Chapter 13
Chapter Thirteen
There were moments in life that were so appalling, they entered the realm of the absurd. For Pippa, this was one such moment.
If only she could faint, was her first thought. Surely, that would solve all her immediate problems. To just fall into a state of blessed oblivion and forget everything she had seen and heard in the last ten minutes.
Instead, she remained stoically standing, watching as the debauched Archduke wrestled with a perfectly naked woman, who, evidently drunk, seemed determined to cling to him like an octopus, all the while wailing for her lover, who seemed to have deserted her.
Pippa’s mind set to work. One, two steps, and she reached the sideboard. She picked up the champagne bucket with the melted ice water—and poured the entire contents over the pair.
Splash.
The prince spluttered.
The woman’s wailing came to an abrupt halt.
She let go of him and dropped to the ground, stunned.
The Archduke, dazed, wiped the ice-cold water from his face. He stared at her, water dripping from his hair, as if she were the most impossible apparition.
Pippa set the bucket aside, stepped up to the table, and with a firm yank, pulled the tablecloth off. Then, she stepped up to the woman and draped the cloth over her body.
Lord Pumpernickel’s drunken laugh sounded from behind her. “Hehehe, did you see that? Now that’s what I call a neat trick. Yank and pull and not a single glass fell to the ground. Best trick I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Marvellous! Do it again!”
But Pippa ignored him and knelt down next to the woman, who was shaking with her entire body.
“Are you well?” Pippa hadn’t the faintest idea who the woman was and truly, she cared little for her, but one thing she knew for a fact: here was a woman whose heart was broken. Just like hers. And that she could not bear to ignore.
The woman looked up at her with enormous eyes, black streaks of kohl running in rivulets down her cheeks.
Her long, sensitive lips were pulled down tragically.
Her pale hazel eyes filled with unutterable sadness.
“You know, all those years, no one ever cared to ask me that,” she whispered.
Then she threw her arms around Pippa’s neck and burst into tears.
It was different from her previous weeping, which had been dramatic and for show. This time, she seemed to cry genuinely, softly, like a child.
Pippa patted her back helplessly.
Behind her, she heard the Archduke’s exasperated voice. “Kovacz, where in hell’s name have you been? Get that accursed woman out of here.”
A man knelt next to her. “Let go of her. I’ll take over from here.” Pippa looked up—straight into Kovacz’s face.
He recoiled. “Merciful Heavens! But what? But how? How how, how can this be?” He jumped up and pointed his finger at her. “Fr?ulein Cranwell? Here? But-but-but in the name of all that’s good and holy, how?”
Pippa looked at him with resignation. It really should come as no surprise that this Kovacz was none other than Klemens’ friend and servant, whom she had known as Marek.
She really should have recognised him earlier, when he had come down the stairs with Klemens—that is, the Archduke—but she had been too fixated on Klemens—that is, of course, the Archduke Leopold.
“But, but Your Imperial Highness—Fr?ulein Cranwell—How—What—Why—” Poor Kovacz stuttered. Then he pulled himself together. “She was here all the time?”
She felt a firm grasp on her upper arm gently pulling her away from the weeping woman.
“Pippa.” The name fell from his lips, hoarse, unbelieving.
There it was. Finally. How she had yearned for his voice to say her name. There was a dull ache in her heart.
Pippa steeled herself. She pulled her arm out of his grasp and tilted her chin up, looking straight into his familiar, sky-blue eyes.
“My name is Anna Braun, Your Imperial Highness. Please forgive me for intruding. I’ve been sent to clean up the room.” She spoke with a broad Viennese dialect and dipped into a curtsy.
“Anna Braun?” he echoed.
“Yes, Your Imperial Highness. I am a junior Dienstmagd, and I would like to sweep the floor and clear away the broken glass, if you please.” She dropped into another curtsy.
“Splendid lass,” the drunken Lord Pumpernickel proclaimed. “Better than all the other bits of muslin combined. Yes, sweep up the mess, right under my feet too, then do that trick again, will ya? The one with the tablecloth. This time with more bottles on’t.”
The Archduke threw an irritated glance at the Englishman, then turned back with a frown at Pippa, who had picked up her broom and proceeded to sweep the floor vigorously.
His Imperial Highness watched her, entirely out of his depth. Then, as if awakening to the specifics of the situation, he ran a nervous hand through his wet hair, straightened the banyan and firmly tied the belt about the waist.
“There has been this, uh, situation,” he began, glancing at the woman, whom Kovacz was ushering back into the bedroom so she could get dressed. “It is a delicate matter of sorts and not at all what it appears to be—”
“Delicate matter, harharhar,” Stewart intervened.
“Why don’t you just tell the truth? That you had the finest hussies of all Vienna in your quarters, dancers and actresses and courtesans, each one prettier than the last, ripe for the plucking.
” He kissed his fingers. “Dancing and singing. We spent a splendid night indeed.”
A dull red climbed the Archduke’s neck. “It’s really not like that—”
Pippa’s stomach twisted. She clenched the broom and swept resolutely, ignoring him as if he had never spoken.
“No, no, it never is,” Lord Pumpernickel chuckled. “That’s what we men like to say when we run out of excuses, lass. Bear that in mind.”
Drunken men and children did speak the truth, it shot through poor Pippa’s mind, as she swept with a fury that would have cleaned out hell itself.
The Archduke stepped into her path. “They were for the Tsar,” he growled. “What was I to do? He wanted to choose one of them, and I had to comply. Then they refused to leave, and that woman appeared, making a scene.”
“Hehehe, yes, of course, anything you say. It was such a chore, such an ordeal to watch them dance on the table, wasn’t it?
Until that woman arrived and made a scene.
” He jerked his chin in the direction of the closed bedroom door, whence the woman had disappeared.
“Why the devil d’ya have to invite the Tsar’s mistress? It was only asking for trouble.”
“I didn’t,” the Archduke bit out. “She came of her own accord. What did you want me to do? Throw her out? When the Tsar expressly ordered her to stay?”
“The man was stark drunk by then and wouldn’t have remembered the next day anyhow,” Stewart grumbled.
“They call him ‘the beautiful Alexander’—hah! I wish they could’ve seen him how beautiful he was last night,” Stewart chortled.
“The Viennese, they really are talented at giving nicknames. Lord Pumpernickel, they call me. I think it’s charming.
Do you know what his name is? Prince Lucifer.
Hehehe. And rightly so. There isn’t anyone as thoroughly debauched as him.
He has made an art out of it. He had an entire troupe of dancing hussies, and then the Naked Angel, the Tsar’s own mistress, at his beck and call.
And he doesn’t stop at that, no he doesn’t.
Now he’s bent on seducing the chambermaids—”
“Will you shut your infernal mouth!” he roared.
Pippa swept and swept with grim determination, pretending she didn’t understand a single word that was said.
More wine glasses, cards, and shards of glass everywhere.
In a corner, she found the woman’s shawl.
She picked it up and folded it and set it on the sofa.
The glass shards clinked as she swept them onto the shovel and then dumped everything into her pail.
She picked up the broken glass bottles and decanters and reached for a vase that had toppled under the table when the Archduke stepped up to her. “Stop it.”
She averted her face. “I beg your pardon a hundred times, Your Imperial Highness. I shall continue cleaning later.” She curtsied.
“There, there, there.” Lord Stewart pointed under the table near his boots. “There’s some shards there.” He lifted his boot.
“Yes, my lord.” She knelt to sweep away the shards right from under his feet.
“Pippa!” There was a hint of impatience in his voice.
“My name is Anna Braun, Your Imperial Highness.” Another curtsy.
“Will you stop that!” He grabbed her broom. To avoid him, she bent sideways, lost her balance, stumbled to the ground and to support herself, pressed her hand flat upon the ground, right into a pile of glass.
A small sound of pain escaped her.
He reached for her hand.
She clenched it to a fist and pressed it against her chest, but he knelt next to her and took her hand and unfolded it, finger by finger, and regarded the bloody palm.
He cursed softly. Picking up a napkin, he picked the little pieces of glass out of her wound. Then he poured some alcohol over the napkin and, with a warning of, “this will sting”, pressed it onto the wound.
Pippa hissed.
He bound the napkin tightly around her palm and made a knot. “There. No more sweeping.” He pulled her against him. She felt his heat, felt her heartbeat slam against his chest.
“Look at me.”
Pippa looked resolutely away.
“Pippa. Look at me.”
“My name is—”
He lifted his hand and tilted her chin up, and his gaze bore into hers, intent, deep, lightning blue.
And suddenly it was Klemens who stood there, Klemens who held her, who looked at her with such concern. With such familiarity, with such worry. With such love.
And suddenly, suddenly it overcame her, and a hot wave of tears welled up. She blinked and blinked, and she would rather die than have him see her cry.
“Please. Let me go,” she whispered, and her voice broke. “Please.”
He hesitated; conflicting emotions ran over his face. Then he loosened his grip and released her.
The sudden rush of cold that surrounded her made her shiver. She averted her face and bent to pick up her broom and pail.
“I’ll return to finish cleaning later, Your Imperial Highness,” she muttered.
He didn’t reply at all.
She curtsied and fled.
He didn’t stop her.