The lavishly decorated opera house contained plenty of flammable materials—velvet curtains, carpets, and furniture. They would catch fire very quickly.
Most people who died in fires were either suffocated by smoke or poisoned by carbon monoxide. Giuseppina Grassini only needed to sleep in the fire for a while, and she would die.
Besides, she was already dead. The Death Priest had once said that no one in this world was truly alive, and no one truly died.
The study he had searched was not Napoleon's workspace with the enormous desk, and Georgiana had not seen a red leather folder on that desk either.
She stood by the window, watching the "street scene" outside. Not every Briton who came to Paris was somebody important; some were quite down-and-out, looking ragged and shabby. The more miserable they were, the more they drank. Though the Britons had been confined, they lacked neither alcohol nor daily necessities. They were even allowed to stroll by the small lake, a far better treatment than prisoners received.
Georgiana drained the strawberry tequila cocktail in her glass. It was the only cocktail she knew how to make. After finishing it, she poured herself another. As she did, she remembered that the Foreign Office had once intended to exchange prisoners for Tobago, France's colony in South America.
Perhaps making a Bourbon royal family member the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitaller was not their real aim this time. Perhaps they meant to provoke Napoleon into agreeing to cede Tobago, so Britain could better colonize South America.
Even street scum would become superior once they reached the colonies because they were British, especially in a country like India. Before Britain's colonial expansion, India's economy had not lagged behind, but after the East India Company established colonial rule, great famines became