The Accidental Empress (12 page)

Sisi cut her sister off. “My sweet Néné, we know how impossible such a fate is. You heard Mamma explain.”

“Yes, I did.” Helene slowly slipped into the gray dress.

“Well, my sweet Néné.” Sisi stepped into her petticoat now, and she walked toward the window, gazing out once more at the household that her elder sister would have to manage. “This is your new life, and I know that you will make the best of it. You will be such a sweet wife that Franz will adore you, as I adore you.”

“You look lovely, Miss Elisabeth.” Agata admired Sisi, whose long hair she had just fashioned into her favorite style: two plaits woven into a thick bun. “Miss Helene, are you certain that I cannot fashion your hair for dinner?”

“I’m certain. Thank you, Agata.” Helene, following her aunt’s orders, was applying a meager amount of rouge to her cheeks, but her black hair she insisted on wearing in her customary style—parted down the middle and pulled back into a sensibly tight bun.

“We must give her credit, Agata.” Sisi looked at her sister in the mirror’s reflection. “My sister will never be the type of monarch who changes to suit the fancy of the times.”

Though her sister was adamant about wearing a muted gray gown, Sisi had selected a dress of soft blue with white lace and pearl trim for herself. She felt a rush as she gazed in the mirror, seeing bright color once more, and she couldn’t help but smile.

“Well, let me see my girls in their fresh clothing.” Ludovika swirled into the room, a blur of raspberry brocade and tightly pressed dark curls.

“Hello, Mamma.” Sisi ran to the duchess.

“Sisi, how nice you look. Wasn’t it a relief to have a good bath and a change of clothes?” The duchess’s spirits seemed higher than they had been following the afternoon’s initial introduction. That was, until she spotted her elder daughter. “Oh, Helene, gray? Must you wear something so colorless?”

“What’s wrong with gray? I like gray,” Helene repeated her earlier justification, standing up from the dressing table.

“Gray is fine for mass during Lent. But can’t you put on something a bit merrier to have dinner with your groom?” Ludovika riffled through the pile of gowns her daughters had unpacked. “How about this nice yellow gown? Or perhaps something in peach? Or why don’t you borrow the one Sisi has on?” Ludovika gestured toward her younger daughter. “Sisi, let Helene wear the blue.”

“But, Mamma, I am wearing this one,” Sisi answered, folding her arms protectively over her dress.

Ludovika shot Sisi an aggravated scowl. “Yes, but perhaps your older sister should wear it instead.”

“I don’t want to wear that one.” Helene shook her head.

Ludovika slouched, the buoyancy with which she’d entered the room suddenly gone.

When Franz Joseph’s name was announced, he entered the receiving area flanked by men wearing the same white and red uniform. Everyone waiting in the anteroom bowed.

“Cousin Helene, Cousin Elisabeth.” He approached his cousins first. “Please rise. And please, allow me to say how lovely you both look this evening.”

Helene offered nothing by way of reply, but instead threw furtive glances around the room, her dark eyes avoiding the curious stares of the guards and whispering courtiers. Sisi could sense her sister’s panic at the thought of speaking with these strangers. For fear of their appearing rude, Sisi answered their cousin. “Thank you, Your Majesty.”

“Please”—he raised a gloved hand—“it’s Franz.”

Sisi smiled, surprised—yet flattered—to find the emperor speaking to them especially. As she lifted her eyes from her curtsy she noticed, a bit guiltily, that his stare rested on her, and she hoped that he did not notice the reddening of her cheeks.

Franz had not changed out of the white and red military uniform he had worn earlier, but his hair had been combed back and he smelled fresh with the scent of eau de cologne. His stiff, high-necked coat made him appear impeccably dignified.

A gong sounded, announcing dinner. Extending an arm toward each of them, Franz smiled. “May I escort you ladies in to dinner?”

Sisi waited so that Helene could take his arm first and thereby enter into some pleasant conversation. But she noticed, as they walked into the dining hall, that Helene did not speak.

They left the antechamber and proceeded through a candlelit hallway, illuminated by crystal chandeliers and bordered on each side by a column of imperial footmen.

Sisi stared from side to side at the two rows of footmen, each figure identical in a crisply pressed livery of black and gold, eyes unblinking, mustaches trimmed tidily, much like her cousin’s. “They are so serious,” Sisi observed, watching them intently. They kept their gazes fixed ahead on some unmoving point, so that even though Sisi walked between them, they did not seem to see her.

“Don’t be afraid of them, Cousin Elisabeth. They appear more intimidating than they are,” Franz whispered to his cousin.

“How do they stand so still?” Sisi wondered aloud. “Like statues.”

“Lots of training,” Franz answered. “You could do the same if you needed to.”

“I very much doubt it,” Sisi laughed.

Franz kept his attention fixed on Sisi as the three of them made their way toward the banquet hall. “Are you pleased with the Kaiservilla?”

“Oh, indeed.” Sisi nodded, turning from the motionless figures back to her cousin. When their eyes met, Sisi forced herself not to smile at him. And then, to look away. There was no good reason to be staring into the clear, light-blue eyes of her sister’s fiancé.

The sound of violin music now floated delicately through the air, and Sisi peered through the open archway into the dining hall. In spite of herself, she gasped at the candlelit splendor of the room they now approached. “My word.”

The dining hall was flooded in amber light, festooned with a line of overhead chandeliers, each one ablaze with several dozen candles. A long central table beneath the chandeliers ran the length of the wood-paneled room. Sisi admired the scene, not sure how they would fit any food on the table between the heaps of silver candelabra, ripe summertime flowers overspilling the china vases, and hors d’oeuvres of pâté, butter rolls, and miniature pickles.

“It’s like a painting,” Sisi whispered, more to herself than to anyone else.

Franz turned once more to Sisi beside him, his features aglow in candlelight, softening into an affable smile. “I think that one of my cousins is happy. How about you, Helene?” Franz turned now to his fiancée, standing on his left.

“This is nice.” Helene’s response came out sounding forced, but at least agreeable. How Helene could be anything but delighted by now was difficult for Sisi to understand, but she suppressed her desire to once again interject herself into the scene.

“Here we are. Franz, girls, come sit.” Sophie, who had been escorted to dinner by a man in uniform slightly older than Franz, moved toward the head of the table on the far side of the room. She took her seat there, as several solicitous footmen hovered about her.

“Come, to your seats, everybody. We won’t bite.” Sophie’s miniature dog was placed in her lap by another footman. It took Sisi a moment, but she soon deduced that it was the same minister from earlier who took the seat to Sophie’s right; he had shed the formal white wig so that his natural, black hair flew wildly from his scalp. An empty chair waited on Sophie’s left.

Sophie beckoned the three of them forward, a flourish of her heavily ringed hand. “I hate to be kept waiting, especially when I’m hungry.” A full plate of hors d’oeuvres—slices of goose liver pâté, veal dumplings, Viennese sausages, and pickled herring salad—was now placed in front of her.

“Elisabeth, come sit by me.” Sophie summoned Sisi across the room to the empty chair beside her. “Franz, let go of your pretty little cousin’s arm, I demand that she be my dining companion this evening.”

“Best to do as she says,” Franz spoke softly to Sisi. “Enjoy your dinner.” They exchanged a smile and Sisi slipped free from Franz’s arm. Sisi crossed the room toward her aunt, aware that the eyes of the ministers already seated at the table now rested upon her. “Hello, Mamma,” Sisi whispered to the duchess as she walked past her.

Franz kept Helene on his arm, escorting her to a chair on the opposite end of the table from Sisi. When Helene was situated, Franz took the seat at the head of the table farthest from his mother and immediately adjacent to his fiancée. Ludovika was placed to his other side, across from her elder daughter.

“Gentlemen, this is my niece, Elisabeth of Bavaria.” Sophie spoke to her end of the table, turning to the black-haired minister from earlier in the day.

“She is so entertaining, is she not? Why, she actually told me earlier that she would love to be a goat herder!” Sophie broke into laughter as the men looked at Sisi with expressions ranging from keen interest to befuddlement. At that introduction, Sisi accepted a footman’s outstretched arm and lowered herself into her chair.

“Elisabeth, meet some of my . . . Franz’s, the emperor’s . . . ministers,” Sophie prattled, picking at a lump of foie gras with her jeweled fingers.

“This is Minister of the Interior Baron Alexander von Bach.” Sophie pointed toward the minister beside her, across from Sisi. “I let the minister shed the wig for dinner, it is so ghastly hot in this house.” At that complaint, a servant appeared and began fanning the archduchess.

Sisi smiled a greeting to the minister. “Baron von Bach”—she nodded—“it is an honor to meet you.” Just then a footman arrived beside her, proffering a crystal flute filled with bubbling champagne.

“Duchess Elisabeth.” Bach nodded once in reply. Without the wig, he appeared decades younger, his unruly tufts of black hair falling loosely to the side, matching the same dark shade of his abundant mustache. Though Bach may have shed the wig to counter the summer heat, he still must have been warm, Sisi noted, for he wore a white shirt and vest under a heavy black suit coat and a wide black cravat around his neck.

“And this man next to you, to your right.” Sophie was the only one picking at the plate of appetizers before them, nibbling on a veal dumpling. About the uniformed man who had escorted her to dinner Sophie said: “This is one of my son’s generals and closest advisors, Count Karl Grünne.”

“Count Grünne, a pleasure to meet you as well.”

“Your Majesty, Duchess Elisabeth.” Count Grünne nodded his head, offering just the hint of a smile.

“You’ll want to win him over, niece. For he’s the one whose opinion Franz heeds. Isn’t that so, Count Grünne?”

Sisi marveled at the familiar manner in which her aunt conversed with these men—much more forward and assertive than when her mother addressed officers and ministers.

“Of course, whatever opinions I might humbly submit to the emperor fall second to those of his most faithful and admirable mother, the archduchess,” Grünne replied, flashing a charming grin. Even though he was advanced in years, much more so than Franz, he was not unattractive.

“Nonsense. Your humility does not serve you, Grünne. Grünne here is the type of man you want around when you’re under attack,” Sophie added, raising her eyebrows suggestively to Count Grünne as she fed herself another large bite of dumpling. Sisi found it an interesting way to describe someone, but she did not question her aunt further. “And across from Grünne is His Excellency Pyotr Kazimirovich Meyendorff.” Sophie now fed her little dog a bite of dumpling. “Ambassador from the Russian Empire to Austria. A special friend and most distinguished guest.”

“Your Excellency.” Sisi nodded, staring into the wide face of a dark man, his broad forehead made even more expansive by a receding hairline and faint fringe of thinning brown hair. The man’s features were not attractive, but they were striking: he had bulbous lips and a thick nose under even thicker eyebrows.

“Pleasure to meet you, Duchess Elisabeth.” The ambassador offered a curt nod. He, unlike Grünne, spoke with a strong accent that confirmed his foreign roots.

“And this—” Sophie pointed farther down the table, and Sisi spotted the same stern, pinch-lipped woman she had seen earlier in the day, at tea. The one whom she had nicknamed “Countess Gray-Hair.”

“This is the Countess Sophie Esterházy,” Sophie explained. “The countess shares not only my name, but happens to be my closest friend.” Sophie beamed at the woman, who returned the remark with a solemn nod. And Sisi deduced, from that limited interaction, how the friendship went: the archduchess spoke her mind, and the Countess Esterházy agreed, unflinchingly.