Enchantée(102)

Lazare groaned. He was now drumming on the table with both hands, agitated. Beneath his wig, the hair at his temples glistened with sweat. He had one more chance with the last card, the one they called the hock.

Please.

Under the table, Aurélie grasped Camille’s hand.

Chandon’s face was completely bleached of color. “Last one,” he said, exhaling shakily. Someone in the crowd shouted “Vive Sablebois!” but was quickly hushed. The only sounds were the ticking of a mantelpiece clock and Lazare’s nervous tapping.

Chandon placed his fingertips on the card and released it from the box. As he slid it out, it bent ever so slightly, and Camille caught a glimpse of the jack’s pointed beard. A jack—Lazare had won!

She watched his grim expression, waiting for it to change to joy.

Chandon flipped the card.

It was a five of hearts.





53


Camille pushed her way through dresses and plumes and the haze of perfume and candles. Lazare had staked so much money—everything he had—and lost it.

All of it, utterly gone.

He had demanded to see the final card and Chandon had handed it to him while all the other players watched, some gossiping behind their fans about Lazare’s unrefined behavior. He’d given the card back to Chandon and staggered away from the table, as if wounded.

She could not comprehend what had happened. No one had kept count on the abacus, so anyone’s guess as to the last three cards would have been based on what he remembered being played. But Camille had seen the last card. And then—for she didn’t doubt what she had seen—Chandon must have turned it. And probably many other cards as well, leading to that final play. That was why no one had kept track of the played cards on the abacus. Chandon had planned to cheat. And to cheat Lazare.

But why?

No matter how she puzzled, it made no sense. Lazare loved Chandon well, as far as Camille could tell. Had they quarreled? But whatever Lazare might have done to Chandon, this was going too far.

She found Chandon by the library’s marble fireplace, warming his hands over the fire in the grate. Which wouldn’t have been strange if it hadn’t been the middle of July.

“Why did you do that? Cheat him?” Camille challenged.

“Camille.” Chandon stared at the fire. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”

“But I did. Explain yourself! Why would you do such a thing? He’s drunk, lost—I thought you and he were friends. Since you were little, taking fencing lessons together!”

“We are, as much as anyone can be in this nest of vipers.” Chandon seemed even more exhausted than he had at the faro table. His once lively, handsome face was ghastly white. “I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand.”

“Tell me how I should understand this, Chandon. You betrayed him.” Camille felt that betrayal as if it were her own.

He inclined his head a fraction of an inch. “I did. But Séguin forced me to do it.”

A finger of ice ran down her back. “How? What did he do?”

The cords in Chandon’s neck were taut as wires. “Blackmail. Magic.”

“Over what?” But then, with a sickening lurch, she knew. “Foudriard?”

Chandon’s mouth worked, his lips struggling to shape the words. He could only nod.

Her heart ached to see him like this. “What he’s done to you—has it made you ill?” All those times she’d seen Chandon sick, exhausted, coughing as if he would retch up blood. Growing weaker and weaker. Aurélie had offered her physician—and Chandon had refused. Too much magic, he’d told her, but only now did she see that whatever the magic was, it hadn’t been his to control. It was not something a physician could cure.

“And worse.”

She clasped his hands. They were fever-hot. “What can I do?”

The tears that had been welling in Chandon’s eyes spilled over. “As a magician, you are in grave danger—you must flee Versailles. Now that I am so—broken—Séguin has grown desperate. Promise me you’ll go now,” he said.

Impulsively, she threw her arms around his neck. His chest convulsed with sobs.

“We will put an end to this,” she said into his ear. All magic eventually wore off. Didn’t it? “Can we not get you away from Versailles? What if we took you over water—to England?”

“I don’t know that it would help,” he faltered. “I suspect Séguin has set a plan in motion in which I am only a bit player. If it succeeds, he will no longer need me. And in any case, I am almost finished—another week or two of this and I’ll be neither pretty to look at nor fun to talk to.”

“Don’t say those things!” She remembered how Maman, exhausted from working la magie, had succumbed so quickly to the smallpox. And now her friend, too? “I won’t watch you die. There has to be something we can do.”

“There is.” He brought her hands to his lips. “Promise me. Stay far from this monstrous place. And get Sablebois away before he discovers Séguin’s cheated him. It will not end well.”

Chandon nodded toward the room beyond the library, where the refreshments had been laid out. “You’ll find him there. Hurry.”