Klemens jumped up. “Mention the word duty one more time and I shall challenge you to a duel.”
At that, Metternich laughed outright. “I see I touched a sore wound. It would be a pleasure to meet you in a duel. And no, you wouldn’t be the first. Haven’t you heard? The Tsar is so incensed with me he has threatened to call me out. Mind you, he was half drunk at the time and in one of his infamous tempers.” He pulled a face. “He is difficult and unpredictable, more of an overgrown toddler wearing a crown, nothing more.”
Klemens paused. “Wait. The Tsar called you out? Why on earth?”
Metternich had the grace to look embarrassed. He rubbed his neck. “Over a woman.”
“A woman,” Klemens echoed, and fell back onto the sofa. “Naturally. If you mean the Princess Bagration, I must assure you that her presence in my rooms that night was entirely because of her own machinations. I am fairly certain the Tsar has tired of her.”
Metternich waved a hand. “The only relation I have with her currently is that she is the mother of my daughter Marie-Clementine. She is not the woman I meant.”
Klemens wondered briefly how many mistresses Metternich had, and how many illegitimate children they had borne him. Not that it was any of his business, mind.
“I meant Wilhelmine.” A faint sheen of red crawled up Metternich’s neck.
“Wilhel—oh. The Countess of Sagan?” She was a beautiful woman, no doubt about it, voluptuous and stately and proud, impeccably dressed and the perfect society hostess, if one’s tastes ran to that. His certainly did not, for he much preferred a less refined, daintier slip of a girl with a whirlwind of black curls, an honest tongue, her heart in her eyes and the sharp brains of three mathematicians combined filling her head. For nothing in this world or the next would he want to swap his Pippa for a society cocotte like the Duchess of Sagan.
Metternich leaned back with a groan. “We had an argument.”
“Believe me, I know the feeling,” Klemens muttered darkly.
“She won’t see me.”
“That’s of course…a dilemma.” Klemens cleared his throat, wondering why this conversation was suddenly veering off into these waters.
“Not only that, you see, she won’t even answer my letters! I’ve been sending her daily missives, sometimes even twice a day, and what does she do? She does nothing at all.” He threw up his hands dramatically.
“Well, sometimes no response might also be a response,” Klemens muttered under his breath, thankful that Pippa, at least in this regard, had been crystal clear about her intentions. After their fight, he had wallowed in a full day of intense self-pity, nursing his wounds like some tragic hero in a third-rate opera.
“I have tried everything: sent her pralines, jewellery,the latest fashionable bonnet, and while that might induce her to reply with a thank you, it is but a curt, polite missive.” He looked at Klemens with despair. “As though I were some distant acquaintance she barely tolerates. It is as though she were pushing me away deliberately.”
Klemens went very still.
As though she were pushing him away deliberately.
“Yes, I know she loves me. I’ve seen it in her eyes. So why would she say such things unless?—”
The thought struck Klemens like a thunderbolt.
Unless she was trying to protect him.
Of course, of course Pippa loved him. How could he have ever doubted that? Wouldn’t it be entirely in her nature to be contrary and sacrifice everything, even her love, if she believed it would harm him? All her talk about the differences of their stations and propriety was merely a pretext, a shield she’d raised between them for his sake alone.
He would not have it.
A warm feeling spread through him. When Pippa loved, she did so with a loyalty and fierceness that encompassed her entire being. Their problem was not affection but politics.
He would simply have to be diplomatic.
“What do you think it means?” he paused. “Highness?”
Klemens snapped out his reverie. “I would say that’s rather evident—” Then he interrupted himself. If he wanted to get Metternich on his side, he would have to approachthis differently.
“Do you truly want my advice?” Klemens asked bluntly.
“Pray, yes.” Metternich pulled at his hair.
“At the next ball. You are to host one soon, are you not?”
