Lindenstein nodded. “Yes.” He pulled at his hair. “What am I to do? I can’t sleep at night for worry of what terrible ills might befall her. The myriad dangers she might find herself in are too terrible to contemplate.”
“That is indeed a problem,” Aldingbourne muttered.
“Julius.” Lindenstein clamped a hand over his arm. “I’m desperate. I can’t involve the officials to help because they will immediately sense something is afoot and all my plans will come to naught. If Metternich gets wind of this, it’s over.I need to keep this secret.”
Aldingbourne gave a curt nod. “That is understood. I can’t abide the man myself. He won’t learn a thing from me about anything.”
“Help me find her, Julius,” Lindenstein pleaded. “You must help me find her, before it’s too late.”
ChapterThree
Pippa was takento theOberste Polizei- und Censur-Hofstelle—the Supreme Police and Censorship Court Office.
She was ushered into a narrow room with a small window.
“Sit.” There was a table filled with papers, behind which sat a man with a pale face, thin lips and greasy black hair. He did not look up when she entered but kept scribbling, taking down her name, age and marriage status.
“Parents?”
“I have none.” She swallowed painfully. “My father died recently.”
“Name?”
“Basil Ambrose Cranwell.”
The pen hovering over the paper paused mid-air. His shrewd green eyes shot up to meet hers. “An Englishman?”
Pippanodded.
He lowered the pen. “And your mother?”
“She died when I was five.”
He leaned back. “Cranwell. Cranwell.” He pursed his lips. “Of course. That English professor. Natural Sciences?”
“Mathematics and Philosophy. He was a Cambridge man.”
“Ah.” He tapped his pen on the paper. “They say he was one of the most brilliant minds of this era. But didn’t he publish a scandalous treatise that made him fall into disgrace with the English crown? Which is why he came to be in exile here?”
“It’s a vicious lie!” Pippa flared up. “That’s what evil tongues say to blacken his name.”
“And why would they do that?”
“How should I know? Jealousy? Politics? Because they wanted to eliminate an influential voice on the king?” Pippa’s temper had got the better of her. For the man was right. Her father had indeed been a tutor to the Prince of Wales until he had fallen out of grace because the treatise he’d published had been too radical for the conservative taste that prevailed at court. Yet he’d claimed it was grounded in logic and science.
The man across her gave her a veiled gaze. “He is dead now.” Hearing those words pronounced in such a cold manner caused her heart to clench.
Suddenly he switched languages. “If Professor Cranwell was indeed your father, you must be fluent in English,” he said in perfect English, though with a strong German accent.
“Indeed, I am.” Pippa replied in perfect King’sEnglish without missing a beat. After all, she’d spent her childhood in England before her father had taken her to the Continent.
“French?”
“Not as fluent as English, but conversant,” she replied in French.
“Ah.” Then he switched back to German. “And why are you in Vienna?”
“To be with my intended husband.”
