“And that would be admirable,” I shot back, “were you not also risking the political rights of all women by representing us as a bunch of nincompoops incapable of understanding world affairs.”
Sputtering, she rose and took her leave. I lingered, stinging from her rebuke. So she thought me an attention-seeking coward. Perhaps it was hubris to think the Lafayette Fund could make a difference, I thought. Perhaps a society wife—and an abandoned one at that—was all I could ever be . . . I had, after all, already risen higher than someone like me had any right to.
While I brooded, slathering my scones with jam and clotted cream with no consideration for my waistline, my eldest moped up to the table and perched on the edge of a chair. “Whatever is the matter, darling?”
Billy stared down glumly, swinging his legs. “I c-can’t be Lafayette in the p-play.”
“Why not?”
“The other kids don’t want to f-f-f—” I waited for him to get the word out. It only made him more self-conscious to have his sentences finished for him—children too have their pride. “F-follow me onstage,” he finally managed to say. “They p-poke fun at me.”
I bristled like a mother bear. “Which children poke fun at you?”
Billy jutted his chin in a way that reminded me of his stubborn father, and I knew he’d never tattle. Finally, he said, “Lafayette was a h-hero. I’m just a boy.”
A shy, awkward boy, he meant, and it hurt to see his confidence shaken. Especially when my own was shaken too. What a sad pair of mopers we were. What would Minnie say?
Nobody gets anywhere being a wet blanket. Even if you’ve got to dig your nails into your palms, just put on the mask and smile.
I’d given my sons every advantage in life, but maybe I needed to remind them—and myself—that what mattered was a stout heart and a resolution never to bow to low expectations. If only to be a good example, I couldn’t let myself sink into the role society set for me and wallow in loneliness and despair. With my work at the Lafayette Fund—however silly it might seem to reporters like Mitzi Miller—I’d found a new sense of purpose that I intended to embrace, with or without a husband. After all, if I’d learned anything as an actress, it was that you can become the role you take on.
I took my son’s chin. “Darling, I’m going to let you in on a little secret. No one is born a hero; it’s something you have to find inside yourself. Once upon a time, even Lafayette was just a boy like you.”
EIGHT
ADRIENNE
Versailles
January 1775
At court, my seventeen-year-old husband shied away from the Hall of Mirrors, afraid that any misstep should be reflected from a hundred angles for all to see. Lafayette worried about making a fool of himself, and he was not a practiced dancer, which is why he did not often join in the queen’s quadrilles.
Yet, at her first occasion of the New Year, as a mark of growing favor to me, Marie Antoinette offered her hand to Gilbert to partner with her, and every man turned envious eyes his way. I gave my husband an encouraging nod, despite my irritation that on this occasion, I was left to partner with the lascivious duc de Chartres. “Shall we, my pretty poppet?”
Despite my tender age, I’d grown too accustomed to Philippe’s flirtation to blush behind my fan anymore; I had learned to appear indifferent. So I let him guide me to a position across from his lover, Aglaé, whose beautiful emerald eyes gleamed with jealousy—authentic or feigned, I could not guess. And, waiting for my husband to lead the queen in a graceful promenade, I asked, “Are you looking forward to the king’s coronation?”
He laughed. “Not as much as the queen, who hopes the ceremony might finally put a little stiffness into the royal rod.”
He said this with contempt, which made it a relief that the dance required me to momentarily leave him, crossing the center to clasp hands with the gentleman opposite—the king’s portly brother. The king’s brother huffed and puffed, but I much preferred this to when Philippe grasped hold of me again. “Not even a smile, Adrienne? Tell me why you refuse to return my love.”
I believed Philippe did not mean love, but lust. “I have morals, sir.”
“Morals, like fashion, can be out of style.”
I knew I might rise higher in the royal court—be considered worldlier—if I returned the flirtations of the pleasure-loving young men who made up the queen’s coterie, but I was already becoming more Lafayette than Noailles. “Then I am content to be old-fashioned.”