Enchantée(43)

“Absolutely not,” he said, as charming as ever. “I’ll come for you in a carriage. Tell me your address.” He looked at her, expectantly, as if this were the most normal thing in the world.

She felt the precipice ahead of her, her toes on the edge. She could say it wasn’t possible. It would be easy to curtsey and smile and mumble something polite about having to go, or perhaps another time, and escape into the street. She’d be safe.

But that was the rub. The hesitant, shimmering feeling of what if. Like a playing card that hadn’t yet been flipped to reveal its face. A gift that hadn’t been opened. She wanted to reach out her hand and take it. But what if she missed?

Lazare’s smile faltered. “I promise I won’t lurk outside your door.” He seemed to be struggling with something and it made Camille feel better. Less alone in her fear. Less outside.

“Listen, mademoiselle,” he said, “despite the awkward thing of almost crashing the balloon, I am fairly reliable.” He put his hand on his heart. “I swear.”

He was so vulnerable in that moment her fear disappeared.

“The tall house with the gray door in the rue Charlot, number eleven.” And before he could say anything more, she opened the door and went out into the street.





22


When Camille stopped in at Madame Bénard’s to tell Sophie how the visit to the workshop had gone, she did not get a warm welcome. Ushering Camille away from her wealthy clients as if she might dirty them just by being in the room, Madame informed her Sophie had already gone home. Camille couldn’t believe it.

“Oh, but she has! She finished her work—What speed! What delicacy! What fantasy!—before leaving with a young man. Not a client, bien s?r, someone else.” Madame Bénard raised her eyebrows meaningfully. “Or maybe a brother?”

Impossible, Camille thought as she let the door swing closed behind her. Sophie would have told her if she had seen Alain, or met someone. Wouldn’t she? A year ago, yes. Camille was certain of that. But now? She didn’t know. Not to a certainty. Two days ago, when they’d talked about Alain, Camille had the creeping sensation that Sophie didn’t look like her sister at all. In the way a mirror can be tilted to show another part of a room, Camille had looked at her sister and seen someone else. Someone different.

But when Camille ran up the stairs and through the door, Sophie was there, her golden hair spilling loose around her shoulders, her feet in their cotton stockings up on the chair, an enormous silk chapeau in her lap. “How was it? Tell me now!”

After Camille described what had happened and was crossed-examined about every detail of expression and conversation, Sophie shook her head wonderingly. “It’s like something from a fairy tale.”

“It is not,” Camille protested. As if good things happened only in stories. “Lazare is nothing like a prince and I am nothing like a princess.”

“True,” Sophie mused. “Maybe it’s a different type of tale. You’re more like the pathetic little sister, sorting flax seeds while blind or some other impossible task.”

“Lest you forget, I’m the older sister.”

“That doesn’t mean you know everything.” She set the hat aside and fixed her eyes sternly on Camille. “For example, how will you succeed tomorrow, at the Petit Trianon?”

“As I showed you. I’ll use la magie to turn the cards.”

“I meant in terms of the Rules of the Game.”

“I know the rules to every card game there is.”

“Not those. How to behave. Etiquette. Maman taught me and I can teach you. If you ask nicely.”

Though she didn’t want to admit it, she did need Sophie’s help. She winced when she thought of how she’d not only mistaken the Chevalier Foudriard for Aurélie’s husband, but actually said it out loud.

“There are so many things I don’t know. It feels hopeless. You’ll help?”

“Sit up straight, then,” Sophie said imperiously. “We begin immédiatement.”

For the rest of that day and into the next, Camille didn’t leave the apartment. She gnawed on day-old bread and nibbled bits of cheese, feeling like one of the gray mice in Perrault’s story before it was transformed into an elegant horse. There were so many things to learn it made her head ache. How to sit, how to stand, how to walk as if floating. How to address strangers, how to address the king and queen. How to speak to servants. How some of the people who behaved like servants were in fact aristocrats and had to be treated as such. Which doors to knock on with her knuckles and which doors she should only scratch on, with her fingernails.

“Really?” Camille asked.

“Some courtiers grow an especially long nail for it,” said Sophie.

Camille listened carefully to stories about the old king’s mistresses, the hierarchy of the court, Marie Antoinette’s favorites—everything Maman had told Sophie in their nightly tête-a-têtes, Sophie now told Camille, and pushed her to practice.

In its own way, etiquette was just as exhausting as magic.



* * *



Thursday afternoon, Sophie gave her approval. After Camille put on the cloth-of-gold dress, she took Chandon’s pink card from its hiding place.

On the front was printed: JEUX ET JOIES, and below it, At the Queen’s Pleasure. A pretty circlet of roses framed the words.