Two Empresses by Brandy Purdy

Author:Brandy Purdy [Purdy, Brandy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2016-11-16T16:00:00+00:00

PART 3

JOSEPHINE

CHAPTER 20

From the moment Bonaparte changed my name, my life would never again be the same; I would never be the same. The moment I let him touch me, I felt my true self, Rose, fading away. Josephine—in truth, I hated the name! Only one thing good could be said about it: It provided a means by which I could always divine and divide my true friends from the flatterers and favor-seekers; the latter always called me Josephine, but to the former I would always be Rose.

When Bonaparte left my bed that chilly dawn, still in muddy boots and rumpled uniform, he uncorked the champagne that had sat all night, untouched in a silver bucket filled with ice. He insisted that we must drink a toast—“To Destiny!”

Without giving me a chance to take even one sip from my glass, he drained his, flung it into the fire, and fell on me again, spilling champagne all over the pink coverlet as the glass tumbled from my hand.

“You, Josephine, are my destiny!” he cried as he ravenously took possession of me again.

I didn’t say anything. I was too overwhelmed to speak or even clearly think. My body instinctively did what was required of it while my thoughts were racing about, lost and afraid in an indecisive fog. I didn’t want this, Bonaparte wasn’t the man for me, but the alternative was too terrible to consider. My instinct was to run away as fast as I could, but where to? Where could I be safe? Was there anywhere far enough away to escape Barras’s campaign of slander or Bonaparte’s mad, obsessive passion? They would pursue me to the ends of the earth, I was sure. And what hope had I, at my age, of starting over again? I was thirty-two, though I lied and told everyone I was twenty-nine. I was certain I could never make a success of it even if I tried. I would surely die a pauper.

I was a coward and I took the coward’s way out. I decided that it was better to marry Bonaparte and make the best of it than risk Barras’s wrath and spending the rest of my life a poor outcast. Security was like a drug I craved and Bonaparte could give me a lifetime supply of it. He would “love” me in his way and always take care of me, even if his embraces and kisses stifled me to the point where I wanted to scream.

* * *

I woke to his letter lying on the pillow beside mine with a pink rose, wilting from the cold, on top of it.

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