Enchantée(73)

Apart from the balloon that needed mending, everything in the workshop seemed to Camille just as it had the last time she was there. “Why, what’s happened?”

“When you and Lazare went up in the balloon, and were so magnificent? Well, no one came.”

“There was to be an audience?”

Rosier shrugged. “Une très petite audience. Not one that would have bothered anyone, not even Lazare with his scruples about a natural philosopher’s honor and all those things I never can fathom. Besides! What’s the harm with a very small, very quiet paying audience?” He made a tiny space between his thumb and forefinger to show how small it would have been. “Because balloons—especially Alp-ascending balloons—cost a lot of livres.”

How much did a balloon cost: as much as six months’ rent at Madame Lamotte’s? A year’s rent? “Lazare mentioned you needed money for the new balloon.”

Rosier acknowledged this with a fierce nod. “Lazare himself has supplied most of the money, so I do my part by scheming. I printed up posters—the ones you helped us with—and plastered them all over Paris. But only two people came.” He pulled at his hair, making it even wilder. “I was furious! Dumbfounded! But I see now why we failed.”

“Don’t!” shouted Armand.

“Ignore that fool. He should know by now to stick to calculations. In the end, we failed because we didn’t take advantage of what was right in front of us!”

“Which was?” Camille said, not following his train of thought.

“You, mademoiselle! A balloon flight? It’s already been done. It’s passé! But a flight by a girl—now that is something else.” He took a drag on his unlit pipe. “I mentioned it before, didn’t I? But it was too late. Next time, we’ll advertise that you’re going up.”

“Going up?”

“You’re not afraid anymore, are you?” He regarded her quizzically. “Not with your intrepid aeronaut beside you?”

“He’s not my aeronaut,” Camille said. After last night, who or what he was, she could not say.

Rosier’s eyebrows jumped to his hairline. “Well. In any case, I’d like to do a sketch. Of you, in the gondola, if it’s not too much trouble. We’ll put it on the posters before our next flight.”

“Lazare didn’t wish you to do it?”

“He didn’t. Doesn’t.” Rosier threw up his hands in exasperation. “Lazare doesn’t want to do a public launch, with people gawping and shouting things and waving commemorative handkerchiefs. He thinks the balloon should be used for testing the winds and the pressure of the air. For exploration! Knowledge! Which of course it can be. But without an endless river of money—and Lazare’s money is nearly finished—to the public we must appeal. Plus,” he sighed happily, “the people of Paris love a spectacle.”

Here was something interesting. An aristocrat with no money? “Lazare’s money is gone?”

“I didn’t say gone. Nearly finished.”

Could this be why he’d never mentioned his title and all that came with it? It was certainly possible. “Where does his money come from?”

“I’m afraid I don’t know. He never speaks of it.”

Camille suppressed a sigh of frustration. Getting at whatever lay behind Lazare’s decision to hide his noble birth from her might be more difficult than she’d first imagined.

“May I direct your attention this way?” Rosier said, pointing to the balloon’s gondola, which rested on the floor beneath the largest window. It was perfectly placed for a portrait, Camille realized.

“You’ve been waiting for me to visit the workshop!”

“I hoped. And was lucky, as usual.” He smiled as he unlatched the wicker door. “Please? It won’t take long.”

After he told her where and how to stand, with one arm up as if holding onto one of the balloon’s ropes, he took out his notebook and a piece of charcoal. “Now, the drawing! Chin up! Imagine the wind!”

Feeling a bit foolish, Camille stood in the balloon’s gondola while Rosier sketched, talking to himself while he drew. “Bigger!” he said under his breath. “More shadow here! No, no, this way.”

He’d sketched for nearly ten minutes and Camille had begged for a pause to rest her arm when, from the hallway there came the sound of rapid footsteps. Camille tensed as the steps came closer.

Lazare was dressed once more in a plain brown suit, the powder brushed from his ebony hair. His face was flushed, as if he’d been running. Under his arm he held a rectangular wooden box; when he set it unceremoniously on the ground, the top slid off and sawdust rained out of it. “Couldn’t the man have nailed the lid down?” he said, exasperated, as he bent to retrieve it.

Rosier coughed. “We have a visitor today.”

Lazare stood, followed Rosier’s gaze. “Mademoiselle!” For a moment, Lazare only stared. “You’re here?”

“Apparently,” she said, pleased that she’d surprised him for once. “I thought I’d pay a visit.”

When Lazare reached her, he sketched a deeper bow than was truly necessary, his hand grazing his leg in a courtly flourish. She couldn’t help wondering if it were like a gambler’s tell, a sign that he was something other than a boy from a bourgeois Parisian family?