving: a bullet.

15 December 1891

Berkeley Square, London

My dear Emily,

I hope all is well with you in Vienna and that you will be able to return to England soon. I miss you so very much. I can’t stand the thought of Christmas this year. My parents have wired to say they would return from India at once, but I can’t bear to face them and begged them to stay away. How quickly our fortunes have changed.

I have news that should be joyous, but in the present circumstances brings angst rather than pleasure. I’m sure you can guess what it is. How cruel that such a thing—something Robert and I have wanted for so long—should happen now. I’ve told no one else, Robert included, though I think Margaret may be suspicious. It would be difficult for her not to be. I can’t bear the sight of breakfast.

Robert’s mother calls on me daily, but we do little more than sit in grim silence. She used to give me cheery updates on the plans for Robert’s defense, but she’s had nothing positive to say for many days in a row now. I’m afraid that if she discovers my condition, she’ll insist that I go to her house, and I don’t want to do that.

Every day there’s another story in the paper, each one more wild than the last. Margaret and Davis try to hide them from me, but I manage to find them nonetheless. Today it was suggested that Robert is a German spy. Can you imagine? I don’t know how they can print such baseless accusations. But apparently Lord Fortescue had sensitive documents that went missing from Beaumont Towers. Do you know anything about this? How could anyone think Robert had taken them?

There is so little at present that I can tell you to offer a bit of joy. But you should know this: Margaret’s friend, Mr. Michaels, has been sending letters to her with alarming frequency, and I caught her blushing as she read one. What a pity he is an Oxford don instead of a peer of the realm—and don’t scold me for saying that, Emily. It’s only that I fear her parents would not approve of the match.

But I don’t know Margaret so well as you do. Perhaps it is only an academic correspondence. I may be entirely misjudging the situation.

I miss you very, very much and am your most devoted friend,

Ivy 

Cécile and I were snug under heaps of blankets in a carriage, slowing as it reached the Amalienhof wing of the Hofburg Palace, where we were to call on the empress. It was our second full day in Vienna, and already I could see how easy it would be to get caught up in the lovely frivolity of the city. In many ways, it reminded me of the London Season: balls, parties, concerts, the opera. But added to that was the café culture, with which I was much taken, the postcard-perfect architecture of the Ringstrasse, and a lively community of artists. Notably absent, of course, were the matrons of London society. The Viennese had their own rules, but as a foreigner, I found it deliciously simple to do what I wanted without being the target of withering glares on a regular basis.

It had taken me longer than usual to dress for our trip to the palace, a fact that disappointed me, as I liked to believe that I was utterly undaunted by royalty. In the end, I settled on one of Mr. Worth’s creations, a striking gown on which gold embroidery covered a dark burgundy underskirt. Fastened over the high-necked bodice was a trim jacket and overskirt made from soft golden velvet. Flounces at the hips were gathered to reveal the rich burgundy below, and the material from the underskirt, with its lovely embroidery, featured again on wide lapels and fitted cuffs. Meg had taken extra pains with my hair, taming my curls in an upswept knot and pinning a darling hat trimmed with wispy feathers to my head. She would not let me leave the hotel until she was confident I could impress the empress.

In contrast, Cécile was nonchalant when choosing a gown. She knew full well that she would be all striking elegance no matter what she wore. Despite her age, her face was still beautiful, her silver hair shone, and her every movement was filled with grace. Furthermore, there was not a single item in her wardrobe unfit for a queen.

She and Sissi had met when they were girls and Cécile was visiting Bavaria. From that time, they corresponded, although they saw each other infrequently. The connection between them, she had told me, was strong, and in difficult times, each turned to the other.

The empress’s eccentricities were as infamous as her beauty was legendary. It was said she maintained her figure with a never-ending series of extreme diets: oranges and violet-flavored ice cream, raw eggs and salt, substituting meat juice or milk for meals. She pampered her face with masks of strawberries or raw meat (although I never quite understood how raw meat fit with pampering), and bathed in water mixed with olive oil or milk and honey.

I had never seen her in person, but when we were girls, Ivy had a postcard that pictured her, and we’d lamented that our own queen was not nearly so lovely. Empress Elisabeth was a vision of royal perfection: a fairy tale. But the woman who greeted Cécile and me after we’d been settled into a formal salon in the Amalienhof bore little resemblance to the figure from the postcard.

“My darling Cécile, I have so longed for you.” She was shockingly thin and swathed from head to toe in black, still mourning the loss of her son, Rudolf, whose death at the imperial hunting lodge at Mayerling had shocked the Austrian nation.

“You should have sent for me sooner. I am distressed to find you in such a condition.”

“Don’t scold me. I can’t bear it. Things are more dreadful here than ever. I don’t know why I ever come back to Vienna. I wish we were still girls, playing in the Alps.”

“How are the horses?” Cécile asked, and the empress’s face brightened at once. They embarked on a spirited discussion of the animals (one of whom was called Nihilist, an excellent name) that lasted nearly a quarter of an hour, neither of them paying me the slightest attention. At last, Sissi sighed and looked at me with eyes void of energy.

“Perhaps you would like to read so Cécile and I do not bore you with tales of our squandered youths.” She waved a slim hand in the direction of a desk in the far corner of the room. “I’ve all sorts of books. Take whatever you’d like.”

“Thank you,” I said. The books piled in neat stacks on the desk caught my interest at once: two volumes of Greek mythology, a copy of Plato’s Republic, six volumes of rather sensational poetry, and a copy of the Odyssey in the original Greek. The empress was no vapid royal. I flipped through the poetry first, assuming I would not be spending much time reading.

I underestimated how much Sissi had to say to Cécile.

Three-quarters of an hour later, I had come to the conclusion that I’d always underrated the Romantic poets. I was just about to pick up The Republic when the conversation on the opposite end of the room grew louder. By louder, I mean slightly less inaudible than it had been. I couldn’t understand much of what was being said beyond the word “Mayerling,” and that caught my attention not only because it was a topic Cécile had warned me to avoid, but also because it was also written on a letter that was sitting on the desk.

I—like everyone else in Europe—had read the story of Crown Prince’s Rudolf’s death nearly three years earlier. It was originally reported that he’d died of heart failure, but rumors of a very different ending were rampant. His mistress, young Mary Vestera, had died the same night, and although the young lady’s name was not mentioned in any papers in Austria, the news I had read in London was full of stories of a lovers’ suicide pact.

Ordinarily, I would not dream of reading someone else’s correspondence, but I found myself leaning forward across the desk, straining to make out the words of the letter while keeping an uneasy eye on Cécile and the empress. I did not want to pick up the letter and risk being caught doing the literary equivalent of eavesdropping. In it, someone was reporting to Sissi that there had been many shots fired at the hunting lodge the night Rudolf died. Trailing at the bottom of the page was the beginning of an intriguing sentence about the motivations of the French and their English compatriots. I longed to turn it over to read the rest, but was not bold enough. What had the French or English to do with Mayerling?