Enchantée(50)



“Manners are for Versailles,” Camille said, impatient. “In Paris I’m allowed to be as crass as I please.” Several lengths of trim remained on the floor, waiting to be reattached to the skirt. The matching dancing shoes lay under the chair where she’d kicked them off this morning. Their curved heels were stained grass-green.

Camille’s fingers trembled as she picked up the end of the thread. She tried three times before she was able to slip it through the needle’s tiny eye. Part of it was exhaustion from working the glamoire—that she knew from the smaller magic of turning metal scraps into coins. To turn herself and the dress was magic of a magnitude she’d never worked before. Since Chandon’s warning, she saw it was no longer an isolated thing, but part of magic’s twilight history.

Realizing that this was her own history felt as if a shadow were burrowing under her skin and making itself at home. They were frightened of us then, Chandon had said. Because they saw what we did to achieve it. What we were prepared to do to ourselves.

“When we’ve finished these repairs, we’ll pack,” Sophie said.

“Why?”

Sophie groaned. “Aren’t you finished with Versailles?”

“Because of what the Marquis de Chandon told me?” Camille touched the seam she was working on. The stitches were crooked and would have to come out. “I just need to be careful, that’s all. The court both loves and fears magic. And I must guard myself against the unfriendly magicians, whoever they are.” In the moment, her conversation with Chandon in the dim hallway had seemed so necessary, everything he told her so dangerous. But in the end? He’d only meant she needed to be more circumspect. Less obvious. His warning wasn’t enough to keep her away when she’d come home with such a full purse and there was still more to be won.

“Perhaps the marquis means that the magicians are unfriendly because they’re territorial.” Sophie took another stitch. “Like dogs?”

In the wall behind Camille, something scratched. A crack snaked from the floor to the window where they were sitting. It had been there for months; Madame Lamotte never made repairs. Soon, the crack would widen and become a throughway for mice. Or worse. How big did a hole have to be before rats shouldered their way in?

Camille wanted three months’ rent safe under the hearthstones before they searched for another apartment. She might ask Aurélie if she knew of one—Aurélie seemed to know everything. But what would that rent be, somewhere nicer? Twice as much, four hundred livres? She had twelve hundred now. Three times as much? Six hundred? Or even more, so much so that she could no longer count it in livres but would have to count in louis d’or?

Irritated, she ripped out the stitches, rethreaded her needle. Once again, she dipped the tip of her needle in and out, catching the satin edge of a ribbon of roses and sewing it to the skirt while trying not to compare her long, impatient stitches to Sophie’s invisible ones. As she was pushing the needle in for another pass, Sophie pulled at the skirts and made Camille prick her finger.

“Ouch!” She stuck her finger in her mouth to stop it from bleeding. The dress shifted uneasily in her lap—as if it wanted a taste—and a heave of repulsion turned Camille’s stomach. Sometimes she wished she could quit magic. And she would, as soon as they had enough. “Watch what you’re doing!”

Sophie didn’t seem to hear. She was peering out the window. “There’s a carriage in the street.”

“And?”

“I’ve never seen it before.”

Down below, a carriage, its brass fittings gleaming, had appeared. As Camille watched, its wheels rolled slowly through the mud.

“Probably a new customer for Madame Bénard, no doubt come to buy one of your fantastic hats.”

“Hush, someone’s getting out.”

With a sigh, Camille pushed herself out of the chair and peered down, her stomach tightening at the drop. Someone had stepped out. A boy in a plain brown suit, a spyglass leaning precariously from his coat pocket. Tawny skin, dark hair tied back with a black ribbon. “Oh,” she breathed.

“I told you. I bet he’s come with the surprise.”

Camille gripped the windowsill as, down in the street, Lazare strolled to the next building to check its number. Even from this distance, his movements were lithe, confident. “Dieu,” she said. “He came.”

“That’s usually how it works.” Sophie said, a twist of envy in her voice. “When a boy likes you.”

“How would I know?” Camille said. The last three months had been a fog of hunger and death and dwindling in the slow, stifling grip of not having enough to eat. When she thought back to that time, and even before, when Papa lost the printing shop, she could not recall one promise kept, except the bad ones.

But here Lazare was.

She could watch him all day.

In the street, he pivoted on his heel and walked back to number 11 rue Charlot. He rapped on the heavy courtyard door. And waited. He poked at something in the street with his shoe; he took a notebook from another pocket, hesitated, and put it back. He looked over his shoulder at the coach and shrugged.

Then he tipped his head back and shouted, “Mademoiselle Durbonne! Does anyone know where I may find Mademoiselle Durbonne?”

“Oh là là!” Sophie exclaimed, laughing. “He certainly is impatient.”

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