Enchantée(71)

35


As Camille returned to Paris, the sun rose above the horizon. The carriage trundled past open fields and vineyards and small towns, their stone houses crowding the edge of the road as if they wanted to see inside the passing carriages. She sat with her elbow on the window’s edge, watching the countryside go by.

Lazare was an aristocrat.

So much money, so much privilege, so much noblesse oblige toward the poor. Had he included her in his noble kindness? Or did he care for her as she was?

The carriage picked up speed. A broken-down manor house flashed by. A milkmaid in man’s shoes poking thin cows with a branch.

And Séguin a magician.

She thought of the time he’d offered to help her avoid the traps of court. She was sure he’d meant it as a kindness. But the way he’d read her palm, the fire in his hands when he touched her, that was something else. Were the intense looks he gave her—the ones that made her want to pull her cloak up to her chin to stop him from seeing into her—those of a magician? Or were they the looks of someone who wanted to trap her in an empty room and push her against the wall, his hands shoving up her skirts?

Bile rose in her throat. There was something brutish about him, used to getting his way. But whether that was because he was an aristocrat or because he was a magician—or both—she did not know.

She lowered the carriage window and inhaled the cool morning air. Either way, she needed to be careful. And to pretend she wasn’t. Was Séguin somehow interested in Chandon, too, because they were both magicians? That charged line vibrating between them and their swords. Where had she seen it before?

Rows of unripe grapes on a hill. Ducks flapping from a pond.

And then, as if in a darkened salon someone had held up a candle and suddenly everything in the room could be seen, if only dimly, she realized: she’d felt that same line of energy between him and herself the first time she’d come to Versailles.

But what did it mean?

Did he want something from her beyond what any rake in the palace wanted? It was close, the answer. She could feel it, a pulling certainty in her fingertips. But she could not grasp it.

Whatever it was, she was not relinquishing Versailles to Séguin. She would not be frightened away. Not when there was so much she still wished to do.





36


Sunlight flared in around the edges of the bed curtains. Camille blinked, rubbed at her neck. She’d fallen asleep so fast that she’d slept on it twisted. It was crooked and stiff. Her whole body ached from the glamoire. She wanted nothing more than to forget what had happened last night and sleep for another day or two.

“You awake?” Sophie called though the bedroom door.

Wrapping a shawl around her shoulders, Camille walked numbly out into the salon, where Sophie stood by the fireplace, reading a letter.

“Partially,” Camille said, rolling her shoulders. “You’ve been out already?”

Sophie slipped the letter into her sleeve. “Not everyone keeps such hours as you, ma soeur.” She removed her hat—a tall, mint-green confection trimmed with swooping egret feathers, a wide, striped ribbon, and silk camellias dyed scarlet—and laid it reverently on a table. “I took a walk with some girls from the shop. We wanted to show off our hats, see if we might drum up some business.”

“And did you? It’s quite something.”

Sophie laughed. “I made it in honor of a new kind of pastry from Sweden, if you can believe it. Ladies practically threw themselves at me on the street, begging to know where I’d bought such a wonder.”

“Madame Bénard is lucky to have you.” Camille found the teapot, poured herself some tea. It was lukewarm. She set the cup down so hard it rattled on its saucer. “Why doesn’t she pay you more? It’s not as if she doesn’t have the means.”

“Bah! She doesn’t think she needs to.” Sophie dropped into an armchair, pulled her workbasket closer. “Wait until I set up my own shop and she discovers I’ve become her competition.”

Camille kept silent as Sophie rummaged through her basket, searching until she held up a hodgepodge hat ornament made of lace, feathers, and something like straw. “Isn’t this hideous?”

“Charming,” Camille muttered.

“I’m going to take it apart.” Sophie pried loose a tiny papier-maché bird from the hat ornament and set it aside. “What’s made you so cross?”

Oh, a hundred reasons. “The dress turned too early, again.” She glared at it where it hung lifelessly from its hook.

“That’s all?”

“Perhaps.” There was Chandon’s revelation about Séguin, of course. She’d decided to be on her guard at the palace, and not mention it at home, as there was nothing she could say to Sophie without alarming her further. Sophie had already become disenchanted with Camille’s visits to Versailles. Mentioning that Séguin was a magician would only make things worse.

“Tell me, Camille—what’s wrong? Something’s happened, anyone can see that.”

She took a deep breath, exhaled. “Lazare was at Versailles last night.”

Sophie sat up straight. “Really? What was he doing there?”

“I don’t know.”

“You didn’t talk to him?”