Enchantée(25)

Camille couldn’t stand the way Sophie was looking at her: knowingly, as if hiding a sly laugh. This was Sophie’s forte, after all—court ways and etiquette, fashion and rank—and in her dream to eventually become an aristocrat, she’d learned as much as she could. From Maman, who’d grown up at court but renounced it all when she fell in love with Papa and his revolutionary ideals, from the courtly invitations Papa printed to bring in money, from the customers Sophie waited on at Madame Bénard’s.

“But we went to Versailles for the balloon launch with Papa. And you’ve been there with Alain, haven’t you?”

“We were only visitors then, and the private rooms were roped off, guards posted at doors and stairs. It’s the home of the king and queen. The Hall of Mirrors, the gardens—there are hundreds of rooms, suites, hallways. Most of them private.” With her hands, Sophie traced labyrinths in the air. “You won’t be able to simply slip in there and play cards.”

Camille didn’t wish to play cards. She wanted to steal things. She wanted to cheat, and not care—take as much as she could, pawn it all, and get away from this place and leave behind the cracks in the plaster, the empty fireplace, her numb fingers, her hunger. Most of all—though she couldn’t think of it without guilt—she wanted enough money to get away from her brother.

“I must find a way,” Camille hissed. She was horribly gratified to see Sophie flinch.

“What about Grandmère? Couldn’t she help us? I remember she let me play in her jewel box when we visited her, when I was little. She had an enormous house,” Sophie said, warming to the subject. “You’re certain that Grandmère is … dead? When Maman told us stories of when she lived in a grand chateau and went to court, wasn’t that with Grandmère?”

“I suppose.” The stories of Maman’s childhood, told while she brushed their hair or tucked them into bed, had felt so real. Costly dresses, a tiny lapdog, a diamond-fretted bracelet she was allowed to wear when she was six. Beautiful stories as if cribbed from Perrault’s fairy tales. But Maman had willingly given all that up when she met Papa. In the end that fantasy childhood was nothing but sweet and fleeting dreamstuff, like the fluff Alain fed Sophie now. “I wrote to Grandmère, you know.”

Sophie stared.

“After Maman and Papa died. I found a letter from her, from before we were born.” Camille had unearthed it at the bottom of her mother’s bureau. Written in an exquisite aristocratic hand, on thick paper, the letter informed Camille’s mother that since she had disobeyed her own mother’s wishes and married a printer—the word underlined so savagely Camille could feel the gouge with her finger—she was to consider herself cut from the family. “I hoped she would help us,” Camille said as the old hurt resurfaced, its nails still sharp.

“She said no?”

“The letter was returned, unopened. Maybe she sent it back, or maybe she’s dead,” Camille said, taking a shaking breath. A memory surged back: a closed door, a crowded street, her father’s shattered face.

“But Alain—”

“Forget Alain! If you had seen him, Sophie—” The Alain who had been her brother, juggling plates to make her laugh, was gone. “He can’t help us. He can’t even help himself. The rent is overdue. Madame Lamotte said she would throw us out. Now she will. I know it. Sophie, there are girls on the street, younger than you, selling themselves in a doorway for a livre or two,” she said grimly. “That cannot be us.”

“Then what?” Tears hung in Sophie’s blue eyes. “What will we do?”

It was easy, and it was not. “We will survive,” Camille said. “I’m going to Versailles to gamble.” Seeing Sophie’s shock, Camille pressed on. “The man who holds Alain’s debts is from Versailles. That’s where the stakes are the highest, that’s where people play the richest games. And there are no duc’s men ready to throw me out.”

“At Versailles, you must be an aristocrat—and you can’t pass for one.”

Couldn’t she? Putting her hand to her throat, Camille pulled a fine gold chain out from under her chemise. A tiny golden key swung on it.

“Not the glamoire.” Sophie shook her head. “Maman said it was wrong. Too dangerous.”

Nothing was more dangerous than the path they were on. They’d first put their feet on it when Papa began to print his revolutionary pamphlets. At night, in secret. The money he made by printing invitations and cards and books for the wealthy men and women of Paris paid for all of it. And for a long time—long enough for Camille to learn how to help him print those pamphlets—it worked. He’d pulled the wool over the eyes of the aristos, and he reveled in the deception. He had not, however, expected to be seen by the Vicomte de Parte as he nailed up a pamphlet outlining reasons for abolishing the aristocracy. The vicomte told everyone. Papa’s rich clients vanished without paying their bills. Then the shop disappeared. And soon after, Papa and Maman too were gone.

What Papa had done was right. It was the world that was wrong.

But she’d not walk this crooked path any longer.

She would change it, just like she changed the cards and the scraps of metal she dug from the dirt, until it no longer resembled anything she knew.

She would change herself.