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

they’d set off from Possenhofen, Sisi had overheard her parents whispering in her father’s study.
    “But what if they inadvertently say something to offend him? Or worse, to offend Sophie? They know nothing of the stringency of court protocol.”
    “They aren’t farmhands, Ludovika, they are perfectly nice girls,” the duke had replied. “And of aristocratic birth, might I add.”
    “Yes, but they are so naïve, Max. Instead of language and dancing lessons, we let them ride horses through the fields and hook fish in the lake.” Ludovika, pacing the cramped study, had spoken with an urgency that Sisi had rarely heard in her mother’s authoritative voice. “They’ve hardly seen the world outside of Possenhofen. Sophie will have their game in less than half an hour.”
    “That’s precisely what your sister wants.” The duke shrugged, staring wearily into the fire. “Sophie wants a wife for her son whom she can control. She’ll see Helene’s naïveté as a positive—something she can use to her advantage.”
    Ludovika had considered this in a brooding silence. Eventually she sighed, saying: “Max, I’m beginning to think this is not the best fate for our daughter. Perhaps we thought too much of the opportunity, without considering what such a future meant for Helene. And Sisi .”
    Sisi’s spine stiffened at the mention of her name—at the fact that her mother’s voice now carried outright panic. She crouched closer to the study door. “I shudder to think how Sisi will appear at court. Why, she is just a child. And a wild, free-spirited one at that. Why, she can barely string five words together in French. And she’s never danced with anyone other than her tutor.”
    Sisi bit on her lip, irritated by this. She was young, yes. And what her mother was saying wasn’t inaccurate. But surely she wouldn’t prove such a disappointment. In fact, she decided right then to prove her mother’s fears wrong.
    “One does not say no when the Imperial Mother comes and asks for one’s daughter for marriage,” the duke reasoned. “They’ll be fine.”
    “Max. We have found so many faults with our own parents over the years. Putting us together in this . . . marriage . I know perfectly well that you were in love with another woman. And you know that I was terribly homesick, and cried every day. Aren’t we now doing the same thing?”
    Sisi couldn’t help but peek her head around the opened doorway now, eager to see her father’s response to such a raw, unguarded question. “What choice do we have?” The duke shrugged his shoulders, taking a long inhale from his pipe. “When you have daughters, and a title, that’s what you do.”
    Sisi had remained there, just outside the door, as the moments passed, her parents sitting in silence beside a dying fire. Eventually, her mother had said: “How I shall miss them. If only we could keep Sisi a few more years. She is just a child.”
    “I shall miss them, too,” the duke had sighed, and Sisi had been surprised—even touched—to hear the confession. “But it is what’s best for them. We must try to be happy with the opportunity.”
    The duchess, still perched on the arm of her husband’s leather chair, remained silent.
    “Helene will do better than you think, Ludovika. And Sisi will take care of her. That one is smart. Perhaps a little wild, you’re right. But Sophie will rein her in. Baptism by fire, that’s what I call it.”

    Word spread like a plague, as gossip tends to do in a small town, and the entire population had turned up to see them off. Some of the peasants and townspeople had smiled, some of them had wept, but all of them had blessed the Wittelsbach women with prayers, waving small miniatures of the blue and white Bavarian flag.
    Sisi, her trunks loaded in the second coach, embraced her father and her younger sisters, not knowing how long it would be before she saw them again.
    “You’re going to win them all over at court, Sisi.”