Enchantée(91)

In the gardens, she stopped, caught her breath. Compared to the hectic burn of thousands of candles, here it was cool inky darkness, the moon a scimitar in the sky. The clipped yews at the edge of the Grand Trianon had ceased to be trees and become pointed tips of a deeper shadow. The stars were out, fierce and knowing, as if they had been watching dances and lost loves for thousands of years. Over the Grand Canal, fireworks shot up and bloomed into bluebells, then sprouted into vines of wild eglantine.

It was all so beautiful, and none of it for her.

She strode out onto the gravel path. But the farther she went from the Trianon, the more the dress rustled. Warning her. Urging her to return.

She was halfway to the lower parterre before she remembered Sophie.

Camille gathered her skirts and ran. Back up the stairs, along the paths, through the open doors, she plunged back into the sea of silk and tulle and feathers—all the masked faces spinning blind in the dance. She saw the queen, dressed as a berry-picking maid, her basket filled with raspberries; the king clothed as a woodsman, an axe poised on his shoulder. Fears of something happening to Sophie—a darkened room, a chair against the door, rough hands—kept her searching the crowd. Where is she? Camille wanted to shriek for the musicians to stop playing, for everyone to stop dancing, so she could find her.

And then she did.

Sophie was dancing with the Vicomte de Séguin. As they came together, Séguin bent his head toward Sophie’s, his fox-ears pricked, as if he were about to devour her. She ducked her head and smiled.

Camille’s pulse raced as she neared them. How dare he? She tapped Séguin on the shoulder. He spun around, and where the long, toothed smile of the fox should have been there was instead his own thin mouth, curving up at the corners as if he scented something good to eat. His strong cologne burned in her nose.

“Madame la Baroness,” he said, in that low, thrilling voice. “You never told me you had a sister.”

Sophie smiled knowingly.

And in that silence, Camille realized she was perilously close to being unmasked. Séguin might know she was a magician, a fraud—but he did not know she was Camille Durbonne, the girl whose sister he’d nearly run over in the Place des Vosges. She clung desperately to this last scrap of self and would not let it be taken from her. “My sister is in fact too young to come to court,” Camille said, grabbing Sophie’s arm so hard she winced. “And it’s late.”

“But—” Sophie shook off her sister’s grip. “I don’t wish to go. I wish to dance and speak with the vicomte.”

“Any later and our carriage will become a pumpkin,” Camille said through gritted teeth.

“What a pity,” Séguin said. He took Sophie’s hand and pressed it to his too-red lips. Sophie flushed. “I will live in hope of our next encounter,” he said.

“You were ruder than that Englishman to drag me away,” Sophie complained as they left for the colonnade where Madame de Théron’s carriage would be waiting. “He said he would live in hope of our next encounter. Isn’t that polite enough for you?” She glared at Camille. “Can I not be my own judge of character? I see nothing wrong in it. Would it have been so terribly unbecoming if I had said I could not wait until next time?”

“There won’t be a next time.” Camille hated how cruel her voice sounded, how mean and unfeeling, but she couldn’t shake the picture of the fox and his prey. Those watchful eyes behind the mask.

Sophie’s voice was hard. “He’s a rich nobleman, Camille. He likes me—perhaps he’s the one, n’est-ce pas? Isn’t he everything I’ve been wishing for? Why is it that you can take what you want from the nobles and I can’t?”

Camille shook her head. It wasn’t the same. Was it? “The difference is I don’t like doing it.”

“If Alain were here,” she grumbled, “he would have congratulated me on my conquest.”

“Of course he would have. He thinks that’s the best we can do, we girls—marry a man with money.”

“But that’s what I want,” Sophie countered, hopefully. “Don’t you see?”

It was useless to try to convince her.

Once in the carriage, they untied their masks. “How ravishing everything was,” Sophie said as the carriage rolled down the linden tree allée, her anger at Camille seemingly forgotten. “The ladies’ dresses, the costumes, the men in their masks—so mysterious! I had many partners besides Monsieur le Vicomte. And what they murmured in my ear! The things the men will say—c’est incroyable.”

“At court, no one means what you think they mean,” Camille said, tossing her mask to the side.

Lazare, least of all.

In the tower of Notre-Dame, they stood so close under the stars, and everything was as it should have been—except that at the center of it were their secrets. She saw how he’d danced with the daughter of the Comte de Ch?mes, how prettily she’d flushed and laughed. Wasn’t that the way Lazare once smiled at her, before, under the stars? Wasn’t that how she’d flushed, too, in his arms?

She had perhaps lost him with her pretending.

Camille sank back in the seat, her mask next to her. It stared up at her as the carriage jostled across the cobbles of the grand court and through the palace gates.