Enchantée(75)

“Face front!”

Chagrined, Camille dropped Lazare’s hand and turned around. Lazare said nothing, but she could hear the rise and fall of his breathing behind her.

“Why?” she asked.

“Their reasons don’t matter,” he said, roughly. “It simply is. Did no one in your family ever wish you to do something you didn’t want to do?”

She thought of Alain, Sophie, Maman with her insistence that Camille master la magie, even though she had to draw on her own sorrow to do it. Now she could see that Maman had forced her to practice because she was terrified her children would starve. But Camille still smarted from the pain of not being given a say in what was happening.

“Yes.”

He swallowed. “Then you understand.”

No. She did not understand why his parents had anything to do with his sudden appearance at Versailles among her new friends. She did not understand why this fact of his birth, his station in life—this yawning chasm between his place in society and hers—was not something he would mention, even as their conversation circled at its edges. There was too much pretending for this to be nothing. Her frustration mounting, she tried another tack. “Perhaps you’ll take me to Versailles sometime?”

Something shifted. Lazare stepped back. “I couldn’t do that,” he said.

“Why not? Would I not like it?” she pressed.

“I don’t think you’d like being there with me,” he replied. And before she could say anything more, he called out, “Rosier, are you almost finished? I have more business with the instrument-maker.”

What had she said that was so wrong? She had stepped over some line she hadn’t seen, and now he was retreating. “You’re not going, are you?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said, letting himself out of the gondola.

“Your timing is perfect, Lazare,” exclaimed Rosier, leaping out of his seat to show them his drawing. “See? All finished. I’ve captured you with the dreamiest expression, mademoiselle. It’ll be perfection on the poster. Girl Ascends the Heavens!”

“You’ve made me more mysterious than I am,” she said, but she was secretly pleased. He had given her big, visionary eyes and not emphasized her childish nose.

“And I?” Lazare asked. “How is your drawing of me?”

“Less successful,” Rosier said.

Rosier tore out one of the pages from his notebook and folding it, gave it to Camille. “Off to the printers,” he said, and with a quick bow, he left, the street door banging shut behind him.

She expected Lazare to make some excuse to go with him, but he did not. Nor did he put on his coat, retie his cravat. His river-brown eyes were shadowed with worry. It hurt her to see it. “I’m sorry if I said something wrong.”

He shook his head. “It’s nothing.”

“Will you come see us,” she persisted, unwilling to let this be the end, “in our new place at the H?tel Théron?”

Lazare nodded. He paused, as if calculating risk. “Before I go, there was something I meant to ask you. Why did you move?”

Did no one in your family ever wish you to do something you didn’t want to do?

She remembered how Lazare had stared at her bruise in the Place des Vosges, how broken she’d felt knowing he’d seen it, what he must have been guessing. She hadn’t wished to be seen that way. So exposed. She’d tilted her hat, turned away.

But now it felt as though there were too many secrets, too much hiding. And if she wanted him to tell her what she wished to know, how could she defend a decision not to tell him? She exhaled, tried to keep her voice from shaking. “My brother—I didn’t feel safe with him any longer.”

Lazare’s face hardened. “He wasn’t the one who—hit you?”

Camille bit her lip to stop it trembling. Somehow the furious shock in Lazare’s face was almost too much to take.

He took a step back and his right hand went, in a ghostly gesture, to his left hip, where his sword would, at Versailles, have hung. “I should have done something earlier,” he fumed. “Why did you not tell me?”

“I didn’t wish you to know.” She blinked to keep back the tears. “I was so ashamed.”

Slowly, tenderly, he straightened a wayward ruffle on her cloak. “You saved me, once. Or have you forgotten? Might I not have a chance to save you?”

Camille smiled as best she could. “I’ll endeavor to do something dangerous. Soon.”

“Come up again in the balloon, then. Though it’s only somewhat risky.”

“I don’t know about that.”

Together they ambled down the dark hall and out into the street, the liquid June sunshine thick as honey, and said their adieux.

He hadn’t recognized her at Versailles, she was sure of it. And the rest? This secrecy had something to do with his family, but she still did not understand why. Did he not trust her? What had she said that had been so wrong?

It didn’t matter, she told herself. She’d gone too far. They had parted as friends, but it did not feel as easy as it had before. There was now a crack in it.

One winter it had been very cold in Paris. Winds blew in from the north with ice in their mouths. Weeks and weeks passed huddling by the fire, her hands too stiff to help Papa sort type into boxes. When the Seine froze, she and Alain walked out onto the ice. They shuffled their feet at first, then took bigger steps, running a little before sliding to a stop. Daring each other, they did it over and over until she went too close to the river’s center. Her foot punched a hole in the ice’s skin and disappeared. She remembered her fear, the numb shock, how her stockinged leg shot down into the black water as if it had been pulled.