The Accidental Empress by Allison Pataki Read Free Book Online Page A

said, repeating herself. As if a wardrobe change would somehow transform Helene into the imperial bride she needed to become.
    Sisi kept herself occupied in the nerve-fraught coach by staring out the windows and imagining what life must be like in each Alpine home she passed. While the farms appeared idyllic, the goat herders had it the best, she decided. For the goat herders were free to set out each morning from their cliffside chalets and march into the hills. Armed with a block of cheese, a loaf of bread, and a skin of wine, they could wander and explore the mountains and creeks with no one to answer to. Or they could find an open, sunlit field and lie down on the grass, passing away the hours under a sky so close that Sisi longed to reach up and pull some of its blueness down into her hands.
    “Bummerl would love these fields.” Sisi thought of the horse she’d left behind and felt a stab of longing for home. “We could get lost in them for hours.” Neither her mother nor her sister replied. “Mamma, will I be able to ride in Vienna?” Sisi asked.
    “I don’t know, Sisi.” The duchess answered dismissively, her head tilted back against the upholstered wall of the coach. “I would imagine that you will be much too preoccupied to be thinking about your own leisure activities. You will have an entire court to meet, and years’ worth of etiquette to learn. You think the Austrian aristocracy gives a fig about your riding? No. They expect to receive a well-mannered, well-spoken young lady. You and your sister must concern yourselves with learning the ways of the Habsburgs.”
    “I don’t know how I will bear it if I’m not able to ride,” Sisi mused aloud. But it was a mistake to say it, and she knew so immediately when she saw her mother’s eyes flash open.
    “You shall do whatever is expected of you,” her mother snapped.
    “Mamma,” Sisi started, taken aback by the duchess’s recent irritability. Her mother sighed by way of reply, shutting her eyes once more. A tense silence rocked with them in the coach.
    Eventually, the duchess spoke. “I apologize, Sisi. It’s just that . . . well, I fear that . . .” She hesitated, then said, “I only wish for you two girls to succeed.”
    Sisi considered this. How different could court life be? They were, after all, the daughters of a duke. And besides, such obvious worrying on her mother’s part would not help Helene gain confidence before the important meeting with her groom. Speaking with more self-assurance than she felt, Sisi answered: “Don’t be nervous, Mamma. Of course we shall succeed.” She looked determinedly into her sister’s eyes as if to convince Helene of this statement’s inevitability. “Besides, as you said, we will have Aunt Sophie to help us.”
    The duchess now opened her eyes, and the equivocal look she gave her daughter did not offer any reassurance. “Let’s hope that we have Sophie’s backing,” was Ludovika’s response.
    Sisi felt for her mother, because she knew that it was on her two daughters’ behalf that the duchess worried so acutely. Ludovika’s initial joy following the invitation to court had been whittled down over the past month, replaced now by a sharp tongue and scrutinizing stare. Sisi’s and Helene’s previously permissible—even customary—behavior now seemed to elicit harsh chidings. Like when, on the road, Sisi had gotten out of the carriage to help the groom water the horses, and had unwittingly splashed her dress.
    “You do not water the horses like a stable boy!” It had been just the latest in a recent litany of unanticipated rebukes and censures.
    “ You will not answer back when your Aunt Sophie speaks to you .”
    “ You will not gallop down the hallways at court like a wild ruffian .”
    “ You will not appear at dinner dirty, like a country peasant. ”
    The duchess, usually so measured, seemed to wrestle with some undeniable fear when it came to her elder sister. Days before