ChapterOne
The boy had stolenher reticule.
Pippa had been reaching for a coin when he flitted from the shadows and snatched it from her hands. She watched, stunned, as the scrawny figure sprinted along the cobbled street, zig-zagging nimbly around the pedestrians like a hare.
Pippa cursed with such vehemence that the stableboy nearly dropped the water buckets in alarm.
She immediately set off in pursuit. Under normal circumstances, she would have chased him down easily, since she was an equally nimble runner. It would have been child’s play to catch the little wretch.
Provided she wore trousers and sturdier shoes.
But Pippa wore delicate kid leather half-boots that, whilst so pretty in the shop window, proved treacherous on cobblestones. Her heavy woollen dress and layered petticoats caught at her legs with every stride. Not to mention the shift, stays, and stockings that kept sliding down. Over it all she wore the heavy loden coat Papa hadgiven her last Christmas, with her shawl and bonnet, draped in dull, black mourning crepe. It was nigh impossible to run even two steps in that outfit.
And sure enough, her heels entangled in the hem of her long skirts, she stumbled, and came to a halt. She watched in disbelief as the boy made a last turn and disappeared into the crowd.
The stableboy had witnessed the entire interlude. “Stop the thief!” he yelled. Some stable hands set into motion to run after the boy, but they returned empty-handed, panting and shaking their heads.
“Sorry, Fräulein. But he was too fast,” the boy said regretfully and shrugged.
A sick feeling struck Pippa in the stomach, robbing her of breath, as the realisation set in of what, precisely, this signified.
Her reticule was gone. And with it, her entire future.
All her valuables—her papers, her jewellery, the purse with the money—gone.
Her knees weakened, and she swayed. She was about to swoon and faint and drop to the ground like those silly, simpering ladies she had always liked to mock. No, worse. She had allowed herself to get fleeced like a helpless little lamb as soon as she arrived in Vienna.
What on earth was wrong with her?
Spitfire, hothead, minx, madcap, was what people called her. Mostly with annoyance, but from those who knew her, with some affection.
My petandmy treasurewere the endearments her papa had used for her. Sometimes, he called her Poppy, like theflower.
Andmein Täubchenwas what Klemens liked to call her teasingly. My little dove. With amusement brimming in his eyes, because her personality was anything but dove-like. His lips would curl at the corner, and it would take only a little more edging on, a little more teasing until she would receive her reward: a full-blossomed smile breaking over his handsome face…
But all her fire and spirit had disappeared when Papa died and Klemens had vanished.
Angry, hot tears spilled over and ran down her cheeks.
And now she was weeping. For heaven’s sake! Fierce, headstrong Pippa never cried. She rubbed at the tears impatiently with one hand. Really, she was no better than those silly, milk-and-water ladies she despised.
“There, there.” The man gruffly patted her arm. “’Tis a terrible thing, the thieving these days. With all that aristocratic rabble swarming into Vienna for this cursed congress—or whatever they call it—the fine lords are drawing every kind of riffraff, pickpocket, and cutpurse into the city. The prisons are full of them. But it is all useless because for every thief they throw into prison, ten more pop up, like mushrooms. Now, you look like a sensible young thing. Surely you have kept some spare coin stowed away elsewhere, as one should do.”
She had not.
“And surely you must have a respectable family—” he sized her up and down to take in her formal mourning attire that screamed bourgeois respectability, “—that will take you home from here.”
She did not.
Papa had died a fortnight ago. The land and cottage in the alpine village where she had grown up had been seized to pay the debt Papa had left behind.
She had no home.
Her eyes lifted to take in the inn where the mail coach had stopped, the ostlers busy running back and forth, tending to the horses. Her eyes lit on the gilded lamb that dangled over the main entrance:Gasthof Zum Goldenen Lamm.
Klemens.
Klemens would be here. A flush of relief swept through her.
