Free The Empire of Yearning by Oakland Ross Page B

there were any other way to save Baldemar, and it so happened there was. At least, he thought there might be. The rough shape of a plan had occurred to him the previous day as he rode past the Gran Teatro Nacional. The memory of that incident sharpened the pain still coursing through his hand. He took another swallow of brandy. The drink calmed him a little, and his idea seemed to harden in his mind, take on greater detail. Maybe, just maybe, a woman would do something out of gratitude that she would never do under duress.
    “You haven’t answered my question,” said Salm-Salm.
    “It isn’t up to me.”
    “But you’ll talk to our friend Ángela?”
    Diego bridled. ‘
Our
friend’? What did that mean? But instead of protesting, he merely shrugged. “I’ll try. I’ll do what I can.”
    “I’m counting on you.”
    “Yes. Well …” Diego gazed around the room. He had another thought. “The emperor,” he said. “Would it be your judgment that he is governed by the head or by the heart?”
    “Why do you ask?”
    In fact, Diego was thinking about this scheme that was taking shape in his mind—his plan for Baldemar’s rescue. Much would depend on the Austrian. But he didn’t say so. “I’m just curious,” he said.
    “How quaint.” Salm-Salm flicked a trace of lint from the collar of his frock coat. He frowned. “‘Just curious’? Really? Nothing more?”
    “That’s right.”
    “I see. Well, since you ask, I would say the answer is quite clear. By the heart. Max will always behave according to the dictates of the heart.”
    “You’re quite sure?”
    “Oh yes. It is a great weakness in him, a great weakness in anyone. But he is a younger brother, you see, and suffers a younger brother’s frailties.” Salm-Salm smiled and raised his glass. “Like you.”

C HAPTER 10
    F OR D IEGO’S PLAN to succeed, he had no choice but to recruit Ángela, and so he was obliged to visit her again and make his case. He said nothing of her sham marriage or her infant son. He was unsure which of these two circumstances enraged him more, but he did his best to put them out of his mind. All that was in the past, or so he told himself. He handed his horse off to a stable hand and walked up to the main door. A maidservant ushered him into the main salon. Within several minutes, Ángela appeared.
    “Your hand …” she said. “What happened to your hand?”
    “A reaction to circumstances.”
    It was the response he had settled upon, sufficiently vague it could mean anything at all. Besides, he felt remote from Ángela now. Possibly, it was this distance that freed his tongue. Whatever the reason, he found he could speak with a greater assurance than he could remember ever having experienced in her presence before. He explained his plan to rescue Baldemar. She listened without speaking and, when he was done, she promptly agreed to play her part. She had no betterproposals of her own, she said, and Diego’s scheme might even work. It had to.
    He looked at her, then at the floor, then at her again, managing somehow to hold her gaze. The pain in his hand still throbbed, and this seemed to balance the other distress he had suffered on her account. He felt clear in his mind. They had one goal: to rescue Baldemar. Before, other factors had always complicated his motives. Now nothing else mattered.
    Still, it was a gamble. Everything depended on Ángela’s performance, not during the opera but afterward. As the banner had announced, the production on the opening night at the newly renamed Gran Teatro Imperial was to be
La Traviata
, and Ángela would play the part of Violetta. But her real performance would come after the curtain had fallen—the performance that would determine Baldemar’s fate. She assured Diego she would prepare herself fully. She would be as ready as it was possible to be. It was all anyone could do.
    But much could still go wrong.
    The opening night arrived at last, and Diego paced back and forth