Enchantée(60)

Sorrow swept through her as she remembered what he had been. How much she had loved him, her big brother. Again she took in his dirty, torn clothes. What had happened to him?

“Have pity, Camille!” he begged. “If I have nothing to give, he’ll take my soul.”

Alain was not prone to nightmares and fancies. Or he hadn’t been, before. Was it drink or laudanum that made him think his creditor could take his soul?

“Please,” he begged. “Only ten thousand livres and he’ll let me go.”

“Only ten thousand?” she said, coming back to herself at the mention of such a great sum. It was more than twice the amount she and Sophie had saved. “That’s more than Papa earned in a year!”

“I won’t tell my creditor where you live.”

“And if I don’t give you the money, you will tell him?” Camille snapped. “You’ll sell us as harlots—as you threatened before? You may not care for me, but think of Sophie!”

“I don’t want to do it.” His voice in her ear was a rasp across stone. “Anything you can give me, just so he stops hurting me.”

Something cold slithered across Camille’s back. If this was true, this person—the man Alain was in debt to—was not a normal man. She gestured to his bandaged hand. “Did he do that to your finger?”

Alain said nothing, but Camille saw it in his face. This man had done it. And if he succeeded in breaking him? What would her brother tell him to avoid more pain? Here, in the suffocating dark, he seemed terrified enough to say anything.

It was dangerous, the idea she now had. What if she gave him some money? Just this once? If she did, he might stay away long enough for her and Sophie to escape the rue Charlot. Tomorrow.

“What if I gave you—” What was the right amount? She and Sophie still needed enough to get away. “One thousand?”

Alain clasped her hands and kissed them, his shoulders shaking.

How had it come to this? Her brother, once so handsome and clever and strong, teaching her to play cards and juggle, was now a raving drunkard. Addicted to gambling or laudanum or both. She still remembered the light in Maman’s face when he had first come home in his uniform, the buttons on his coat gleaming like tiny suns. With Maman gone, who was left to believe in him?

“I’ve been waiting for you every night, ma soeur. This is good, a good start, but I’m going to need a lot more to appease him.”

“I don’t have more—”

He crushed her hands. “I see you when you go to Versailles. I know you go there to gamble. Work magic, too, non? What if I told the constable you use counterfeit coins? Told someone at Versailles?”

Fresh anger crackled through her. It always came back to this—no matter everything they’d shared, she was no longer a person to him but a way to get money. He’d been hiding in a doorway, watching as she stumbled exhausted to the courtyard gate, and never lifted a hand to help her. Where was the brother who had pulled her up, shown her the dazzling world she couldn’t see?

Utterly gone. Now she too had to get away.

“Constable!” she shouted, adding a tremolo of fear to her voice. “Police! Aidez-moi!”

People in the street, who had ignored them until now, stopped, stared, waiting for something to happen. One of them passed on her call: “Police! Dépêchez-vous!”

The crowd rumbled closer, angry.

His back to them, Alain grabbed Camille’s arm and shook it once, hard, like a dog shakes a rat to break its neck. “I won’t forget this. This will cost you.”

“It’s already costing me,” she said bitterly. But tomorrow they’d be gone. “Promise you’ll never bother me again and I’ll leave the money for you with Madame Lamotte.”

“Fine.” He let go of her arm.

“Stay away from me and Sophie. Understand?”

But Alain had already disappeared into the dark.





32


H?tel Théron was a beautiful fortress. A high wall protected the house from the street, the only entrance to the courtyard an iron gate topped with spikes. Through the black bars Camille glimpsed a mansion of pale stone, its windows reflecting the hot June sky. The house itself was serene and unconcerned. Alain’s appearance at the gate had been the final warning, one she could only disregard at her peril. They had to find another place to live.

“Truly, that’s the one?” Sophie asked. “It’s so—”

“Imposing?” Even after Camille’s time at Versailles and all its blinding excesses, it was a different thing altogether to imagine living in such a place.

Sophie sniffed. “Modest. I thought Aurélie would have recommended something much finer.”

“You know, I haven’t actually become a wealthy aristocrat,” Camille said.

“We are aristocrats. At least half-aristocrats. And I thought you said—”

“I asked for simple.” Camille checked the address Aurélie had scribbled on a receipt for hair powder. “This is the one: rue Saint-Claude, near the church.”

“But I wore my best dress.” Both of them had. Camille had planned to work a glamoire, but Sophie convinced her it was best not to: did she want to have to work magic every day, to disguise herself from their landlord? She did not. They’d laced themselves into their finest silk dresses, trimmed with ruffles and lace. Camille had chosen a ribboned cloak, while Sophie’s cartwheel of a straw hat—one of her own very popular designs—slanted becomingly over her forehead.