Enchantée(117)

“You cannot mean to hurt Sophie to give me more sorrow!” Her voice was small, plaintive as a child’s. “I won’t let you.”

Séguin pointed a ringed finger at her. “Now, now! You promised. What is yours is mine, and what is mine is mine. N’est-ce pas? Come, it won’t all be bad. We’ll mix sorrow and happiness.” He put his arm around her and murmured, “Chandon was a nothing. You and I—together we will rise. Victorious. We will be the court’s second monarchs, the King and Queen of Magic.”

He had conjured for her a nightmare of pain and sadness. And he believed it a beautiful thing.

What was it she’d thought to do, to escape this trap? She could not remember. Her mind was numb as stone. Her limbs too heavy. She tried to resist, but the drug had filled her with suffocating oblivion. It was useless. She sank onto the thick carpet.

Somewhere above her, Séguin snapped his fingers. A door opened.

“Monsieur?” the valet asked.

“The next apartment,” Séguin said. “Now.”





62


Séguin and his valet carried Camille to another apartment farther down the long hall. The valet pressed his hand over her mouth. His hand was so large it covered her nose. She was in danger of fainting.

Suddenly, at the end of the hall, a light bobbed: a candle. Someone was coming. Someone would save her.

Camille writhed and kicked to get loose.

“Remember your place, mademoiselle,” the valet said, cuffing her with the back of his hand.

“Attention—not like that, you fool,” Séguin said. “You don’t hurt her.”

“Unless she acts up,” the valet said.

“Unless she acts up,” Séguin agreed.

Woozily, the dress showed her a memory: the deep silence of the charred box. Camille knew what the dress was trying to tell her. She must bluff and pretend. Be silent.

And wait. She let her head loll against Séguin’s silk-clad shoulder.

He reached up and patted her cheek. “We’re almost there.”



* * *



When Camille woke, the moon was a high white coin in the dark sky.

Her head throbbed. She sat up and rubbed her temples, taking in her surroundings. She had slept, apparently, on a sofa in an unfamiliar room. In the dim light, she saw it had been hastily vacated. Dark rectangles on the walls showed where paintings had hung, bureau drawers yawned open, and abandoned clothes lay crumpled on the floor and flung over the backs of chairs. Pieces of broken mirror glinted on the dressing table. It was as if the levelers of the Bastille had stormed in and ransacked this room.

The events of the evening came back to her, memories and conversations like swaths of smoke. She had been so naive. She’d believed Séguin would simply turn Sophie over to her. But he had prepared. The poisoned wine was waiting. He’d found an empty room in which to imprison her.

Camille rose unsteadily and went to the door. She pressed her ear against it and listened. It was quiet. Slowly she turned the door handle. Locked, of course. How many hours were left before she could see Sophie? At the edge of the horizon, the black sky blurred to deep blue. It was past midnight, then, maybe two or three o’clock. The windows opened, but there was nothing outside—no drainpipe, no ivy—that she could climb down to escape. She could call for help, but who would hear her?

And if she somehow escaped, what would happen to Sophie?

Now that she knew what Séguin wanted from her, she must shuffle the deck, rearranging the cards she’d been dealt and how she might play them.

There had to be another way.

Since Maman and Papa died, there had been no one to help her. There had been no one to take over and say, Sit back. I will take care of you. She’d had to do it herself. La magie had been her tool and in some grim way, an outstretched hand. It pulled her up and out of the despair that followed her parents’ deaths, Sophie’s illness, Alain’s descent into drink and debt. She’d hoped to give it up. But without it, what did she have?

If only she could understand why Séguin needed her. She’d thought it might be love. But not any longer. What he did felt nothing like love. It was instead a desperate need for more magic. But what great expenditure of magic was he making, such that he drained the life from Chandon and was ready to do the same to her? She could not fathom why he needed so much.

She didn’t think she could muster the energy to work the glamoire once more to change her dress. Someone—she hated to think which one of them it had been—had undressed her down to her chemise. Her stays, her hoops, and the court dress lay on the floor. It looked sad and shapeless, abandoned, and she had to turn her back to it to keep from crying. Her mother had worn it, and it hadn’t helped her. Camille had worn it and this was where she had ended up.

In the bluish half-light, though, the dress seemed to shimmer with magic, calling to her. Camille lifted it up, pressed it close, and felt the dress pleading with her, desperate to be worn.

One last time.

As she stepped into the gown, the bodice laced itself. She pricked her finger with the brooch and let three drops of blood fall onto the dress, imagined it pale as morning, silver-gray, almost without color. A mourning gown? A wedding gown? She didn’t know. Listening to her, the dress took her sorrow and transformed, changing its shape, its color bleeding away until it had become the one Camille imagined. It stiffened around her ribs, curving to fit her.