Chapter 5
Marseille
1794
“MARRY HIM?” I GASPED, MY mouth falling open. Julie was the least impulsive person I knew, which made the force of her news that much more shocking.
“Yes,” Julie answered, meeting the astonishment on my face with her own level expression. “I’ve agreed to marry Joseph di Buonaparte.”
“Does Maman know?” I asked.
“Yes, Maman knows.” Julie turned back to the mirror, and I avoided her gaze, hiding the sting of it all—the fact that she and Maman had discussed, perhaps even planned, while I had been kept entirely out of the news.
Julie yawned. “I’m tired,” she said. She sat at her vanity, brushing out her long dark hair. It was a warm evening and we were undressing for bed, having just returned from the theater with our two Buonaparte beaux.
“Nicolas approves?” I asked.
“He does,” she answered.
“But…what do he and Maman think?” Do they not see how hasty this is? I wondered, though I did not say it.
“They are quite happy about it,” Julie said, setting down her ivory comb. “Maman says it’s a good thing to be aligned with a Buonaparte these days, and you know she cares for Joseph. Much more than she cares for—well, never mind.”
For Napoleone. I knew my sister’s meaning. I shimmied out of my unlaced corset and into my light sleeping shift, hiding my scowl.
“Come now, Desi.” Julie’s tone softened. “Aren’t you happy for me? The older sister, the one you all worried would never marry?”
“I never worried you wouldn’t marry,” I said, my voice flat. Truth be told, I’d never thought much about Julie marrying at all. I’d never imagined she would leave, had never even considered that things could change. Julie was my sister, my constant, more reliable than even the rising or setting of the sun, since there wasn’t an hour of the day or night during which time I did not have some awareness of Julie near me. With only my narrow, youthful understanding of the world, I’d never considered a scenario in which she would not be there.
Perhaps my face showed all of this, because my sister crossed the room and stood before me, her hands reaching to pull me into a gentle hug. “Don’t worry, Desi. I shall still be your sister. We will always keep a place for you in our home.”
Our home? So she and Joseph were already a “we”? And I was the guest they had agreed to welcome? I swallowed hard, forcing back the threat of tears. I would not cry, not when she was being so resolute about it all, so clearly treading cautiously with me, as if I were the emotional child whose eruption was to be anticipated and managed. I would be as practical, as mature as Julie was. I pulled away from the hug, leveling my chin as I looked at her. “When?” I asked.
“Soon. You know they are awaiting word from Paris on Napoleone’s proposal for Italy. When Napoleone leaves for the capital, Joseph will go with him. If his brother continues to rise in the army, then Joseph could have a real chance at a career in the new government. He hopes to be a diplomat. He must be in Paris for that, beside his brother. And the only way I can go with him is if we’re married.”
My mind raced to take all this in, but my sister hadn’t answered my question. “So, when?”
“Before summer’s end.”
“But…that’s in a month! Surely you aren’t going to marry someone you’ve only just met?”
Julie sighed and I bristled at the way she was clearly reminding herself to be patient—a patience born of pity, was it? I resented that.
“It is the best way, Desi.”
“Why?” I asked, my tone biting. “How can you think that leaving home is for the best?”
“You know what it’s been like at home. With Maman. Well, this could help things. Could help all of us. Joseph…he has connections but no wealth, and we have wealth but no protection. In aligning with each other, our deficits become obsolete, but our assets, united, become all the better.”
I absorbed this, leaning away from Julie to lower myself onto the bed. She sat beside me, our bodies sinking slowly through layers of plush bedding. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “I’m not beautiful like you, Desi. Nor am I young. But I could not hope for better than Joseph. He is a kind man. He will be good to me, to our whole family.”
“Well…why does it have to be so soon? Why can’t you just wait a few years?” Until I’m older and ready to be married as well, I thought. But I didn’t say it.
“Oh, Desiree.” My sister patted my hand, turning to glance at her reflection in the mirror. “You don’t know anything of the ways of men and women. There are certain things that…a lady…cannot do. At least, not until she’s a wife.”
I stood alone in the garden, the familiar space barely recognizable as I surveyed the scene. Maman had conjured our very own Eden at the Clary villa, with heaps of roses perfuming the air and hundreds of candles lighting the space. Joseph had ordered a massive arrangement of flowers delivered to our home for the wedding, accompanying the garlands of hibiscus and honeysuckle that draped the long banquet tables in the garden.
Nicolas had spent generously on both the wine and the meal. As night lowered around us, the air was redolent with the aromas of not only the flowers but also the feast—lamb and pork, saffron rice and stewed apricots, platters of whole fish, skin crisped, eyes and bones still in place.
The evening was balmy with just the slightest breeze, and though the seagulls cawed, though nearby the cafés of our busy harbor town filled with their nightly diners and revelers, we heard none of those summer sounds, for Maman had hired musicians for the night.
Nicolas had invited several of our family’s most important clients, and he looked on, the père de famille now that Papa was gone, approvingly. Maman flitted about in her gown of midnight blue silk, tossing orders at the servants and accepting the compliments of the wedding guests. She’d been so nervous about a summer rain, but the night settled around us clear and comfortable, and the relief was evident in her broad smile.
The Buonaparte family arrived en masse just before the meal was served. I met them all: the younger brothers, Lucien, Louis, and Jerome. They all shared the same dark hair and languorous accents. They kept to themselves mostly, mingling only with the Buonaparte sisters, who were also in attendance. There were three of them: Pauline, Caroline, and Elisa, and they told me their names in quick succession.
I also met Mamma Buonaparte, the fierce Letizia, who entered the dinner party surrounded by her offspring. Looking at her, I guessed that she might have been beautiful once, perhaps in her youth, but her dark features were now sharp, scraped of all softness by age and hardship and the ruthless Corsican sun. She was quiet but civil with Maman, thanking her for her hospitality. I greeted her, staring into her unsmiling face, thinking that with her aquiline nose—much like her favorite son’s—and stern, alert eyes, she might pose as a formidable matriarch of the former Roman Empire. “It is an honor to meet you, Madame Buonaparte,” I said, lowering my eyes as I curtsied before her. She studied me with that probing gaze, and I instantly understood that this was another trait she had bequeathed to her son. I did not know what Napoleone had told her of me—or indeed whether he had told her anything at all—but I felt cowed as she returned my greeting, and then she turned to her nearest daughter and demanded a cup of wine.
With the Church having been carved up and stripped of all power, including that of blessing a marriage, Julie’s wedding was just a quick legal affair at the town hall before the feast at our home. Fitting, as that is where she and Joseph had first met, just months before. Nicolas and Napoleone attended as witnesses, and I was to attend to Julie at the fête.
Of course the musicians began the night in the only way imaginable: a boisterous playing of “La Marseillaise,” the anthem of our new Republic, given its name after volunteer soldiers from our own hometown sang it while marching on Paris. We sang along to the jaunty tune, men doffing their caps, women holding hands to hearts.
I felt a tap on my shoulder a moment after “La Marseillaise” concluded; I turned, already knowing whom I would find. Of course my eyes had been tracking Napoleone since the start of the feast. I’d watched greedily as he’d laughed with a sister—I believe it was the middle one, Pauline. I’d noted how he had waited solicitously on Mamma Letizia, bringing her plates of fish and cups of wine and slices of lemon cake. I’d relished seeing this other side of him with these women he loved, had even enjoyed the prick of envy that it had elicited in me.
“May I?” He held a hand toward me now as the musicians began their next set. I had barely placed my hand in his before he was guiding me forward into a swift quadrille. His steps were decisive and self-assured, if not entirely fluid.
Nearby, Joseph laughed, the sound of his joy soaring over the din of the partygoers and the music. “He is happy,” Napoleone said, keeping his eyes fixed only on me.
“So is she,” I answered. And she was; for that I was happy, too. But my heart did carry a pang of sadness, knowing that Julie would be gone that night. Nearby, to be sure—they had taken a modest but comfortable townhouse close to the square, only a few blocks from our neighborhood. But still, she would not be in our home, in the bedchamber we had shared since before my memories began.
“Mamma likes you,” Napoleone said, his pronouncement pulling my thoughts from Julie. I stole a glance across the garden, where Letizia sat, scowling, flanked on each side by a daughter, two of her sons standing over her like sentries.
“She does?” I asked.
“She thinks you are a dear girl. From a respectable family.”
I nodded. I supposed that was good.
“When you and I are married, I’ll have my men fire a 101-gun salute before the feast,” he said.
I would have tumbled to the soft grass, I was sure of it, had he not been holding me up, guiding me through the dance steps. When you and I are married. There’d been no proposal.
“How does that sound?” he asked.
I shook my head, looking into his green eyes.
“What is it?” he asked, his self-assured composure flickering for just a moment.
“At my wedding, I want something else,” I answered.
“Oh?” He flashed half a grin, daring me to oppose him. “Pray tell.”
I squared my shoulders, willing myself to speak my own mind: “I’ve heard that in Paris they have these new machines. They fill them with gas and they can fly.”
“Yes, hot-air balloons,” he said, nodding. “Indeed. I’ve seen one.”
“You have? So they really…fly?”
“They really do. And if you want one at our wedding, we shall have one.”
My eyes went wide. That was the second time in a matter of minutes that he’d said we would marry. Did he really mean it?
“But not yet,” he said, his tone matter-of-fact. “I won’t marry you yet. Not while I still await word from the Committee on my invasion plans for Italy. Not until after that campaign is concluded in victory. I wouldn’t take the chance of making you a widow at the age of sixteen.” He said it all with such decisiveness. It was settled. But like so many other moments, he had never even asked.
Did I wish to marry him? I considered the question a moment as he guided me through the dance steps. What did I wish—sixteen years old, dancing on the wedding night of the person closest to me in the world? Like everyone else in our fearsome, fragile world, what I wanted most was an escape from the Terror. I wanted my loved ones to survive. I loved my family, I loved my home—that, I knew.
But did I wish to remain at home, with Maman, now that Julie was gone? I knew the answer: no, I did not. Julie was speaking of going to Paris with Joseph and Napoleone; how could I stay behind in Marseille?
And now here was this singular, strong man, standing before me, telling me that I would go with them. A man more self-assured and powerful than I had previously known possible. A man so much wiser in the ways of the world than I had ever hoped to be. A man who made plans, and knew how to act on them. The brother of Julie’s husband. Just when it had appeared that my entire world would fall apart, he’d stepped into it—both he and his brother—and nothing had been the same since that time. Yes, I loved Napoleone.
And so I allowed myself to imagine even more—Napoleone and I joining forever, and my cleaving even more irrevocably to Julie and to Joseph, too. A new city, a new life. Our bond forged out of the strength of not just one union, but two. What could be better?