Enchantée(65)

“Still, one minute more and d’Astignac would have wagered the lease for his house!” Camille said.

“Bah! He only mentions it to lure unsuspecting ladies into his trap,” said Aurélie with a smirk. “Then, he trounces you.”

Camille frowned, half-serious. “No one trounces me.”

“Not yet. Besides,” Chandon observed, “too much winning isn’t good for anyone. Remember?”

Camille ducked her head. She’d been unwise. In the thrill of the moment, it was all too easy to forget. “I’ll be more careful, I promise.”

“Careful about what?” Aurélie asked.

“Allons-y!” Taking a lantern from a table, Chandon ushered them through the doors. “Cache-cache awaits.”

The moonlit night was cool relief after the heat of the gaming rooms. Their pastel-colored clothes glowed in the darkness as they ran between the pools of the Water Parterre and down the stone steps to the next parterre, where a party was taking place under a large silken tent, glowing with rose-colored candles. In the vague darkness, it shimmered like a moth’s wing. The queen and her friends were dining at a long table, jumbled with glasses and plates and food. Stumbling around the edge of the tent, a blindfolded courtier fell into a man’s lap; Marie Antoinette and her favorite, the Duchess de Polignac, burst out laughing. Next to the queen, a man in a foreign uniform poured champagne until it frothed over the lips of the glasses.

“Something new, those tinted candles?” Chandon asked idly as they went by, keeping well away from the party.

“All the rage, mon ami,” Aurélie said, linking arms with Camille and Chandon as they headed down the slope. “If you want them, you must order in advance, and after you order, you must wait. Can you imagine: a queue for candles?”

It is nothing compared to a queue for bread, Camille thought, but she kept it to herself.

Two soaring walls of yew trees—so tall they blocked out the stars—edged the stretch of lawn known as the Green Carpet. Against their plush gloom, marble statues of Roman gods and goddesses glowed eerily white.

“They’re like ghosts,” Aurélie said with a shiver.

“Shh, the real ghosts will hear you.” Chandon stared down the expanse of shadowy green. “Where are the others?”

“There.” Aurélie pointed straight ahead. “Someone’s coming out of the trees.”

Two figures stepped out of the hedge: one wore a crown of flowers; the other one, golden-haired, stopped and raised his arm. “Dépêchez-vous!” the Vicomte de Séguin shouted. “The game’s nearly over!”

“Séguin,” muttered Chandon. “Always appearing where he’s not wanted.”

“Some may want him,” Aurélie said, squeezing Camille’s arm. “Even though he’s not a marquis like you, Chandon, he is terribly rich and handsome, if you like your lover to resemble a gold statue. I’ve caught him looking at our baroness with something very much like longing.”

“Hardly,” Camille said, though she knew what Aurélie meant about the way he stared. “More like he’s hoping to catch me cheating.”

When they reached the middle of the lawn, Séguin had already disappeared into the hedges and Julien Aubert, Baron de Guilleux, strode up to them. Strikingly sunburned, as if he spent long hours out of doors, with a beaky nose like a Roman emperor, Guilleux was all warmth and smiles. Against his golden-brown skin, his sea-green eyes nearly glowed. He had a tumbler of red wine in his hand, which he finished off and then set neatly in the grass.

“Bienvenue à nos jeux!” He beamed. “Everyone, welcome to our entertainments!”

“Julien’s an officer in the navy—and our host,” Aurélie said in Camille’s ear. “The midnight garden revels, including this game of cache-cache, are his invention. Isn’t he terribly clever?”

Greeting them all with kisses, even Camille, he crowned them with wildflower circlets like his own. Only Aurélie’s was fashioned of tiny pink roses that gleamed against her ebony hair; by the way the baron looked at Aurélie with unabashed admiration, Camille suspected he’d planned it.

“You’ve come just in time, mes amis,” Guilleux said. “The others have already taken their hiding places. Per our usual rules, the person who’s le loup—the wolf—guards the Fountain of Apollo—the one with the bronze horses and chariot. Put your hand in the fountain’s water and you are safe. Be touched by le loup, however, and you must hunt with le loup.”

“Hunt with the wolf?” Camille laughed.

Guilleux pretended to launch an arrow from an imaginary bow. “To help him, bien s?r, and find all the others who are hiding.”

“And what’s our prize? If we’re the last to be found?” Aurélie asked.

“A gondola ride on the Grand Canal.” Guilleux smiled when he saw their surprised faces. “My valet arranged it.” He waved toward the Apollo fountain, where a shadow stood out against the water, waiting. “Count again, will you?” Guilleux shouted to the boy standing there. “We’ve three more who want to play.”

While the boy counted, his voice muffled, the others scrambled into the maze of hedges and topiary surrounding the fountain. Camille had hoped to hide with Chandon, but he vanished quickly into the maze of yews. Ducking as branches scratched at her face, Camille ran on. Behind the statues, shadows deepened: good places to hide. She squeezed in behind a figure of Proserpine. No one would see her; she could barely see her own hand. But she could see the fountain, and the shape of the boy who was le loup, straight ahead of her. As soon as he went to look for the others, she’d run to put her hand in the water.