Banquet of Lies

  Praise for Michelle Diener’s The Emperor’s Conspiracy, a Publishers Weekly  “Best Book” of the Year

  “Diener delivers a rousing read.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “An exciting historical romance perfect for fans of The Tudors! What an amazing plot . . . with a twist of intrigue. It was so difficult to put this book down.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “If you love historical novels with a touch of suspense and a hint of mystery, Michelle Diener’s latest novel, The Emperor’s Conspiracy, is sure to please. The author has a knack for writing snappy, action packed novels . . . pure delight for those who love to escape into a page-turner.”

  —Historical Novel Review

  “A fantastic novel! Michelle Diener has a way of bringing the past alive. . . . I was entranced.”

  —Peeking Between the Pages

  “Ripe with passion. . . . If you’re a fan of historical fiction that incorporates specific events from the past, then I highly recommend this book.”

  —Girls in the Stacks

  “A very fast-paced plot . . . had me flipping the pages as fast as I could.”

  —My Reading Room

  “Fabulous . . . I was enjoying it so much I was not ready for it be over!”

  —Books Devoured

  “I closed the book with a smile.”

  —Caffeinated Book Reviewer

  Praise for Michelle Diener’s Tudor novels, In a Treacherous Court and Keeper of the King’s Secrets

  “Richly detailed historical setting and intrigue-filled plot.”

  —Chicago Tribune

  “Taut suspense. Diener enlivens history.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “A masterfully spun tale!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Compelling . . . fast-paced.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The characters are going to hook you first, and the intrigue will keep you turning the pages. Diener’s writing style is beautiful, to the point, vivid and exciting. This author is one to watch.”

  —Reader’s Entertainment

  “Packed with unexpected twists and turns, solid prose, always-fascinating court intrigue, and a unique story.”

  —Diary of a Book Addict

  “Dramatically original with imaginative scenes of suspense and one mystery after another.”

  —Single Titles

  “One fast-paced historical fiction novel! It reads like a thriller.”

  —Girls Just Reading

  “The characters in this book are wonderful and believable. . . . An interesting, emotional, and dramatic story.”

  —Romance Reviews Today

  “An action-adventure-mystery-historical that grabs the reader on page one and doesn’t let go.”

  —Kate Emerson, author of The King’s Damsel

  “An enormous talent! I was absolutely enthralled and thoroughly enjoyed every last page of this story!”

  —Affaire de Coeur

  “Diener has set a standard for what good historical fiction ought to be.”

  —Luxury Reading

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to the real Madame and Monsieur Levéel, and Eric and Nadine, for welcoming me to their home all those years ago and giving me homemade Reine Claude jam and brioche every morning for breakfast, thus spoiling me for life. Thanks also to Edie, as always, and to my beta reader, Jo. Much thanks to my agent, Marlene Stringer, as well as my editor, Micki Nuding, and all the amazing people at Simon & Schuster who helped send this book out into the world in its best possible form.

  1

  STOCKHOLM

  LATE FEBRUARY 1812

  * * *

  “I hear from the Countess de Salisburg that you collect recipes, Miss Barrington?” The plump diplomat’s wife standing beside Gigi on the edge of the dance floor crinkled her pretty forehead in confusion.

  “I do.” Gigi wished the countess had not said anything. No one in the gilt-edged circles she and her father occasionally brushed up against had ever understood her interest in recipes and cooking. “My father’s work takes me to such interesting places, and while he records the fairy tales and folktales from the areas we visit, I like to ask the women what they cook and if they would be willing to share their recipes.”

  “What do you do with the recipes?” The woman looked genuinely interested now.

  “I’m compiling a reference work of dishes from the cultures of Europe. But mainly I follow them.”

  “Follow them . . .” Confused, the woman looked around the crowded room, as if the people swirling around them could help her. “How?”

  Gigi smiled. “The usual way. In the kitchen.”

  “You make the dishes?” The woman tapped Gigi on the arm with her fan. “With the servants?” Her voice was a squeak.

  “With the chef who has accompanied us for the last ten years.”

  “Ah.”

  A chef was different. A giant step up from a cook.

  Gigi always invoked Pierre’s status when the questions became too tiresome. Cooking was considered a strange passion in a young lady. And it was a passion.

  For her, what people ate, and how they ate, was just as interesting as the stories they told.

  An uncomfortable silence fell between her and the diplomat’s wife, and she raised her eyes to the clock. Five more minutes had ticked by since the English ambassador to Sweden, Sir Thornton, had come looking for her father, but he had yet to return.

  Her father and the ambassador had met in the early hours of this morning, but something must have happened between then and now to have Sir Thornton so on edge.

  It was time to find him.

  She murmured her excuses and made for the glass doors leading to the garden, slipping out without attracting any attention.

  The glitter of a party in full swing at Tessin Palace lit Gigi’s way, the chandeliers casting a warm glow. Behind her, the rich and titled of Sweden, along with most of the diplomats in Stockholm, laughed and danced, the sound pleasing and merry.

  She took the stairs into the garden carefully, her eyes adjusting to the semi-darkness.

  Cold in her thin silk gown, she shivered and felt a sudden, inexplicable dread of the darkness before her. It slowed every step she took away from the bright chatter, as if the air became more solid the farther from the light she went. She shrugged off the sensation and forced herself to run lightly down the rest of the stairs, ignoring the prickle of irrational fear at the back of her neck.

  The gravel of the garden path was sharp beneath the thin soles of her shoes, although at least free of snow after the warmer weather these last few days. Low box hedges curved and dipped in an intricate pattern before her. She caught the faintest scent of lavender. It was nearing the end of winter, but come summer, she guessed this jewel of a garden would be redolent with the perfume.

  No sound could be heard over the muffled merrymaking of the ball, except the murmur of the fountain directly in front of her.

  She knew her father was out here somewhere. She’d seen him leave, and had watched the door for his return ever since Sir Edward Thornton had come to ask for him.

  She’d never known him to keep anyone waiting this long.

  She’d certainly never had to go looking for him before, and she’d been his companion at diplomatic functions since she was sixteen.

  She skirted the outside
of the intricate box hedge, her satin slippers soundless, moving past dark painted doors set flush against a smooth, white wall. Someone barked out a laugh, and she stopped to listen.

  Voices came from the back of the garden.

  She followed the sound, walking cautiously on the bruising gravel, and stepped at last onto a smooth brick path that led into an even smaller garden, tucked between two curving walls, directly behind the stables.

  She hesitated. If her father was involved in a private conversation, she did not wish to intrude. The men with whom he occasionally had special business usually didn’t want to be recognized or seen in his company.

  But there had been something like worry on Sir Thornton’s face when he’d approached her the second time to ask if she’d seen her father. And when they’d been interrupted by a Swedish nobleman, the ambassador had lied smoothly about their topic of conversation, and pretended a relaxed, indolent air that was at odds with the tight grip of his hands on the edges of his waistcoat.

  “All will be well.” The unmistakable sound of her father’s voice was clear.

  In the limited light, Gigi saw his companion touch his hat in farewell and walk toward the stables, slipping through a door.

  She was holding back, waiting for the stranger to be completely gone, when a shadow detached itself from one of the trees and lunged at her father—like an evil stallu from Lapland’s Sami folktales come to life, using the darkness to consume its prey.

  Her father gave a hiss of pain, and Gigi saw the gleam of a knife. She stepped closer, ready to shout, and at that moment her father turned his head, jerking away from the blade, and caught her eye.

  With a quick movement, he lifted a finger to his lips and then indicated she get down.

  “What is it?” The man holding him looked sharply toward the palace, but she was down by then, crouching behind a waist-high marble block.

  “Who are you?” Her father was his usual calm self.

  “No one you’ll need worry about after tonight. Just tell me where it is.”

  “Why would I, when you’ve just let me know that I’ll die, whether I tell you or not?”

  “Because you have a daughter. Giselle.”

  He spoke so normally, so conversationally, she had the terrifying image of him in a drawing room, speaking about the weather and the social scene, indistinguishable from any other man, completely hiding his true nature.

  “In a few moments, if you don’t tell me where it is, she’s going to receive a note from you, in handwriting very like your own, asking her to meet you outside. My little friend managed to keep you busy for some time, and I’m sure you’ve been missed by now. She’ll most likely be so eager to find you, she won’t question it.”

  “I thought Frederik’s concerns a little too trivial to require such an urgent meeting.” Her father made no mention of the threat against her.

  The man at his back noticed. “And your daughter? Nothing to say? She’s a pretty thing. I might make her very intimate acquaintance, if you don’t cooperate.” He spoke with no emotion.

  Fear hammered a hard, cold nail into her heart.

  “My daughter isn’t easy to fool.” Her father’s words were curt.

  The shadow man was silent for a moment, as if thinking how to escalate the threat. Time was not his friend; at any moment someone else could wander out into the garden. Even Thornton might come looking.

  He finally shrugged. “I have men working as staff at the ball. If she doesn’t heed the note, they will find a way to get her out.”

  “On what signal? You’re here alone, as far as I can make out.” Her father was dismissive.

  Gigi shrank even smaller. Her father was warning her there could be more of them in the garden.

  “The signal will be my failure to return to the party by a certain time.” The man spoke coldly, unwillingly.

  For the first time, Gigi realized what she had been too shocked to before—he spoke in English, the perfect English of an Englishman. This was a traitor—not an enemy spy.

  Her father seemed to deflate. “I don’t have it, you fool. I’d have given it to you to safeguard my daughter—you’re quite right. But I don’t have it to give. Your intelligence is wrong. I was the red herring this time; it’s already gone. Long gone.”

  He spoke with frustration and anger, but Gigi knew he was lying. She had never seen her father at work in the field before, had never seen this side to him.

  “You must be lying.” The shadow man spoke through gritted teeth, and her father gave an involuntary cry, as if he were hurt.

  Giselle peered around the marble block, her legs shaking with the desperate need to run to his rescue.

  “No!” Her father briefly looked her way again as if he spoke to her, not the shadow man; as if he knew what she intended. “Please,” he whispered. “I would sacrifice anything for my daughter. Her safety is worth more to me than my life. I do not have it.” He ground the last words out between gritted teeth. “Search me. You’ll see the truth.”

  There was the sound of rough handling, of clothes being torn and thrown off.

  “Take off your boots.”

  She looked again and saw her father bending, tugging off his boots. The moon found a small break in the clouds and shone, silver-bright, down on the garden for a few moments; she could make out blood at his throat, and his jacket, waistcoat and white linen shirt were ripped.

  The shadow man’s face was still in darkness, but she could see his arm, his hand, with the knife gripped tight, gleaming in the moonlight.

  She started to rise, and her father caught her eye as he pulled off his second boot.

  “Please don’t,” he whispered.

  “Begging now, Barrington?” The shadow man forced her father to his knees, the knife still near his throat, and Gigi saw that he held a pistol to her father’s back as well. No wonder he hadn’t tried to escape.

  She tucked herself back into her hiding place, shaking.

  The boots must have been checked, for she heard them kicked over in disgust.

  “You must have it. I saw you meet with Thornton this morning—”

  “A red herring, as I told you. The real document went this afternoon. The courier’s had a head start while you and your spies have watched me.”

  “You’ll regret that, Barrington.” The shadow man’s voice was frighteningly devoid of emotion. “I won’t be made a fool of—and your daughter might be more forthcoming than you. I’ll make it a point to find out.” He was breathing heavily, making a lie of his calm tone. “You can think about that while you burn in hell.”

  There was a shot. A terrible, final shot, and Gigi bit down on her knuckles to prevent herself from crying out.

  Her father had died rather than reveal her; she would not dishonor his last wish.

  She heard a low curse, and then the sound of a man walking down the path directly toward her. She curled even smaller, flush up against the marble pedestal.

  He walked straight past her.

  He would see her if he looked back, so she slid around the block until she was on the far side with her father.

  She crawled to him on her hands and knees, her fingers reaching out to touch his face.

  She had hoped. . . . But there would be no last words, no last spark of life. His eyes stared sightlessly up at clouds edged silver by the moon.

  He was truly gone.

  She looked back down the garden to the palace and saw a dark figure climbing the stairs to the ballroom.

  He would be looking for her now, if his final words hadn’t just been a cruel taunt. And he’d be looking for the document he had killed her father for.

  The document her father had given to her minutes after he left the ambassador early this morning, for safekeeping. As he always did.

  2

  The Duke of Wittaker’s grand mansion, set beside St. James’s Park in London, was lit warmly despite the early morning hour.

  Gigi ignored the coachman’s curious look
when she instructed him to take her to the back entrance, dressed in her finery as she was. Exhaustion made her light-headed, and she stumbled as she took the steps down to the gravel drive. “Please wait.”

  Her journey, from the coach ride from Stockholm to Gothenburg, to the ship to Dover, and the coach to London, had passed in a blur of pain, memories and rage. She couldn’t remember a single thing that had happened in the last five days, and she needed to stop that.

  She needed to think.

  She left her trunks loaded on the top of the coach, since she doubted she could stay here. But perhaps Georges would be able to send her somewhere safe for a night or two, so she could sleep, and plan her way forward.

  She climbed the steps to the kitchens with a smile, even though she was so tired it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other without falling. Georges always said he would never work in a home that had a subterranean kitchen. He’d never go back to a hellhole like the patisserie in Paris where he started out, with its dark, smoky cellar-kitchens, now he was a celebrated chef.

  She stepped into a kitchen in the throes of preparing breakfast. She was glad she hadn’t arrived just before dinner. Then, no matter how much Georges loved her, he wouldn’t have given her more than a concerned glance as he got on with his job.

  Eyes turned in her direction as she opened the door and stepped inside. There was a cry from the far end of the room; then Georges was making his way toward her, fierce as a hussar, trampling down those in his way.

  “Ma petite! Mon petit chou!” He grabbed her in a tight hug, and for the first time in the five days since she’d seen her father struck down, she felt safe.

  “Please speak only French,” she had the wit to whisper in his ear, speaking in French herself. She was aware of every eye on them, and she wanted no one to hear her name, or anything else about her.

  He gave her a strange look, pursing his lips under his thick mustache, but he nodded briefly. Then he looked around the kitchen, raising his arms and clapping his hands so suddenly that Gigi jumped, as did everyone else in the room.