Chapter 23
Chapter Twenty-Three
Evie rubbed the back of her neck. Hanging like that over Hartenberg’s shoulder—and who would have known he was so strong?—had given her a cramp in her neck from the attempt to look up at him.
He’d set her down carefully in a small conference room. Schneider had followed and closed the door behind them. The two men were exchanging glances.
“Well?”
Evie felt a sudden urge to drink that bottle of red wine they’d left in the other room. She heaved a sigh and sat in a chair.
“Before I say anything at all, I want to make clear that I had already decided to tell you about it right after you’d caught me breaking into your study.”
Schneider made a choking sound. Hartenberg lifted his hand to silence him.
“Except somehow there was never any time, and you were never at home, and when we did meet in public, you were always in this thunderous mood. In a cold kind of way. Like an iceberg. No, worse.” She pulled a face.
“It is not at all trust-inspiring, you know. I know it made you see me in the worst possible light, but you must believe me when I tell you that you jumped to the wrong conclusion when you caught me in your study. But there is something you should know about me. When I care about someone, I do so with every fibre in my body. Without condition.”
Schneider coughed again. “Maybe I should leave,” he mumbled.
“Stay.” Hartenberg’s glance never left her face.
She threw him a withering glare. “I am talking about my brother Julius, of course.”
“Of course,” he murmured.
“I would do anything for him.”
Hartenberg did not reply.
“Even espionage,” she finished softly. “If that is what it takes to protect him.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “So the Widows attempted to blackmail you?”
She threw him a surprised look. “You are certainly quick on the uptake.”
“That’s why he is a field marshal, my lady.” Schneider pulled up a chair for both himself and Hartenberg, and he straddled it, his face alight with interest. “He is always two moves ahead.”
Hartenberg tapped a finger on the table, deep in thought. “The Widows are looking for the list. They believe that I am in possession of it. So they approached you. You are to obtain it for them. If not, they will do something to Julius. My guess is that they would frame him as a traitor.”
“Brilliant deduction, sir. Absolutely brilliant.” Schneider’s eyes glistened with hero worship.
Evie leaned back in her chair, folding her arms. “Why are we having this conversation if you know the entire story already?”
“The question is why you agreed to it.” Hartenberg’s brows drew together. “You are the sister of a duke. You had only to ask for protection. Instead, you chose to face them alone. Why?”
“Before I answer that, I need to know why you are looking for the list. I won’t say another word until you tell me the truth.”
The two men exchanged glances. “This is highly classified information, my lady,” Schneider began.
“Then we have talked enough.” Evie got up.
“Sit.” The word cut through the air like a sword. Startled, Evie sat.
“Surely you will understand that I am not about to share with you highly classified military intelligence, not when you have proven yourself to be less than trustworthy.”
“I am the most trustworthy person in this entire house,” Evie flared up.
“You must admit that past evidence has proven the contrary.”
“I think I will wait outside,” Schneider mumbled. “Call me when you need me.”
“Stay, Schneider. Take notes. This concerns military intelligence,” Hartenberg snapped.
Evie glared at him. She pointed at the paper and pen on the table in front of Schneider. “There. Write. I want you to note this down. I swear on the life of my brother that what I am saying now is the truth.” She paused and rubbed her forehead, as she recalled the events.
“That first night at the inn, I saw a lady in Miss Honeywell’s room, dressed all in black. She bent over Clara in a way that I found ominous and it became clear to me that she was mistaking her for me. Yet I had never seen that woman before. Are you writing all that down?”
“Yes, yes,” Schneider said, scribbling eagerly.
“I then managed to get a room for myself. But when a woman with her children entered, I thought that she needed that room more than me. So I gave it to her.”
“That was most uncommonly generous of you, my lady.”
“The laundry maid then approached me, thinking I was a servant as well, and offered to share her room with me. I thought that was kind of her and since there were no other rooms left, I took her up on the offer. That night I could not sleep and while lying on the floor on that threadbare mattress, between the shelves, I saw a piece of paper stick out at the very back of the shelf. I pulled it out, thinking it was a laundry list. It was an odd list. It was full of names.”
“Zeus’s beard,” Schneider breathed, forgetting to write.
“Evie.” Hartenberg gripped her hands. “Never tell me you found the list?”
“It was certainly a list. I do not know whether it is the one that you are looking for. I also do not know its significance.” She hesitated. “I would have discarded and forgotten it, save for one thing.” She paused. She could not bring herself to say it.
“Julius’s name was on it,” Hartenberg said softly.
She drew in a shaking breath. “You can call me anything you want, but I am not a fool. If there is a list of names, with my brother’s name on it, hidden away in the farthest corner of the laundry room of a seedy inn, in times like these...
” She shook her head. “I won’t have it. I won’t. It cannot be good.”
“What did you do with it?” he asked heavily.
Evie licked her lips. “I burned it.”
Hartenberg fell back in his chair.
“Zounds, my lady.” Schneider shook his head. “Zounds. What now?”
“Continue your tale.”
“Well, you know what happened next. I returned to Vienna. Lady Castlereagh dragged me all about Vienna, and at an outing to the confiserie, I ran into the lady in black again. She told me she is a baroness, part of an organisation. And she told me that unless I helped her find that list, a copy of which was in your possession, she would expose Julius as a traitor and spy in the Morgenblatt the very next day. She gave me a time limit and unless I gave her the intelligence she wanted, she would do her best to ruin him.”
Hartenberg pulled his hand over his face. “It is worse than I feared. So instead of trusting me and coming to me, or Julius, with the information, you of course agreed to help her, even though you knew I did not have the list.”
“There are several things wrong with that statement. Firstly, why would I trust you? You have not earned my trust.”
Schneider tilted his head. “She does have a point, sir.”
“Silence.”
“Yes, sir.”
“From the moment we met, you have been high-handed, idiotic and beetle-brained in the extreme. Not at all trust-inspiring.” She sniffed. “But, as you can clearly see, I am here now, am I not?” She threw him a withering glare.
“Oh.” Schneider lifted his quill. “I believe that is to say that she trusts you after all, sir. She would not have come here and told you all this if she did not.”
Hartenberg closed his eyes for one moment, as if gathering all his patience.
“Secondly,” Evie continued, “I assumed you did not have the list. Yet I wasn’t at all sure. The Baroness seemed certain that you did. So what if you did have a copy? With information that would incriminate Julius.”
His face was hard as a stone. “So you broke into the study to see whether you could find it.”
“Yes.”
Schneider whistled.
“But, my lady, just for the record, how did you manage to break into his strongbox?”
“I used a hairpin.”
“That is ingenious. That is absolutely brilliant. That is absolutely—”
“Schneider, I think I shall have to throw you out after all,” Hartenberg said heavily.
She fiddled with the string of her reticule. “But of course, I found nothing.” She bit her lip.
“So you believed I might have incriminating information on your brother hidden away somewhere, which is why you found it necessary to break into my study to find it, and destroy it, I suppose.”
“Yes.” She tugged on her lower lip. “But then I thought about it the entire night. And some more. My brother doesn’t like just anyone, you see.
But for some reason that eludes me entirely, he seems to think that you are just the right person to trust his only sister with.
He would give his life for you. Julius isn’t stupid, you know.
So I came to the conclusion that, well.” She ran out of words and she made a helpless movement with her hands.
He looked at her for a long time. “So you came to the conclusion that maybe I would not betray your brother, after all. And that maybe, I would give my life for your brother as much as he would for me.” Another pause. “Instead of betraying his trust.”
She looked at him with big eyes. “I am right, am I not?”
“He is my blood brother,” he said softly. “I have sworn to protect him. As I will protect you. If you allow it.”
She cleared her throat. “So it appears we are on the same side. How f-fortunate. What now? The Baroness is waiting for me to give her the list. She will do her best to ruin Julius otherwise. I had the intention of giving her the list, actually. Without Julius’s name on it.
But I thought I’d ask you first to see whether that is the right thing to do.
I do not want to give her anything that might cause some real trouble. ”
Schneider shook his head, confused. “Hold on one moment, Lady Evangeline. I don’t understand. Earlier you said that you’d burned the list.”
“So I did.”
“Then explain?” Hartenberg’s frown etched even deeper into his forehead.
A small smile stole onto Evie’s face. “See, that is why I believed it would be of benefit for you, too, to get to know me a bit better. You do not know me at all. Not one whit.”
“I do not understand, Evie. What does this have to do with anything?”
“You do not know that I have an excellent memory.” She tapped a finger against her temple. “I can memorise entire passages of books merely by looking at them. It is a bit of a talent that I possess.”
Schneider dropped his quill. “You memorised the list?”
“Why…yes?”