Enchantée(74)

“It’s been too long,” he said with that easy smile. “It’s fantastic to see you again. And in the daylight, too.”

For a heart-thudding moment, she thought: He means to compare last night with today. But then she remembered that the last time she’d seen him as Camille, as herself, it had also been dark on the tower at Notre-Dame. She swallowed. “I heard you didn’t want me to sit for a portrait? Armand seemed determined to prevent it, on your behalf.”

“Armand might have his own, suspicious reasons, but I thought you might not wish it.” Unself-consciously, he began to loosen his linen cravat.

“Mademoiselle!” Rosier chided. “Please; look straight ahead.”

Reluctantly, Camille faced Rosier.

“I have a better idea,” Rosier said. “Lazare, get in the basket, too. It will look very well, trust me!” Rosier waved him on.

For a moment, he simply stood next to Rosier, watching her, with all his lanky grace. Camille’s eyes went as if magnetized to the golden skin at his throat as his deft hands undid the knot of his cravat. Those hands had stroked her cheek, tangled in her hair, on the tower of Notre-Dame.…

He saw her looking, raised an eyebrow. “It is a warm day, non?”

If he took off his coat, she might expire.

“Hurry up,” Rosier said. “My drawing is waiting.”

And then Lazare was letting himself into the gondola, and she was making room for him, the gondola wobbling a little so that he reached out a hand to steady himself on her shoulder. It was only a moment, it was nothing, but it felt like everything. How could a touch be both intoxicating and reassuring?

“Pardon,” he said, as he settled in next to her, but there was something in the way he said it that suggested he’d meant to touch her all along.

“Now, mademoiselle,” Rosier said, “arm up once more, and Lazare, stand right behind her, so I can see your face over her shoulder.”

He did. He was very near, so near she felt his breath on the side of her neck, the heat radiating from him, the rustling of his shirtsleeves against her back.

“Is this close enough?” Lazare said, very seriously.

“Parfait!” Rosier turned to his sketch, his hand shifting rapidly over the paper.

Her intention was to get answers to her questions, but with him standing next to her, she felt less clearheaded and more distracted than she’d imagined she would. She had no idea where to begin her investigation. Start somewhere, Papa had always said, so she took a deep breath and plunged ahead.

“It’s been a while since we last met.” She wanted to add: when we said good-bye outside the courtyard gate on the rue Charlot, you asked me if tomorrow was too early for us to meet again. And that tomorrow never came.

He leaned closer, his elbow brushing against her waist. “Not for lack of trying,” he said. “I went back to the rue Charlot, the very next evening. But your landlady told me you’d moved.”

Camille half-turned, astonished. “What? She didn’t tell you where we’d gone?” All that time she’d spent wondering why he never came: it was because of stubborn, misguided Madame Lamotte?

A smile twitched at his lips. “I was quite persuasive,” he went on, “throwing compliments and money at her, but she refused.” His voice climbed an octave, became wheezy and indignant: “‘I can’t give Mademoiselle’s address to every boy that comes calling!’”

“Mademoiselle! Face front!” Rosier admonished Camille. Reluctantly, she did as he asked.

“I specifically told her—” Camille began.

“That I might be allowed to know your new whereabouts?” he teased. “If so, I’m relieved. I got the impression she’d been warding off a herd of boys, and I was only one of many. Indistinguishable from the rest.”

Whatever he was, he could never be that. “You’ve been in Paris, then?”

“A bit,” he said slowly. “My parents wished to go to Versailles, so I took them there.”

His aristocratic parents, she thought, but she wasn’t supposed to know that. “As tourists?” she asked.

“To visit friends.”

Was there a strained note in his voice?

“Do you often visit the palace?” she asked, as nonchalantly as she could.

A hesitation. “Sometimes.”

She was getting closer to learning why he was so determined to keep his noble birth a secret, she was certain of it. Versailles was somehow implicated in it.

“And what do you do there?”

“Balloon business, mostly. You know how relentlessly Rosier hounds me to raise money.”

“Unfair!” Rosier exclaimed.

She turned, saw Lazare’s dark brows swoop into a frown. “That’s all?”

He shook his head. “My parents wish it. They think I should make my living at court.” He sounded so stricken by this that she reached out—and took his hand.

My title is a suit that doesn’t fit.

She tried to imagine him in the fine court clothes he’d worn the night before. It was nearly impossible. Apart from that tiny flourish in his bow, there was nothing—no sign whatsoever that he had been at Versailles, disparaged magic, argued with the Vicomte de Séguin, or told her about it. Rien.