Chapter Eighteen
It was almost dawn when Marietta awoke and immediately rose from her bed. The children slept while she bathed and then donned undergarments, stockings, and shoes before putting on a robe to eat breakfast. She had heard that the new commander needed as little sleep as General Bonaparte, which was why she thought her chances of seeing him would be better in the early morning before the business of the day claimed his time. After dressing her hair, massing it in the soft style that echoed the fashionable fullness of skirts over abundant petticoats, she took the gown from where she had lain it during the night hours.
Its rich peach-pink silk dramatized her hair and the paleness of her skin. It was low-cut with a diaphanous fichu that both concealed and revealed her cleavage.
