While that particular house party at Malmaison was my own invention, Josephine’s country house and the tensions within the Bonaparte clan were very real. As described in the novel, Hortense, Josephine’s daughter by her first marriage, had been married off to Napoleon’s younger brother, Louis, in the hopes of providing an heir to the Bonaparte dynasty. The marriage was a disaster. By the summer of 1804, when Napoleon seized the imperial crown, it was becoming increasingly possible that Hortense’s matrimonial sacrifice had been for nothing, as Napoleon’s family urged him to set the barren Josephine aside and take a younger and better-connected wife. For more on the Bonapartes’ private lives, at Malmaison and elsewhere, there are a host of books to choose from, including Theo Aronson’s
Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story
, Evangeline Bruce’s
Napoleon and Josephine:
The Improbable Marriage
, Andre Castelot’s
Napoleon
, and Christopher Hibbert’s
Napoleon: His Wives and Women
. For more on my favorite of the Bonaparte clan, Hortense de Beauharnais, you can read about Hortense in her own words in her memoirs or in Constance Wright’s biography,
Daughter to Napoleon
.
While the specific masque performed in this novel may have been a fiction, amateur theatricals were very much a part of life at Malmaison. The Bonapartes were all theatre mad, so much so that Napoleon had a complete theatre erected on the grounds of Malmaison in 1802 for the family’s amateur theatricals. The inaugural performance was
Barber of Seville
, with Hortense as Rosina. As Peter Hicks describes in his
Napoleon and the Theatre
, Napoleon commissioned plays for his pet theatre and brought in the famous actor Talma to direct them—although one imagines that nothing quite like Whittlesby’s masque ever graced the stage.
This book goes out to Jenny Davis and Liz Mellyn, the other two thirds of the Triumvirate of Terror. Thank you for being my friends, as well as Eloise’s, and for always giving the very best advice. Cambridge wouldn’t have been Cambridge without you.
Huge hugs to Claudia Brittenham, for being my first and best reader; to Nancy Flynn, for Pony Post Wednesdays; and to Brooke, for being Brooke. To Mutt and Jeff (aka Kristen Kenney and Jen Chen) for evenings at Alice’s; to Abby Vietor, for afternoons at Gotham; to Sarah Camp, for elegant outings; and to the entire Crawford family (and Catharine), for the best book tour weekend ever.
Thanks go to Tasha Alexander and Deanna Raybourn, the best book tour buddies any author could desire. (Our plan for world domination commences! Oh, wait. Did I say that out loud?) And to Sarah MacLean, my favorite book release sister—tiaras become us, my dear.
Thank you, parents, for putting up with me; Joe Veltre, for advising me; Erika Imranyi and Danielle Perez, for editing me; Erin Galloway, Jamie McDonald, Liza Cassity, Dora Mak, and the rest of the gang at Dutton/NAL, for doing all those magical things you do; and everyone on the website and Facebook, for distracting me when I need it—and sometimes when I don’t.
Last but not least, to James Ratcliffe. I promised you a sentence, but you deserve a paragraph.
The author of eight previous Pink Carnation novels, Lauren Willig received a graduate degree in English history from Harvard University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, though she now writes full-time. Willig lives in New York City.