Yet Roland, too, stuck to their improvised script, and when they reached the end of the meal and, after Toby had paid the innkeeper, left the inn and walked into the yard, she looked around their small company and declared, “Well done!”
“That,” Toby said from beside her, “went off without a hitch. Congratulations to us all—we did it!”
Bryce and Evelyn cheered, and Roland smiled.
Gunter was waiting in the yard with Bruno on his leash. Toby and Gunter conferred, then Toby took the leash and turned to the others. “While Gunter’s getting the horses put to, why don’t we go for a short stroll?” He glanced at Bruno, who was looking up at him with big brown eyes. “Bruno looks like he wants a run.”
The children agreed. Toby handed the leash to Roland, and as there was a small park on the other side of the road, as a group, they crossed the street, then the children rushed ahead onto the grass.
Diana smiled. “They need to run as much as Bruno.”
“Indeed.” Toby offered his arm. “But now they’re not with us, I believe a married couple wouldn’t merely walk beside each other.”
He was right. Steeling herself, she lightly looped her arm with his, and they strolled on, arm in arm, just like the married couple they were purporting to be.
Diana fought to subdue her leaping senses, to force them out of the front of her mind—why Toby Cynster affected her so, she had no idea—but as she and he had nothing to do but watch the children and walk in their wake, she had no ready defense, no way of diverting her thoughts, much less her reactions. Her apparently ungovernable reactions.
Unexpectedly, her irritation over those reactions being so persistently rebellious and unmanageable helped her endure until, at last, it was time to turn back and climb into the carriage Gunter had driven onto the street.
Finally, she could draw her arm from the muscled strength of Toby’s and step a little apart.
Then, of course, Toby had to hand her up the coach steps. Her wits abruptly focused on the grip of his fingers about hers, and the distraction made her wobble as she stepped up, and instantly, she felt his hand at her waist, lightly gripping as he steadied her.
Her senses flared, and she nearly ground her teeth.
With an effort of will, she masked her response, then suggested to Evelyn that she might wish to sit in the middle of the seat, thus allowing Diana to look out of the window over the next leg.
Tired out, replete, and ready for a nap, Evelyn was happy to trade places.
Diana sat and waited as the rest of their “family” climbed aboard and settled, then the coach started off again.
Sadly, despite having Evelyn and several feet between them, her stupid senses remained in a state of heightened awareness that was focused on Toby Cynster.
As they traveled on, she was definitely not amused.
* * *
By two o’clock,via a great deal of charming and apparently inconsequential chatting with various residents of Kleeblattgasse, Heinrik and Eva had assembled a decent description of Diana Locke.
Thus armed, they walked into Vienna’s main railway station, intending to inquire if Fraulein Locke, perhaps in company with a gentleman of Toby Cynster’s description, had boarded a train to Germany and points farther west.
On entering the station concourse, they made for the ticket booths arrayed along one side wall.
Scanning ahead, Heinrik saw two black-coated figures in front of the single booth currently manned. He swore beneath his breath and, without altering their apparently relaxed stride, took Eva’s arm and steered her to one side, to where a glass-fronted café occupied the corner between the front wall and the wall of ticket booths. The café’s helpfully reflective frontage sat at an angle to both walls.
When Heinrik halted before the café’s front window as if he and Eva were reading the menu displayed there, she murmured, “The Prussians?”
“Yes,” Heinrik whispered. “Listen.”
At that moment, fortuitously between any major departures and arrivals, the concourse was sparsely populated, and like all such places of brick and steel, it echoed.
In the glass of the café’s window, Heinrik studied the reflections of the men at the booth. He’d crossed paths with them on several occasions, and none of those incidents had gone well for the pair Heinrik knew as Jager and Koch, two of the more violently inclined agents the Germans deployed.
That they were here explained the wreckage in the Kleeblattgasse house.
He and Eva couldn’t hear every word exchanged, but by combining what they could catch with the men’s gestures, the situation became clear enough.
“So,” Eva murmured, “the lady in question did not leave on the train.”
