The Second Empress (6 page)

“Maria,” he begins, but can’t seem to find words to continue. I bury my fingers in Sigi’s fur and wait for my father to say it. Clearly, the French emperor has asked for my hand, and now Austria must begin the tricky dance of turning him down without grave offense. He looks to Prince Metternich, who clears his throat.

“Your Highness,” the prince says, “there is joyous news.”

I make a point of raising my brows, then looking around the table from face to solemn face. If this news is so joyous, why does everyone look as if someone has died?

“The emperor of France,” Metternich continues, “has requested your hand in marriage. As you know, this is a great honor for the house of Hapsburg-Lorraine, for there has not been a marriage between Austria and France for thirty-nine years.”

“Yes, and that ended well,” I reply. But no one smiles. My father shifts in his seat, and when I look at Count Neipperg, his face is grave.

“The emperor is a man of swift decisions, Your Highness. Three days ago he sent his stepson, Eugène de Beauharnais, to our embassy in Paris to ask for your hand. Our ambassador was told he must accept the offer at once or risk displeasing the emperor … 
greatly
.”

My heart begins to race beneath my cloak. “So what are you saying?”

Metternich glances at my father before speaking. “That the offer was accepted, Your Highness.”

The room blurs. The Chinese wall hangings fashioned from blue rice paper take on a whitish hue. Sigi nuzzles my arm, and his cold nose against my skin brings it all back into focus.

“Maria,” my father begins, and the heartache in his voice is unbearable. “It is still your decision—”

“But understand,” Metternich interjects swiftly, “that this decision comes with lasting consequences.”

He means that if I refuse, my father will lose his crown. If I refuse, eight hundred years of Hapsburg-Lorraine rule will be ended with the unwillingness of an eighteen-year-old girl. And still my father is asking me to choose.

I have never loved him more than I do now.

I look at the faces assembled around the room, then at the long council table gleaming red and gold beneath the chandeliers. I had not imagined this to be the place where my marriage would be decided. I had imagined it would happen in my late mother’s quiet study, or in the eastern terrace with its frescoed ceiling of angels.

“Your Highness, we need your answer,” Metternich says.
Because tomorrow there shall either be a wedding or a war
.

My stepmother’s face is pale, and next to her, Adam Neipperg looks murderous. But I cannot allow myself the luxury of considering either of them. I know my duty to my father and my kingdom. My eyes burn, and though I feel my stomach rise, I will the word to come. “Yes.”

Metternich leans forward. “
Yes
to what, Your Highness?”

“To …” I breathe deeply. “To the marriage with the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.”

There is a moment of silence while everyone comprehends what has just happened. Then they all begin talking at once. Adam Neipperg, who has been so dear to me since his return from our campaign against Napoleon last year, bangs his fist against the table and shouts, “I stand firmly against this!”

“There is nothing to stand against,” Metternich retorts, and the two men rise from their seats. But Metternich is no match for Adam, who is the opposite of the prince in every way. At thirty-four, Adam has experienced more war than peace. He was part of the Blockade of
Mainz, and at Dolens, after his right eye was taken by bayonet, he was left for dead on the battlefield. Despite these wounds, he recovered, and now he wears a silk patch over his eye. There is no woman in Austria who has not heard of Adam’s daring feats, so when he leans across the table, Metternich backs away.

“Enough,” my father says, and when no one can hear him, he shouts, “
Enough
!”

Both men sit down, and I avoid Adam’s gaze.

“This council is dismissed. The answer has been heard, and no one is to speak of it. Count Neipperg, Prince Metternich, please stay.” The other men push back their chairs to leave, and when my stepmother rises as well, my father puts a hand on her arm. “You should be here. For Maria,” he adds.

I watch the chamber empty, and when there are only the five of us in the room, it suddenly becomes real. I will never be regent for my brother Ferdinand. Who knows whom the task will be left to, but I will not be here to guide him. Instead, I am to marry the man who stripped our kingdom of its wealth and slaughtered more than three hundred thousand Austrian soldiers, a man whose taste for the lavish, crude, and unrefined is known throughout Europe. I look down at Sigi, and my tears dampen his fur.

“Maria,” my father begins, and I realize how pale and drawn he looks. He has been struggling with this knowledge for two days. “I want you to know there was nothing any of us could do.”

But there is nothing anyone can say to remedy this. “Yes. I understand.”

“Whatever you need, whatever you want to take with you to France, you shall have.”

I swallow my pain and try to sound grateful. “Thank you.”

“The French court will be very different from Austria,” he warns. “Prince Metternich can explain—”

“Everything,” the prince says eagerly, and I realize that of the five of us assembled, only he is excited. I wonder what his role has been in
this marriage, and whether my father might find a handsome payment from the French if the prince’s accounts were exposed. “Over these next three months—”

“Is that when the marriage is to take place?” I ask him.

“Yes. But first there will be a ceremony here.”

“Then Prince Metternich and Count Neipperg shall be escorting you to the border,” my father explains, “and a second ceremony will be held in Paris.”

My heart races. “But his divorce—”

“Is to be announced tomorrow. This contract will not be public knowledge until the new year.”

Then there’s hope! Perhaps in three months the French emperor will change his mind. Perhaps he will find a Russian who is more to his liking. But my father sees the look on my face and shakes his head.

“Maria, this emperor is not like your mother.” Who could change her mind three times in a day. “He looks to marry the great-niece of Marie-Antoinette.”

I had thought myself fortunate to be a Hapsburg princess. I was wrong.

“He will wish to change your name,” Prince Metternich warns. “The Empress Joséphine was once Rose de Beauharnais. And he will want to choose your outfits,” the prince continues. “He is very particular about what his women—”

“This is ridiculous!” Adam Neipperg shouts, and the longing I feel for him is unbearable. I will never hold him again, never touch his face or run my fingers through his hair. “What does it matter what she wears?”

“Perhaps it doesn’t,” Metternich says hotly. “But these are not my rules. If you don’t like them, I suggest you speak with the French emperor.”

“Am I allowed to bathe myself, at least?”

Metternich sighs, and this is the first time I have seen him appear at all sympathetic. “He will be a difficult man to please, Your Highness.
He is stubborn and jealous and filled with ambition. But he is also a visionary. That should be something.”

But it isn’t.

I
N THE HALL
outside the Council Chamber, Adam remains after the others have gone. “You can refuse this,” he tells me, leaning close to my ear, and I am touched that he thinks I am worth fighting a war over.

“I am no Helen of Troy,” I say. “This is my father’s crown. The Empire of Austria is everything to him.”

“And there’s no reason to believe he wouldn’t keep it.”

“Except the Treaty of Pressburg and the Treaty of Schönbrunn,” I answer, naming our two previous defeats against the “Modern Alexander.”

“Trust me, Maria.” He reaches out to take my hand and I blush to hear him use my Christian name. “Your father and I will come for you.”

But I must not believe such promises. Next week I will be nineteen, and more likely than not, I shall pass every future birthday in France. I swallow against the tightness in my throat. “Thank you, Adam.”

“This is not an idle promise,” he swears. “We
will
come for you.” He squeezes my hand. “That is a vow.”

C
HAPTER
5

PAULINE BONAPARTE, PRINCESS BORGHESE

Tuileries Palace, Paris

“
Pauline Bonaparte was as beautiful as it was possible to be.… She was in love with herself alone, and her sole occupation was with pleasure
.”

—PRINCE METTERNICH, AUSTRIAN STATESMAN

I
LEAN TOWARD MY MIRROR AND MARVEL THAT NONE OF
the pain shows in my face. My stomach has been cramping since dawn, and though the doctors insist that an “excess of nightly passion” is to blame, I know it isn’t true. This is something more. But ill or not, I will look my best tonight.

I arrange my hair around my face, and try to imagine how I shall look in Joséphine’s crown once my brother acknowledges that I should be queen. Of course, the design will have to be altered. Or perhaps I will use the Egyptian crown he gave me. I would never want to be seen in anything she wore, although diamonds and sapphires have always suited me.

“What do you think?” I turn to face Paul and hold up two gowns, one in cerulean blue, the other in bright cerise.

“The blue,” he says. “This isn’t a ball.”

I toss the blue back into my commode and put on the deep red; it’s more festive. “You’re wrong, you know. There’ll be dancing tonight. He sent out invitations.” My chamberlain thinks Joséphine walks on water.
Sweet
Joséphine,
charming
Joséphine. Was she sweet when she cuckolded my brother the first week they married, sleeping with that lieutenant, Hippolyte Charles? And was she charming when he discovered that she had lied about her debts, year after year? She ruined my relationship with Fréron, and he still has sympathy for her. “What time is it?”

Paul watches me slip on my gloves. My mother taught me the proper way to do it when I was eight. “You begin with your bare arm outstretched,” she said, then showed me how to slowly,
very slowly
, tease them on and off.
And if every man in the room isn’t watching
, she added,
you’ve done it wrong
. He leaves his book—Machiavelli’s
The Prince
, my very first gift to him—to look at the clock in the salon.

“Twenty till eight,” he calls to me.

My God, it’s all going to happen in twenty minutes. My heart is beating so swiftly that I can see its rise and fall through the light fabric of my dress. Then a spasm in my stomach nearly makes me bend double. I sit on my chaise and look around my chamber. From the pillars of gilded bronze to the statues of Isis, my brother has re-created the Palace of Thebes for me in here. We belong together. And tonight, when he is free of Beauharnaille, I will convince him to return to Egypt.