Enchantée(37)

“Paris—the rue Charlot.”

“I can take you as far as the Hall des Blés.” The farmer pulled his horse to a stop and patted the bench beside him. Grateful, Camille took his rough hand and swung up, tucking her skirts around her legs.

“Merci, monsieur. You’re heading to Paris to sell grain?”

“Barley—and some wheat,” he added in a low voice. “I put those sacks underneath; no need to advertise it. Wheat’s like gold to people and I’m liable to be robbed. Or accused of hiding it to sell to the rich. Not sure which is worse. My friends say I’ll be rich, too, with wheat prices climbing to the sky. But I don’t like it. I’d rather get less and not be afraid.”

“People would steal from a farmer?”

He shrugged his big shoulders. “Can you blame them? Criers on the streets shout that aristocrats make cakes from wheat and children’s blood. They don’t know any better.”

“Those things—they aren’t true.” Papa had printed provocative pamphlets but nothing like that. The rule, he’d said, was to explain, not inflame.

“Bien. You and I know that,” he muttered. “But when people don’t know what’s really happening, rumors start. And that’s when you’ve got to be careful.” The farmer reached behind him and pulled out an empty sack. “Wrap this around yourself, mademoiselle. You’ve hardly got any clothes on.”

The old court gown had a deep neckline, she remembered with a twinge of embarrassment. She tugged the sack around her shoulders.

“You work at the chateau?”

She shook her head.

“I suppose if you did, you’d know better.”

“Know what, monsieur?”

He gave the reins a shake. His hands reminded her of her father’s: strong, capable. “Girls shouldn’t walk along the road so close to the palace. I’d never let my own daughters flounce around Versailles.”

“Oh?” Imagine if she told him what she’d just done. “Why is that?”

“Good thing I’m here to tell you.”

“Go on, then.” Camille settled against the rough board that served as a backrest. From her shoulder she unpinned the diamond brooch and slipped it into her pocket with the eight gold louis and the card Chandon had given her.

“First the men. All they want is…” he said, ticking off on his fingers a list of all the things they wanted that put young girls like her in peril. Camille rubbed her neck. The rolling of the cart and the farmer’s comfortable voice made her limbs heavy. She felt as if she’d been awake for days. Now that the glamoire was gone, her body was becoming her own again, thin and shaky. The dress’s troubling aliveness was fading, as if it too were tired, ready to sleep.

“And the ladies?” Camille asked.

“They’ll wear you to the bone with all their demands, the fetching and carrying. Even if they give you their castoffs.” The farmer frowned pointedly at her tattered gown. “Be on your guard, mademoiselle. Rakes and hooligans, all of them, in that chateau.” He waggled a dirt-caked finger at her. “You never know what they might do.”

“C’est vrai.” You never knew. She’d gone to Versailles hating the nobles for their riches, their arrogance, the way they believed France and its people existed just for them. To serve them, or to crush if they chose. Certainly that was what Papa would have seen, tonight, in their manners and their idle games. But—and she was suddenly glad that Papa had not seen this—she’d liked the play and the players. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

She did know, however, that when she got back to Paris, before she snuck into their apartment on the rue Charlot, she’d count out the louis in her purse and slide them under Madame Lamotte’s door. One month’s rent, one month’s more time.

It was already very early on Tuesday morning. Tomorrow would be Wednesday, the day she’d been invited to the aeronauts’ workshop. It had been less than a week since she’d met Lazare. She thought of how, after she’d agreed to come, he’d walked away backward, smiling. A promise.

Above Paris’s western gates, the evening star glinted like a silver coin.





20


Camille woke halfway through the afternoon to find Sophie poised at the foot of the bed. Waiting. When she started asking questions, Camille flung her arm over her eyes and begged for coffee. Sophie huffed that Camille was developing very refined tastes but agreed to go, taking with her a hat she’d finished trimming to Madame Bénard so she could get paid. The apartment was quiet, Camille’s only company Fant?me, a black comma curled on the wooden floor.

She felt under her pillow for the two pieces of paper she’d hidden there. On one she’d inked the address of Lazare’s workshop and a day: Wednesday. Tomorrow. The promise of that day was like a louis d’or, gleaming in her hand.

The other was Chandon’s pale pink card. A pass into fairyland.

Camille jumped when the door swung open and Sophie came in, a fist-sized bag of coffee in the crook of her arm. “I must say, you look terrible.”

“How kind of you to say that. I feel as if I’ve been run over by a dray wagon.”

“Is it the glamoire?”

“A little.” Camille dragged herself out of bed and dropped into the good chair. “It was a long night.”