"Who taught you to waltz, woman in red?" Napoleon asked. "Did you have a dance teacher too?"
"No, you could say my father taught me." Hathor smiled. "We don't actually need to stand this close, First Consul."
"Why not?"
"Look around you." Hathor glanced around the dance floor at the men and women whispering behind their little fans. "What do you think they're saying?"
Even without hearing the ghosts' whispers, Pomona could guess from their expressions.
In the twenty-first century, the waltz was an antique among antiques, something only grandmothers and grandfathers danced. Young people danced rock music like they were having seizures.
But in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the waltz was still considered "indecent." Elderly ladies watching their daughters, draped in gauzy veils, dance so "wantonly" to waltz music would not only be heartbroken with anger, but would also believe they had failed in their responsibilities as parents and distorted the fine traditions of modesty and proper upbringing.
For some unknown reason, the waltz had first become popular in Germany, then in Britain. This English waltz incorporated folk dances and differed somewhat from the waltzes popular among the Parisian bourgeoisie.
In short, those French aristocrats were probably guessing that this foreign woman, who knew where she had come from, was leading their First Consul astray.
Pomona had never dreamed that words like "promiscuous" and "Bad Woman" would one day be associated with her.
"Why worry about what they say? They're just a pack of fools who love to prattle." Napoleon spoke disdainfully. "The Italy I fought so hard to win was lost by them in less than a year. Before I went to Egypt, I left them a perfectly fine France, and now it's become a complete mess. With that level of skill, they still plan