Amélie rattled her cup in its saucer. She’d hate to see the Bertrands desert Napoleon. “It’s very hard on the emperor...knowing he can’t leave, and the rest of us can.” Could he leave? Her anger circled around her open wound, yet her compassion for him hadn’t diminished. A slight whimper escaped, as neither had her love.
Fanny’s gaze softened. She touched her hand lightly. “Amélie, I see you are upset. I want you to know if you ever need anyone to talk with. You have only your father here, and men are notoriously useless on certain...subjects.”
The woman no doubt referred to the sordid rumors about Amélie and Napoleon. All of England was probably aware and debated the pros and cons in their Parliament. She gripped the sofa cushion. None of it mattered anymore. Her illusions had shriveled in the open air.
“I’ll remember that, thank you, Madame.” Amélie might need a confidant in the upper echelon—her last toehold in the court?—if she ever decided to confide, but the shred of strength she clutched in her fists might collapse if she revealed her shattered core.
* * * *
In Napoleon’s bedroom, Marchand handed him his late morning coffee, steaming hot the way he liked it, but the liquid tasted like mud to his dissatisfied mouth. Napoleon had promised himself to let Amélie down gently, but instead he’d crushed her with a few words. Her face, her tortured face ripped him inside. Last night he’d given in to his desire, his need for her. Dare he admit it, his love? Love weakened men. He’d fallen prey to it with Josephine. He couldn’t let this girl deter him from his plans. She would complicate everything. What if he had taken her? His body still felt the sensual pull. He sighed. Let her believe in his selfishness.
“This coffee tastes like swill. If you spent less time with your mistress, and more time tending me, you rascal, you might learn how to make a palatable brew.” He teased the young man to dispel his anxiety.
Marchand smiled, always accepting his jibes with good humor, and took the cup he thrust out. “I will try to improve my cooking skills, Sire.”
Napoleon sank back into his thoughts. He could do something for Amélie. A foolish action, he knew. He still held on to her by a thread. There had to be a kinder way to ease her departure from him. Napoleon clenched his hand on the chair arm and glared into the bedroom fireplace. “Marchand. Tell Chef Perrault I wish to speak with him.”
* * * *
Amélie picked at her lunch, sitting at the splintered table in the kitchen. The table rocked on uneven legs, and she frequently stuffed wads of material or paper under the short leg, but they kept disappearing.
Her father entered when she was halfway through mashing the contents on her plate, and sat down across from her. They hadn’t spoken since their morning’s disagreement.
Amélie resisted meeting his gaze and watched a red spotted millipede crawl from the pantry toward the stove. She knew better than to disturb it because of the foul odor it would emit. Some things were better left undisturbed.
“Aren’t you hungry?” Perrault asked in a low voice.
“Not really.” She pushed the plate of mackerel aside. The fish tasted like damp grass that gurgled inside her, her bowels twisted in knots. “I apologize for my behavior earlier.”
“You’ve been crying?” he asked. Her attempt to sooth her red eyes with cold compresses was obviously a failure.
“I’m all right, don’t worry.” She’d spent most of the time since returning from Hutt’s Gate soaking tears into her pillow, trying to breathe with a piece of her hacked out and missing. Now she slumped in her chair, exhausted with misery and swollen with resentment.
“You have grown into a lovely woman, as much as I’m reluctant to admit it.” Perrault tapped a finger on the table and sighed. “You’ve been one all along.”
Amélie stared over at him. How severely he’d aged since they’d come to St Helena. The lines around his mouth and brow were deep gouges; his cheeks sagged under pouched eyes. A normally bronze complexion had turned sallow.
“Not as womanly as I might wish.” She chewed on the tip of her thumbnail. She’d failed as a courtesan. “Do you need me to iron anything for you to wear to Cipriani’s burial?”
Her father studied her, leaning back in the chair. “The emperor called me into his study an hour ago. He asked, no, he implored me to stay. He said he couldn’t do without my services. His Majesty insisted we both stay.”
Her heart skipped a beat, and she hated that it still cared. “You told him?”
“I asked him if this was at your behest. He assured me it was his personal wish. I’m weary of battling with you. I’m not a man who welcomes hostility. His Majesty swore that the Count de Montholon acted out of spite, as well as his wife. Alors, I consented to stay for the time-being.” Perrault’s face sagged in uneasy defeat and she almost pitied him. “What I said before...about you being from a decent family and what I expect. I hope you understand?”
“Yes, Papa, I do.” Her voice sounded stagnant. She felt dazed by this turn of events, incapable of a coherent thought.
“I realize things would be simpler if your mother were alive. I do insist you spend no more time alone with His Majesty.” He reached over and squeezed her arm. “That is very important.”
This was his second mention of her mother in just a few days, after being so silent on that subject. Amélie rubbed her temples. “You don’t need to be concerned about that.”
Perrault stood, eyeing her carefully. “If you ever need to discuss things, as I said before, I want you to…feel you can come to me.”
Amélie nodded, anxious to end both their discomforts. “I will, thank you.” Though he no longer had reason to worry. She would remain celibate, untouched, virginal, perhaps join a convent. Maybe God would be easier to understand.
“I’m going to rest in my room for a moment before the funeral. I’ve felt a little tired lately. As everyone says, it’s probably the weather.” He dragged out the door, leaving her to her brooding.
Amélie pressed her hands to her head. She’d tried to blot out her conversation with Napoleon—too much anguish. She had to face the cruel revelation of not possessing enough appeal to secure her position. Now she was totally baffled. What bizarre game did the emperor play and neglect to inform her of the rules?
Her eyes misted again and she wiped them with her handkerchief. The same handkerchief Napoleon gave her months ago. She wadded it up and stuffed the cloth under the table’s short leg. She refused to be manipulated by his whims. How stupid to preach of strong women, then prostrate herself before a man.
Chapter Twenty-One
Death is nothing; but to live defeated and without glory is to die every day—N.B.
Out of a restless slumber, Amélie awoke with a jerk midway through the night. A cold sweat soaked her and she wheezed for air, her hands clutching the sheets. A strange, brooding dream swam in her memory. In the suffocating dark room she tried to recall the details.
She’d stood again at Cipriani’s funeral—a funeral the emperor hadn’t attended because he refused to show himself anywhere near Lowe or his minions. Alone under a murky sky, utterly abandoned, she’d leaned forward over the burial mound. Instead of the pathetic wooden cross, a headstone loomed and she squinted to read the blurry inscription. Her father wept across from her. The only time she’d seen him weep was when her mother died. Now she stared at the stone and distinctly read the name.
That triggered her leap back to consciousness. The dream was an alarming mixture of her mother’s funeral and what took place yesterday for Cipriani.
“Your mother is very ill. We mustn’t stay too long. It will only tire her,” her father had said before her mother’s death. “You understand we have to be brave, Amélie.”
Amélie recalled that fearful girl, hovering in the bedchamber doorway of their humble Parisian cottage. She’d watched the figur
e on the rumpled sheets toss her once graceful head and moan with inhuman shrillness. With so little time, she needed to stay beside her.
I was brave, Papa. She relived the horror of her family’s bedside vigil as Madame Perrault gasped her last. Her adored mother would never again spend cherished moments with her. The day before she fell ill, her mother held Amélie’s face in a tight grip and told her to grow to be a strong woman and never let her heart weaken her.
“I did let my heart weaken me, Maman.” Amélie sobbed in her own bleak room.
She lay stiff in the sheets until the cannon fired for sunrise, rattling her high narrow window. A heavy rain beat down. She crawled from her bed and lit a candle. She pulled her mother’s miniature from her dresser drawer and ran a finger over what existed no more. A tear dropped on her mother’s face, distorting it. “Fate has decided otherwise, Napoleon says, but fate can be a hard taskmaster.”
* * * *
Rain made a good excuse to stay inside. Napoleon stared out the hole in his study shutters. The deluge soaked the red earth. The dampness ached in his bones. Two people dear to him snatched away. One by a curious death; he should have demanded an autopsy. The other by his own hand. Yet he clung to Amée, asking Perrault to remain. Clung to her from a distance—safer that way. He still had control over her. He would devise a wiser plan.
Napoleon plodded into his bedroom, jerked aside the taffeta curtains, and stretched out on his camp bed. This bed once stood on the field of Austerlitz, his greatest victory, when he thought he gripped the world. He fisted his empty hand. He must put his mind to this new skirmish, battle weary though he was. Always a war to reclaim his life. Captain O’Sullivan, his Uncle Fesch, they both promised results. Still, Cipriani’s death hampered so many intricacies they’d set up on the island, almost as if he was purposely swept out of the way. Dare he ponder again if the man was murdered? Did the English suspect his plot?
Napoleon laid a hand on his chest. His heart felt dead, barely beating. Most of his life he’d filed his thoughts in little compartments in his brain. Then he could open a drawer and only concentrate on what was there. Amée had seeped into so many of these boxes. He couldn’t lose himself in her pervasive, naïve love, after years of perfecting a cold cynicism where women were concerned. Without her, though, he felt a deep loneliness as if he stood up to his throat in mire and no one would care if he were sucked under.
* * * *
“His Majesty still won’t dress or shave,” Saint-Denis said after ten days passed with Napoleon never leaving his quarters. The valet sipped his coffee in the kitchen. “Our emperor is unpredictable, restless one moment, then he sits for hours staring at nothing. I told him a hilarious story about a drunken soldier falling into a camp cesspit, and he didn’t even smile.”
“Here, give His Majesty some Saint-John’s-wort tonic. It helps sadness.” Amélie pulled down a bottle from the cupboard—she’d sipped the concoction herself—avoiding the valet’s probing gaze. She struggled not to care, determined to never fall under Napoleon’s spell again. The fact he’d asked them to stay only added to her confusion, her torment over a man who denied his feelings about so many things. “Don’t tell the emperor what it’s for...and insist that Doctor O’Meara visit him.”
“There’s Captain Blakeney sneaking around the house.” Madame Cloubert stirred the last of the sugar into her coffee and stared out the window. “He’ll choke if he doesn’t get a glimpse of the emperor soon. This new orderly officer is such a drunk, he makes my flesh crawl.” Her glare darted to Amélie who now busied herself at the table making a leek tart. “No more walks with His Majesty anymore, Amélie?” The woman nudged her.
“My reasons are private and I haven’t the time.” Amélie lined the tart pan with dough. Active work with her hands kept her mind from dripping down into sorrow, that nagging sense of betrayal.
“The orderly officer walks a thin line. Poppleton became too friendly with His Majesty. Lowe couldn’t abide that.” Saint-Denis threw up his hands in exaggerated affront. “The emperor gave him a snuffbox with the imperial monogram when he left, to show his esteem, and Poppleton had to sneak it off the island. Lowe will be up any day, shouting orders, demanding Blakeney arrange some way to spot His Majesty, even if he has to tunnel under the house.”
“Peste, Blakeney insists on rummaging through our laundry, as if we’d smuggle correspondence there. He loves to handle the women’s underthings, and no one can tell me different.” Madame Cloubert patted down her bodice as if fearing an immediate invasion.
Saint-Denis laughed. “He does seem to take pleasure in that, the filthy rogue.”
Amélie beat two eggs in a bowl until they foamed.
“Amélie, why haven’t you tried to bring His Majesty back to the living?” Ali crossed his long arms, smirking at her. “Certain people in the house relish this change of situation. Why don’t you encourage the emperor to come out and take walks with you? What happened to cause this falling out?”
“Monsieur Saint-Denis, you valets should encourage our emperor to exercise again, but please keep your prying to yourself.” Amélie’s pain went far deeper for the Montholons’ sneers to matter. She spooned leeks sautéed in butter into the tart pan, working in tense precision. Adding milk, salt, pepper, and nutmeg to the egg mixture, she poured this sauce over the leeks, then shoved the pan into the oven. “I’m certain His Majesty is still despondent over his good friend Cipriani’s death.”
“The English forced us to suffer through that loud-mouthed island chaplain, instead of providing us with a priest for our funerals. There’s no one to hear our confessions.” Madame Cloubert stroked her pointed chin. “My husband could do with some spiritual guidance.”
Amélie pitied any priest who’d have to bear this woman’s indiscretions, and had no doubt of her husband’s need. Squeezing past Madame and Ali, and their stares, she went out to her herb garden. She kneeled on the ground and idly picked at weeds, glancing at the back of Longwood as she watched a caterpillar crawl toward her plants. She’d forgotten to sprinkle berries about the garden to attract the birds that would eat these worms and other insects.
Captain Blakeney slunk around the walls of the house, trying to peer into the windows of the Imperial bedroom and study—a frustrated soldier anxious to appear vigilant in a distasteful assignment.
Amélie’s empathy stayed with Napoleon, a man who couldn’t even sneeze without someone writing it down. Even with his rebuff, she had the persistent ache inside that she was the one person who stood between her emperor and disaster.
* * * *
“Countess, thank you for inviting me in.” Amélie sat again in the Hutt’s Gate parlor. Two weeks had passed with the recluse refusing to see anyone but his valets. If this woman’s offer of friendship was genuine—she was probably desperate for any society—Amélie needed advice. “His Majesty won’t even see his doctor. The valets say he won’t leave his bed. I’m so worried about him.”
“He’s very moody, our emperor.” Fanny raked her fingers through her limp hair. “He gets worse as time goes by, but who wouldn’t here? My husband and the Montholons have tried to coax him out. Surely you can get in to see him.”
“To be honest, I haven’t tried. We had a...difference of opinion, shortly before he went into seclusion.” She sighed past the lump in her throat. Fanny emphasized the you, thinking Amélie a special being in the eyes of the emperor when this wasn’t true.
“Oh, that’s the problem.” Fanny narrowed her dark eyes. Then her features softened, though still measuring her. “Do you care to talk about it?”
“No, you’re mistaken, Madame. I’m not the cause of this.” How could she be when she meant nothing to him? She grimaced as if a knife scraped along her stomach lining. “Our difference of opinion went to his satisfaction. He’s probably still disturbed over Cipriani’s death.”
�
�Peut-etre. He did request an autopsy of the man, and the body couldn’t be found. That was so odd. Did Napoleon think there was foul play?”
Amélie wished she could share his sorrow, but must stay away from him. “I don’t know. Cipriani died so suddenly. Now His Majesty might be ill—”
“Amélie, may I be candid with you? There’s something else, isn’t there?” Fanny patted her hand, her smile indulgent. “I mean, between you and Napoleon.”
“Not anymore.” Amélie hunched her shoulders, glanced around the room, and swallowed. “Rather, not what everyone seems to believe...to the extent everyone believes.”
“Calm yourself, please. You can tell me in strictest confidence, I promise.” Fanny rose and poured them both a glass of wine from the chipped crystal decanter on her sideboard. “Are you, by any chance, in love with him?”
Amélie quivered with emotion at the blunt question. “Things are so awful, for both Napoleon and me, and there’s nothing I can do.” She met the countess’s eyes, her warm gaze inviting honesty. “Yes, I love him, but it’s over. We were never...that intimate, even if the world says the opposite. He’s made it plain he has no deep feelings for me.”
“I believe he cares quite sincerely for you, and for Napoleon, that’s saying a lot.”
“Not enough to abandon his ties with Marie Louise. That would mean giving up his idea of being emperor.” Amélie took a sip of wine to wash down the bitter words.
“You’re right. He would want to preserve that connection, but maybe just for his son.” The countess sat beside her again on the sofa. “Such concerns never stopped his other affairs.”
“I was never an affair.” Amélie flushed, feeling suddenly inadequate as a woman. Again, her ignorance on sexual matters rankled her.
“No, maybe that’s his dilemma. Napoleon might care too much for you.” Fanny’s eyes widened as if amazed by her own statement.
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