When I voiced this concern to Julie that afternoon as we strolled the pebbled allées of Parc Monceau, she offered only a sly smirk in reply. “What?” I asked, my interest immediately roused. “What are you withholding from me?”
Julie looked straight ahead at the pathway before us, apparently deliberating how to answer. Eventually, she yielded to my insistence, saying: “I do not believe you shall have to wait too much longer for that kiss, my dear sister.”
I paused mid-step, staring at her. “What do you mean?”
Julie beamed as she finally let it gush out of her: just that morning, following his visit to our home, Bernadotte had asked Joseph if they might speak in private. The two men had retreated to my brother-in-law’s study while I had gone out on an errand to the florist’s shop, none the wiser that such a meeting was taking place. Following his conversation with Bernadotte, Joseph had pulled Julie into his study. And here I was, a few hours later, walking in Parc Monceau with my sister. “He’s asked for your hand, Desi,” Julie said, guiding me to the nearest stone bench.
I felt my heart leap in my chest. Bernadotte wished to marry me. Did I wish to be Bernadotte’s wife? Julie asked.
I sat beside her on the bench, considering my response. It was odd—with Napoleon, I had known him better. I had spent more time with him, and I had been madly in love with him, recklessly so, infatuated in the way that only a young girl can be before she’s ever known heartbreak or betrayal. And yet, look at how he had treated me, how he had behaved once he’d secured my affections.
Bernadotte I knew less intimately, to be sure. After all, he’d never even kissed me. And yet, somehow, I trusted that Bernadotte would not hurt me in the way that my previous fiancé had. I felt, perhaps naïvely, that Bernadotte would prove to be the good man I had seen him to be so far. The sort of man with whom I could trust my wary heart. The sort of gentleman I would want for my husband.
Now I did not try to suppress the smile that burst across my face; I did want to marry Bernadotte. I knew that. I wanted to marry him more than I’d wanted anything since Napoleon’s abandonment.
Julie read my face, and she took my hands in hers. “And so, I ask you again: is there any reason why Joseph ought to refuse our dear Bernadotte’s request?”
“No reason,” I said, beaming at my sister. “No reason at all.”
* * *
On the day when spring finally and fully took possession of the city, when the crocuses burst forth with petals and the leaves of the plane trees unfurled fat and green, Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte asked for my hand, and I happily gave it.
“Desiree Clary, you’ve made this soldier see that there is more to life than warfare.” He held my hands in his as we stood alone in Julie’s salon. “Mon Dieu, I thought I was immune to nervousness, having stared down enemy muskets, but I find myself lacking…” He swallowed, taking in a fortifying breath before he tried again: “I find myself lacking the words to tell you how deeply I care for you now, Desiree. How…happy you would make me if…well, if you’d…” I saw how he trembled, how his guileless features flushed as he forced himself to keep my eye contact.
“Yes,” I said, hoping to encourage him with my smile.
He raised a dark eyebrow, the hope apparent on his face.
“Yes, Sergeant Belle-Jambe,” I continued, “I will marry you.”
With that, he pulled me toward him, letting loose a loud whoop as he twirled me around the room. Julie and Joseph, upon hearing this celebratory exclamation, took that as their invitation to burst into the salon, the champagne already poured. There were hugs and handshakes; Julie wiped tears as she whispered to me: “I am so happy for you both.” Handing each of us a flute, Joseph offered a toast: “To the Bernadottes, and many happy years for them.”
The Bernadottes. As I gulped the cold, bubbly drink, I felt my entire body ripple with a giddy sort of exhilaration. I stared at the man beside me, taking in his handsome features, his bright and earnest smile, his strong figure, and I marveled at all that had led me to that moment.
While Napoleon’s intentions had been whispered in the darkness, his affections hastily given and even more hastily withdrawn, Bernadotte had done everything properly. He’d written to Marseille to request my mother’s and my brother’s blessings. Having secured those, he’d spoken to Joseph, just as Julie had told me. And now, on that glorious spring day, he became my fiancé.
Bernadotte didn’t promise me a comet. He did not promise to pull me, blazing, across the sky. He only promised to give me himself, wholly and faithfully. And that, I decided, would be quite enough.
Chapter 16
Paris
Spring 1798
IT WAS THE BIGGEST NEWS ever to come to France. The newspapers teemed with daily reports, as the gossip spread down streets and through cafés. It was to be the largest, most ambitious, most far-flung military campaign ever attempted by any French army. A campaign to be carried out across sea and desert sand. A quest to capture the storied and ancient kingdom of Egypt.
And yet, what does any of that mean to a young lady, newly twenty, suddenly and unexpectedly in love and planning to be married?
Very little, I’ll confess, once I found out that my Bernadotte would not have to take part in the massive force. In fact, Bernadotte had put in a request for several months’ leave, ostensibly for rest after the grueling campaigns with the armies of the Rhine and Italy, but, he confessed to me, that wasn’t the real reason. “I need to take a break from soldiering and play the part of lover for a time,” he admitted, grinning as we ended an evening of supper and cards at Julie’s home. I felt my face grow warm, my features spreading into a smile, and I allowed Bernadotte to steal a quick kiss before he hopped into his waiting carriage.
We were planning for a late-summer wedding. Though Bernadotte had taken the lease on a handsome estate to the south of the city, I’d admitted to him that I didn’t wish to live in the countryside, so far from my sister. Being the dear he was, Bernadotte took out another lease on a grand townhouse in Paris on the Rue de Monceau, just a few blocks from Julie and Joseph, and a short walk from my beloved Parc Monceau.
The Egyptian war that Napoleon was planning mattered little to me compared with the concerns of assembling my trousseau and furnishing the home in which Bernadotte and I would live as newlyweds. And yet, I couldn’t help but hear the rumors and gossip that trickled into Julie’s household through Joseph and his brother.
France’s ruling body in Paris, the five-person Directory, had fallen from favor due to widespread corruption and ineptitude. Napoleon, more interested in marching armies abroad than squabbling over politics at home, shrugged off the mounting cries of the people that he seek office and wrangle the nation’s politicians as effectively as he had wrangled our troops and foreign heads of state. Outwardly, he had no interest; his focus was turned entirely toward capturing Egypt and ending the British dominance of the Far Eastern trade routes.
Josephine was beside herself—I knew this because it was the Bonaparte sisters’ favorite topic to discuss whenever they visited Julie and me. Pauline, particularly, was gloating, as puffed up as a peacock. “She’s positively begging him to take her with him on campaign. Weeping every night. She claims that the thought of their separation torments her, but we all know the real reason: she is in debt, and she knows the creditors will cut her off as soon as Napoleon is gone and no longer paying her bills.”
Word of Josephine’s profligate spending had become common knowledge throughout Paris. Shopkeepers and bankers delighted in the appearance of her gilded coach, the alighting of her narrow frame, her eager smile, amber eyes scanning always for the latest wares. She deployed francs with the same unmitigated verve with which her husband deployed troops. Only there was a recklessness to her expenditures—some hunger for luxury and acquisition that seemed impossible to sate. “Her wardrobe alone for a single season costs more t
han what most families will ever earn,” Julie told me. “Joseph cannot believe it.”
Though Napoleon had returned from his Italian campaigns with veritable trunks full of plundered jewels—diamonds, rubies, sapphires, amethysts—she still spent on jewelry with an appetite that rivaled Marie-Antoinette’s. She spent on each jar of rouge what our soldiers’ widows were allotted to spend in an entire year. Her gowns, hundreds of them ordered custom from the exclusive Parisian dressmaker Rose Bertin, set the trends each season for fashion. And the renovations she had undertaken for their home on the Rue de la Victoire had exceeded even her mother-in-law’s disapproving predictions; she’d enlisted our famed national painter Jacques-Louis David to create a sprawling masterpiece of friezes and murals on the walls. The final price of this project—millions—now fueled public outrage, even from a populace inclined to adore her husband and see his consort as faultless.
Napoleon was the only person, it seemed, who dared to tell her no. Though he never denied her requests for material comforts (in fact, he’d just recently acquiesced to her request to buy a sprawling estate, the Château de Malmaison, on the western outskirts of the capital), he would not allow her to join him on his campaign to Egypt. She wept at this. He’d told her that France would colonize that kingdom and he could be gone for as long as six years, but her presence would prove too much of a distraction. He would take her son, Eugene, a young officer who had recently completed his training at the military academy, but not Josephine. While in Egypt, he would need to play general, not husband. She could travel with him to his embarkation at the port of Toulon, but he’d bid her farewell on French soil.
Those of us who saw them together in intimate moments—family dinners or outings to the theater—knew that their relationship was as volatile and erratic as ever, with frequent outbursts and tears smearing her rouged cheeks. When we went to Macbeth as a family in the week before Napoleon’s departure, Josephine spent the entire first act in the carriage, crying, refusing to come out.
“It’s because she wanted him to wait with her, to sit there and soothe her, rather than see how Lady Macbeth resembles his own scheming wife,” Pauline said, whispering to Julie and Joseph loud enough that I overheard.
I was overjoyed to have my Bernadotte as a refuge from the Bonaparte family’s histrionics. Though I’d never consider giving up my intimacy with my sister, I relished the thought of an escape from the daily interactions with the rest of the clan. Joseph’s home, just like Napoleon’s, had become a hive of constant and chaotic activity as they prepared for the departure to Egypt. Napoleon would be taking not only tens of thousands of soldiers and sailors with him, but also the elite minds of French academia. He’d be transporting botanists, zoologists, astronomers, surgeons, writers, and painters as part of his floating force. Joseph would not go, but would remain behind to safeguard Napoleon’s interests in Paris, both with the ruling authorities and within the Bonaparte family.
And when Josephine and Napoleon left for Toulon before dawn on an early May morning—early enough that the English spies who trailed them would not notice their exit from the capital—I welcomed the thought of turning my focus from Napoleon and Josephine to my own romance, one with decidedly fewer quarrels.
* * *
The Hôtel de Ville at Sceaux was an old lemon-yellow building in the center of the rural town, just a short carriage ride from the country estate Bernadotte had recently considered home. Joseph and Julie gave me away with Maman’s full blessing.
We retired to Bernadotte’s nearby estate after the ceremony for the wedding luncheon. There in the garden under the shade of the leafy plane and chestnut trees, my sister made a toast to my bridegroom. Joseph wished us happiness and then honored his absent brother Napoleon, whose fleet was at that time fighting the desert tribes of Egypt against the backdrop of the grand pyramids.
Josephine, who was ensconced at Malmaison overseeing the renovations to the sprawling château, had declined my invitation with effusive regrets. I knew that she dreaded the thought of facing the unified Bonaparte clan without her husband present. It was just as well—and no small relief to know that the day would pass with far less tension.
We feasted on a spread of champagne and oysters and roasted pheasant stuffed with sage and apples. After our guests had eaten their fill, I stood beside my new husband in our large forecourt and saw them off, waving happily at the line of departing coaches.
When the last guests—Julie and Joseph—had receded from our view, Bernadotte turned to me, taking my hand in his. “Alone with my wife. At last.”
I smiled. At last. He was correct; how many times had I lamented the fact that marriage seemed like a doorway through which I had been barred entry? I squeezed his hand in return. “My husband.”
Bernadotte carried me to our bedchamber and made a grand gesture of bearing me over the threshold. His arms were so unlike Napoleon’s—indeed his entire frame was. Napoleon had been sinewy, narrow, nearly my height, while Bernadotte towered over me. I felt nubile and supple in his arms as he lowered me to the bed. “Well, then, Madame Bernadotte.”
“Yes, Monsieur Bernadotte?”
My husband looked down at me, his dark eyes alight. “You make a seasoned soldier feel a bit shy.”
I tugged on his shirt, pulling it over his head. My mind swam in a heady whirl of champagne and giddy feelings—nervousness, eagerness, even a bit of bashful modesty—but I gasped when I saw his bare skin for the first time: Death to Kings had been tattooed across his broad chest. I looked from his body to his face, my shock surely apparent on my features.
Bernadotte lifted his hands, a protective gesture, as he looked down at the words. “Yes. This is…I gather you’ve never seen a tattoo before?”
I shook my head.
“I had it done in one of my…younger moments. That’s the thing about engraving your skin in ink—it’s permanent.”
I studied the letters. “I…I wasn’t expecting it.”
“No,” he said, reaching for my hand. “I’m sure you weren’t. I’m sorry if I startled you.” He paused a moment. “But…but I don’t regret the sentiment.”
I didn’t say anything. The bedchamber was quiet; the rural countryside beyond our windows was so very still compared to the foot traffic and coach clatter din of the capital. I blinked, staring once more at the words on my new husband’s chest. Death to Kings.
“Do you find it…terribly off-putting?” he asked, his voice timorous.
I studied the rest of his body, taking in the carved ridges of his flesh and muscle. His thick arms, expansive chest, strong shoulders. His skin fairly hummed with desire, and so, I realized, did mine. “Not at all,” I answered honestly, leaning forward to meet his lips with mine.
Bernadotte accepted my body’s invitation and proved my fears wrong with that first, long kiss as man and wife—there was certainly no lack of passion between us. He took me in his arms with a strong, determined embrace, pulling me ever closer until there was no more fabric or modesty to separate us, and there was no more conversation that evening, at least not of the spoken kind.
* * *
We gave the servants very little work those first few days, barely emerging from our bedchamber and our newlywed joy. Meals were brought in on trays and enjoyed in bed. I cared very little for exploring the grounds or the large rooms of the home, so consumed was I in acquainting myself with my new husband’s body and the previously unknown pleasures he seemed so intent to pull forth from my own.
After our brief stay as man and wife in Sceaux, we relocated to our new townhome in Paris. As was so often the case with my Bernadotte, he did not look at new places as we approached, but rather watched me as I saw them. It was as if his reaction could only be formed once he saw that I was happy.
“Here we are, Madame Bernadotte,” he said as the coach pulled up to our new property. An iron gate led to a broad forec
ourt, with the mansion tucked back away from the street. The front of the home was brightened by tall windows with balconies and flanked by two gracious wings, or pavillons. The home was large, much more than we needed for just the two of us, but it would be perfectly suited for both entertaining and…I thought with a blush…a growing family.
“Does it please you?” he asked, his focus still fixed on me as the coach slowed to a halt. “Oh, Bernadotte, it’s lovely.” My excited smile was met now by his own happy expression.
Inside, the home was bright and the décor was tastefully elegant. Perhaps not as lavish as our family villa in Marseille, or the Bonapartes’ palais here in Paris, but I knew that we could be very comfortable—indeed, happy—here. I had overseen the decorations and had selected the furnishings myself, with Julie’s help of course, and I was delighted to see how it had all come together. Sèvres porcelain covered the long mahogany table of the dining room. Just across from that, our salon was appointed with marble-topped end tables accented with porcelain vases and delicate dishes painted in pastoral scenes. On the mantelpiece ticked a gilt clock fashioned in the elaborate style of Louis XIV. A row of tall gold mirrors reflected the flickering light of the candelabras and would make this the perfect room for gatherings lasting late into the night. One room over, a long gallery filled with oil paintings led to a conservatory with a high ceiling, the airy space awash in natural light. In that sunny room, overlooking our lovely gardens, I intended to take up my girlhood passion for drawing once more. My husband heartily supported my plan.
A broad, curving staircase in the center of the front hall led to the second floor. It was toward that stairway that my husband now carried me, and he made quick work of the steps. “Where are we going?” I asked as he whisked me upstairs, making me feel light in his arms.
The Queen's Fortune Page 20