The Second Empress Read Online Free PDF

he still loves for a woman who will be able to give him sons. It is cruel. Especially since he has already gotten a child on his Polish mistress and might easily make the young boy his heir and keep his wife.
    “And what did she tell him?” the princess demands.
    What any woman of dignity would have said. “That love cannot be bought and sold,” I reply. “The empress refused the offer.”
    She sinks back on the divan. “Thank God.”
    A knock on the door sends Aubree rushing across the salon. She ispractically dancing in anticipation, twisting her charcoal-colored body back and forth. “Look at her!” The princess laughs. “Calm down, mon chou , it’s only a visitor.”
    I cross the salon to open the double doors, but when Aubree sees who it is, she hurries back to the divan. “Her Majesty Queen Caroline,” I announce without enthusiasm.
    The youngest of the Bonaparte sisters pushes past me, and I am in full agreement with the dog. I cannot imagine a less likely woman for the queen of Naples. She is short and ungainly, with eyes that are forever darting about and the complexion of someone stricken with fever.
    “I have news.” She seats herself across from her sister and arranges her velvet cap so that the feathers are tilting jauntily to the side. The emperor may have made her shifty husband, Joachim Murat, the king of Naples, but he can never buy either one of them style. She is a dim star to Pauline’s sun, and there are a hundred petty jealousies between the sisters.
    “I know,” Pauline says smugly. “Paul’s already told me. He’s going to divorce her!”
    But Caroline, who should look dismayed that I’ve gotten to this news first, keeps smiling.
    “What?” Pauline presses. “Is there something else? Is he officially announcing it?”
    Now her sister plays coy. “I don’t know. Perhaps His Highness can tell you.” Her eyes cut toward me. “He seems to know everything.”
    Pauline shrugs. “If you can’t say—”
    “He’s drawn up a list of names!” she blurts. “All foreign princesses. And not a single one’s French.”
    Pauline’s voice rises. “For marriage ?”
    Caroline, satisfied with this reaction, nods sagely. “Including Maria Lucia of Austria and Anna Paulowna, the Russian czar’s sister.”
    “I don’t believe you,” Pauline says flatly.
    “Then I suppose Maman didn’t show it to me. Perhaps I was dreaming—”
    “He would never marry an Austrian!” Pauline exclaims. “The last Hapsburg queen of France lost her head.”
    “That was sixteen years ago. Who even remembers Marie-Antoinette now?”
    All of Haiti , I think. She is the reason that Toussaint declared an end to slavery on behalf of every personne de couleur . If not for her, there would never have been a revolution. And if not for the Revolution, with its Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, Toussaint would never have been inspired to declare Haiti free from slavery and oppression. It took thirteen years and a hundred thousand lives before the French were removed from Haiti, but four times this number were slaughtered after Marie-Antoinette lost her head. So surely they will not want another Austrian for their throne ?
    “Then again,” Caroline adds lightly, “it could be the Russian. Or any number of minor princesses.” She is torturing Pauline.
    “He will not remarry yet,” Pauline counters, but she seems uncertain. She is twenty-nine to Caroline’s twenty-seven, but she might as well have been the younger sibling. I study her in the morning light: the graceful curve of her neck, the deep chestnut of her hair, the new lines etched by worry between her brows. I remember the afternoons we shared together in Haiti, the air heavy with orange blossoms and the scent of summer rain. Now that world is gone, lost in the savagery of war that took my family along with my home. But the island remains. My mother’s songs remain. And someday Pauline must see that all this is futile, must realize