Chapter 5: The Flood of Letters
The letters arrived with the relentlessness of artillery fire, each one a fresh volley from the Netherlands front. Lalisa watched them accumulate on the gilt table by the window, a growing mountain of desperate handwriting that seemed to multiply every time she turned her back.
The first had come at dawn, still warm from the courier's saddlebag.
My Dearest Little Storm—I have not slept for three nights. The rain here is relentless, and every drop reminds me of your skin. I dream of burying my face between your thighs and inhaling until I drown. Write to me. Tell me you are thinking of me. Tell me you are not thinking of anyone else.
She had smiled at that one, tracing the smudged ink where his hand had slipped in his haste.
By mid-morning, the second arrived. Then the third. The fourth came before she had finished her coffee, delivered by a breathless messenger who bowed so low his wig nearly fell off.
Lalisa—Why have you not replied? Have you even read my letters? I know you have been to the Palais-Royal. I have my sources. Ney was seen speaking with you at the card table. I want you to know that I have given orders for his regiment to be redeployed to the Spanish border. Do not test me on this.
Lalisa laughed so hard she nearly choked on her croissant.
"Your Majesty?" The servant hovering by the door looked alarmed.
"Nothing, Claire." She waved a hand, still chuckling. "Simply the Emperor's unique brand of romantic expression. Bring me more coffee, and perhaps a larger desk. It seems I am to receive a great deal of correspondence."
By noon, the pile had reached sixteen letters. They covered every surface of her private study—the desk, the chaise, the windowsill. They spilled from drawers and cascaded across the floor like a paper avalanche of masculine insecurity. Jensen had written her during their courtship with similar fervor, but this was something else entirely. This was obsession distilled into ink and delivered by exhausted horses.
Lalisa settled into the wingback chair by the fire, a stack of the latest arrivals balanced on her lap. She read them in order, watching his descent into jealous madness unfold chronologically.
Letter Seven: I have heard that you wore your hair uncovered at the Palais-Royal. In public. Without a hat. In front of everyone. Do you not understand how beautiful you are? How could you be so careless with what belongs to me?
Letter Nine: The weather here is miserable. The troops are miserable. I am miserable. And you, I imagine, are perfectly content in your warm palace, surrounded by admirers, laughing at my letters with your ladies-in-waiting. I can picture you now, your little tongue darting out as you read, that smile I love so much curving your lips as you plot your next cruelty.
Her tongue darted out, involuntarily, as she read it.
Letter Eleven: I have enclosed a lock of my hair. I know it is not what you want, but it is all I can send from this godforsaken place. I want to know every man who has looked at you. I want their names. I want—
The letter cut off mid-sentence, as if he had been interrupted or had simply lost the thread of his own demands.
Letter Thirteen, written in a hand so shaky it was nearly illegible: If you do not write to me by the time this letter arrives, I will assume the worst. I will assume Ney has placed his hands on you. His foul soldier's hands. I will assume you have let him taste what is mine. I will ride back to Paris myself and—
Lalisa flipped the page. Nothing. The sentence hung there, a threat too terrible to complete.
She set the letter down, a strange ache blooming behind her ribs. Ten years of marriage, and still he burned like this. Still he obsessed, still he doubted, still he loved her with the desperate intensity of a man who believed every moment apart was a wound that might kill him.
It was exhausting. It was infuriating.
God help her, it was thrilling.
She rose from the chair, crossing to the mahogany desk where a blank sheet of parchment waited with her quill in readiness. She had attempted a reply three times already—once with tenderness, once with irritation, once with playful teasing. Each attempt had been abandoned, crumpled, tossed into the fire.
How did one answer a deluge of desperate love? How did one address a man who demanded her scent while simultaneously accusing her of treason?
She dipped the quill in ink, paused, and began to write.
My dearest husband—
The door burst open. A messenger staggered in, his face flushed, a letter clutched in his gloved hand.
"Another dispatch from the Emperor, Your Majesty."
"Of course there is." Lalisa set down the quill. "Where does he find the time? The man is supposed to be commanding an army, not penning a romance novel."
The messenger had the decency to look embarrassed. He handed over the letter and retreated.
She broke the seal—more hastily than usual, the wax cracking unevenly—and read.
Lalisa. I have been informed that you have received my letters and chosen not to respond. This is either an act of indifference that I cannot bear or a deliberate provocation designed to drive me mad. Knowing you, it is likely both. I am writing to inform you that I have not slept in forty hours. I have stopped eating. The troops believe I am ill, but the truth is simpler: I cannot function without the sound of your voice. Without the sight of your handwriting. Without the knowledge that you exist somewhere in the world, breathing the same air that I will soon breathe again. Write to me. If you have ever loved me, write to me.
Beneath the words, he had drawn a small sketch of her face, rough but recognizable—the curve of her jaw, the fall of her hair, the slight smile he always complained about.
Lalisa stared at the drawing for a long moment. The ache behind her ribs intensified.
She picked up the quill again, but the words would not come. Everything she thought to write seemed either too sharp or too soft, either a surrender or a betrayal of her own pride. He wanted her scent—she could not send that through the post. He wanted proof of fidelity—she would not be reduced to offering it. He wanted her to write, and she wanted to write, but the very pressure of his desperation made her hand freeze over the page.
A knock at the door.
"Your Majesty." Claire's voice, hesitant. "Another rider has arrived. He says it is urgent. From the Emperor's camp."
Lalisa pressed her fingers to her temples. "Send him in."
The messenger who entered was younger than the others, his uniform splattered with mud, his eyes wild with exhaustion. He carried not one letter but a bundle, tied with red ribbon and sealed with the imperial sigil.
"He instructed me to deliver these personally, Your Majesty." The young man's voice cracked. "He said—forgive me—he said if you did not reply by the time I arrived, I was to read this one aloud in your presence. To ensure you heard his words."
Lalisa's eyebrows rose. "That is... unconventional."
"He has not been himself, Your Majesty." The messenger looked miserable. "He has not slept. He paces his tent all night, writing. The officers are concerned."
"How many letters did he give you?"
"Nineteen, Your Majesty. Some written this morning. Some written in the night. The most recent was written just before I departed."
"Nineteen." She felt the weight of them, the sheer volume of his longing. The man was drowning, and he was pulling her under with him.
She held out her hand. "Give me the most recent."
The messenger untied the bundle, extracted a single page, and handed it over. The ink was still slightly wet, the paper creased from hasty folding.
I am losing my mind. I know this. I can feel it slipping away from me, like sand through my fingers, and I cannot stop it. You are the only thing that keeps me tethered to reason, and you are silent. Please. Tell me what you want from me. Tell me what I must do to deserve a single word from your lips. I will beg. I will crawl. I will burn Paris to the ground if you ask it. Just write to me. Just tell me you are mine. Tell me you remember what it feels like when I am inside you, when you cry out my name, when your fingers twist in my hair and you tell me you love me. I need to hear it. I need—
The letter devolved into a series of scratched-out lines, too frantic to be legible, and then a single sentence in block capitals:
I AM DYING WITHOUT YOU.
Lalisa lowered the letter. Her hands were trembling, she realized. Trembling with anger, with love, with the peculiar helplessness that only Jensen could inspire in her. The man drove her to distraction with his accusations, suffocated her with his possessiveness, and then wrote sentences like that, and she was supposed to remain composed.
She crossed the room in three quick strides, snatched a scrap of paper from the desk, and scrawled a single line without pausing to consider its implications.
My love, if you wish me to write, you must stop writing first.
She pressed her lips to the paper, leaving a faint imprint of rose-tinted balm, and folded it carefully. She sealed it with wax from the candle on her desk, pressing her own ring into the soft red pool—the imperial seal of the Empress of the French.
"Deliver this to the Emperor immediately." She handed it to the exhausted messenger. "Personally. Place it in his hands and no one else's."
"Yes, Your Majesty." He bowed and fled.
The room fell silent. The pile of letters seemed to pulse on every surface, Jensen's desperate handwriting covering the furniture like a confession of love too powerful to contain. Lalisa stood in the middle of it all, her heart hammering against her ribs like a trapped bird.
She had meant the line as a gentle rebuke, a way of telling him to breathe, to trust, to stop drowning in his own fears. But even as she'd written it, she had known how it would land. Jensen would read it as a challenge. His pulse would quicken. His jaw would tighten. And then—
He would write back. Longer. Harder. More desperate.
And the cycle would continue. It had always been this way between them, a dance of pursuit and retreat, accusation and provocation. He chased, she teased, he begged, she relented, and in the relenting there was a sweetness that made all the chaos worthwhile.
She moved to the window, pressing her palm against the cold glass. The sun was setting over the Tuileries gardens, painting the sky in shades of amber and rose. Somewhere out there, beyond the horizon, Jensen was reading her words. His finger would trace the imprint of her kiss. His breath would catch in his throat.
And by dawn, another rider would arrive with another letter.
She smiled, despite herself.