The Accidental Empress Read online

  Praise for

  The Accidental Empress

  “A love match alters the course of history. . . . Pataki deserves kudos for choosing her subject matter well—Sisi’s life is ideal fictional fodder.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “The Accidental Empress is a stunning masterpiece of imagination, enriched with lavish historical detail. Utterly riveting, amazingly insightful. A splendid saga sure to capture the heart.”

  —Jan Moran, bestselling author of Scent of Triumph

  “Pataki’s fully drawn Accidental Empress is an indelible portrayal—not only of one of the most complicated and misunderstood Habsburgs, but of a turbulent royal marriage during a tumultuous era.”

  —Juliet Grey, author of the acclaimed Marie Antoinette trilogy

  “Allison Pataki so vividly depicts the world of the Habsburg court, you’ll feel the silk of Sisi’s gowns under your very fingers as you eagerly turn the pages of The Accidental Empress. As a woman both ahead of her time and wholly situated within it, Sisi makes for a captivating central figure, and rarely has an author so heartbreakingly captured the exquisite tragedy of getting what you want. Sumptuous, surprising, and deeply felt.”

  —Greer Macallister, author of The Magician’s Lie

  “A glorious novel about a misunderstood empress. . . . With a sumptuous sense of history and evocative attention to detail, Allison Pataki conjures the rebellious, glamorous spirit of Sisi of Austria.”

  —C. W. Gortner, bestselling author of The Queen’s Vow

  “The Accidental Empress is a tale of royal love we don’t know but should, and who better to share it with us than the supremely gifted and entertaining historical novelist Allison Pataki. A delightful gift for readers. . . . The Accidental Empress is enthralling.”

  —Allegra Jordan, author of The End of Innocence

  Praise for

  The Traitor’s Wife

  “A most impressive debut.”

  —Philippa Gregory

  “One of the best, best, best historical novels. I was riveted. . . . I couldn’t put it down.”

  —Kathie Lee Gifford, The TODAY Show

  “Pataki smoothly weaves intrigue and personality with critical historical facts. . . . Historical fiction lovers will look forward to more from this promising new novelist.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A well-balanced narrative . . . offers fresh perspective, plenty of intrigue and a host of interesting, multidimensional characters.”

  —Kirkus (starred review)

  “If you read one book this year, make it Allison Pataki’s The Traitor’s Wife. Few authors have taken on America’s Revolutionary War so convincingly, and this story of Benedict Arnold’s wife will appeal to lovers of historical fiction everywhere. Highly, highly recommended!”

  —Michelle Moran, international bestselling author of Madame Tussaud

  “Allison Pataki’s captivating debut novel examines history’s most famous tale of treachery through a woman’s eyes. Meticulously written and well-researched, this story will transport you back to the American Revolution and keep you turning pages with both its intrigue and love story. The Traitor’s Wife is a well-told tale.”

  —Lee Woodruff, author, blogger and television personality

  “I consider this to be the debut of a major writer of historical fiction.”

  —Mary Higgins Clark

  “The Traitor’s Wife is a gripping novel steeped in compelling historical detail. Pataki writes lyrically and succeeds in bringing to life, and humanizing, notorious characters from our nation’s past. Ultimately a story about honor and heart, readers will have a hard time putting this book down.”

  —Aidan Donnelley Rowley, author of Life After Yes

  “Allison Pataki has given us a great gift: a powerful story of love and betrayal, drawn straight from the swiftly beating heart of the American Revolution. Replete with compelling characters, richly realized settings, a sweeping plot, and a heroine who comes to feel like a dear, familiar friend, The Traitor’s Wife is sure to delight readers of romance and lovers of history alike.”

  —Karen Halvorsen Schreck, author of Sing For Me

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  Contents

  Epigraph

  Introduction

  PROLOGUE

  Budapest, Hungary

  June 8, 1867

  Part One

  CHAPTER ONE

  Possenhofen Castle, Bavaria

  July 1853

  II.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Imperial Resort at Bad Ischl, Upper Austria

  August 1853

  III.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Imperial Resort at Bad Ischl, Upper Austria

  August 1853

  IV.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Imperial Resort at Bad Ischl, Upper Austria

  August 1853

  V.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Imperial Resort at Bad Ischl, Upper Austria

  August 1853

  Part Two

  VI.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Possenhofen Castle, Bavaria

  September 1853

  VII.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Hofburg Palace, Vienna

  April 1854

  VIII.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Salzburg, Austria

  December 1854

  IX.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Hofburg Palace, Vienna

  March 1855

  X.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Schönbrunn Summer Palace, Vienna

  Spring 1855

  XI.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Castle Hill, Budapest, Hungary

  Spring 1857

  XII.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Schönbrunn Summer Palace, Vienna

  Summer 1857

  Part Three

  XIII.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Schönbrunn Summer Palace, Vienna

  August 1862

  XIV.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Hofburg Palace, Vienna

  October 1862

  XV.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Bad Kissingen Spa, Bavaria

  June 1866

  XVI.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hofburg Palace, Vienna

  February 1867

  XVII.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Schönbrunn Summer Palace, Vienna

  Spring 1867

  XVIII.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Budapest, Hungary

  June 1867

  XIX.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Budapest, Hungary

  June 8, 1867

  A Conversation with the Author Allison Pataki

  Acknowledgments

  Reading Group Guide

  About Allison Pataki

  To my parents, Libby & George

  Like thine own sea birds,

  I’ll circle without rest.

  For me earth holds no corner

  To build a lasting nest.

  —Empress Elisabeth “Sisi” of Austria

  “So quick bright things come to confusion.”

  —William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Sisi’s favorite play

  Introduction

  The year is 1853 and the Habsburg Empire covers much of Europe, str
etching from the Russian border in the east to Italy in the west, from northern Germany south to the Balkans.

  Emperor Franz Joseph, one of the most powerful crowned heads in the world, rules over more than 35 million souls, including Catholics, Protestants, Jews, and Muslims. His people are of Austrian, Hungarian, German, Czech, Croatian, Italian, Gypsy, and other descents.

  Austria is the quintessential multiethnic empire, a polyglot patchwork held together not by a unifiying nationality, religion, language, or even a feeling of mutual affection. One thing alone unites these divergent lands, people, and interests: Franz Joseph. A handsome young man in his early twenties, with auburn waves of hair and serious blue eyes, Franz Joseph rules by divine right, a blessed figure, an institution more than just a mere man.

  Franz Joseph ascends to power in the year 1848, the year that revolutions roil across Europe, toppling crowns on a wave of liberal idealism and nationalistic fervor. Nowhere is that revolutionary zeal more fiercely espoused, and then crushed, than in the Austrian Empire. Quashing revolts in both Hungary and Italy, Franz Joseph takes the throne from a weak uncle and solidifies his grip over the government in Vienna and the entire kingdom.

  But a few years into his reign, a Hungarian nationalist attacks the emperor while he strolls through Vienna, lodging a knife blade in the young Franz Joseph’s neck. The empire trembles and prays as the emperor lies in a hospital bed, recovering from the wound. The need for a Habsburg heir has never been more apparent.

  With his good looks, his charming personality, and, not least of all, his glittering kingdom, Franz Joseph faces no shortage of young ladies eager to be his bride.

  But Franz Joseph’s most powerful advisor is not some stiff-necked general or mustached bureaucrat; the person from whom Franz Joseph most often takes his counsel is his mother. Archduchess Sophie is, after all, the very person who has groomed him all his life for this role and has found the way to thrust him onto a throne that hadn’t belonged to him. And she already has a bride in mind.

  Heeding his mother’s advice, Franz Joseph sends an invitation to Bavaria, where his pretty young cousin, a girl named Helene, is cowed and flattered to receive such a summons. When Helene’s younger sister, a spirited young girl of fifteen named Sisi, joins her elder sister, no one involved knows how deeply their lives—and indeed the world—are about to change. . . .

  Prologue

  BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

  JUNE 8, 1867

  “Empress, we are ready for you.”

  She turns, a small nod and a flourish of her hand. “Time to assume the role.” She slips her arms through the sleeves.The silken fabric, expertly stitched and tailored, molds around her curves. My, but she has never quite grown accustomed to how heavy these things are. Heavier, it seems, than her own tired frame.

  All around her, nervous footmen and chattering attendants fuss, bickering like frantic bees in the hive that encircles their all-important leader.

  “Fluff her skirt!”

  “Mind the trim!”

  “Time to go!”

  “Can’t be time already, can it?”

  “Ready, Empress Elisabeth?” The imperial hairdresser stands before her, the ancient crown poised between two fingers, its diamonds catching a glint of candlelight. As delicate as the wisps of a spiderweb. And yet, durable enough to have survived the centuries, to have persisted longer than the royal heads on which it has rested. Heads now embalmed, hairs now gray and fallen out.

  “Ready.” She nods, lowering her chin so that the diadem can be nestled into her chestnut curls—curls that have been named the most valuable crown jewels in all of the Habsburg collection. The curls, they say, that won her the emperor’s heart.

  The crown in place, she glides forward and glances at herself in the full-length mirror. She does make an arresting vision; even she has to admit it.

  The gown is of white and silver brocade, laced with rows of diamonds and stitched to hug her narrow figure. A long cape of white satin drapes over her shoulders before tumbling to the ground. But it’s her face that they always want to see, more so than any imperial stitching or ancient tiara. They’ve all heard of her slanting, honey-colored eyes. Her smoothly sculpted cheekbones. Her lips, the lips that the emperor once declared as “fresh as strawberries.” The emperor. Her heart lurches clumsily in her breast. God, but she is tired. Will she have the energy to survive this day?

  A knock, and her heart trips once more. She glances up, her eyes darting to the heavy oaken door. Which one of them will it be on the other side? Will it be the emperor? Or will it be . . . him? Her cheeks grow warm at the thought, and she chides herself. Even after everything she has been through, she still reddens like a girl of sixteen at the thought of him, the mention of his name. Her own husband doesn’t pull such a scarlet blush to her cheeks.

  The door lumbers open, groaning like a sluggish guard woken from his midnight watch after too much ale. In an instant, she sees him, and he sees her. He takes her in. She can tell from his face that she has succeeded in beating the breath from his gut; he wears the look of a stunned animal.

  “Sisi,” is all he manages to say. He throws his arms up, wide, as if to pull her into him. But he checks himself, takes note of the servants bustling about.

  “Your Majesty.” He clears his throat. “Are you ready?”

  She inhales, considering the question. Is she ready? No. She never really was ready, she supposes. That was the problem, wasn’t it? But she lifts her chin, throwing her shoulders back.

  “I am,” she answers, one quick nod. She glides forward. The dress drags—its splendor too heavy for her exhausted body. But she sighs and continues across the room.

  She can already hear them on the other side of the walls. Not so much the individual cheers and cries, but a dull, persistent throb. Constant. Like the crush of the sea waves on the earth: unyielding, unceasing.

  He offers his arm and she slides her own through it, her soft flesh pressing into his heavily starched uniform. The doors open wider now. She blinks, longing to pull a gloved hand upward. To shield herself, to hide her face from all of those direct, inquisitive eyes. . . . Eyes that will study her and take her in, as if she is theirs for consuming. She seethes with that instinctive, familiar desire to flee, to escape. But she checks her impulse. Stands a bit taller.

  And then she hears it. “Sisi!”

  A breath inward. A moment to fortify herself as she turns to him. “It is time.” And it was. At last, it was time.

  Part One

  Chapter One

  POSSENHOFEN CASTLE, BAVARIA

  JULY 1853

  Sisi crouched low, peering over the wall of brush. Her gaze was alert, her legs ready to spring to action, her heart pumping blood throughout her veins with a speed that only the hunted can sustain.

  “Come out, you cowards!”

  Just then Sisi spotted the figure crossing the meadow, a dark silhouette piercing the backdrop of the crenellated white castle and deep-blue sky, and she ducked once more out of sight. Her brother Karl had not yet found her, and he yanked on his horse in frustration, as if to remind the beast of the authority his sisters so brazenly flouted.

  Sisi watched Karl, her contempt thickening as she discerned his thoughts: clutching the reins, he imagined himself a Germanic warrior atop a stallion, ready to ride on the Hungarians or the Poles and seize glory from the battlefield.

  “Karl the Beneficent, Duke of Bavaria, demands that you come meet your lord and surrender!” He scoured the woods, his words finding Sisi even as his eyes failed to locate her. “Kiss the ring and I shall show you mercy—more mercy than you deserve. But if you continue to run and hide like rodents, I shall have to flush you out. And when I do, you shall wish you had surrendered!” The horse pawed at the ground, agitated under Karl’s grip.

  Sisi was fed up with being the prey. The odds were not just; if she had had the chance to mount her own horse, Bummerl, she would chase Karl all the way to the Bavarian border, and he knew that.
But she hadn’t expected to have to fend off her brother when she had wandered toward the wooded lake shore with her sister, Helene, to pick wildflowers.

  “We should surrender, Sisi.” Helene crouched beside her, worry pulling on her sharp, dark features. “You heard him. Otherwise, he will make trouble for us.”

  “Nonsense, Helene.”

  Two years younger than Sisi, her brother was nearly twice her size, his thirteen-year-old body robust from adolescence, beer, and bratwurst. But though she lacked his girth, Sisi knew she could best Karl with wit.

  “We’ll show Karl the Beneficent what a formidable foe he really is.” Sisi nodded at her sister, picking up a cool, smooth stone. Helene responded with a whimpering sound.

  “So be it,” Karl hollered from outside the woodline, on the far side of the meadow. “You have chosen your own fate. And that fate is—pain!” Karl dug his leather boots into the sides of his horse. The beast whinnied in response, and then Sisi felt the earth begin to vibrate beneath her.

  “Now we’re really in for it, Sisi.” Helene paced in their hiding spot like a wounded animal as the sound of hoofbeats grew louder.

  “Hush, Néné.” Sisi quieted her elder sister. Oh, how she longed to be atop Bummerl! “Helene, when I say ‘run’—you run. Understand?”

  “Run where? Right into the lake?”

  “No.” Sisi shook her head. “In the other direction. Across the meadow, toward home.”

  “Toward Karl?”

  “Trust me, Néné, all right?” After a pause, Helene nodded her reluctant assent. Sisi poked her head out once more from behind the brush and saw that her brother had almost cleared the entirety of the meadow. He rode toward the woods where they hid, his eyes narrowed to two slits as he scoured the brushline. But he had not yet discovered their hiding spot. Sisi took aim, raising her hand and the rock in it. The hoofbeats were like cannon blasts now as Karl barreled toward them. She waited, patiently, allowing him to come still closer. When he was within striking distance, Sisi released the rock, hurling it with as much precision as she could manage.