The Secret Life of Josephine by Carolly Erickson

Author:Carolly Erickson
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780312367350
Publisher: St. Martin's Press

32

MUCH TO MY SURPRISE AND DELIGHT, Euphemia came to join me at about this time. I had been writing to her often, urging her to make the journey to Italy and reassuring her that much of the fighting was over and that she would not be in any danger from cannonfire or marauding soldiers if she came. I was so glad to see her that I burst into tears.

We sat together in the garden and she told me all her news. She handed me a portrait miniature of Hortense, who looked so grown up I almost didn’t recognize her.

“She’s a young lady now. Almost pretty. She misses you such a lot. She has an admirer. He’s English, I’m sorry to say. Young Lord Falke. Very dashing.”

“And Coco? How is she?”

“Into everything. A strong little thing. She turns cartwheels like you used to do. Hortense is teaching her her letters.”

“As you once taught me, Euphemia.” The memory of Euphemia, then a young girl herself, teaching me my alphabet reminded me that my beloved half-sister was getting on in years. I thought of her as eternal, as someone who had always been there and always would be, but as I looked at her now, I could not help but realize that of course she was aging, her tightly curling hair in its neat bun turning grey, her shrewd yet kindly eyes ringed with lines. She moved more slowly than I remembered, and her large, capable brown hands with their pink palms were losing their plumpness and becoming gnarled, the finger joints swollen.

Having Euphemia with me at the villa made the surly coldness and hostility of the Buonapartes even more evident, and stiffened my resistance toward them. My husband’s youngest sister and brother, Caroline and Jerome, I could tolerate but the others irked and angered me more and more. Louis, who I thought of as the civilized Buonaparte, cornered me one morning as I was leaving my bedroom and slipped his arm around my waist.

Startled, I whirled out of his grasp. He laughed. “Come now, sister-inlaw,” he said in a honeyed tone I had never before heard him use, “you won’t deny me a kiss. From what I hear you’ve never denied anyone.” He reached toward me and I eluded him. At that moment he was repellent.

“Wait till I tell my husband about this!” I said through clenched teeth.

Louis shrugged. “He won’t mind. We’ve shared many a servant girl, Nabulio and I.”

“I am no servant girl!”

Louis curled his lip disdainfully. “No. You’re a slut. Everyone says so.”

I slapped him and went downstairs where the Three Graces—or so I had begun to refer to Letizia, Paulette and Elisa—were waiting for me. Letizia sat in her rocking chair, knitting, and glanced up at me with a frown. Elisa glared at me, her double chins shaking, and muttered something under her breath. Paulette, I saw, had gone into my wardrobe and taken my favorite gown, a gossamer-thin ball gown made of fine peach-colored Milanese silk, and put it on.

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