Enchantée(96)

But she had nothing more.

She’d opened her heart and confessed that before she went up into the balloon, her view of Paris had been small, provincial. A mouse’s view. These people, whose money could bring them anything—food, shelter, libraries of books, travel, education—took it all for granted. They found nothing in her story to celebrate because—she saw it in the furrowed brows and pleated mouths and folded hands—they could already imagine it.

Or thought they could, which was just as bad.

“It seems a noble venture, monsieur,” said the man standing by the mantel, next to Aurélie. He wore a blue uniform with gold fringe on his epaulets. Camille recognized his face from the newspapers—he was the popular commander from the American wars, the Marquis de Lafayette. “But before we empty our pockets, tell me, what is the purpose of a balloon? Could it perhaps function as a kind of spy machine? Say, on the battlefield?”

“A brilliant idea, Monsieur le Marquis!” Rosier interjected. “Imagine, hundreds of sneaky balloons spying on the English—”

“Exactly what I was thinking,” Lafayette said, approvingly.

Lazare stepped forward, his arms rigid by his side. His voice was clipped as he said, “A war machine?”

“Why not?” Rosier said, encouragingly. Camille saw he was frustrated and was trying to make the balloon seem useful, but this was all wrong. A balloon was not intended to be a machine of war.

Lafayette nodded. “We are of one mind, then.”

Lazare’s jaw clenched. Camille remembered when they’d been in the balloon and he’d spoken of his tutor, the one who’d been mistreated, the one who’d taught him to ask why. There had been happiness in his face then, but also something infinitely sad. A loss. Lazare, too, had taken a path other than the one he wanted to take, just as she had. The balloon was his salvation, his way out.

But what she saw now was that it wasn’t only Lazare’s hope, Rosi er’s, or Armand’s. It had also become her own. Being with Lazare today—she as herself, he as himself—she saw it so clearly. This was their hope, all of them together. And she refused to let their balloon become a war machine, something to help generals with their killing.

“Monsieur,” she began again, “we aeronauts believe that a balloon can be anything. Not simply a war machine, or a spyglass. Or,” she added with a warning look at Rosier, “an amusement for the people.”

Lafayette responded so politely he sounded bored, “And what should it be, mademoiselle?”

She felt Lazare’s gaze on the side of her face, intense as summer’s light. Like possibility. She knew what the balloon could be. “It can be a way out. A hope.”

“Monsieur le Marquis,” Lazare said brusquely, “you have commanded armies. An army needs shoes and muskets, bayonets and cannon. But is not hope just as important?”

Lafayette crossed his arms. “France’s armies are already stretched thin. There’s unrest in the countryside over the lack of bread, and these troubles will multiply in Paris. How can I ask for money for hope?”

Lazare shook his head, as if he could not find the right words. As if the salon had turned out to be what he’d thought it would be: a way to make money, no better than selling tickets to the public.

Anger thrummed through Camille. Hadn’t she lived on hope when there was nothing in the pantry? It was all she had when her parents died, her brother became a monster, when there was nothing but the pain of turning coins and swindling shopkeepers in order to survive. Hope was the thing she’d made from her sorrow, and she would not let it be tossed aside.

She blazed out at the commander and the room of placid, watching faces. “What else is there but hope?”

Again, someone coughed. No one agreed, no one applauded. No one fetched his purse and opened it, counting out the coins.

Only silence.

“Come, come, monsieur,” Lafayette said then, making his way to Lazare and throwing an arm over his shoulder. “I’m certain there is some angle we can take on this.” As Lazare followed Lafayette to a corner of the room, he glanced once at her, his river-brown eyes regretful.

Rosier appeared at her elbow with lemonade in a crystal glass. “Now it’s up to Lazare to rope them in. It’s one thing to say you don’t care about money; it’s another not to take it when someone dangles it in your face.”

“And if we don’t get the money?”

Rosier snatched a tiny sandwich off a passing tray and tossed it into his mouth. “We recalibrate,” he said between chews. “Pardon, I see an open pocket.”

Rosier strode to the doorway to greet a lavishly dressed man and a woman who had just arrived. His clever black eyes laughing, persuading, cajoling, he made his way from that couple to others in the room. Selling the balloon as best as he could.

On the other side of the room, Lazare stood in a group of salon goers that included Aurélie, laughing at something she had said. The light from the open window fell on him, illuminating his lively face. Perhaps he would accomplish what she could not.

There was no point in her staying.

She left the crowded room that had already forgotten her, out through the grand foyer, pushing wide the heavy front door before the footman could open it for her. Into the bustling street and then north to the river, where she crossed the dark water clotted with boats, and then finally to the pale stone courtyard that now was home.