BooksBarbecue
Back The Empress Save as PDF
Chapters (68)
  1. Cover
  2. Dedication
  3. 1853
  4. PART I
  5. ONE
  6. TWO
  7. THREE
  8. FOUR
  9. FIVE
  10. SIX
  11. SEVEN
  12. EIGHT
  13. NINE
  14. TEN
  15. ELEVEN
  16. TWELVE
  17. THIRTEEN
  18. FOURTEEN
  19. FIFTEEN
  20. SIXTEEN
  21. SEVENTEEN
  22. EIGHTEEN
  23. NINETEEN
  24. TWENTY
  25. TWENTY-ONE
  26. TWENTY-TWO
  27. TWENTY-THREE
  28. TWENTY-FOUR
  29. TWENTY-FIVE
  30. TWENTY-SIX
  31. TWENTY-SEVEN
  32. TWENTY-EIGHT
  33. TWENTY-NINE
  34. THIRTY
  35. THIRTY-ONE
  36. THIRTY-TWO
  37. THIRTY-THREE
  38. THIRTY-FOUR
  39. THIRTY-FIVE
  40. THIRTY-SIX
  41. 1854
  42. PART II
  43. THIRTY-SEVEN
  44. THIRTY-EIGHT
  45. THIRTY-NINE
  46. FORTY
  47. FORTY-ONE
  48. FORTY-TWO
  49. FORTY-THREE
  50. FORTY-FOUR
  51. FORTY-FIVE
  52. FORTY-SIX
  53. FORTY-SEVEN
  54. FORTY-EIGHT
  55. FORTY-NINE
  56. FIFTY
  57. FIFTY-ONE
  58. FIFTY-TWO
  59. FIFTY-THREE
  60. FIFTY-FOUR
  61. FIFTY-FIVE
  62. FIFTY-SIX
  63. FIFTY-SEVEN
  64. FIFTY-EIGHT
  65. FIFTY-NINE
  66. SIXTY
  67. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
  68. ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Now, in the quiet space between the trees, she traced the shape of new memories she wanted to make. Her fingers slowly unfastening the buttons on his uniform, sliding over his broad shoulders, pushing off his jacket, his shirt. She pictured the skin of her chest against the skin of his. She would kiss along his jawline. He would kiss along her collarbone, then lower. Lower still—

She licked her lips, reveled in the images. She could almost feel his hands on her skin, coaxing goose bumps over neck, arms, stomach, breasts. He was a tinderbox, she a match. She reached her hand up into her skirts, pressed it to her upper thigh. She let her fingers explore the softness of her skin, slipping inside her, imagining her hand was not her own.

“I love you.” She tested the words aloud: even more delicious than on paper.

Her whole body trembled as she pressed into herself, recalling a poem he’d written for her in one of his letters as she urged her body on toward a crescendo:

Sparrow, fly to me, Fly to me, Quickly—

I need you like a gull needs

The salt-drenched air under his wings.

She rode the wave of the poem, the rhythm of her fingers, and felt it all crash over her, pressing her body against rough bark, releasing her soul into the ether.

“Franz.” She whispered it, then said it louder—no one around for miles to hear.

Soon, they would be together. Soon, the long silences and longer lessons of her stifling house would be behind her. And it would be his fingers tracing the curve of her breast, the tender skin of her inner thigh, the climax between her legs.

She felt drunk with the possibility of it, stretched out with the longing.

She only had to wait two more days.

THIRTY-NINE

image

LOVE WASN’T A WORD FRANZ HAD SAID TO ANY OTHER woman.

He’d had affairs, of course. Any young man did. He’d felt the urgency of want, the breathlessness of secret rendezvous. But this was something new. She was something new.

In his letters, he’d started writing the word. And now it was on the tip of his tongue, ready for letters to become conversations, laughter, whispers in the candlelight.

He was in his room writing another letter, the last he’d send before she was here. It might not even get to her in time, but he could picture the smile on her face if it did, if it sneaked up the day before she left.

She’d sent him another poem, and he reread it now:

You are my sun,

O noble Achilles!

O thrust your spear into my heart,

Release me from a world that is

Without you

So desolate, so empty

So vainly keeping me distant.