“No,” said Hortense quietly. “He rules far more territory than King George, and will rule still more if his plans go as he intends them. They usually do,” she added.
It wasn’t an indictment, just a statement of fact.
“What plans?” asked Emma suspiciously.
“There are always plans,” said Hortense wearily. “This time it’s the invasion of England. He’s always wanted to conquer England. If he manages that…” She shrugged. “He’ll have achieved what none of his predecessors could. France will rule England. For that, he’ll need an heir.”
Emma couldn’t care less about England, but she did care about Hortense. “But he has an heir,” Emma said stubbornly. “What about you? What about Louis-Charles?”
The very purpose behind Hortense’s disaster of a marriage to Bonaparte’s younger brother had been to provide Bonaparte with that heir, an heir of both his blood and Josephine’s. Louis-Charles had been intended for that position from birth. If the Emperor had changed his mind now, it meant that Hortense’s sacrifice and all the pain she had endured since had been for naught.
It was, thought Emma passionately, unthinkable.
“He won’t go back on his word now,” she said, wishing she could believe her own words.
Hortense smiled without humor. “It’s not the same. If he is to be an emperor, he must have heirs of the blood. Or so they say.”
Emma bit down on her lower lip. “What about your mother?”
Hortense didn’t even need to think about it. “It will devastate her,” she said simply.
Emma could remember when Bonaparte had been the one clamoring for Mme. Bonaparte’s attention, suing for such crumbs of affection as she might choose to toss him. She had treated him, then, with a sort of abstracted fondness, and chosen her lovers elsewhere.
Emma wasn’t sure when the balance had shifted; she had been preoccupied with her own affairs, with Carmagnac and Paul and her own wounded feelings. It had been a blurry and confused time, and, at the end of it, she had come to Malmaison to find that the world had shifted, that it was Mme. Bonaparte begging her husband’s affection, biting her lip and looking the other way as he chose his mistresses from among the actresses at the Comédie-Française, and sometimes even from among his stepdaughter’s friends.
Once, Mme. Bonaparte might have had her own way with a single, softly spoken word. Not anymore.
Emma had a very bad feeling about this.
“What can you do?” Emma asked her friend.
Hortense looked down at her son’s head. “I’ve done everything I can do,” she said, and there was a touch of bitterness in her voice. “What else, I don’t know.”
They sat together in silence, each caught in her own thoughts. The sun shone brightly on the river, but it seemed dim to Emma’s eyes, too much light turned dark, like a black spot on one’s eye from staring directly at the sun.
Emma looked at Hortense’s familiar face, at the new hollows between her cheekbones and the shadows below her eyes, prettier, in some ways, than she had been as a girl, but so much sadder. They had sat so often like this, she and Hortense, in this same spot, watching the play of light on the water, tossing crumbs to the ducks, and talking of books and dresses and life and love. Here Emma had told Hortense of her disillusionment with Paul, twisting her hands in her lap, hour slipping into hour as the sun set over the water, and here Hortense had confessed her love for a young general, Duroc, one of the set that had flocked to Malmaison in those long-ago halcyon days.
Hortense had been so certain her stepfather would give his consent.
Emma jerked around as a sudden clatter erupted from the river. Bored with the adults, Caroline’s child had wiggled free and was pelting Mr. Fulton’s steamship with pebbles. The noise battered against Emma’s skull, shattering the illusion of peace. The ducks squawked in protest, their feathers ruffled.
Emma’s hands balled into fists in her lap. “It didn’t need to come to this,” she said.
She didn’t need to explain what she meant; Hortense always knew.
The Emperor’s daughter smiled wryly. “Didn’t it? My stepfather is the comet and we are the tail. We must follow where he leads for better or ill.” Her smile twisted, like a theatrical mask, half comedy, half tragedy. “I imagine the comet’s tail doesn’t much enjoy it either.”
Emma’s heart ached for her friend. She held out a hand. “Hortense—”
Hortense waved her away. “Forgive me. I can’t think why I’m being so melodramatic! It must be the child. It wreaks havoc with one’s emotions. You’ll see.”
“But you’re not being melodramatic. Not at all! Not if you really believe—” Emma would have pressed the topic, but her words were drowned out by a resounding crash.
In the shocked silence that followed, she could hear an ominous cracking noise.
As the crowd stared in mingled horror and delight, the chimney of Mr. Fulton’s steamship cracked, sliding slowly sideways. The ship skewed sideways, a sad, ruined thing.
“I sank it! I sank it!” crowed Achille.
Mr. Fulton looked ill. Kort gaped, as though he couldn’t quite believe what had just happened. Hortense sighed, and shifted her own sleeping son on her lap.
“Yes, you did,” said the Emperor genially. He pushed out of his chair, gesturing brusquely to his staff. “Enough entertainment. To work!” He jerked his head in the direction of Mr. Fulton. “You, too.”
With one last, wordless look of dislike at Achille, Fulton joined the stream of naval commanders following the Emperor to the summerhouse he employed as an office in good weather.
The party was over, at least for some. Emma could see Mme. Bonaparte moving graciously through the crowd, smoothing over her husband’s gaffe, urging everyone to stay where they were and enjoy the refreshments and the fine weather. Most people didn’t need to be asked twice. Someone began plucking at a guitar, singing in a pleasant tenor voice about flowers blooming, bloomed too soon, ducking and striking a false chord as a candied chestnut sailed past one ear. In Hortense’s lap, Louis-Charles stirred fitfully.
“I should take him in,” Hortense said, just as a shadow fell over their sunny spot.
Emma didn’t need to look up. She could see the silhouette stretched across the blanket, the full sleeves, the curling hair, the long legs, distorted and caricatured by the angle of the sun, and, yet, still recognizable. Or maybe it was the other things that she recognized: the smell of fresh-washed linen and ink, the elaborate clearing of the throat that preceded a grand oration.
Augustus addressed himself to Hortense. “Might I beg your indulgence, O Our Madonna of these Riparian Banks?”
“You may,” Hortense said graciously. “Provided that you never call me that again.”
Augustus bowed with a flourish, his head nearly scraping grass. “My dear lady, your lightest wish is my commandment. I crave only the counsel of your companion, should you be so very good as to release her into my custody for a brief colloquy.”
“Her custody is her own,” said Hortense. “Emma?”
Emma looked up at Augustus. “I need to talk to you,” he said in a low voice, intended for her ears alone.
“What is it?” she mouthed, but he only shook his head.
“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Emma asked Hortense.
Hortense mustered something akin to a smile. “Go,” she said. “I’m quite content to doze by the river now that the excitement appears to be over.”
Was it? Emma’s pulse picked up as Augustus held out a hand to Emma. Against her better judgment, she took it, letting him draw her up off the blanket.
“A thousand thanks, O benevolent ladies.” As he waved an enthusiastic farewell to the Emperor’s stepdaughter, Augustus bent close to Emma’s ear, sending a shiver down her spine as he murmured, “Come with me. We need to be private.”
