Greta paled and cast a nervous glance over her shoulder. “Don’t say that. She has eyes and ears everywhere. One just has to mention her name, and she appears, sprouting from the ground.”
They had been scrubbing for what felt to Pippa like half a lifetime, yet had managed no farther than the middle of the first staircase, when the rattle of wheels echoed through the archway below. A carriage rolled to a halt. The horses tossed their heads, nostrils steaming, while footmen darted forward.
The door swung open, and down stepped a gentleman in delicately tailored breeches and satin slippers, as if he had just emerged from a ballroom.
Pippa froze, her brush halfway to the bucket. She and Greta exchanged a look of dawning horror. They were kneeling squarely on the stairs, buckets, bristles, and knees in the muck, and there was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide at all. They scuttled backwards, dragging their brushes and buckets with them, and the gentleman strode up the stairs as if in a great hurry.
Pippa pressed herself against the marble balustrade, turning sideways, Greta doing the same. Her breath caught; her pulse thundered. Perhaps the gentleman would sweep past them without notice.
From the corner of her eye she saw the flash of a stockinged leg, cream satin breeches, and shoes adorned with buckles so large and gleaming they seemed to cover half the shoe. Those buckles must have cost a fortune, she thought wildly, even as he ascended. Relief flickered through her, for he had not seen them, or else chose to ignore them, when a sudden clatter and muttered oath froze her blood.
The brush.
She had left a brush in the middle of the stair. And the man promptly stumbled over it. He gripped the bannister just in time to prevent himself from tumbling headlong down the stairs.
Greta gasped.
Pippa wanted to sink into the stone floor. Panic propelled her forward on her knees. “I am sorry, so very sorry, sir, please forgive me, please accept my most humble apologies.” She ducked her head, words tumbling out, her gaze fixed on the polished shoes before her.
Above her came a soft, amused huff. Then he bent, lifted the offending brush, and held it out to her.
She looked up, straight into a pair of sharp hazel eyes.
The stranger was striking: pale face, prominent forehead shaded by unruly fair hair, nose long, lips curved in a smile that was as condescending as it was beautiful.His lower lip is fuller than his upper, her mind noted, absurdly.
Two crisp white shirt points framed his chin above a bright red silk cravat. His black tailcoat was heavy with gold oak-leaf embroidery, and a broad crimson sash slanted across his chest, a jewelled star gleaming on his breast. Cream satin breeches and massive shoe-buckles completed the picture of a man who could belong nowhere but the highest rank of society.
“Th-thank you,” she stammered, taking the brush. But he held on to it firmly as his gaze bore into hers.
“And your name, Fräulein? So I may know whom to thank for attempting my assassination with a scrubbing brush.”
She felt all the blood drain from her face. Her mouth opened and closed several times before a sound came out. “Philip—I mean, Anna Braun,mein Herr. Sir. Your lordship.” She looked at him woefully. “Your Ma-Majesty?”
He uttered a laugh so soft it caused her arms to break out in goosebumps. Then, with the faintest bow of his head, he relinquished the brush.
Pippa clutched it, still kneeling in the muck, stunned and mortified.
Greta made a strangled noise beside her. “Oh, my heart! Oh, my nerves!” She pointed a finger up the stairs, shaking heavily. “That, that…that was Prince Metternich.”
Metternich! Of all people, it had to be him. Prince Metternich was the Austrian minister of Foreign Affairs and the host of the impending congress. He was powerful, charming, cunning and ruthless. He had set up the most elaborate spy network history had ever seen.
Pippa dropped back, collapsing onto the stair, her limbs having turned to water.
“Now that,” she told Greta, her lips pale, her hands shaking, “was the most terrifying encounter in my entire life.”
A queasy feeling churned in her stomach. She’d nearly given her real name away and only caught herself at the last moment.
Something told her he would not forget the name Anna Braun so easily.
Then another thought hit her: she had just met the man she was indirectly spying for.
Chapter Six
A few days later,August had her summoned to thePolizeihofstelleto pick up her new papers, after she had finished her duties for the day.
“These are issued under your real name, Philippa Cranwell,” he informed her as he handed her the papers. “Guard them well.”
Pippa folded them carefully into her reticule.
