The Ambitious Madame Bonaparte (25 page)

“A little longer.”

IN EARLY AUGUST, Robert received word from a man named O’Meally, a business associate in France, that Paris was buzzing with the gossip that Jerome was expected back from Algiers within the week.

“Surely, he will get word to me then,” Betsy exclaimed. “He will be so close that he must be able to find some discreet messenger.”

A few days later, a letter addressed to Mrs. Anderson arrived, but when Eliza opened it, she discovered that it came from Dr. Garnier and was intended for Betsy. She handed it over.

As Betsy read the letter, she grew indignant. Garnier wrote that when he reported what happened at Texel, Jerome had been pained to learn of her suffering but even more upset about her decision to sail to England, which he said had damaged his efforts to win over the emperor.

“Jerome cannot have sent this message! His first concern would be my welfare. He would not blame me for seeking what safety I could.”

“Consider who wrote that,” Robert said. “You told me that you do not trust the doctor.”

“No, I know him to be a villain.” As Betsy continued to read further, she discovered that Garnier claimed Jerome wanted her to return to the United States and remain there for twelve to eighteen months while he completed his business on the continent.

For a moment, she found it so difficult to breathe that she had to press one hand against her ribs. Then she said, “He tells me to go home and claims that Jerome will not be able to resolve things for a year or more.”

“May I see the letter?” Robert asked.

She passed it across to him and waited with a sense of mounting dread while he read it. Finally, he looked up. “Betsy, I cannot accept that Jerome would adopt such a businesslike tone and not send you a single word of affection.”

“Then you do not believe this is what he wants me to do.”

“Well—” Robert rubbed his chin. “The advice to return to Baltimore has merit. I have given you the same counsel myself. But the letter does not sound like Jerome.”

“Why should it?” Eliza asked, looking up from the novel she was reading. “The doctor no doubt knows of Betsy’s dislike, so he would hardly be likely to pass on endearments. I think we should evaluate the letter logically, and by that standard, it offers sound advice.”

“You think that only because you wish to go home yourself.”

Eliza shrugged. “I do not pretend otherwise, but that does not hamper my ability to see the sense in this proposal. Clearly Jerome has found it difficult to persuade the emperor. To stay here wastes your father’s resources and antagonizes Napoleon.”

“I cannot leave for Baltimore,” Betsy whispered. “Not yet.”

On Monday, August 12, Betsy received a letter from what she assumed to be another curiosity seeker. Breaking open the seal, she unfolded the page and was astonished to read that Miss Mary Berry wished to call on her to relay a message from Jerome.

“Listen, Eliza! Miss Berry says that last June, Jerome met a friend of hers, the Marchioness of Donegal, in Genoa. He begged Lady Donegal to bring me a message as soon as she came back to England. She has finally returned but is unable to travel to London at present, so she gave Miss Berry the commission. A few more days, and I will finally hear from Jerome.”

Eliza looked up from the letter she was writing. “I hope that the message is all you wish.”

“Why do you say that? Do you expect bad news?”

Eliza put her quill into a holder at the side of the ink bottle. “I do not know what the message might contain, and neither do you.”

Reviewing Miss Berry’s letter, Betsy said, “Jerome would not try so urgently to get word to me if he no longer cared.”

“No, almost certainly not. But the question of Jerome’s sentiment is not really the issue. The more important point is whether his brother has changed his mind.”

Betsy sighed. “I think we can assume that the message would not be sent with such secrecy if Napoleon had yielded.”

When Miss Berry called a few days later, she turned out to be a plump, forty-year-old woman about Betsy’s height. She wore a grey short-sleeved gown with a lace ruffle around the neck and a grey bonnet with a matching ruffle and white ostrich plume, decidedly feminine attire that Betsy thought was intended to compensate for her plain face.

Miss Berry curtsied. “Madame Bonaparte, I am so happy to make your acquaintance. Lady Donegal was devastated that family matters kept her from town. She sent me in her stead so you could receive your husband’s message as soon as possible.”

“Thank you,” Betsy said, gesturing to one of the twin armchairs while she sat on the sofa beside Eliza. “What did Mr. Bonaparte say?”

The older woman laughed in a coquettish way. “Well, he particularly wanted to convey that his sentiments and intentions toward you are unchanged. He has not been able to write because he is closely watched. Oh, and he also wished you to know that he is in good health and very well liked at Genoa.”

“Very well liked,” Betsy repeated, wondering why Jerome thought that significant.

“Yes.” Miss Berry nodded emphatically. “Lady Donegal said he wishes to make a good impression on his superior officers.”

“Oh, I see.”

“Lady Donegal also wished me to convey that she has friends in Genoa and would be more than happy to use them to get a message to Mr. Bonaparte.”

“Thank you. That is a great comfort to me.”

“I would be happy to wait.” Miss Berry settled her ample bottom firmly in her chair.

Realizing that her visitor expected her to write immediately, Betsy said, “Thank you for your kindness, Miss Berry, but I believe that my husband is still at sea. Please tell the marchioness that I will avail myself of her kindness soon.”

“Certainly.” Miss Berry glanced around the room. “I understand from the newspapers that you have recently given birth to a son.”

“Yes.” Betsy noticed the woman’s avid expression. “He is asleep right now.”

“Of course.” With a show of reluctance, Miss Berry rose. “Then I will take my leave.”

“Thank you so much for taking the trouble to call,” Betsy said as she walked her visitor into the hall. After saying farewell, she returned to the drawing room. “What a gossipy old spinster. But at least now I know that Jerome is not changed toward me.”

“As of six weeks ago,” Eliza said without looking up from her sewing.

“That is a cruel thing to say.”

“Cruel? I thought it merely accurate.” Reaching the end of a row, Eliza knotted off her sewing and snipped the thread. “To own the truth, I find it difficult to be optimistic about your Jerome, but perhaps I should not assume that he will turn out like my Henry.”

“I should think not,” Betsy said, offended that Eliza would compare Jerome to her runaway husband. “The two cases are not at all alike. Jerome had no choice but to leave me.”

“I daresay Henry thought he had no choice either, what with the creditors at his heels.”

Stunned at discovering this unexpected vein of bitterness in her friend, Betsy left the room before they started another quarrel.

AS SUMMER MOVED toward autumn, Betsy’s resolve eroded. The time that Mr. O’Meally gave for Jerome’s stay in Paris elapsed without any communication. As each new day passed without a message, Betsy found it more difficult to believe that her husband was making progress in effecting their reunion. She did not fear that Jerome had ceased to love her, but she realized as never before what a determined adversary Napoleon was. She began to feel like Prometheus, with her torment renewed every day as though the gods had sentenced her to eternal punishment. By the beginning of September, she was flayed raw by repeated disappointment.

Baby Jerome was her sole joy, and she spent hours chattering to him, telling him about his father and spinning tales of what his future would be once he was acknowledged as a prince. The first time he smiled in response to her voice Betsy longed desperately to share the accomplishment with Jerome. Instead, she wrote long letters to Baltimore.

Finally, on the two-month anniversary of her son’s birth, Betsy went down to breakfast and announced, “I have changed my mind. It is too lonely here, and I miss our mother. Robert, I would like to go home.”

XIX

B
ETSY, Robert, and Eliza sailed from England in late September and arrived in Baltimore on November 14. Even though Betsy detested her hometown, she felt relief when the ship docked in the familiar square-shaped harbor with its jutting wooden piers and three-and-four-story warehouses crowding the waterfront. As Robert walked the few blocks to fetch the family coach, Betsy stood on deck holding her son and watching freight wagons and carriages pass on Pratt Street. Irrationally, she hoped to glimpse her father going about his daily business.

She had been standing there a few minutes when Eliza joined her at the railing. Betsy recalled the day—it seemed so long ago now—that the two of them had stood together gazing at England for the first time. “Thank you, Eliza, for all your help these past few months. I do not know how I could have gotten on without you.”

Eliza reached over to tuck the baby’s blanket more firmly in place to protect him from the chill. “I am sorry for your sake that your voyage did not have a more satisfactory ending.”

Betsy sighed. “Yes, I had hoped that—well, you know my hopes as well as anyone. The important thing now is that you will soon be with your daughter again.”

An hour later, Robert dropped Betsy and her maid at South Street and then escorted Eliza home. Betsy hesitated before the marble stoop, overwhelmed by a sense that she was returning as a failure. Baltimore society would see her as an abandoned wife, no matter how much she might protest that Jerome intended to come back for her.

Telling herself that lingering in the street would only confirm the impression that she had slunk home in shame, Betsy climbed the steps. The front door opened and her mother stood before her, laughing and crying simultaneously. In the shadowy passageway behind Dorcas lurked the dark figure of Mammy Sue.

“Oh, my child!” Dorcas exclaimed as Betsy entered the hall.

As Jenny closed the door behind her, Betsy held out her dozing baby. “Here is your first grandson, Mother.”

“Hello, precious.” Dorcas took him in her arms and pushed back the blanket from his face. “He is so big!”

“Yes.” Betsy unknotted her ribbons, removed her bonnet, and handed it and her cloak to Jenny. “I cannot account for his vigor because we went for weeks without enough food, but he was a large baby even at birth. I think he must have inherited his uncle’s determination to devour the whole world.”

Standing back at a respectful distance, Mammy Sue cleared her throat, and Dorcas handed her the baby. The wet nurse clucked at him. “Miss Betsy, I see you only brought back that slip of a maid on the ship. Who has been feeding this child?”

“I am. That is what the doctor recommended.”

“Fool doctors don’t know anything. You can turn him over to me.”

“No!” Betsy cried, determined not to relinquish that special bond with her son. “He is used to my milk, and I do not want to upset him after all he has been through.”

Mammy Sue frowned and made to hand the baby back, but Betsy added, “Of course, I need your help with other aspects of his care.”

“Yes, ma’am, if you say so.” As Mammy Sue carried the still-sleeping baby upstairs, she began to sing a song Betsy recognized from the past.

Betsy took her mother by the arm and walked into the drawing room. There she felt an immediate sense of refuge at sight of her mother’s familiar banister-back chair by the fireplace. Before sitting on the sofa, Betsy crossed to the hearth to stare at the portrait of her mother holding her when she was a baby. “I was right. I did not think my son resembled me. He is a Bonaparte through and through.”

“He is a handsome boy. Jerome has not seen him?”

Sadness tightened her throat, so Betsy shook her head.

“Have you heard from him since your separation?”

“Only a few messages. His associates would have us believe that it will take a year or more to win the emperor’s favor.” Betsy gazed at the painting a moment longer and then blurted, “Oh Mother! I try to keep my faith, but sometimes I am so frightened.” She turned to Dorcas, who pulled her into an embrace.

WILLIAM PATTERSON ARRIVED home about seven. After curtly welcoming his daughter, he asked, “Where do you propose to live?”

Betsy felt a prickle of anxiety. “I would hope to stay here until I can set up my own establishment, which is what Jerome wishes me to do.”

Her father folded his arms across his chest. “Jerome’s wishes no longer carry much weight in this family. As for setting up your own establishment, with whose money do you propose to do that?”

Taken aback, Betsy glanced at her mother. Dorcas said, “Mr. Patterson, this is not the time for that discussion. Tonight is Betsy’s homecoming.”

“As you wish. I expect to see you in my counting house in the morning, Elizabeth.”

Betsy swallowed back her annoyance that he would talk to her as though she were still a child. “Yes, sir. I will attend you there after breakfast.”

THE NEXT DAY as Betsy sat before her father’s desk in his private office, she watched with misgiving as Patterson pulled a sheaf of papers from a drawer. “Do you have any idea how much money this ill-fated marriage of yours has cost me?”

“I know that refitting the
Erin
and supplying the provisions were expensive.”

“Two hundred and ninety dollars the food alone cost me.” He pulled a paper from the stack and waved it before her. “But that is not the half of it. What about the money you spent during your sojourn in England, drawn upon my accounts? What about the time my two oldest sons frittered away on your concerns rather than attending to business?”

His sons,
Betsy noted, rather than her brothers. “I am sorry, Father, to have been a burden to the family, but I had no way of knowing beforehand how the voyage would turn out.”

“On the contrary, my girl. We had every reason to suppose that Jerome Bonaparte was a man without honor.”

“Father, be fair! He may have committed indiscretions in his youth, but since our marriage, his conduct has been blameless. As for the opposition we encountered, Napoleon was not emperor when we wed, so how could we anticipate his objections?”

“I do not speak of Napoleon.” Patterson began to shuffle through the sheaf of papers. “I am referring to your husband’s complete lack of self-control.”

Betsy dug her nails into her palm. “Did you not hear me say that he has behaved impeccably since our marriage?”

“Impeccably? Did he not lie about his age?” He fixed Betsy with a piercing stare. “And what is worse, he left Baltimore owing hundreds of dollars in debts that I have had to pay to uphold our family’s reputation. Look at this!” He pulled out a receipt for $373 that he had paid to a gunsmith and flung it across the desk. “What need had Jerome for a double-barreled gun and a pair of pistols?”

Tossing more receipts her way, he said, “This is his tailor’s bill, a sum that would keep any reasonable man in clothing for a lifetime. Here are bills for the blacksmith and stable. Here is a bill for jewelry. Here is a wine merchant’s bill. All unpaid, all past due. It has taken me months and cost me several thousand dollars to clean up his profligacy.”

Tears filled Betsy’s eyes. “According to you, this is the worst of it, not that the emperor casts doubt on my honor and my son’s legitimacy, but that my husband cost you money?”

Her father stopped, taken aback by her charge. Then fury consumed him again. “It is all of a piece. A man of honor protects his family’s reputation in all things. You chose badly, Elizabeth, and I have had to pay for your foolishness.”

“But I had no idea he was running up debts. He told me he had funds.”

“You should have realized he was lying.”

“How?” She pushed the papers back at him. “You never discuss your financial dealings with Mother. Why would you suppose Jerome was any more forthcoming with me?”

“I do not imagine that he was.” Her father collected the scattered receipts and made a great show of putting them back in order—except a single folded page he left upon the desk. “What I do know is that I raised you to live without ostentation, and if you had held to my teachings, none of this would have happened.”

“How could I? You always taught me that a wife’s duty is to obey her husband, yet now you blame me because I did not compel Jerome to live by your standards.”

“No, I blame you for having married him. I knew from the beginning that nothing good could come from this connection, but I let you have your way to keep you from committing scandal. Now do you see that I was right?”

Betsy stood, drawing herself up to her full height, short as it was. “Forgive me, sir, if I dare to hope that you are wrong. For the sake of my son, I must continue to seek a reunion with his father. If Jerome ever returns to us, then rest assured I shall ask him to repay you. Store your receipts meticulously like the exacting businessman you are so that when that day comes, you can make an accurate accounting.”

“Never fear, I intend to.” Patterson returned the receipts to the drawer and slammed it.

As Betsy turned to leave, her father said, “Elizabeth, there is one more thing.” He slid the single folded page across his desk. “This came from Jerome’s secretary in September. I did not want to trouble you with it while you were in England, but now that you are home, you should know what it says.”

With dread, Betsy resumed her seat and read the letter, skipping through it to find the lines that concerned her most directly.

Your daughter has far removed, if not destroyed forever, the possibility of a reconciliation…. Finding in Holland orders which prohibited her landing on the French territory, she imprudently went to London, instead of going to a neutral port…. The Emperor, in a letter which Mr. Bonaparte received yesterday, expressed to him a strong dissatisfaction…. However, Mr. Bonaparte begs me to assure you that he will never deviate from the principles of honor and delicacy…. He desires you to rely entirely upon him, and let time obliterate the first impressions made on the mind of the Emperor.

Betsy felt close to despair as she met her father’s eyes. “This is why you think he will never return.”

“I do not see how to put any other construction upon it.”

She shook her head. “I think Jerome must be under continual harassment, or he never would have commissioned Le Camus to write such a letter. The accusation that I willfully went to London is unjust. Amsterdam was supposed to be a neutral port, yet the French fired upon us there. Afterward, I begged William to sail anywhere but England, but Captain Stephenson feared we would receive the same rude welcome at Emden or Bremen. Garnier was supposed to explain all that to Jerome, but he may have misrepresented my plight.”

“On the contrary, I think Jerome knows all too well that you had little choice if you were to preserve the well-being of your child. This letter is a cowardly attempt to blame you rather than own to the fact of Napoleon’s tyranny.”

Looking down at the letter again, she pointed at one line with her forefinger. “But Le Camus says that Jerome still hopes to win over the emperor.”

“That is a fool’s hope.”

“We do not know that yet.”

“Betsy,” Patterson said, using her nickname for the first time since her return, “I believe Stephenson was right. You would have been harassed as you were at Texel in any other continental port. Emden is part of Holland, and the French occupy Bremen. Napoleon made sure you would have no place to go except England because he wanted to discredit you in Jerome’s eyes.”

“But he has not given me up, Father. Two weeks after Le Camus wrote this, Jerome sent a message through an Englishwoman. He is diligently trying to make a good impression so he can bring about our reunion.”

Patterson’s tone grew sharp again. “The longer you cling to that hope, the more painful it will be once you have to accept that Napoleon has separated you forever.”

Betsy lifted her chin. “For the sake of my son and my own honor, I must continue to fight for recognition of our marriage.”

Her father pounded his desk. “That marriage was a deal made with a scoundrel. You would do better to accept it as a bad bargain and move on.”

“Jerome is not a shipment of spoiled cargo to be deducted from my ledger!”

Patterson shook his head. “Of all my children, you have always been the most stubborn. Have it your own way, but do not expect me to keep bailing you out of your difficulties.”

“I would not dream of it, sir,” she retorted and took her leave.

HER FIRST SUNDAY back, Betsy walked with her parents to First Presbyterian Church, two blocks from their home. With a membership composed mostly of successful merchants like William Patterson, the Presbyterians had the wealthiest congregation in Baltimore. Their church building was an impressive structure nicknamed the “Two Steeple Church” because it had twin octagonal belfries on either side of a classical temple front.

The reading for that Sunday was from Ecclesiastes: “Cast thy bread upon the waters: for thou shalt find it after many days.” Building upon that verse, the Reverend Dr. Inglis gave a long sermon analyzing how God rewards the good that people do, if not in this life, then in the next. As he droned on, building an intricately reasoned argument by quoting ancient philosophers and the Bible with equal ease, Betsy felt like a tightly lidded boiler about to explode. So God always rewarded good deeds, did He? Then why was she suffering for something that was not her fault? What had she ever done to deserve the way Napoleon had treated her?

Betsy and her mother waited on the front steps after the service as Patterson spoke at length to Dr. Inglis about church finances. As Betsy tried to mask her impatience at standing in the cutting November wind, one of the elders’ wives approached them. Mrs. Finley was a humorless dowager of about fifty, whom Betsy avoided whenever possible.

“It was a good sermon, do you not agree?” Mrs. Finley asked.

“Oh, yes,” Dorcas replied. “Dr. Inglis is such a scholar.”

“And what about you, Betsy? Did you not find it edifying?”

Annoyed that the woman had addressed her familiarly as though she were still an unmarried girl, Betsy longed to answer sarcastically. For her mother’s sake, she remained polite. “Indeed, it was a prodigious example of the art of preaching.”