Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
The Embassy ball took place at a glamorous palais in the Minoritenplatz, where the English delegation had settled.
Rumours circulated that Castlereagh’s first residence had consisted of fourteen rooms and been deemed unsatisfactory, and he’d moved to this current baroque palais in central Vienna, with twenty-two rooms. This provided much gossip to the Viennese.
“How many rooms can a man and his wife possibly need?” they complained.
Well, it wasn’t just for himself and his wife, as it turned out, but also for his brother Lord Stewart, the English ambassador, in addition to the entire delegation that had accompanied Lord and Lady Castlereagh, with the exception of Aldingbourne, who had rented his own palais.
The baroque banquet hall glittered with white stucco on the ceilings, crystal chandeliers, and gilded mirrors. Everyone had been invited and it appeared the entire Congress was in attendance.
Evie stepped with trepidation up the thick, red carpet on the staircase to the ballroom, flanked by her brother and his wife, Catherine, as well as Clara, still pale from her recent bout of measles, who had decided she felt well enough to join just until the announcement.
Evie was wearing a cream silken dress with a delicately embroidered gold overdress, her hair brushed up with a few feathers.
At the top of the stairs, a dashing gentleman in gala uniform was waiting: white and red, under his arm the tricorn. He stepped forward and saluted.
She did not immediately recognise him as Hartenberg, and when she finally did, her eyes widened. Good heavens. She’d certainly known that he was good looking, but when he was truly primped and spruced up… His eyes roved appreciatively over her, and she realised she did not look half bad herself.
“She is all yours.” Julius gave him a curt nod. “I owe you my thanks for taking her off my hands. Good luck, dear chap, for she is a handful.”
“Julius!” His wife gasped. “You can’t hand over your sister as though she is some sort of furniture that passes from one owner to the other.”
“No, for by God that would have made things easier.”
His wife slapped him lightly on his arm. “Incorrigible. Hartenberg, what he of course means to say is that you are lucky to have her, and if you don’t take good care of Evie, you shall have to deal not only with him but with me, personally. And of the two, I promise to be the more terrifying.”
Hartenberg smiled at her charmingly. “Never fear, Your Grace, I perfectly understood the real meaning behind his words. I shall guard her as the most precious treasure.” He placed a kiss on her gloved hand and even though his lips did not touch her skin, a rush of heat swept through her entire body.
Evie flushed crimson but lifted her chin defiantly. “I have something to say in this matter as well, you know.”
He smiled lazily into her eyes. “And well I know that.” He turned pointedly to Clara. “It is a pleasure to see you again, Miss Honeywell.”
Clara blushed, curtsied and stammered a reply in kind in a low voice.
The announcement was made at the opening of the ball.
Castlereagh spoke first, then his brother Lord Stewart, the ambassador, then Metternich.
The speeches grew longer as they progressed, and by the time her brother Julius stepped onto the stage, Evie felt unaccountably anxious.
Her heart slammed against her ribs and a rushing filled her ears.
It did not make sense whatsoever, but she felt like storming out of the ballroom and running far, far away.
Hartenberg, as if feeling her nervousness, stepped closer and gripped her hand tightly and growled softly into her ear, “Look at me.”
She lifted her head with some difficulty. His eyes were deep, calm.
“It will be all right.”
Something in her chest, which had been clenched tight as a fist, eased open. She stared back, speechless, and for one deceptive second the anxiety lifted.
Then it came crashing back with even greater force.
Would it, indeed? Would they truly be all right?
“…and it is with great pleasure that I announce the betrothal of my sister, Lady Evangeline Stafford-Hill, to His Excellency, Field Marshal Georg, Count von Hartenberg…”
There was a rushing in her ears, faces turned towards them with bright smiles, people clapping, raising champagne glasses, and she smiled back, smiled, smiled until her cheeks ached, when in reality she felt as though her stomach might turn over right there on the ballroom floor.
Panicked, her eyes darted about the crowd and everyone was pressing in on them.
“Look at me,” he murmured above her, holding her firmly, and her gaze flew up and met his, and relief swept through her once more. “Always keep your eyes on me.”
He drew her forward, and she felt his warmth, smelled his cologne, a whiff of musk and forest, and it was comforting.
The orchestra started up and she did not even know what she was dancing, for Georg, it turned out, was a rather accomplished dancer after all, and he was leading her deftly across the ballroom floor. Her feet danced quite out of their own will, knowing the steps, while her mind did not.
It was then that it happened.
Evie missed a step. Georg’s hand tightened at her waist, steadied her, carried her on. Safe, steady, calm.
She clung to him, never wanting to let go.
He really was like a rock in the surf, steadfast and loyal.
Aside from her brother, she had known very few people like him in her life.
Julius had been her only family for as long as she could remember.
She had grown up without her mother, who had died in childbirth, and with a father too busy with his ducal duties.
From early on, she had learned that the only person she could rely on was herself, and maybe her brother.
But Julius was now happily married and in love. He had a new family of his own. Which left her exactly nowhere.
Her brother Julius and his wife Catherine danced by, close to them.
Catherine had her face lifted up to him, and there was such joy brimming in her eyes.
And her brother stared down at her, his eyes full of a tenderness that took Evie’s breath away.
He bent down to whisper something into her ear, Catherine blushed and chuckled and then he chuckled, and there was an aura of love about them as they swirled with the music.
Love.
“I can hear you think,” Hartenberg remarked, and the corner of his mouth turned upward ever so slightly.
Her eyes flew to him again.
A flush prickled up the back of her neck, accompanied by a heavy thumping of her heart, that quite inexplicably increased when he looked at her, but maybe that had something to do with the exertion of the dance.
She stopped in the middle of the dance to stare at him, disrupting the set, which had involved a rather complicated twist, turn and jump with a second couple.
The music went on, the dancing and the ball around them went on, and she stared.
The noise of the ball receded to a faraway murmur.
Hartenberg, too, paused, and waited for her patiently, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to suddenly stop in the middle of a quadrille to gape at one’s partner as the revelation of a lifetime crashed about her.
She had fallen in love with him.
Hopelessly. Deeply. Impossibly.
It jolted through her, that knowledge, like a lightning bolt, and her jaw may have dropped at the greatness of that revelation.
He was saying something now, but she could not understand a thing, because she was too busy gaping at him. He had to repeat it three times before she heard him.
“Would you prefer to rest?”
“P-p-please.” She had clearly lost all ability to speak.
With a nod, he took her arm to lead her to the refreshment room.
She stumbled once more, for clearly she had also forgotten how to walk. She heard him chuckle softly as he caught her once more.
She pressed her cool glass against her heated cheek after she had gulped it down.
Hartenberg was still next to her, chatting genially with another military man.
She peeped up at him sideways through her eyelashes.
He, Hartenberg. He would be her new family. He would be steady and steadfast, quiet and loyal.
He would be home and she would be safe.
She loved him so dearly everything inside her squeezed together, leaving her breathless. She drew in a deep, shaking breath.
And the very same breath that delivered this discovery delivered the next, that this, precisely, was what she would never have in return.
After the dance was over, people approached to congratulate them, more champagne was poured, more glasses raised. Metternich climbed the podium again to make yet another speech lauding the progress of the congress, and how well things were proceeding.
The man standing next to her snorted. “The Prince has an exquisite sense of humour, for the only thing that has been progressing of late is the amount of champagne poured down our throats.” He spoke in French, wore a wig and silken knee breeches and, instead of waltzing, tapped his cane on the ground in time with the music, watching the crowd with lively eyes under his bushy eyebrows.
He had been introduced to Evie as Talleyrand, one of the most famous French statesmen of all time.
He had bent over Evie’s hand with practised gallantry, congratulated her, and observed with a sweet smile that it was a cunning piece of statecraft on her part to have secured one of the most powerful men of the empire.
“The congress has accomplished nothing half so clever,” he concluded.
“Maybe that is because there are only men sitting around the congress table who inevitably end up arguing with each other. You should have included some women. Women are more pragmatic, and tend to settle things with greater efficiency.” Evie was relieved to have regained at least some of her wit, for it wouldn’t do at all to spend the entire evening staring at Hartenberg like a mute, lovelorn sheep.