Enchantée

by Gita Trelease

  Camille blinked. The room swelled into clarity: the flames of the candles on the table, violet evening outside the window, the half-full glasses, the glittering piles of money and jewels and chocolates, the young nobles’ animated faces, waiting for her.

  “Daydreaming as usual,” she said in a way she hoped was self-deprecating.

  Her hands trembling, she flipped her cards.

  The two of diamonds and the eight of spades. “Twenty!” she breathed. Not exactly what she’d imagined, but certainly good enough.

  Faster than she could think, Chandon flipped his. “Twenty-one!” he crowed. He scooped everything on the table toward him: the pile of coins, the bracelet—and the snuffbox.

  “Damn.” Foudriard tossed his cards on the table. “And I had such a good feeling about that one.”

  “Your feelings are good, but mine are even better,” teased Chandon.

  Camille sank back in her chair, pressed the heels of her hands to her eyes. She had failed. At the moment when she’d needed it the most, magic had deserted her. Chandon had been extraordinarily lucky.

  But luck didn’t hold forever.

  She sat up straight, felt the bodice of her dress support her. “One more game,” she said.

  “Spoken like a true addict,” Foudriard said. “Brava.”

  “You want your dead husband’s snuffbox back, I’m guessing?” Chandon said cheerily. “Well, I can’t say no to that.” He held out his hands to take the cards.

  She’d do it this time. There was no way the odds could favor him again. As Chandon shuffled, Foudriard laughed at a joke Aurélie made. Chandon was smiling, too, his hazel eyes on Foudriard, but he did not stop shuffling the cards. They hissed as they slid through his fingers, arcing and slicing. A dazzling display, like fireworks. He was about to deal the first round when Aurélie held up her hand. “Attendez—someone’s coming.”

  Chandon said, low, “Don’t be nice to him, Baroness, whatever you do.”

  Outside in the hall, heels clattered on the parquet. The door crashed open and a young man stepped into the room, his sword swinging from its sash. He was no longer at the Place des Vosges, where his carriage had nearly hit Sophie, but Camille would have known him anywhere. The long, aristocratic nose, the heavy-lidded, golden eyes accentuated by a beauty mark, the fair skin, the hair like spun gold: the Vicomte de Séguin.

  “Damn my servants!” he said. “I’d swear it takes them several days to dress me.”

  “Dismiss them, then.” Aurélie tossed him a faint smile.

  “While you were getting dressed, the Baroness de la Fontaine so kindly filled your spot,” Chandon said. To Camille, he added, “Do you know this dishonorable gentleman, madame? If not, we don’t need to include him. We only tolerate him because of his money.”

  Foudriard coughed into his cravat. Camille shook her head. She didn’t trust her voice.

  “Your face is so very familiar,” the vicomte said in a low, rich voice as his eyes flicked lazily over her face and down to her hands. “But I can’t place where we might have met. You’d think I’d remember such a lovely girl.” At her chair, he stooped into a bow. “At your service, madame.”

  “Monsieur.” The less she said, the better. She tried to tell herself that even this close, so close she could see the fine film of powder dusting the planes of his face, the glamoire would protect her, like a shield. Its power was in its perfection, the subtle erasure of her freckles and the hungry tightness around her eyes, the illusion that darkened her lashes and her cloud-gray eyes, added curves to her cheeks. Still, the way he scrutinized her, as if she were a counterfeit coin, made her wish she were somewhere else. He sensed something, she was certain of it. She forced herself to smile when what she wished to do was to shrink back into the stiff shell of her stays.

  Séguin straightened abruptly, and just like that, the line of tension between them snapped.

  His thin mouth curved when he saw the pile of coins and jewels. “You play high, mes amis.” Opening a purse, he pulled out a handful of gold louis, which he dropped carelessly in front of him. Camille had never seen so many, all at once.

  Chandon put his mouth to Camille’s ear. “Careful,” he said. “Séguin cheats.”

  Now that Séguin had arrived, she saw what a terrible mistake she’d made to stay. He made it hard to concentrate, but the snuffbox—on top of the glittering pile—she could not leave without it. She had no choice but to trust the glamoire, work her best magic with the cards, and then leave as soon as she had even a hundred livres.

  Over Chandon’s shoulder, through the tall window, the sky above the gardens of Versailles was darkening to purple. It was growing late. Too late. With a start, she remembered she’d told the coachman eight o’clock. Quickly, she rose from her chair.

  “Madame,” Aurélie said, frowning. “You’ve spilled something on your dress. I’ll ring for a maid?”

  There was no maid at Versailles who could help her. For there, on the bodice of her dress, was a scattering of drops—just like spilled wine. But it wasn’t wine. The dress was changing.

  “It’s nothing,” Camille said, fear snaking along her skin. She had to go. The snuffbox—she could still feel how reassuringly it had lain in her pocket—she would have to leave behind. Taking a step backward, Camille pulled her skirts free of the table. There was more damage: along the hem of her skirts ran an irregular seam of dark gold, creeping up like mold.

  “My apologies,” she said quickly. “I’ve overstayed my welcome. It’s much later than I thought.”

  “Later?” asked Chandon. “It’s not even late.”

  “Was it something I said?” The Vicomte de Séguin mock-frowned as he rose. Chandon and Foudriard stood up, too, their swords clattering against the furniture.

  “Bah, it’s too bad!” Aurélie pouted. “It was so fun to have you with us, madame! And now the evening is popped, like a bubble!”

  Camille’s throat burned with shame. Not only had she lost the snuffbox, but if the dress’s enchantment continued to fade this might be the last time she came to Versailles. She wished desperately they would all leave so she could sneak away unseen.

  “Ah, it’s not that bad,” Chandon said, putting his arm around Aurélie. “Your special friend, the Baron de Guilleux, is sure to be playing paille maille by torchlight in the gardens. Let’s join him, non?” Everyone agreed it was a fantastic idea; Foudriard blew out the candles.

  At the door, Camille tried to hide her fading dress, willing the magic to hold. The boys bowed to her; Aurélie kissed her on the cheek. “Next time we won’t let the boys win. It’ll be you and I, invincible.” Aurélie was kind, but her words did nothing to make Camille feel any better or to stop the refrain jangling in her mind: you lost it all.

  Last to leave, Chandon paused beside her. All the amusement had vanished from his face; without it, his hazel eyes were surprisingly somber.

  “Séguin takes a toll, doesn’t he?”

  “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “No?” Chandon raised an eyebrow as he polished the snuffbox on his coat. “You’ll forgive me that I didn’t give you a chance to win this back.”

  Her fingers longed to wrest it from him and run. But as the others drifted down the hall and on to their next game, Camille was beginning to see another path. Another way to win. This palace might be the home of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and the French court, but it was also a gambling hall of immense proportions. These aristos would play any game and bet on anything.

  She could see it unfold ahead of her.

  If she could master the magic of turning cards, she might make much, much more than a few months’ rent. She could make her and Sophie’s fortune and step into a new future. She had only to be assured of another chance to play.

  “Perhaps another time?” she murmured.

  Again, the dimpled smile. “Of course! Still, you mustn’t leave empty handed—here, take what I have left.” He slipped the little box into his vest
pocket and, from another pocket, pressed eight heavy gold louis into her palm.

  She hardly dared breathe: there was the whole rent in her hand.

  “Next time, come to the Petit Trianon, won’t you? We need more people like you there,” Chandon said. “We play on Thursdays.”

  “Oh?” She had no idea what the Petit Trianon was. Or what he meant by people like you.

  “That’s where the queen hides from old age and etiquette, bad press and debts, people who beg her for help.” Chandon examined his nails. “I suppose she deserves it. After the dauphin died.”

  Camille had never thought of the queen like that, as a person who needed to escape—but all the gold louis in the world hadn’t saved the queen’s son.

  “Still,” Chandon went on, speaking faster as the others ambled away, “she’s lonely at the Petit Trianon without anyone to flatter her, play music or cards. That’s why pretty young things such as ourselves get invited. It’s a select group, I might add. We’re all terribly louche.” A square, pink card appeared as if by magic in his hand. “This will get you in. And I can promise you money and strawberries.”

  Money and strawberries—and a bright, new chance to make up this loss. Those gold louis on the table, the jewelry and shiny trinkets in a pile—it’d only take a handful of Thursdays before she had all the money she and Sophie would need. To eat until their bellies were full. To move to another place. To be safe.

  She reached out and took the card. “Merci.”

  “It’s nothing,” Chandon said with a quick bow. He walked away, sword swinging from its sash. “You’ll have to practice, madame, if you wish to beat me!”

  She had been so close. Playing at the Palais-Royal, and with Sophie, it had seemed so easy to use la magie to turn cards, but this was a new lesson: there was no guarantee.

  Hanging back in the shadows, pressing her skirts to the wall, she watched the aristocrats saunter away: Foudriard with his arm slung over Chandon’s shoulders; Aurélie with her right hand tucked into the crook of Chandon’s arm, Séguin one step behind. Chandon made a joke and Aurélie giggled into his shoulder.

  They made a pretty group, a gaggle of young nobles straight from a Fragonard painting. They were figures in a most foreign world, so unfamiliar to her it might as well be China. It had its own rules and prejudices and was filled with so many, many things they took for granted—things she’d only dimly glimpsed today. She could play, yes, and cheat, but she needed to know the rules of the game. She couldn’t afford to make any more foolish mistakes. And the thought of beating them? Their pretty mouths falling open, cards sliding from their soft hands? The knowledge that this time, it would be their pockets that were empty? She could almost taste how sweet it would be.

  She tucked the pink card into her sleeve. Soon.

  Her dress looked as if someone had spilled bronze ink all over it. There was no time to waste.

  She picked up her skirts and ran.

  19

  Down avenues of parquet, under jangling chandeliers, past innumerable marble rooms, Camille ran. She raced past white-faced statues and portraits of men on horseback and more mirrors than she had ever seen in her life.

  In each one, she couldn’t help but look.

  Invisible hands were erasing the glamoire. Stubborn freckles rose up through the white on her cheeks, red hair seethed through the powder’s film, the bruise purpled again. Her hairpins would no longer hold and her locks tumbled down around her shoulders. Her stormy-sky dress had completely faded to worn gold, its trims flapping loose. And each time she caught her reflection, the more the hungry hollows gaped under her cheekbones and around her throat. The bruise made her remember how Lazare had startled when he’d seen it. It wasn’t just the dress and her hair—she needed to get away before anyone else could see her face.

  The halls were empty of day-visitors; somewhere, far off, she heard the click of heels and laughter, someone shouting, “To the fountains!” From an upstairs room, a blurry snatch of music. Camille fled down a narrow stair and surprised a servant carrying a laundry basket. Through a window she glimpsed the pale rectangular shapes of the parterres and then—with a relief so profound she wanted to cry—she came to a door that opened to the outside. The footman who should have been waiting to open it slumped against the wall, snoring.

  She let herself out into the cool evening. She paced through the shadowy gardens, through the park, and out to the Cour d’Honneur where the coachman would be waiting.

  Except he wasn’t.

  There was no sign of him or his flea-bitten gray.

  After scouring the courtyard, swearing under her breath, Camille pulled off her shoes and started to walk. The summer sky was growing dark, and it was hard to see what lay ahead of her on the road. Leaping aside to avoid a speeding cabriolet, she’d nearly stepped on a dead cat. She hoped that one of the fancy coaches driving past her on the avenue might take pity and stop, but none did. Not only had she lost the snuffbox, but she had also lost the illusion that she was anything more than a starving girl in a ruined gown who’d foolishly thrown away her prize.

  Bone-weary and miserable, she’d walked for nearly an hour on the road to Paris when a cart, drawn by a draft horse, drew up alongside her. The horse’s legs were muddy to the knees, the back of the wagon stacked with sacks of grain. The farmer held up his lantern and tipped his hat to Camille. His face was kind. “It’s late to be out walking, mademoiselle. I’ve got daughters no older than you. Where might you be going, ma fille?”

  “Paris—the rue Charlot.”

  “I can take you as far as the Hall des Blés.” The farmer pulled his horse to a stop and patted the bench beside him. Grateful, Camille took his rough hand and swung up, tucking her skirts around her legs.

  “Merci, monsieur. You’re heading to Paris to sell grain?”

  “Barley—and some wheat,” he added in a low voice. “I put those sacks underneath; no need to advertise it. Wheat’s like gold to people and I’m liable to be robbed. Or accused of hiding it to sell to the rich. Not sure which is worse. My friends say I’ll be rich, too, with wheat prices climbing to the sky. But I don’t like it. I’d rather get less and not be afraid.”

  “People would steal from a farmer?”

  He shrugged his big shoulders. “Can you blame them? Criers on the streets shout that aristocrats make cakes from wheat and children’s blood. They don’t know any better.”

  “Those things—they aren’t true.” Papa had printed provocative pamphlets but nothing like that. The rule, he’d said, was to explain, not inflame.

  “Bien. You and I know that,” he muttered. “But when people don’t know what’s really happening, rumors start. And that’s when you’ve got to be careful.” The farmer reached behind him and pulled out an empty sack. “Wrap this around yourself, mademoiselle. You’ve hardly got any clothes on.”

  The old court gown had a deep neckline, she remembered with a twinge of embarrassment. She tugged the sack around her shoulders.

  “You work at the château?”

  She shook her head.

  “I suppose if you did, you’d know better.”

  “Know what, monsieur?”

  He gave the reins a shake. His hands reminded her of her father’s: strong, capable. “Girls shouldn’t walk along the road so close to the palace. I’d never let my own daughters flounce around Versailles.”

  “Oh?” Imagine if she told him what she’d just done. “Why is that?”

  “Good thing I’m here to tell you.”

  “Go on, then.” Camille settled against the rough board that served as a backrest. From her shoulder she unpinned the diamond brooch and slipped it into her pocket with the eight gold louis and the card Chandon had given her.

  “First the men. All they want is…” he said, ticking off on his fingers a list of all the things they wanted that put young girls like her in peril. Camille rubbed her neck. The rolling of the cart and the farmer’s comfortable voice made her limbs heavy. She
felt as if she’d been awake for days. Now that the glamoire was gone, her body was becoming her own again, thin and shaky. The dress’s troubling aliveness was fading, as if it too were tired, ready to sleep.

  “And the ladies?” Camille asked.

  “They’ll wear you to the bone with all their demands, the fetching and carrying. Even if they give you their castoffs.” The farmer frowned pointedly at her tattered gown. “Be on your guard, mademoiselle. Rakes and hooligans, all of them, in that château.” He waggled a dirt-caked finger at her. “You never know what they might do.”

  “C’est vrai.” You never knew. She’d gone to Versailles hating the nobles for their riches, their arrogance, the way they believed France and its people existed just for them. To serve them, or to crush if they chose. Certainly that was what Papa would have seen, tonight, in their manners and their idle games. But—and she was suddenly glad that Papa had not seen this—she’d liked the play and the players. It was an uncomfortable feeling.

  She did know, however, that when she got back to Paris, before she snuck into their apartment on the rue Charlot, she’d count out the louis in her purse and slide them under Madame Lamotte’s door. One month’s rent, one month’s more time.

  It was already very early on Tuesday morning. Tomorrow would be Wednesday, the day she’d been invited to the aeronauts’ workshop. It had been less than a week since she’d met Lazare. She thought of how, after she’d agreed to come, he’d walked away backward, smiling. A promise.

  Above Paris’s western gates, the evening star glinted like a silver coin.

  20

  Camille woke halfway through the afternoon to find Sophie poised at the foot of the bed. Waiting. When she started asking questions, Camille flung her arm over her eyes and begged for coffee. Sophie huffed that Camille was developing very refined tastes but agreed to go, taking with her a hat she’d finished trimming to Madame Bénard so she could get paid. The apartment was quiet, Camille’s only company Fantôme, a black comma curled on the wooden floor.