Anne Perry - Dorchester Terrace

Pitt was smiling now too. “I was not head of Special Branch at the time,” he replied. “But I was ambitious, and hungry enough to reach for the best with no idea of my own limitations.”

“Excellent!” Blantyre applauded him. “Never allow your dreams to be limited. You should aim for the stars. Live and die with your arms outstretched and your eyes seeking the next goal.”

“Evan, you are talking nonsense,” Adriana said quietly, looking first at Charlotte, then at Pitt, judging their reactions. “Aren’t you ever afraid people will believe you?”

“Do you believe me, Mrs. Pitt?” Blantyre inquired, his eyes wide, still challenging.

Charlotte looked at him directly. She was quite sure of her answer.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Blantyre, because I don’t think you mean me to, but yes, I do believe you.”

“Bravo!” he said quietly. “I have found a sparring partner worth my efforts.” He turned to Pitt. “Does your position involve dealing with the Balkans, Mr. Pitt?”

Pitt glanced at Jack and Emily-who had now moved farther away and were engaged in conversation elsewhere-then back at Blantyre.

“With anyone whose activities might threaten the peace or safety of Britain,” he replied, the levity wiped from his face.

Blantyre’s eyebrows rose. “Even if in northern Italy, or Croatia? In Vienna itself?”

“No,” Pitt told him, keeping his expression agreeable, as if they were playing a parlor game of no consequence. “Only on British soil. Farther afield would be Mr. Radley’s concern. As I’m sure you know.”

“Of course.” Blantyre nodded. “That must be challenging for you, to know when you can act, and when you must leave the action to someone else. Or am I being unsophisticated? Is it actually more a matter of how you do a thing rather than what you do?”

Pitt smiled without answering.

“Does your search for information ever take you abroad?” Blantyre continued, completely unperturbed. “You would love Vienna. The quickness of wit, and the music. There is so much music there that is new, innovative in concept, challenging to the mind. I daresay they are musicians you have never heard of, but you will. Above all, there is a breadth of thought in a score of subjects: philosophy, science, social mores, psychology, the very fundamentals of how the human mind works. There is an intellectual imagination there that will very soon lead the world in some areas.”

He gave a slight mocking shrug, as if to deny the heat of his feelings. “And of course there is the traditional as well.” He turned to look at Adriana. “Do you remember dancing all night to Mr. Strauss’s music? Our feet ached, the dawn was paling the sky, and yet if the orchestra had played into the daylight hours, we could not have kept still.”

The memory was there in Adriana’s eyes, but Charlotte was certain she also saw a shadow cross her face.

“Of course I do,” Adriana answered. “No one who has waltzed in Vienna ever completely forgets it.”

Charlotte looked at her, fascinated by the romance of dancing to the music of the Waltz King. “You actually danced when Mr. Strauss conducted the orchestra?” she asked with awe.

“Indeed,” Blantyre responded. “No one else can give music quite the same magic. It makes one feel as if one must dance forever. We watched the moon rise over the Danube, and talked all night with the most amazing people: princes, philosophers, artists, and scientists.”

“Have you met the emperor Franz Josef?” Charlotte pursued. “They say he is very conservative. Is that true?” She told herself it was to keep the conversation innocuous, but she was caught up in this dream portait of Vienna, the new inventions and new ideas of society. It was a world she herself would never see, but-at least as Blantyre had told it-Vienna was the heart of Europe. It was the place of the genesis of new ideas that would spread throughout the whole continent one day, and beyond.

“Yes, I have, and it is true.” Blantyre was smiling but the emotion in his face was intense. There was a passion in him that was urgent, electric.

“A grim man, with a devil on his shoulder,” he went on, watching her face as closely as she was watching his. “A contradiction of a man. More disciplined than anyone else I know. He sleeps on an army bed and rises at some ungodly hour long before dawn. And yet he fell madly in love with Elisabeth, seven years younger than himself, sister of the woman his father wished him to marry.”

“The empress Elisabeth?” Charlotte said with even sharper interest. There was a vitality in Blantyre that intrigued her. She was unsure whether he spoke with such intensity merely to entertain, or possibly to impress, or whether his passion for his subject was really so fierce that he had no control over it.

“The very same,” Blantyre agreed. “He overrode all opposition. He would not be denied.” Now the admiration in his face was undisguised. “They married, and by the time she was twenty-one she had given birth to her third child, her only son.”

“A strange mixture of rigidity and romance,” she said thoughtfully. “Are they happy?”

She felt Pitt’s hand touching her arm, but it was too late to withdraw the remark. She glanced at Adriana and saw in her eyes an emotion she could not read at all: a brilliance, a pain, and something she was trying very hard to conceal. Becoming aware of Charlotte’s gaze on her, she looked away.

“No,” Blantyre said frankly. “She is somewhat bohemian in her tastes, and highly eccentric. She travels all over Europe wherever she can.”

Charlotte wanted to make some light remark that would ease the tension and turn the conversation away from her misjudged question, but she thought now that such a thing would be obvious, and only make matters worse.

“Perhaps it was a case of falling in love with a dream that one did not really understand,” she said quietly.

“How very perceptive of you. You are rather alarming, Mrs. Pitt.” Blantyre said this with pleasure, and a distinct respect. “And very honest!”

“I think you mean ‘indiscreet,’ ” she said ruefully. “Perhaps we had better return to Mr. Strauss and his music. I believe his father was a noted composer as well?”

“Ah, yes.” He drew a deep breath and his smile was a little wry. “He composed the ‘Radetzky March.’ ”

At the farther side of the room was Victor Narraway, newly elevated and a somewhat reluctant member of the House of Lords. He suddenly smiled as he saw Lady Vespasia Cumming-Gould. She was now of an age that it would be indelicate to mention, but she still had the beauty that had made her famous. She walked with the grace of an empress, but without the arrogance. Her silver hair was her crown. As always, she was dressed in the height of fashion. She was tall enough to carry off the huge, puffed upper sleeves that were in style, and she clearly found her great sweeping skirt no encumbrance.

He was still watching her, with the pleasure of friendship, when she turned slightly and saw him. She did not move, but waited for him to come to her.

“Good evening, Lady Vespasia,” he said warmly. “You have just made all the trivialities of attending such an event worthwhile.”

“Good evening, my lord,” she replied with laughter in her eyes.

“That is unnecessary!” Now he felt self-conscious, which was a very rare thing for him. He had held extraordinary power, discreetly, for most of his adult life, first as a member of Special Branch, then for the last decade and a half as its head. But it was a new experience for him to be given such social deference.

“You will have to get used to it, Victor,” she said gently. “Elevation to the peerage gains a different kind of influence.”