Sophie did not dare contradict her. After all, her father had agreed to let her go and live with Cousin Emmanuel’s widow. Perhaps that meant he would not be her father any longer. She followed the maid and Dermide out of the room, grateful to escape from the woman’s terrifying presence.
The moment the door closed behind them, however, she wanted to run back and take one more look, hear her speak once more. How odd that voice was! It had a little catch in it when she laughed. Sophie had never met anyone who laughed so often. Her hand was so soft, too. When she had held Sophie’s chin, it had felt as though it was wrapped in velvet. She was the same height as Sophie. Wasn’t that odd? Cousin Pauline. She tried it out, under her breath. Cousin Pauline.
Sophie was in love.
She did not recognize the symptoms. This mixture of fascination, guilt, and terror was new to her. All the way back to Pontoise her thoughts flew back and forth like little darting birds: on one side, her father and the apple tree; on the other side, Cousin Pauline and the sound of laughter. When her grandfather asked her if she was feeling unwell, she burst into tears.
Camillo Borghese was also in love. He was in love with Paris, and Paris was in love with him. Ten years earlier, a prince foolish enough to visit France would likely have been ushered straight to the guillotine; now, under the First Consul, Paris was redis- covering the pleasures of privilege and excess. The elegant young Roman with his formal dress and courtly manners reminded the French of the beauty and ceremony they had renounced. Suddenly it seemed appealing, rather than appalling, to hold receptions, to bow, to wear lace and jewelry, to address a young woman as mademoiselle again instead of citoyenne. Camillo was invited everywhere, introduced to everyone. Frenchmen tried to copy his graceful gestures, his practiced movements on the dance floor, his stylish handling of his horses. Marriageable damsels simpered at him. Matrons wrote him on scented paper, lamenting the cold and indifferent nature of their husbands and hinting that he might be able to comfort them.
The prince found his popularity bewildering and exhilarating. In Rome he had been the shy and unpromising son of a magnetic father; three years after Don Marcantonio’s death, Camillo still felt uneasy when addressed by his title and tended to defer to his mother when any important decision confronted him. Here in Paris, with no parents or cousins or uncles or tutors to remind him of past inadequacies, he was reborn. Even his poor French was (at least at first) a blessing in disguise. He often found himself nodding or smiling agreeably in response to something he had barely understood. The result was a revelation: if only he had nodded and smiled more in Rome, instead of trying to consider his response carefully before he spoke! Every reception, every dinner party offered the chance to meet yet another Parisian—usually female—who would say, breathless, eyes shining, “Oh, Monsieur le Prince! It is such an honor! I have been hearing so much about you!” He would look at their breasts and smile, and they would chatter, and he would smile, and they would kiss his cheek and invite him to dinner and beg him to take them for rides in his high-sprung two-wheeled carriage.
When Angiolini mentioned the possibility of marriage, therefore, the prince was initially not very receptive. It did not help matters that it was early—not even eleven in the morning—and he had, as usual, been out very late the night before. He was on his third cup of coffee and still felt half-asleep. He was so startled by Angiolini’s casual mention of the topic, in fact, that at first he thought he had misunderstood him. But they were speaking Italian, not French, and instead of nodding and smiling, Camillo reverted to his older, less successful practice of staring at something below his interlocutor’s eye level—in this case, the floral pattern on his china cup. When that produced no inspiration, he tried scowling and hoped that Angiolini would take the hint.
He did not. “Well?” said the older man. “You look as though I were speaking of a funeral, not a wedding. What do you say to the notion?”
“I—I had not thought about it.” This was not strictly true. One of the most enjoyable things about Paris was the temporary respite from his mother’s attempts to find him a suitable mate. He thought about marriage every day. I am still in France, protected from the would-be princesses of Rome. Praise God.
“Not at all? You will be twenty-eight in a few months.”
Camillo shrugged. “My father did not marry until he was almost forty.” He took another sip of coffee.
“But you would not object if a match were to be proposed?”
“Has one been proposed?”
Angiolini was a veteran diplomat; Camillo did not expect a straight answer. And he did not get one. “Perhaps I might have heard some rumors that an alliance would be possible,” the Tuscan envoy conceded. “Nothing more.”
“Alliance” was, of course, the correct term. Borghese princes did not marry for love. Camillo had known since childhood that his bride would require the approval of the pope and would likely be chosen for him rather than by him.
“An alliance with whom?”
Angiolini looked surprised and offended. “With the Bonapartes, of course. Who else is there in France, these days? The young woman is the consul’s sister.”
Camillo put down his coffee cup. He was suddenly very wide awake. He had met Napoleon—that, after all, was the main point of his visit to Paris. While he had not precisely disliked the man who now ruled France, Belgium, and large chunks of Italy, he had not found him very congenial. In fact, he had found him rather cold and threatening. Someone had told him that the Bonaparte sisters were even more terrifying; as for the mother, she was—according to the same informant—the reincarnation of a pagan fury. He frowned. “But Napoleon’s sisters are married. You presented me to Madame Murat yourself, just a fortnight ago. And the other one, Elisa, is the wife of that Corsican fellow, Bocisomething.”
“There is a third sister, a widow. She has been living quietly since her husband’s death last fall.” He paused. “You had not heard of her? Of Pauline?”
Camillo frowned. “I don’t believe so.” Had he heard something? Perhaps there had been some talk of a Pauline or a Paulette. Titters, whispers, French idioms that he did not know. He had not paid much attention. But if this sister was a new widow, still in mourning, the gossip must have been about someone else.
Angiolini smiled and took a small parcel from his pocket. “I will leave this with you, then. Let me know in a day or so if you wish to meet Madame Leclerc. Perhaps a small family gathering, nothing that would give rise to any talk.”
Camillo unfolded the brown paper and stared down at the miniature in its silver frame. It showed a young woman with a perfectly shaped oval face, curling brown hair, delicate, slightly rounded features, and mesmerizing dark eyes. He looked at it, twisted it, held it up to the light, rotated it slightly. Nothing changed. The woman was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen.
“She doesn’t really look like this, does she?” he said finally.
As usual, Angiolini did not answer his question. “I shall look forward to hearing from you, Your Excellency.” Still smiling, he bowed and left.
“I can’t marry a Bonaparte,” Camillo said a minute later. His tone was plaintive. “My mother would never approve. The pope would never approve.” There was no one there to hear him.
TWO
Cousin Pauline installed Sophie in a beautiful suite of rooms in the mansion she had bought on the rue de Faubourg St. Honoré and allowed her to pick out all the furnishings. Sophie had her own maid and so many new frocks that she could change several times a day. She had tutors—three of them. The music teacher and drawing teacher were both young men; they were meant to come only twice a week but both seemed to find frequent excuses to stop by the Hôtel de Charost and discuss Sophie’s progress with her guardian. There was also a governess, who came every morning to oversee Sophie’s exercises in Italian, German, arithmetic, grammar, and penmanship. The first incumbent of this position was dismissed when she tactlessly observed that Sophie’s spelling and g
rammar were better than Madame Leclerc’s. The replacement, duly warned, concentrated on arithmetic, which Sophie hated.
Sophie’s days were very orderly. She would wake up at eight and have hot chocolate in bed. For the first week, this was a thrilling luxury; she thought she would never tire of it. She soon did, but was too shy to ask for anything else, and often threw most of the chocolate surreptitiously out of her window and went hungry all morning. After this, her maid would help her dress, and then she would have lessons in the sitting room adjacent to her bedchamber. At noon, she would have a cold luncheon, followed by an hour in the music room to practice the piano. At two o’clock, she would have either music or drawing; then she would go for a walk in the garden with her maid. At four, she was supposed to lie down in her room; she never wanted to rest, however, and so would usually go up to the nursery and play with Dermide. At six, Sophie changed her gown for supper, which she ate alone in her sitting room, served by a footman named Denis. She knew his name because she asked him; he told her, but then advised her that he was not allowed to speak while serving. After supper, she and Dermide would go downstairs for a brief visit with Pauline; then Dermide was put to bed and Sophie would read or struggle with her embroidery until her maid came to help her get into her nightgown.
She almost never saw Pauline aside from that all-too-short evening ritual. Drawing and music were her favorite lessons because her teachers would often contrive somehow to see their lovely employer while they were there, and then Sophie could see her as well. Sophie also liked Italian because she discovered that Pauline spoke it in preference to French. Her governess told her, with a sniff, that Corsicans did not speak proper Italian at all, but Sophie didn’t care. She pestered Carlotta to converse with her and rapidly acquired both a broad accent and a number of Corsican vulgarities, which resulted in repeated punishments—sometimes merely sentences for her copybook, but more often a stinging blow across her palms or knuckles with a metal-edged ruler.
After one particularly painful morning, Sophie was soaking her throbbing hands in a basin of cold water, provided, with indignant sympathy, by Carlotta, who could always be counted on to take Sophie’s side when she was beaten for speaking Corsican. It was raining—again—and when Sophie’s maid came clattering up the stairs to the nursery, Sophie thought she was coming to postpone their afternoon walk. But when Nunzia burst into the room, she was bright red with excitement. “The children are to go with the signora to Master Lucien’s house,” she announced breathlessly. “Right now! In their best things!” She lowered her voice then and spoke in dialect, but Sophie understood her anyway. “It’s a new suitor—a real one! A prince!”
Sophie had mixed feelings about the men who haunted the Hôtel de Charost. She was terrified that one of them might succeed in carrying Pauline away; on the other hand, their visits created an extra occasion for Sophie to see her. Pauline liked to show her maternal side to visitors, and after a few weeks, Sophie had become part of the display. Dermide and Sophie were brought in, introduced, and then arranged in a tableau: Dermide on Pauline’s lap; Sophie standing just behind her. The gentlemen in attendance would exclaim with pleasure at the sight and offer extravagant compliments, comparing Pauline to the Virgin Mary and Dermide to the Holy Infant. Carlotta would mutter darkly afterward about blasphemy and insist that Dermide pray to the Blessed Virgin for his mother’s soul. Sophie, the child of two freethinking Jacobins, did not mind the comparison on religious grounds, but she preferred admiration that included her as well as Dermide.
A few days earlier, Sophie had been standing in her usual position behind the sofa. Pauline was feeding Dermide sweetmeats and teasing him, and Sophie was bored and jealous. The servants had been gossiping about the various suitors and their prospects (or lack thereof) even more openly than usual in the nursery that morning, and Sophie blurted out suddenly: “Cousin Pauline, are you going to marry again?”
There was a shocked silence.
One of the visitors said, with heavy gallantry, “Madame dares not remarry; half the gentlemen in Paris would kill themselves in despair.”
Pauline laughed, but the laughter had an edge.
“Who is the girl?” asked another visitor, as though Sophie were not there.
“Mademoiselle Leclerc, Napoleon’s ward.”
Sophie knew she was in disgrace; usually Pauline presented her as “my late husband’s cousin” or even “my foster daughter.”
“Well,” said the second man, a young man in uniform who had been present several times in the last few weeks when Sophie went downstairs, “what is your answer, Madame Leclerc? Shall you change your name once more?”
“I will do as my brother advises.” Pauline’s tone was cold.
The young man laughed. “So do we all! And yet, he has advised me not to visit you so frequently, Pauline. If I do not obey, I may find myself posted to the ends of the earth, like your late husband.”
Sophie knew from the servants that the West Indies was not one of Pauline’s favorite topics. Nor did Pauline permit witticisms at her brother’s expense. Her dark eyes flashed. “Then I would recommend that you take his advice. Good day, Colonel.” She held out her hand for him to kiss, as though she were a queen dismissing an errant minister.
The young man looked at Pauline in dismay, looked at Sophie, then back at Pauline. It was not a jest; she was not smiling. Chagrined, he bowed over the offered hand and took his leave, although not without giving Sophie a vengeful glare as he went by.
Pauline turned to Sophie after the servants had shown the officer out. “What possessed you, Sophie—my shy little Sophie—to ask such a question!”
“I beg your pardon, Cousin Pauline. I am very sorry,” Sophie stammered. But she could see from Pauline’s face that her guardian was not angry with her any longer.
“Well, as it happens, I can answer your question. It seems I may be getting married again quite soon.” Pauline spoke very loudly and clearly, and although she was looking at Sophie, her reply was obviously directed at the two remaining visitors. One, the portly young Frenchman who had protested at Sophie’s question, seemed crestfallen at this announcement. But the other, an older man who had been calling quite frequently for the past two weeks, looked very satisfied.
“Cousin Pauline is not going to marry that Italian man with white hair who was here tonight, is she?” Sophie had asked Carlotta nervously on the way up the back stairs.
“Marry Signor Angiolini! Certainly not!”
Reassured, Sophie had pushed the unsettling topic of Pauline’s remarriage to the back of her mind.
Now, at Nunzia’s emphatic “It’s a new suitor—a real one!” her anxiety returned, magnified a hundredfold by the maid’s vehemence. And Pauline’s subsequent behavior only amplified her fear. Pauline was always conscious of her appearance and surroundings when receiving visitors, but Sophie stood (along with half the household) in the front vestibule and watched the normally self-confident Pauline change her mind repeatedly about her dress, her hair, her shoes, Dermide’s outfit, Dermide’s hair, Dermide’s shoes. Even Sophie was sent to change her gloves when one of the welts on her hand broke open and stained the back of her glove with a drop of blood.
After everyone was clothed and coiffed and shod, Pauline fretted about the timing of their arrival. They should arrive early and await the prince at Lucien’s. Or perhaps they should make sure he was there first, so that she could make a good impression as she came in. No—the first idea was better: they must be there in time to make sure Lucien used the gold salon and took away the ugly side-table.
At this point, they were now in danger of arriving after the prince, because of all the changes of clothing, and so an express messenger was sent to tell Lucien not to admit anyone save Pauline until she could come in through the terrace in the back. The party was duly received on the terrace by Lucien himself, who seemed rather amused that his elaborately gowned sister was stealing into his garden through a trash-strewn alley. Then Pauline d
irected her own footmen to rearrange the furniture in the reception room she had selected, banishing all but two chairs and a mahogany daybed. The latter was placed in the center of the room, with Pauline and Dermide posed in a semi-reclining position on its ivory-colored silk cushions. Lucien was sent downstairs to receive the visitors. Sophie was relegated to a spot near the wall, standing behind Lucien’s fiancée, Alexandrine, who had one of the chairs. The other, Sophie assumed, was reserved for the prince. She was wrong.
After the chaos in Pauline’s front hall, the harried carriage ride, and the furniture-moving, Sophie expected Lucien to throw open the doors of the salon the minute Pauline had settled herself with Dermide. Instead, they all waited in virtual silence for twenty minutes. When Alexandrine made one or two attempts to start a conversation, Pauline simply raised her eyebrows and said nothing in response.
Finally the double doors opened, and Lucien walked in, talking casually with the two men who followed him. Sophie recognized the first man; it was the man with white hair who had looked so complacent a few days earlier when Pauline had answered Sophie’s question. Behind him was a taller, much younger man with a wide forehead and curling, light brown hair. He paused just inside the doorway and Sophie saw him take in the charming picture of Pauline and Dermide. He was obviously impressed; he did not even glance at Alexandrine or Sophie.
Pauline was greeting the older man. “Signor Angiolini!” she said. “How lovely to find that you are also visiting Lucien today! Please, do sit down.” She gestured toward the only remaining chair. “And who is this you have brought with you?” Sophie heard the low, slightly hoarse timbre of Pauline’s voice and her heart sank. That was the voice Pauline used to enchant people.
The young man, looking bemused, stepped forward with Lucien, who bowed slightly to him.
“Your Excellency, may I have the honor of presenting my sister, Madame Leclerc?” He looked down at Pauline and gave a conspiratorial smile before completing his introduction. “My dear, this is His Excellency Prince Borghese. He is visiting us from Rome.”
The Princess of Nowhere Page 3