Enchantée(18)

Camille watched him walk off with long strides, his coat billowing behind him. Each step he took pulled at her inside until she felt something would snap. But to call him back? To reveal herself that way felt too dangerous when she didn’t know how he felt. She bit the edge of her fingernail, worrying at it.

He was nearly at the street when he stopped. “But you’ll still come to our aeronauts’ workshop, mademoiselle?” he called out.

Hadn’t she wanted something more, the day of the balloon? A bigger life? Then why did saying yes to this boy feel like standing at the edge of a precipice and stepping into air? It should have felt easy, but it didn’t.

“Say yes,” Sophie nudged. “Remember, he likes you.”

Lazare waited, fidgeting with the edge of his coat.

It was just him. It wasn’t a precipice. It was only a tiny step.

“When?” she asked.

A smile spread slowly across his face. “Truly?” He told her where the workshop was and suggested they meet there on Wednesday. “I’ll need the time to prepare Armand,” he said.

“He dislikes me so much?”

He shook his head. “I’m teasing. Though, on second thought, perhaps not.”

“Well, until then,” Camille said, pointedly ignoring Sophie’s look of triumph.

He hesitated. “One thing more, mademoiselle.”

“Yes?”

“If there is any trouble from the person who blackened your eye, tell me. Because, pardieu, whoever he is, he will have to answer to me.”



* * *



“He would have walked us home,” Sophie said once they had left the grassy carpets and plush hedges of the Place des Vosges.

“He was being kind, that’s all.”

“He invited you to his workshop.” Sophie rolled her eyes. “Truly, you are the most resistant to romance of any person I know.”

She didn’t want to respond to that. The less said about the confusing boy the better. There was something she wished to know, though. “What did the vicomte give you, Sophie? Was it his card?”

“Why should I tell you? You’ll only be angry.”

“Show me.”

Sophie opened her hand. In it lay a square of the palest mint-green paper, barely as wide as her palm, with the boy’s names and titles—Jean-Baptiste de Vaux, Vicomte de Séguin—engraved across it, very much like the expensive cards her father had resentfully printed to cover the costs of his pamphlets. It was soft from being clutched in her fist.

“à moi.” Camille held out her hand for it.

Sophie slipped it into her purse. “It’s mine.”

Camille gritted her teeth to stop herself from saying something she’d regret. This was where Alain’s tales about girls swept off their feet by princes led. “You don’t know the ways of the world, ma chère.”

“And you’re an expert?”

“Just—don’t trust as much. Be careful … of things.”

“How specific you are.” Sophie found a clump of grass on her skirt and flicked it off.

“You know what I mean,” said Camille, exasperated.

“Do you mean runaway carriages?” Sophie said, knowingly. “Or is it handsome noblemen we’re to be wary of? What about handsome balloon pilots?” Sophie poked Camille in the arm.

“That hurts,” Camille said, pushing her sister’s hand away. “And don’t think you’re being droll—you’re absolutely not.”

The look in Sophie’s large blue eyes said she knew she was very droll indeed. “Alors,” she said, tucking her hand under Camille’s elbow and giving her arm a squeeze. “I will no longer be droll. But, sérieusement, Camille—how he looked at me! Don’t you see that the attention of someone as important as the vicomte is a good thing? A way out?”

Camille fumed. Couldn’t Sophie see that a rich nobleman was no real security, nothing assured at all? “But it’s not the right way out, Sophie,” she said, feeling she’d never convince her.

“Bah!” Sophie laughed. “In the end, who can say which way is right and which way is wrong, as long as one of them leads to happiness?”





11


On the way home they stopped at a patisserie so that, as Sophie insisted, they could recover from their fright. They paid with turned coins and walked away as quickly as possible. They were so hungry they ate the pastries the way stray dogs would, on the street outside their apartment, while people stared. Camille didn’t care. The buttery flakes and the sweet marzipan tasted like sunbeams. After the pastry was gone, she licked her fingers, too. Her stomach filled, a sense of well-being came to her. They had the medicine they needed; Sophie had not been hurt. All of that was good. And underneath, a secret, almost painful joy: she’d seen Lazare again. She would visit his workshop in three days.

It was a far-off gleam, like a candle in a window. Waiting. Beckoning.

On the winding stairs to the apartment, Camille nearly tripped over Fant?me, who was lounging on the last step. “What’s he doing here?”

“Chat méchant,” Sophie scolded as she scooped him into her arms. “Naughty cats won’t get anything for supper but nasty mice they have to catch all by themselves.” The black cat snuggled against her shoulder and began to purr.