The governor of the Bank of France was speaking with former Minister of War Claude-Louis Pothier. In 1796, he had signed the document appointing Napoleon as Commander-in-Chief of the Army of Italy of the French Republic, and he had also made military accounts clearer than they had ever been since the French Revolution.
Saihe stood beside them. A prominent merchant and shipowner from the Bordeaux region, he moved with ease through both political and business circles and currently served in the Senate of the Directory.
Several others stood around the outer edge of the group. Joseph-Marie Vien, the teacher of the painter David, should ordinarily have been responsible for painting an occasion like this, but he had brought his students, so they were handling the painting.
There was also the playwright Haines, now editor-in-chief of the Proverbs Gazette.
And then there was Monsieur Duchâtel, a government councillor and chief registrar. He looked rather old, and the exhaustion brought on by his heavy workload left him nowhere near as spirited as the Duke of Bedford, who had likewise married a young wife.
Georgiana could now go back and see what Bonaparte had been doing in the carriage. Perhaps there would even be an "unexpected surprise."
But this was a dream. The people before her, who seemed alive, were all dead, like the dancing ghosts she had seen in the Louvre Museum, lost in a world that was both real and unreal.
She glanced at the Scourer. He was watching her from outside the crowd.
Their goal was to capture Severus. Once Severus had been caught, she would no longer have any value. Could Bonaparte protect her?
Perhaps those crocodile statues that could make magic disappear would achieve the effect of a surprise attack, but he had already used them...
Georgiana looked