A few afternoons ago, Georgiana had met Louis and Stephanie by the pond where the swans were kept.
Today, in almost the same place, she was receiving the director of a major transport company, Gaston Anthony Martin.
Long ago, when she had still been a schoolteacher, she had helped children with career counseling. Someone like the director of Bonafou Transport Company would have been a person she needed to receive with care.
Now, however, he had to serve her carefully.
After the War of the Oranges, Portugal and France signed a peace treaty. The Portuguese prime minister in charge of signing it had stalled and evaded every way he could. In the end, Napoleon flew into a rage and had France impose twenty million in war reparations. He had set that money aside, intending to use it for road construction.
Lyon also had barracks. In terrain as rugged as the Alps, every fortress formed another layer of defense. This road served both commercial and military purposes.
Just like the horses she intended to commission the transport company to purchase from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, those horses could carry grain or military supplies. Transactions involving warhorses would be concealed among large purchases of civilian horses.
The fashion among young people now was to wear neither hats nor wigs nor hair powder, leaving their natural hair exposed. The man Madame Leoncourt had introduced was a short, middle-aged man wearing a large tricorne hat. Seeing this middle-aged transport merchant, Georgiana suddenly realized that thirty-year-old Napoleon was actually already an "antique."
"Miss Georgiana." The middle-aged man removed his hat and bowed deeply, exposing his slightly protruding crown.
Only then did she remember that the First Consul of France had a very thick head of hair. Still, she worried that all this excessive thinking would sooner