Enchantée(69)

Camille flinched as if she’d been hit. “Do you truly mean that?”

“Of course she does,” Séguin said. “What are they but starving mice, living in our grain houses?”

“Mice?” Camille’s voice climbed. Any benefit of the doubt she’d given to Séguin was completely gone. “The poor don’t steal your grain—they are the ones who grow and harvest it! How do you think you—we—have all this?”

“Bah,” said Séguin scornfully. “In Paris the streets are full of poor people doing absolutely nothing. They are filthy, lazy—”

“Don’t say it,” Lazare interrupted, his voice like ice.

“Tell us,” Séguin said, “how is it on the other side, Sablebois?”

“What do you mean, the other side?”

Séguin shrugged. “The dark side. La vie sauvage.”

Cold anger rushed through Camille as she watched Lazare swallow hard, look away. How dare Séguin imply that there was something wrong with Lazare because of the color of his skin? She did not know how far she could go, but she had to say something. “The dark places are in our own hearts, isn’t that so, monsieur?” she said, her voice cutting. “Isn’t it our duty to help others?”

Séguin regarded her carefully before his hard, golden gaze twitched to Lazare. “What were we talking about?” He yawned. “Baroness, care to take a turn in the shrubbery?”

“No one is safe in the shrubbery with you,” Chandon snapped. “Stay with us, Baroness.”

Foudriard put his hand up. “Before more swords are drawn,” he warned, “does anyone wish to take a boat ride?”

On the Grand Canal, the curving, black silhouette of a gondola cut through the silver water. A lantern light winked at its prow. “Guilleux’s boat approaches,” Chandon said. “Coming for you, Aurélie, I suppose. None of us will get a ride before the sun comes up.”

“Well then,” Lazare said, “I must be going. Good night, everyone.”

“So soon?” Camille heard herself saying. She wanted to pinch herself.

“He must return to his balloons and whatnot,” Séguin answered. “Pointless, futile, and utterly childish experiments.”

Ignoring him, Lazare began to walk toward the palace, his head up. When the dawn breeze billowed the sleeves of his chemise, Camille realized she still had his coat. “Monsieur!” she called, running a few steps to catch up with him.

“I’m loath to take it from you,” he said. “You’ll be cold.”

When she tried to slip out of it, he came forward and took it off her shoulders. As he did so, his fingers again brushed the bare skin on her back, between her dress and her neck—and then were gone. It was perfectly respectable, but its effect on her was decidedly not. She exhaled. “I wish the Vicomte de Séguin had not said those things.”

Lazare startled—a flash of deep brown eyes, a black sweep of lashes. “That’s kind of you.”

Down by the water, Guilleux started to sing a bawdy sailor’s song that made Aurélie shriek with laughter.

“What’s wrong with Séguin, that he behaves that way?”

“He believes he behaves perfectly,” Lazare said, exasperated. “He’s been that way since he came to court three years ago. Along with Chandon, we were all under one fencing master. One day, after our lesson, Chandon challenged Séguin and won handily. Embarrassed, Séguin thought to vanquish me. I’ll admit it to you, madame—I brought him to tears.” One side of his mouth curled into a smile. “He’s never forgiven me for being who I am, and beating him.”

“But it’s pathetic, non?” It stung to think of anyone being against Lazare.

For a moment, she thought he might say something in response, but he only shook his head, as if he’d answered a question he’d been asking himself. “I must go—my balloon, the one Séguin’s always harping on—awaits.” And then it was over. With a wink, he said adieu, asking her to give his best to the others.

As he strode easily up the inky green slope, his sword swinging, he looked back at her over his shoulder.

Their eyes met.

Something flickered in his face—what?—but it vanished as quickly as it came. He continued to the palace.

Her shoulders sagged with relief. He did not suspect.

Camille pressed a hand to the bodice of the dress, felt its fibers shift and meet her palm. The glamoire had perfected her to the point at which she no longer resembled herself. She knew how she looked in the mirror: illusion erased the hollows of her face, her freckles. Certainly Sophie recognized Camille when she was glamoired—but Sophie was her sister. She knew who Camille was on the inside. And Sophie had watched her put on the glamoire’s mask. She knew what was under it.

Lazare, luckily, did not.

“Someone caught your fancy?” Aurélie called out.

The last thing Camille wanted was for others to suspect there was something between them. “Not at all.”

“Come, then, Cécile. Let’s go watch the sunrise! There’s room in the boat with me and Guilleux.”

With the two of them, in the boat? She felt suddenly very much outside of it all.