Жюльетта Бенцони: Marianne and The Masked Prince

Those people waiting for you at the Tuileries,' she whispered, between kisses, 'I hope they won't be bored – and are not too important?'

'A courier from the Tzar and a papal envoy, you little devil. Happy?'

For answer, Marianne twined her arms more closely round her lover's neck and closed her eyes with a happy sigh. It was moments like these that made up for all the disappointments, fears and jealousies. Listening to his frenzy of passionate endearments, Marianne was comforted. Surely this Austrian female he was about to take into his bed in place of Josephine, this Marie-Louise, could never win so much love from him? Probably she was nothing more than a frightened little ninny commending her soul to God with every minute of the journey that was taking her closer to her country's enemy. Napoleon to her must seem a kind of Minotaur, a contemptible upstart. If she had anything in common with her aunt Marie-Antoinette, she would treat him with all the hauteur of her imperial blood, while if, as it was whispered in the salons , she was merely a silly girl with as little intelligence as beauty, she would submit passively.

Even so, an hour later, as she watched through a hall window the porter shutting the massive gates behind the imperial coach, all Marianne's fears and uncertainties came flooding back. The next time she saw the Emperor he would be married to the Archduchess and meanwhile, under one name or another, Francis Cranmere was at liberty in Paris.

Shivering in the lace dressing robe which she had slipped on in haste, Marianne picked up the candlestick and made her way back to her own room with a disagreeable feeling of isolation. The sound of the carriage carrying Napoleon away echoed in the distance, a melancholy counterpoint to the words of love still ringing in her head. But for all his tender protestations of affection, Marianne was too honest to conceal from herself that a page had been turned and however great the love that bound her to Napoleon, nothing could ever be quite the same again.

When Marianne got back to her room, she was surprised to find her cousin there. Mademoiselle Adelaide d'Asselnat, dressed in a loose wrap of puce velvet with an immense fluted cap adorning her head, was standing in the middle of the room contemplating, with interest but no apparent surprise, the glorious debris of the white dress left lying crumpled on the carpet.

'Adelaide, you here? I thought you were asleep long ago.'

'I always sleep with one eye open and something warned me you might need a little company when "he" had gone.' The old maid sighed and picked up the scrap of pearly satin. 'Ah, now there's a man who has a way with women! I do not wonder you should fall for him. I did myself, you know, when he was only a shabby, underfed little general. But tell me, how did he take the sudden resurrection of your late lamented husband?'

'Badly,' Marianne said, rummaging among the ravages of her bed for the nightgown which Agathe, her maid, must have laid out to await her return from the theatre. 'He is half-convinced that I was seeing things.'

'You were not?'

'No! Why should I suddenly see Francis's ghost when he was a hundred miles from my thoughts? I thought him dead. No, I am sorry, Adelaide, but there could be no mistake; it was Francis, certainly… and he was smiling, smiling at me in a way that terrified me! God knows what he means to do.'

'Time will tell,' the spinster said placidly, moving in a purposeful way towards the small table with a lace cloth on which a cold supper had been left ready for Marianne, although neither she nor the Emperor had eaten a mouthful. Calmly, Adelaide uncorked a bottle of champagne and filled two tall glasses. One of these she emptied at a draught, the other she carried over to Marianne, after which she returned for her own glass, selected a wing of chicken from the dish, and settled herself comfortably on the foot of the bed in which her cousin was by now ensconced.

Marianne sat propped up on her pillows, glass in hand, and regarded Adelaide with an indulgent smile. The amount of food which that frail, bird-like creature could absorb was quite amazing. All day long Adelaide was nibbling, sipping or toying with 'a little something', none of which deterred her in the least from sitting down to table with undiminished enthusiasm when the time came. Yet for all this she never seemed to put on an ounce of weight or lose one jot of her dignity.

The strange, nervous, cantankerous creature whom Marianne had found in the salon late one night about to set fire to the house had completely disappeared. She had been replaced by a woman no longer young but whose backbone had recovered all its innate rigidity. Well-dressed, her soft grey hair neatly combed into long, silky ringlets that peeped below her voluminous lace caps and velvet hoods, the erstwhile revolutionary who had been sought by Fouché's police and kept under house arrest had become once again Adelaide d'Asselnat, a great lady. At the present moment, however, she was sitting with half-closed eyes, aristocratic nostrils quivering with greed, consuming chicken and champagne with the dainty self-satisfaction of a contented cat. Marianne could not help smiling. While not perfectly sure that her cousin's conspiratorial instincts were altogether buried, Marianne had grown very fond of Adelaide.

She sipped her champagne slowly, waiting for the old lady to speak. She guessed that Adelaide had something to say to her, and, sure enough, having reduced the chicken to bare bone and drunk the champagne down to the final drop, Adelaide wiped her lips with satisfaction and bent her blue gaze earnestly on her cousin.

'Dear child,' she began, 'I think you are looking at your problem from the wrong angle. I gather that your late husband's unexpected resurrection has thrown you into a dither and now that you have seen him you are living in terror of his appearing to confront you again. Is that it?'

'Of course it is! But I don't understand, Adelaide. Do you think I ought to be overjoyed at the return of a man I believed I had punished as he deserved for what he did to me?'

'Well, yes, in a way.'

'But why?'

'Because now that he is alive you are no longer a murderess and need not fear pursuit from the law in England.'

Marianne smiled. 'I was not much afraid of it,' she said. 'Apart from the war, the Emperor's protection is more than enough to remove all my fears. But you are right in a way. It is nice to know there is no blood on my hands.'

'Can you be sure of that? There is still the pretty cousin you stunned so neatly…'

'I can hardly have killed her. If Francis is alive, I would wager that Ivy St Albans is alive as well. Besides, Francis means nothing to me now and I have no reason to desire her death.'

'He is still your lawfully wedded husband, my dear. That is why, if I were in your shoes, instead of running away from your ghost, I should do my best to meet him again. When citizen Fouché calls on you in the morning —'

'How did you know I was expecting the Duke of Otranto?'

'I shall never become accustomed to calling that unfrocked priest by that title. But, of course, he is bound to come tomorrow… Oh, don't look at me so! Naturally I listen at keyholes when I want to know what is happening inside.'

'Adelaide!' Marianne was genuinely shocked.

Mademoiselle d'Asselnat stretched out her arm and patted Marianne's hand.

'Don't be such a little prude. Even an Asselnat may listen at doors. It can be very useful, as you will find. Where was I?'

'You were saying that the – the Minister of Police would call.'

'Ah yes. Well, instead of begging him to lay hands on that precious husband of yours and send him back to England on the first frigate, you must ask him, on the contrary, to bring him to you so that you may inform him of your decision.'