Enchantée(106)

“He must have loved my mother. But then,” he said, despair etching his words, “why has he done this to me? He says I’m a Frenchman. The court at Versailles says I’m Indian. Why is it either/or? Can I not be both?”

“You are both. If we aren’t free to be who we wish to be, what else is there?”

“And yet, here we are.”

“You say it as if we’re both trapped, that we will never break free.” Trapped, free—what did it matter if there were still secrets between them? “Tell me,” she said, “what did your parents wish you to do when they sent you to court, these past weeks? Was it connected to the money for the balloon?”

Lazare flinched, as if she’d hit him. “Rosier told you?”

“He told me only that you were distraught, and that you’d refused your parents’ money. That was why I came.”

“They intended to be generous, but they had so many conditions.” His voice was hollow. “They wished me first to meet a girl, here at Versailles. If I liked her, they told me, they would arrange a marriage. But I never intended—”

“The daughter of the Comte de Ch?mes?” It hurt more than she thought it would to speak of the pretty girl with the white-blond hair. “She was in your box at the opera, surely you considered it—”

“Is that what you think of me?” Lazare asked, bewildered. “Have I not done everything in my power to show you how I feel about you—all the while keeping your secret, for as long as you wished it? Yes, I sat with her in my parents’ box, danced with her at the masquerade, but only to satisfy them. To buy myself time before I lied to my parents and told them I’d tried, but I could never marry her. Because I loved someone else.”

Camille’s breathing was shallow, too fast. She reached out, grasped the trunk of one of the orange trees. Pinpricks of darkness flickered at the edges of her sight. She felt close to fainting. She had been so utterly wrong.

“Who did you think I was, Camille? I refused my parents’ money because I didn’t want to be beholden to them in any way. You’re just like these courtiers—believing in gossip and appearances when you might have asked me. You might have told me the truth.”

“I wanted to, tonight. I wish I had done it before.”

His fierce gaze roamed her face, caressing her cheeks, her chin, and dropping dangerously to her lips. In the darkness, his eyes were deep pools. More than anything, she wanted to kiss him. To put all of this confusion and hurt away, into a box they would never open again. To start anew.

She took a step closer, so close she heard the intake of his breath, felt the heat rise off his skin.

He drew her nearer, dwindling the space between them. “This is what we should have been doing all the while, don’t you agree?”

“I do.” She tilted her face up to his. That mouth.

“Camille,” he said, tenderly tracing the line of her jaw. “After all this time, all this wondering, it is really you, isn’t it?”

She saw herself reflected in his eyes, the gleam of starlight in them. He bent his head to her. Reaching up to touch him, her fingers grazed his hip—and the wide sash from which his sword’s scabbard hung.

The duel.

“Lazare?”

Taking her hand, he turned it over and kissed her palm.

His touch sent shivers along her skin. “Please, listen—do not fight the Vicomte de Séguin.”

Lazare let go of her hand. His face was suddenly, frighteningly closed. “Do not ask that of me.”

“He’s a dangerous magician. He’s been blackmailing Chandon, threatening him—that’s why Chandon cheated you at faro.” She rushed on, trying to help him see. “This duel is part of some terrible plan. Chandon told me to take you away from here.”

Lazare exhaled, running fingers roughly through his hair. “Magician or not, he dishonored me. He cheated. He threatened to speak to my father. He called me a savage.”

There had been so many times since the game of cache-cache that she’d tried to explain away his birth. Fine clothes, fine manners—probably fine houses and horses and who knows what else. The true Lazare, she’d convinced herself, was the one that wanted to fly a balloon over the Alps. Who believed in the power of science to liberate people, to open their minds to new truths. To see things differently. To hope.

“If not for me, then for your old tutor,” she pleaded. “Didn’t you say he showed you a different kind of honor? A different way to be?”

“I’m trapped, Camille.”

Nothing was worth this ancient aristocratic idea of honor. “Please, Lazare. I don’t want you to die!”

“I must go through with this,” he said, bitterly, “otherwise I cannot live with myself.”

“But it’s foolish, and wrongheaded, can you not see that?” she pleaded. “It’s not who you are!”

He looked at her hard, his face taut with sorrow. “Then you do not know me.”

Without another word, he left her, his sword swinging at his side as he disappeared into the dark.





56


Camille blundered through the trees. She found herself not near the stables at all, but lost in a small grove that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere. The trees had hands to grab at her, roots to trip her. Branches snapped in her face and the path diminished into a track fit only for rats. Dawn was coming, but it was pitch-dark under the trees.