Enchantée(68)

It didn’t do much to reassure her, but it was something. Lazare held his coat out behind her, just as he had in the balloon. When she stepped backward into its warmth, his hands brushed her bare neck, just as they had when as they’d sailed over Paris. She’d thought then that he’d done it because he cared about her, because he wanted to have the excuse to touch her. But now? Why did he do it now if he hadn’t recognized her?

Perhaps—a prickling, painful thought—he was this kind to all the girls he met. Perhaps he did take other girls up in the tower at Notre-Dame and tell them, too, that they’d bewitched him.

She did not know anymore.

He went to where Foudriard stood with Chandon, his face still white and flat as a sheet. Lazare bent his dark head to Chandon’s walnut-colored one. She couldn’t hear what they said, but eventually, Chandon laughed, gripped Lazare’s shoulder. He was kind; she could not deny it.

At the far end of the linden walk, a flutter of movement. “Someone’s coming,” she said.

Led by a boy holding a candelabra of ice-blue candles, Marie Antoinette, in a simple white dress, strolled toward them. Next to her, a man in a foreign uniform walked languidly, picking wildflowers.

“How lovely she still is,” Aurélie murmured. “Can you believe she is thirty-four? Some say she drinks secret potions to keep her complexion. Arsenic—or magic.”

“Arsenic, most likely,” said Chandon. He raised his eyebrow significantly at Camille.

Did he mean the queen used magic?

“Of course it’s arsenic! Magic doesn’t exist,” Aurélie protested. “Not anymore. Everyone knows that.”

“Do they?” Chandon’s voice had an edge she hadn’t noticed before. “Magic built the Palace of Versailles. What makes you think it’s gone?”

“Wouldn’t we know if it was still here? For myself, I’d love there to be magic all around,” Aurélie said with a glance at Guilleux. “Love potions, especially.”

Chandon coughed. He was trying to tell Camille something, she was certain of it. “What sort of magic does the queen use?” she asked him, under her breath.

“A kind of disguise. But she is no magician.”

A glamoire? But if not a magician, how could she work one?

Lazare overheard them. “If it is magic,” he said, “then I have even less respect for her than before. Taking blood from others and using it to enrich themselves—why should the magicians have been allowed to stay at court after the things they did?”

Camille stared at Chandon. Taking blood from others? What did Lazare mean? Was this something else Maman had never told her?

“The magicians were bloodsuckers?” Aurélie asked, a thrill in her voice.

“That and worse. La magie is detestable,” Lazare said, coldly. “It was one of the tools of the ancien régime, the old days. Magic has no place in this age of Enlightenment.”

A tool of the old way of ruling that had been in place for hundreds of years, magic was part of the system by which nobles had everything, the people nothing. What grim work had they done, her magician ancestors? Had they truly drained people of blood, like vampires in folktales? If so, they’d wanted the power that came from working blood magic—but not to suffer its cost. It was terribly wrong. She was repulsed that it might even have been possible.

“But why—” Camille began.

“Hush now, my revolutionaries, here they come,” said Chandon.

As the entourage drew close, Aurélie, Camille, and all the boys bowed deeply.

The queen paused before them and smiled. “Up, up, everyone! Etiquette holds no sway in my gardens. It is refreshing to see young people out in the greenery. Soon the sun rises,” she warned, as she swept away. “Be quick with your games.”

Foudriard threw his arm over Chandon’s shoulders. “We must hurry, the queen commands it.”

Camille watched the queen glide back toward the palace. The uniformed man handed her the bouquet he’d picked and her ladies ambled behind her, the hems of their dresses soaked with dew. As the group headed away, the boy with the candelabra of sky-blue candles ran to catch up and, in that instant, Camille knew him: the chandler’s apprentice with the fancy airs, the one who’d taken her turned louis without a second thought. He cast a glance at Aurélie, then Camille, before rushing past them, candle flames wavering. They were all court ladies to him—once again, she’d gone unseen.

Aurélie sighed. “The queen has the dashing Count von Fersen at her beck and call—and that poor chandler, the one whose candles are impossible to buy! How he stares at her! Perhaps she will make him Court Chandler.” She cast a teasing glance at Guilleux. “He is not bad to look at, either.”

Guilleux crossed his arms and started walking away, his good humor gone. “You cannot make me envious of a chandler who waits on the queen, hoping to rise.”

Coming from the other direction, Séguin bowed as he passed the queen, who stopped and exchanged a few words with him.

“Who could possibly envy the poor?” he called as he strode closer. “They are a repulsive lot.”

“I hate to agree with the vicomte but it’s true—the poor are dreadfully boring,” Aurélie said. “Let’s speak of something else!”