LITMIR.BIZ

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who had survived were still forced to live in hiding, and were under constant suspicion ever since the royalist plots against Bonaparte.

      The girl had turned to look up at him, and he noticed for the first time that she had really beautiful eyes, amber-gold in color, shaded by long, dark lashes that looked spiky from tears.

      “Who are you?” The words slipped out without his own volition.

      “Maria Antonia Catalina de Castellanos y Gallardo.” She said it all in one breath, adding simply, “But everyone calls me Marisa. It was my maman’s name for me, for she was French. They put her in prison, and she went to the guillotine with the others. She died very bravely, Delphine said.”

      “Oh, God!” Philip ejaculated, quite forgetting himself.

      His concern, and the sympathy in his handsome face, made Marisa want to confide everything to him—or almost everything.

      Her words began to tumble over each other.

      “I was in a convent in Spain, but they wanted me to marry a man I had never seen—a—a libertine! And so I ran away. I thought that if I could get to France, to Paris, then perhaps I could find my Aunt Edmée again. She was married to an Englishman, Lord—Lord—oh, I cannot remember his name!” she cried out with exasperation. “Perhaps you would know him and I should be safe again.”

      “But—”

      She was too overwrought to let him interrupt. “There is also my godmother. They sent her husband, the viscount Beauharnais to the guillotine, but I heard from someone that it was only a few days afterwards that the Citoyen Robespierre was executed, and they stopped sending everyone to the guillotine, so…She was very pretty and so kind! And I am quite sure that if only I could…”

      Philip Sinclair’s head reeled. The girl’s story sounded too improbable to be true. And yet, could it be possible that she was talking of the same Josephine de Beauharnais who had married the upstart Corsican and was first lady of France?

      “This—this godmother of yours. Perhaps you can remember her whole name?”

      “Marie-Josephe-Rose de la Pagerie—before she married the viscount, of course! And she was a Creole, from Martinique, like my maman and my Aunt Edmée. Oh, monsieur!” Excited, she had slipped back into French. “Do you think you may know her? Does she still live in Paris?”

      The rest of the afternoon, which had started out so badly, turned into a kind of dream, and Marisa felt that fate, which had been so unkind to her before, had surely relented at last.

      Within the next four hours she had been reunited not only with her godmother, but her aunt as well. And her happiness was all due to the good offices of the handsome Englishman, Philip Sinclair, who, on hearing her story, had not wasted a moment in driving her all the way to Malmaison, where the wife of the first consul of France was in residence at the moment.

      There was a long time that passed before Marisa, still slightly dazed, became aware of the full extent of her good fortune. Perhaps God had forgiven her after all!

      Her godmother, her mother’s childhood friend, was married to none other than Napoleon Bonaparte, the man who had conquered more than half of Europe. And her aunt, the Countess Landrey, had taken advantage of the uneasy peace to visit France. She was, in fact, staying at Malmaison with her friend when the young Englishman, whom she remembered meeting in London, had all but forced his way past the enormous, gilded gates.

      From then on, Marisa’s whole life changed. So drastically she could hardly believe it was all true and happening to her. Suddenly she was no longer a poor orphan but a young lady of fashion, her gowns designed and tailored by the great couturier Leroy and her hair arranged and styled by her own maid. Josephine’s daughter Hortense, whom she had known as a child was her friend; and Napoleon himself had noticed her, ruffling her curls as he passed.

      What a transformation! Her mirror told her so, when the others did not. Why, she was no longer as ugly as she had thought herself, after all. When her hair was dressed à la Tite, a jeweled headband showing off its burnished gold splendor, and she wore a diaphanous muslin gown embroidered with gold or silver, she was the equal of any other young woman and the target for flirtatious glances and comments. Only her aunt and godmother knew the whole story behind her sudden appearance in Paris, and not even to them had she divulged the name of the man who had shamed her.

      They did not press her, and Marisa, feeling petted and protected and safe, spent the next few weeks reveling in the luxury and attention that suddenly surrounded her. Her sudden arrival in France was not questioned; since she was under the protection of the chief consul himself, who would dare? Her godmother Josephine and her aunt had let only small, casual hints drop, so that soon it was generally understood she had spent most of her life in a Spanish convent and had traveled here to be reunited with her mother’s family.

      She stayed at Malmaison, which had become like a home to her, and her Aunt Edmée, still beautiful and young-looking, made an amusing game of instructing her in the ways of the fashionable world.

      Her time passed in a whirl of activities—flirting and dancing lessons and riding lessons, and even instructions in geography and history and philosophy. Women like Madame de Stae¨l had made it fashionable for the feminine sex to be intelligent—at least in France. In England a woman who dared to express an opinion of her own, or to argue, would be labeled a bluestocking. So her aunt told her, grimacing slightly as she said it.

      “I can imagine how it must have been for you, my pet, tucked away in that convent surrounded by nuns! No wonder you wanted to run away! But there—we will not speak of that yet, not until you are ready. I myself felt that England was like another kind of prison, where women are expected to keep their place and do nothing but simper and make inane conversation. How I’ve yearned for Paris!”

      Obviously Aunt Edmée was not happy in her marriage. Her husband was an old man surrounded by doctors, and there had been no children.

      “Still,” Edmée admitted with a laugh, “I suppose I should count myself lucky! He allows me to go my own way, as long as I am discreet. I don’t shock you, I hope? And he’s rich….”

      Marisa had already begun to learn that there was hardly a married woman among those elegantly gowned indolent ladies who frequented the highest circles, who did not have lovers—or had not had in the past. Even Josephine herself had been the mistress of Paul Barras when Napoleon had met her.

      These were the people she was surrounded by, and how naive she must seem in comparison! Not at all experienced, in spite of the unpleasant past she tried to put out of her mind.

      Marisa had not been formally presented in Paris yet, but she was happy in the relative seclusion of Malmaison; and there was Philip, who in spite of the fact that he was an Englishman, was permitted to visit her and came almost every day.

      The recent peace notwithstanding, it was well known the first consul had no love for the English. “A nation of shopkeepers,” he called them scornfully. And already Marisa had heard whispers of countless royalist plots against the Republic, financed by the English. Their nobility flocked across the channel to visit France and sample the pleasures of the Continent again, and their spies were everywhere.

      So it was surprising that Philip Sinclair was allowed beyond the golden gates of the château, with its tricolor sentry boxes outside and handsomely uniformed hussars who stood watchful guard. Marisa suspected that this concession was only due to the pleading of her godmother Josephine, who had been so kind to her since her unexpected arrival and had all but adopted her as another daughter.

      Her first impression of Monsieur Sinclair had not changed since she had begun to see him so often. He was still the handsomest man she had ever set eyes on, and his manners matched his appearance. They strolled in the gardens together, down the ornamental flower-lined walks that Josephine had laid out everywhere, and sometimes paused to sit and rest by cool, tinkling fountains.

      He talked to her of London and answered her questions about how ladies dressed and acted there; and he related witty anecdotes that made her laugh. They were

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