Enchantée(98)

“Vanished? But that’s not surprising. Isn’t he always going from place to place?” It certainly seemed that way to her.

“Not this time.” Rosier took a drag on his unlit pipe. “Something happened.”

“What?”

“He came to the workshop—three days ago—upset. Distressed. He told me he had an idea of how to get what he hadn’t been able to raise from subscriptions at the salon.”

“But that wasn’t his fault!”

“So I told him. Then he said he’d refused to take any more money from his parents. As if I’d asked him to!”

“Was that where the money came from before, do you think?” Camille asked.

“Apparently.”

This. This was the thing that he had been hiding—she was certain of it. “What changed?”

Slowly, Rosier shook his head. “Who knows? Something they did? Some condition they placed on him? Whatever it was, it made him furious. Desperate. Distraught. And then—gone.”

“He must be somewhere,” Camille said, fretfully. “I suppose he’s not at his parents’ house?”

“No reply.” Rosier stared blankly out at the quiet street. “Where could he possibly be?”

Slowly, it came to her. He could be anywhere—it was true. But there was at least one other place where he was likely to be.

“I think I know.”

Rosier reached for his coat, hanging on a peg near the door. “Show me the way.”

She hesitated. Rosier might not be shocked about her use of magic, or what she did at Versailles—he’d probably applaud it—but if Lazare was there for some hidden purpose, if he had told no one, it was not her secret to reveal. “I cannot, Rosier. But I will do my best to find him.”



* * *



Heading home toward H?tel Théron, Camille was soon back in the streets of their quarter. In their wealthy neighborhood, where the king’s soldiers marched their patrols, no shop windows had been broken or their shelves emptied. Here hung rosy hams and robust sausages. Costly bread lay piled in baskets, carved with the baker’s initials. And everywhere, it seemed, candies and chocolate and sweets were arranged like jewels.

Stepping into a bakery, she paid for a sticky bun. She took it out to the street to eat it, as she and Sophie used to do when they had a few extra sous. People had stared at them, eating on the street, but she and Sophie hadn’t cared. How could they when they were so hungry and eating a bun was like devouring sunshine?

Camille took a bite. The bun was buttery, sweet with apricot and honey—but it didn’t taste the same without Sophie, the two of them against the world.

“M’selle?”

A barefoot street urchin, his gaunt face sepia with dirt, appeared out of the crowds. He held out an empty hand; with the other, he mimed putting food in his mouth. His fingernails were black, his eyes filmed dull. Hopeless, even as he begged.

Her throat constricted.

What if she told him her fingernails used to be like his? Her belly, nearly as empty? Would he believe her, in her silk dress and cartwheel hat, her new shoes and her clean hands? She thought again of the red-haired running girl, her tiny stolen roll of bread, and where she might be now. It seemed another life. Despite everything she and Sophie had, she could not shake the feeling that something was still slipping through her fingers.

“M’selle? S’il vous pla?t?”

The hair prickled on the back of her neck. She had to go back and talk to Sophie. She had to tell her she missed her, that she’d said and done the wrong things. Somehow their paths had diverged. Camille wanted to go back and start again.

“Take this,” Camille said, handing the boy the bun. He turned to run away but she caught his arm. From her purse she took all the livres she had with her—ten, fifteen, twenty-two—and pressed them carefully into his hand, folding his fingers over the bright coins. “Keep them safe, d’accord?” she told him. “Only show someone you trust. Be careful!”

He nodded, once, then vanished into the crowds.

When Camille burst into the H?tel Théron, there was still no sign of her sister, but Madame de Théron reassured her Sophie had merely gone for a ride in the park with her friends from the shop.

Upstairs, Camille dropped her purse on the writing desk by the window. Fant?me emerged and twined insistently around her ankles.

The purse had a strange shape to it, stretched out. The other letters! She’d completely forgotten.

She tore the violet one open.

Inside lay a tiny card. An invitation.

In honor of Aurélie de Valledoré on her birthday

Jean-Baptiste de Vaux, Vicomte de Séguin, invites you

to an evening of games and gaiety

The fourteenth of July 1789



Tonight.

Across the bottom, in a beautiful hand, Séguin had written:

All our friends will be there.



All our friends.

She hadn’t seen Chandon since the opera, when he’d looked so desperately ill. She’d sent letters to him at the palace but had heard nothing in return. Nothing from Aurélie, either, nor Foudriard.

And if they were there, then perhaps—as she’d told Rosier—Lazare would be, too.

Her mind jumped from one idea about him to another, but it was always the same: what did he know? What did he think? But like the spotted dogs in Astley’s circus, leaping from chair to chair, she never got anywhere. She just went around and around and around.