Page 24
Letting out an exasperated sigh, she started forward, pulling Amalie with her. “Very well. Just do your best not to bump into us!”
As the dancers on the floor streamed outwards on a wave of chatter and laughter and were replaced by new couples, the two women slipped along the edge of the wall beneath the upheld cloak, while Lord Riven paced slowly in their wake. Margaret had to admit that he kept to his word; courtesy of his keen senses, she never felt a single bump or jostle along their surreptitious procession.
By the time they reached the orchestra, the musicians were preparing for their next piece with a visible shuffle of sheet music and emptying-out of brass instruments. Tonight’s conductor was a tall, lean, younger man with wildly curling hair, a cleanshaven face, and a fierce look behind his spectacles; Margaret’s brows rose as she took in the gnarled and twisting black baton in his hands, quite unlike the smoothly polished stick the last conductor had wielded.
“Is that some sort of modern affectation?” she whispered to Amalie, pointing it out.
The lorelei shrugged. “It looks perfectly ordinary to me.”
“And the rest of the orchestra?” Margaret pressed. “You don’t see anything amiss? Anything different from usual?”
“Not as yet.”
“Hmm.” Margaret glanced down at her dance card. If that last dance had been the first waltz of the evening, then this following dance should be a quadrille and of no supernatural interest. As the latest couples formed lines and the orchestra struck up another tune, she turned to her husband and whispered, “Have you had any success in your own mission tonight?”
“None whatsoever.” His lips barely moved as she spoke, his gaze seemingly fixed with rapt attention upon the orchestra, but his voice echoed with the same frustration that she felt. “All I’ve heard has been grumbling about the king of Saxony’s tactless Damenspende gift and other local political gossip.”
“Oh, I overheard some of that, too.” Margaret sighed. “Old army officers unhappy about the emperor trying to make peace by offering up Austrian territory, all wishing the late empress and her chancellor were still in charge.”
“The ‘late’ empress?” Her husband’s brows rose, though he didn’t turn. “Has the last empress somehow lost her immortal life, then, since giving up her crown twenty years ago?”
Margaret opened her mouth to answer and then paused, blinking. “Actually...I don’t know,” she admitted. “I’d always assumed so, as I’ve heard nothing about her in any newspaper since then, but I suppose she might still be alive and only retired from the public eye. She was—or is—a vampire, after all.”
“I was only a child when she stepped down,” Amalie put in softly, “but I’m certain I would remember a state funeral. The whole city comes out for all of those.”
“And she would hardly have been buried in secret after ruling the empire for over a century,” Margaret agreed. “No, I suppose she must still be living somewhere.”
“Rather odd, then, that she hasn’t bothered to return for Vienna’s Grand Exposition and these crucial royal balls,” her husband mused. “I would have expected her to be brought out to charm and overawe all the younger rulers into agreeing terms with her great-great-great-grandson.”
“Well, I don’t blame her for wishing to stay well away from court now she’s finally rid of the throne.” Margaret shuddered. “Can you imagine spending well over a century constantly under observation, forced to practice courtly manners every single day?”
“It would certainly be torture for some,” her husband agreed wryly. “Others don’t seem to mind so much, though. Apparently, that final, vampiric chancellor of hers—the one so hated by the populace for quashing every attempt at reform or social progress—has been witnessed at these balls in his first appearances since he fled the empire twenty years ago in the wake of the violent uprisings. I haven’t glimpsed him yet myself, but I’ve heard plenty of whispering about his return. The nobles here talk about Prince Metternich half in awe and half in fear. Apparently, the network of spies and secret police that he maintained during his decades of power was oppressive enough to leave a long, cold shadow.”
“Hmm.” Margaret absorbed the information without much interest, her attention still fixed on the orchestra.
Beside her, though, Amalie stiffened. “Of course!” the lorelei breathed. “I knew I recognized something about his face. I saw it drawn in caricatures and posted about the streets when I was young!”
“I beg your pardon?” Margaret turned to stare at her. “Do you mean to say that the vampire who forced me out of the room was the last empress’s chancellor?”
“Wait, the man who put his hands on you was a vampire?” Lord Riven demanded. “And you still claimed you were perfectly safe?”
“Oh, that’s hardly relevant,” Margaret said impatiently. “If it were purely a matter of physical strength, I would be every bit as disadvantaged with a human gentleman.”
“I can vouch for that truth,” Amalie put in.
Turning beneath the sheltering cloak, Margaret exchanged a glance of mutual understanding with the other woman. Thoughtful and compassionate as Lord Riven might be, her husband was still a physically powerful man who had been raised and trained to lead other men in battle. There were certain types of vulnerabilities he had simply never experienced...and even with their own shared understanding, Margaret knew herself to have been infinitely more fortunate in her own protections than the woman who stood beside her.
The lorelei held herself with far too much dignity for Margaret to dare reach out her hand in sympathy. She did step ever so slightly closer, though, and Amalie did not shift away.
“Regardless...” Margaret turned back to Lord Riven, granting the other woman a moment to recompose herself. “I’d thought that Emperor Florian dismissed every member of the former government. So why in the world would former Chancellor Metternich—”
“Prince Metternich,” he corrected her.
“...Why would Prince Metternich be sent to wander about ballrooms as an Imperial equerry?” she demanded. “It seems the opposite of the emperor’s desired message.”
Come to think of it, he might not only have been wandering about ballrooms, either. Those gossiping librarians she’d overheard had muttered about someone who was ‘now an equerry,’ hadn’t they? According to them, he’d retrieved an item from the deepest archives and then...oh, what was it they had said, exactly? Had he visited twice? Or was it someone else who’d visited the second time and then scandalously refused to leave any record of that visit?
Curse it, this was why it always helped to share her research with her husband. Her own brain never retained the full details of any gossip that wasn’t supernatural in nature!
