Free The Ravens of Falkenau & Other Stories by Jo Graham Page B

father said we’d just keep holding as long as we could. I got shot on 14 Prairial, and on 15 Prairial he finally asked the Austrians for terms. In the meantime, General Bonaparte trapped the Austrians and beat them.”
    “That’s so…” Victory couldn’t think of enough words to describe it. “Terrific,” she said.
    “It pretty much was,” he said.
    She laughed. “I think you ought to marry a princess for that,” she said. “Just like in the stories.”
    “I’m not sure a princess would want to marry me,” he said, smiling back. “I’m a merchant’s son. And besides, we don’t have any princesses anymore.”
    “Then will you marry me?”
    He didn’t laugh at her. Victory was glad of that. He looked at her, as though seriously considering. “How old are you?”
    “Almost six,” she said. “I was born in Thermidor.”
    “I think six is a little young to get married,” he said. “You probably need to wait a few years.”
    “How old are you?”
    “Almost twenty-four,” he said. “I was born in Thermidor too.”
    “You’re not too old for me,” she said. “Not if you wait.”
    He did laugh then, and she thought it was a very nice laugh. “You’ll have forgotten all about me by then. Come on, little Victory. The people are starting to go into dinner, and your nurse will be looking for you.”
    He helped her up. Or maybe she helped him up. After all, he had a bad arm. They went up the lawn to the party, Victory skipping a little to avoid the peacock shit. He stepped in it, but he didn’t notice and she didn’t tell him.
    Her father came down and swooped her up. “Where are your shoes?” he asked.
    “I don’t know.” Victory shrugged. When she looked around the young man was gone. “Where did he go?” she asked.
    “Where’s your nurse?” her father said. “You need some dinner too. And then it’s your bedtime. And how do you get such snarls in your hair?” He started trying to work a tangle out of her long dark curls.
    “I don’t know,” Victory said. She looked after the young officer, but she didn’t see him anywhere. “I’m going to marry him,” she said.
    It was ten years before she saw him again.

    The ballroom of the Tuileries was hot and stuffy, even this early in the evening. The candles and the press of bodies made that inevitable. Victory carefully lifted her skirts as she climbed the stairs, trying not to trip. She had told her stepmother it was too long at the dressmaker's, but she'd insisted it was fine. Now Victory would spend all night trying not to fall on her face. If she ever got a dance, which wasn't terribly likely. This was only the second time she'd attended an Imperial ball, and the first time she hadn't danced at all, only stood around with Marianne, looking more and more stupid as the evening went on.
    Victory knew she wasn't pretty. Golden girls with pink and white complexions were pretty, girls with large breasts and curving shoulders and décolletage that invited a second look. She was short and sallow, at barely sixteen still boyish and too thin, with lank brown hair that wouldn't take a curl no matter how much time she spent on it. She could singe her hair off with irons and it still wouldn't curl. The only feature she liked were her eyes, dark and smoky brown, fringed with long lashes, deep and (she hoped) mysterious. Unfortunately, anyone would have trouble seeing them, as the curls had already fallen out of her bangs and lay in a sodden mass across her forehead that she had to peep out under.
    They were announced at the top of the stairs. Fortunately, no one would see her anyway, behind her father and stepmother and her older sister. At the bottom of the stairs her sister was claimed by her fiancé, and her stepmother was already making a beeline for Madame la Marechale Lannes, who had recently come out of mourning and could always be counted on to know everything.
    Her father turned to her, one eyebrow raised.
    "Don't you dare," Victory