Enchantée(94)

Lazare took a deep breath, his dark eyebrows drawing together, and then the words tumbled out in a rush. “We need your help to secure funding for the balloon. We’ve run out of money.”

“No surprise,” Rosier said. “That said, there are many ways of raising funds.”

“I have some money—” Camille began.

Before she could finish, the boys were holding up their hands, horrified. “Never,” they said together.

“We’re going to try one last thing before the public launch,” Rosier said, exasperation creeping into his voice. “It’s the only scheme that’s been approved of by him. Just barely.”

Begrudgingly, Lazare said, “I agreed to it, non?”

Outside, in the courtyard, someone shouted. Lazare swore under his breath. “Already? I told your driver we would be a few minutes.” Opening the door, he strode down the low flight of steps and into the courtyard where a small, open carriage waited. When he saw Lazare, the driver began to gesticulate at the gate.

Camille lowered her voice. “Is something wrong between you two?”

“Between us?” Rosier ran his hand through his hair. “Nothing. But this business with the balloon has unsettled him, mademoiselle.”

Through the doorway, she could see Lazare making soothing gestures at the driver.

“I’ve tried to convince Lazare of the public launch many, many times. You’ve heard me! He says it is not in the interest of natural philosophy.” Rosier pulled at his cravat as if it were choking him. “I tell him, then, that the salon is the only answer, and he replies that he does not wish to debase himself by asking for charity!”

Camille began to suspect what was coming, but she couldn’t fathom why they’d ask her.

“You’re going to a salon? To raise money with a subscription?”

Rosier nodded. “Madame de Sta?l’s, on the other side of the river.”

Papa had told her of salons where the wealthy gathered to speak of ideas, literature and philosophy, the events of the day. He’d avoided them, certain that they would never invite a printer, whatever provocative and brilliant pamphlets he might write. Madame de Sta?l’s was one of the most famous. It was said at court that she and her husband, and their guests, were a particularly revolutionary crowd.

Camille hesitated. However revolutionary they were, would they not dismiss her, a printer’s daughter? “I want to help, of course, but I’m not certain—”

“But it’s just the kind of thing you would like! Enlightened conversation! Interesting ideas! Debate!”

“Why not take someone like Armand,” she proposed, “who knows so much about the balloon?”

Rosier groaned. “He should calculate things, not form words and speak them. We need your pretty face. We need you to tell your story.” He frowned at his watch. “In less than one hour.”

In the courtyard, Lazare was clapping the driver on the shoulder, turning back to the house. She needed to know. “Why my story?”

“I believe something happened to you on that flight. Didn’t something change?”

Everything changed.

“Perhaps you can’t see it,” Rosier went on, “but your wonder will get them to open up their purses. A girl, describing what it is like to fly— no one in a salon has ever heard that before. It will be a first, and they will want to fund an adventure like ours.” Rosier held out his hand, a hardworking hand with only one plain ring on it, his thumb and forefinger ink-stained. “Remember your flight. Us, your friends. Save us again, Mademoiselle Camille.”

Lazare was approaching the stairs. His beautiful face was expectant but also somehow protected against the possibility of defeat. It hurt to see it.

Even if she did not fully understand her feelings about Lazare, she did love the balloon. The roar of the brazier’s fire, that moment of supreme lightness when the balloon lifted free of the earth, how she could see everything, the city below as pretty and as painless as a painting, the bright air, the closeness of him—

“I’ll fetch my hat, Rosier.”





48


When Rosier’s carriage clattered into the rue du Bac, its passage was thwarted by a long line of others waiting ahead of them. “Promising,” he said. “Lots of pockets to pick.” He winked and let himself out, waiting at the tiny iron steps to help Camille down. Rosier led the way to the entrance of the grand house; Lazare walked next to her, thoughtful.

As they came to the stairs, Lazare took her hand. “Are you nervous?” he asked, low enough that Rosier couldn’t hear.

“Yes,” she admitted. On the way, in the carriage, she’d remembered how terrified she’d been to go up in the balloon for the first time. It felt a bit like that. “Are you?”

“Ridiculously nervous.” He smiled warily. “I’d rather fly across the English Channel without a cork vest than do this.”

She hadn’t known he could be nervous. “I don’t know if I’d go quite so far,” she replied. “It’s just asking for money—and if we don’t get it, there will be the public launch.”

Lazare nodded. “Though for that we’ll have to sell several hundred tickets.”

Hundreds? “Will there be many people here?” she asked Rosier.