Enchantée(119)

Then he kissed her, full on the mouth. He tasted of ash and power and death.





64


Séguin was silent as the carriage sped away from Versailles. Instead of speaking, he half pulled and resheathed his sword over and over, the biting whine of it making Camille’s stomach churn. She’d asked, again, to see Sophie and he’d waved his hand as if swatting a fly. Soon was his answer to everything. He told her to pull back her cloak so that he might see how the necklace he’d given her lay around her throat and reminded her: now that she was the Vicomtesse de Séguin, she should cast off her other jewels. Camille curved her hand around the teardrop brooch pinned on her shoulder, the one she used to draw blood for the glamoire. “This? It’s been in my family for a long time.”

“A sentimental attachment, then.”

Camille nodded.

“I see.” Séguin straightened the cuffs of his coat, adjusting the lace underneath, and drew the curtains.

In the carriage’s suffocating closeness, Camille sought to prepare herself. She knew what she would say to Sophie. She would beg for forgiveness for all the misguided things she had done. And in case anything went wrong—Séguin did something to stop her, though she could not think what he could do that he hadn’t already done—she had the brooch, the dress, a shard of mirror-glass in her pocket. It was not much, but it was not nothing. She remembered how reassuring the snuffbox’s weight in her pocket had been on her first visit to Versailles, and how easily it had slipped away.

Not this time. She refused to give away what she had. As Séguin’s horses raced toward Paris, in their thudding hoofbeats she heard, Sophie, Sophie, Sophie.

Eventually the carriage slowed, the horses blowing, the traces of their harness jingling. Camille sat up as the carriage rolled to a stop. Outside, a bird warbled its liquid call. She leaned forward, listening intently. She should have heard the rumble of dray wagons and the thump of their horses’ heavy hooves, the cries of vegetable sellers and fishmongers advertising their wares, beggars and street-sweepers and knife-sharpeners and women going to market: all the cacophony of Paris stretching itself and coming awake.

“Why is it so quiet?” she asked. “What’s happened?”

Again the bird sang out, its call echoing as if over open ground.

“Where are we? Where have you taken me?” Camille reached for the curtain but Séguin caught her hand.

“In such a hurry to see your sister? I understand, ma chère, I truly do.” He brought her hand to his mouth and kissed the inside of her wrist. “There’s just one bit of business I need to attend to before we can go see her. It shouldn’t take long.” Séguin knocked on the ceiling of the carriage and the coachman opened the door. Camille tried to see past him, but he filled the doorway as he got out.

Camille dug her fingers into the pile of the seat cushion, steadying herself. Carefully, she reached into her pocket and took out the shard of mirror. It glinted in her hand as she closed her fingers around it. As she stepped down, she gave her other hand to Séguin, who stood waiting by the door.

They were not in Paris.

Instead they stood at the edge of a cow pasture. Mist rose, wraithlike, off the damp ground. At the field’s far edge, a grove of trees made a screen against the sky. Close by, under a spreading oak, several horses were hobbled, rhythmically cropping grass. A few people stood near them, their silhouettes vague against the flat grays of dawn. One of them wore the bright blue of a cavalry officer’s uniform. As the fog wavered and thinned, he looked her way.

Foudriard.

Her breath came in short, shallow gasps. She could not think why he would be here.

Close by in the long grass, a divan chair, and in it a reclining figure. Chandon.

No.

There was no other word in her mind, no other sound, as a lanky boy rose smoothly from a crouch to stand next to Foudriard. She knew him, too. His back was toward her, and in his hand he held a sword, a silver slash in the mist. His hair was midnight, and as Foudriard put his hand on the boy’s black coat and said something to him, he turned around.

Lazare.

Helplessly, she watched as he took in the carriage, Séguin, her hand in his—all of it. In his deep brown eyes flashed pain and bewilderment. He tried to take a step forward, but Foudriard held him back.

“Camille?” he faltered.

“What is this?” she said to Séguin. “What are you doing?”

“Come, madame, you are cleverer than that. This is the duel Sablebois demanded, don’t you remember?”

It was as if he’d hit her. She stepped back, trying to understand. “You cannot—”

“I can. And I will.”

Above Séguin’s cravat, a strip of bare skin showed. A tender, vulnerable place. She closed her hand more tightly around the shard. “I forbid it. I won’t—”

His clipped laughter rang across the field. “You have no choice. You will sit and watch. Do you know how a duel plays out? It is nothing like two boys drawing swords by a shrubbery in the gardens at Versailles. We will choose our weapons and face off. One of our seconds—the Baron de Foudriard for him or the Chevalier Lasalle for me—will call for us to start. Then we will fight, and one of us will win.”

The warning came back to her once more, unbidden: Séguin cheats.