“Do they?” Chandon’s voice had an edge she hadn’t noticed before. “Magic built the Palace of Versailles. What makes you think it’s gone?”
“Wouldn’t we know if it was still here? For myself, I’d love there to be magic all around,” Aurélie said with a glance at Guilleux. “Love potions, especially.”
Chandon coughed. He was trying to tell Camille something, she was certain of it. “What sort of magic does the queen use?” she asked him, under her breath.
“A kind of disguise. But she is no magician.”
A glamoire? But if not a magician, how could she work one?
Lazare overheard them. “If it is magic,” he said, “then I have even less respect for her than before. Taking blood from others and using it to enrich themselves—why should the magicians have been allowed to stay at court after the things they did?”
Camille stared at Chandon. Taking blood from others? What did Lazare mean? Was this something else Maman had never told her?
“The magicians were bloodsuckers?” Aurélie asked, a thrill in her voice.
“That and worse. La magie is detestable,” Lazare said, coldly. “It was one of the tools of the ancien régime, the old days. Magic has no place in this age of Enlightenment.”
A tool of the old way of ruling that had been in place for hundreds of years, magic was part of the system by which nobles had everything, the people nothing. What grim work had they done, her magician ancestors? Had they truly drained people of blood, like vampires in folktales? If so, they’d wanted the power that came from working blood magic—but not to suffer its cost. It was terribly wrong. She was repulsed that it might even have been possible.
“But why—” Camille began.
“Hush now, my revolutionaries, here they come,” said Chandon.
As the entourage drew close, Aurélie, Camille, and all the boys bowed deeply.
The queen paused before them and smiled. “Up, up, everyone! Etiquette holds no sway in my gardens. It is refreshing to see young people out in the greenery. Soon the sun rises,” she warned, as she swept away. “Be quick with your games.”
Foudriard threw his arm over Chandon’s shoulders. “We must hurry, the queen commands it.”
Camille watched the queen glide back toward the palace. The uniformed man handed her the bouquet he’d picked and her ladies ambled behind her, the hems of their dresses soaked with dew. As the group headed away, the boy with the candelabra of sky-blue candles ran to catch up and, in that instant, Camille knew him: the chandler’s apprentice with the fancy airs, the one who’d taken her turned louis without a second thought. He cast a glance at Aurélie, then Camille, before rushing past them, candle flames wavering. They were all court ladies to him—once again, she’d gone unseen.
Aurélie sighed. “The queen has the dashing Count von Fersen at her beck and call—and that poor chandler, the one whose candles are impossible to buy! How he stares at her! Perhaps she will make him Court Chandler.” She cast a teasing glance at Guilleux. “He is not bad to look at, either.”
Guilleux crossed his arms and started walking away, his good humor gone. “You cannot make me envious of a chandler who waits on the queen, hoping to rise.”
Coming from the other direction, Séguin bowed as he passed the queen, who stopped and exchanged a few words with him.
“Who could possibly envy the poor?” he called as he strode closer. “They are a repulsive lot.”
“I hate to agree with the vicomte but it’s true—the poor are dreadfully boring,” Aurélie said. “Let’s speak of something else!”
Camille flinched as if she’d been hit. “Do you truly mean that?”
“Of course she does,” Séguin said. “What are they but starving mice, living in our grain houses?”
“Mice?” Camille’s voice climbed. Any benefit of the doubt she’d given to Séguin was completely gone. “The poor don’t steal your grain—they are the ones who grow and harvest it! How do you think you—we—have all this?”
“Bah,” said Séguin scornfully. “In Paris the streets are full of poor people doing absolutely nothing. They are filthy, lazy—”
“Don’t say it,” Lazare interrupted, his voice like ice.
“Tell us,” Séguin said, “how is it on the other side, Sablebois?”
“What do you mean, the other side?”
Séguin shrugged. “The dark side. La vie sauvage.”
Cold anger rushed through Camille as she watched Lazare swallow hard, look away. How dare Séguin imply that there was something wrong with Lazare because of the color of his skin? She did not know how far she could go, but she had to say something. “The dark places are in our own hearts, isn’t that so, monsieur?” she said, her voice cutting. “Isn’t it our duty to help others?”
Séguin regarded her carefully before his hard, golden gaze twitched to Lazare. “What were we talking about?” He yawned. “Baroness, care to take a turn in the shrubbery?”
“No one is safe in the shrubbery with you,” Chandon snapped. “Stay with us, Baroness.”
Foudriard put his hand up. “Before more swords are drawn,” he warned, “does anyone wish to take a boat ride?”
On the Grand Canal, the curving, black silhouette of a gondola cut through the silver water. A lantern light winked at its prow. “Guilleux’s boat approaches,” Chandon said. “Coming for you, Aurélie, I suppose. None of us will get a ride before the sun comes up.”
“Well then,” Lazare said, “I must be going. Good night, everyone.”
“So soon?” Camille heard herself saying. She wanted to pinch herself.
“He must return to his balloons and whatnot,” Séguin answered. “Pointless, futile, and utterly childish experiments.”
Ignoring him, Lazare began to walk toward the palace, his head up. When the dawn breeze billowed the sleeves of his chemise, Camille realized she still had his coat. “Monsieur!” she called, running a few steps to catch up with him.
“I’m loath to take it from you,” he said. “You’ll be cold.”
When she tried to slip out of it, he came forward and took it off her shoulders. As he did so, his fingers again brushed the bare skin on her back, between her dress and her neck—and then were gone. It was perfectly respectable, but its effect on her was decidedly not. She exhaled. “I wish the Vicomte de Séguin had not said those things.”
Lazare startled—a flash of deep brown eyes, a black sweep of lashes. “That’s kind of you.”
Down by the water, Guilleux started to sing a bawdy sailor’s song that made Aurélie shriek with laughter.
“What’s wrong with Séguin, that he behaves that way?”
“He believes he behaves perfectly,” Lazare said, exasperated. “He’s been that way since he came to court three years ago. Along with Chandon, we were all under one fencing master. One day, after our lesson, Chandon challenged Séguin and won handily. Embarrassed, Séguin thought to vanquish me. I’ll admit it to you, madame—I brought him to tears.” One side of his mouth curled into a smile. “He’s never forgiven me for being who I am, and beating him.”
“But it’s pathetic, non?” It stung to think of anyone being against Lazare.
For a moment, she thought he might say something in response, but he only shook his head, as if he’d answered a question he’d been asking himself. “I must go—my balloon, the one Séguin’s always harping on—awaits.” And then it was over. With a wink, he said adieu, asking her to give his best to the others.
As he strode easily up the inky green slope, his sword swinging, he looked back at her over his shoulder.
Their eyes met.
Something flickered in his face—what?—but it vanished as quickly as it came. He continued to the palace.
Her shoulders sagged with relief. He did not suspect.
Camille pressed a hand to the bodice of the dress, felt its fibers shift and meet her palm. The glamoire had perfected her to the point at which she no longer resembled herself. She kne
w how she looked in the mirror: illusion erased the hollows of her face, her freckles. Certainly Sophie recognized Camille when she was glamoired—but Sophie was her sister. She knew who Camille was on the inside. And Sophie had watched her put on the glamoire’s mask. She knew what was under it.
Lazare, luckily, did not.
“Someone caught your fancy?” Aurélie called out.
The last thing Camille wanted was for others to suspect there was something between them. “Not at all.”
“Come, then, Cécile. Let’s go watch the sunrise! There’s room in the boat with me and Guilleux.”
With the two of them, in the boat? She felt suddenly very much outside of it all.
“You go,” Camille called out, waving her and the others on. Her heart hurt. She tried to understand what Lazare was doing at Versailles, but she could not. Why was everything so hard?
Chandon stayed behind, flicking at the grass with the toe of his gold-buckled shoe. “Something on your mind?”
She blurted out, “I don’t belong here. And nothing is as it seems.” Though she was one of them by blood, the horror of what Lazare had said haunted her: one of her aristocrat ancestors in her finery—perhaps in this very dress—slicing open the arm of a peasant and putting it to her lips. “Is it true that aristocrats used the blood of others for their magic?”
Chandon rubbed the back of his neck. “I wish it weren’t, but I know it to be so. They often preyed upon the poor, sometimes even their own servants. After all, who has more sorrow than the poor?”
She had nothing to say against that.
“What happened, in the shrubbery?” she asked, recalling Chandon and Séguin with their swords drawn, tethered by anger and that erupting line of energy.
His hands shook as he adjusted the lace at his cuffs. “Séguin? He wished to remind me of my place, as he sees it. He is a cheat, Baroness, and he is very clever.” He glanced down the lawn to the others. They were out of hearing, but still he dropped his voice. “This is what I have needed to tell you for all these weeks, but couldn’t find the right time. And now with his talk of strolling with you in the shrubbery, I can’t stay silent. I wish someone had warned me.” He lowered his voice further. “Séguin is a magician. And unlike us, he’s not a nice one.”
“A magician?” she stammered. How had she met him all these times and never known?
“You didn’t guess?”
“How should I have?” she said, uncertain.
“Have you never noticed how a magician smells? Like burned wood? Perfume helps, of course. But Séguin works so much magic he positively reeks of it.”
She recalled the card game, the scent she couldn’t place lingering under his cologne. “But before tonight, he seemed so helpful. And then with the Marquis de Sablebois—”
“That’s precisely it!” Chandon’s voice hardened. “Sablebois is noble and honorable and he doesn’t give a fig for Séguin’s feelings. Séguin is beneath him, and Sablebois decides to shrug. But we may not. That is what I meant when I said you must be the Baroness of Pretend,” Chandon added, urgently. “You must not reveal anything to him, for he will use it against you. Don’t even show him your wariness, vous comprenez? Promise me, you won’t let on?”
“Come on, you two!” Aurélie sang out.
“Of course, I promise. But—is it not safe here? Because of Séguin?”
Chandon cocked his head. “I for one cannot stay away. And it seems, neither can you.”
“I won’t be here long,” she said, though she hardly believed it herself. “Soon I’ll have enough louis that I can stop gambling.”
“How many louis is that? I’ll admit, I’ve never seen a number that satisfies.” Chandon smiled wanly. “It’s hard to stop gambling, and harder even to stay away, if you’re a magician. Don’t you see? Versailles is one enormous, fantastical magical object. Every roof tile and doorknob and armoire bristles with magic. And—I’m guessing your dress is the same—those threads of magic grasp at us like tiny hands, or fishhooks. It is very difficult to tear yourself loose.”
“Thank you,” she said, wearily. Everything had become so complicated.
A shadow slid over Chandon’s face. “Why thank me? It’s a warning, madame. The best I can do, considering. As for belonging at Versailles, you know that you—we—of all people, belong here. We made this monster.”
In front of them, the long rectangle of water had turned to gold. Inside the palace, servants would be stumbling awake as nobles tripped from gaming tables and secret trysts into their beds. In the orangerie, gardeners would be harvesting fruit for the queen’s breakfast; in the royal stables, the king’s horses would be snuffling at their grain.
“It’s so beautiful,” Camille said, and was surprised by the catch in her voice. “This monster.”
“It’s a pretty prison, no more.” Chandon gingerly touched the scratch on his cheek. “I’d rather be home in Normandie, drinking cider in an orchard with Foudriard, not a care in the world.”
“Why stay, then?”
Chandon gazed down the lawn to the shimmer of water behind Foudriard’s broad-shouldered silhouette. “For him. He loves what he does. As long as his post with the cavalry keeps him here, this is the best place for me to be. Imagine if he were sent elsewhere, and I not allowed to go—” He sighed, his breath ragged. His hazel eyes were bright with tears. “Am I being foolish?”
“Not at all.” Camille took his hand. It was strangely hot. “Are you not well, Chandon?”
“As well as can be expected, Baroness Whoever-You-Are.”
“You must call me Camille.”
“A bientôt, then, Camille, mon amie,” Chandon said. “Until next time?”
“How did you know I was leaving?”
“You’d better,” he said, sotto voce. “Your dress is turning.”
35
As Camille returned to Paris, the sun rose above the horizon. The carriage trundled past open fields and vineyards and small towns, their stone houses crowding the edge of the road as if they wanted to see inside the passing carriages. She sat with her elbow on the window’s edge, watching the countryside go by.
Lazare was an aristocrat.
So much money, so much privilege, so much noblesse oblige toward the poor. Had he included her in his noble kindness? Or did he care for her as she was?
The carriage picked up speed. A broken-down manor house flashed by. A milkmaid in man’s shoes poking thin cows with a branch.
And Séguin a magician.
She thought of the time he’d offered to help her avoid the traps of court. She was sure he’d meant it as a kindness. But the way he’d read her palm, the fire in his hands when he touched her, that was something else. Were the intense looks he gave her—the ones that made her want to pull her cloak up to her chin to stop him from seeing into her—those of a magician? Or were they the looks of someone who wanted to trap her in an empty room and push her against the wall, his hands shoving up her skirts?
Bile rose in her throat. There was something brutish about him, used to getting his way. But whether that was because he was an aristocrat or because he was a magician—or both—she did not know.
She lowered the carriage window and inhaled the cool morning air. Either way, she needed to be careful. And to pretend she wasn’t. Was Séguin somehow interested in Chandon, too, because they were both magicians? That charged line vibrating between them and their swords. Where had she seen it before?
Rows of unripe grapes on a hill. Ducks flapping from a pond.
And then, as if in a darkened salon someone had held up a candle and suddenly everything in the room could be seen, if only dimly, she realized: she’d felt that same line of energy between him and herself the first time she’d come to Versailles.
But what did it mean?
Did he want something from her beyond what any rake in the palace wanted? It was close, the answer. She could feel it, a pulling certainty in her fingertips. But she could not grasp it.
36
Sunlight flared in around the edges of the bed curtains. Camille blinked, rubbed at her neck. She’d fallen asleep so fast that she’d slept on it twisted. It was crooked and stiff. Her whole body ached from the glamoire. She wanted nothing more than to forget what had happened last night and sleep for another day or two.
“You awake?” Sophie called though the bedroom door.
Wrapping a shawl around her shoulders, Camille walked numbly out into the salon, where Sophie stood by the fireplace, reading a letter.
“Partially,” Camille said, rolling her shoulders. “You’ve been out already?”
Sophie slipped the letter into her sleeve. “Not everyone keeps such hours as you, ma soeur.” She removed her hat—a tall, mint-green confection trimmed with swooping egret feathers, a wide, striped ribbon, and silk camellias dyed scarlet—and laid it reverently on a table. “I took a walk with some girls from the shop. We wanted to show off our hats, see if we might drum up some business.”
“And did you? It’s quite something.”
Sophie laughed. “I made it in honor of a new kind of pastry from Sweden, if you can believe it. Ladies practically threw themselves at me on the street, begging to know where I’d bought such a wonder.”
“Madame Bénard is lucky to have you.” Camille found the teapot, poured herself some tea. It was lukewarm. She set the cup down so hard it rattled on its saucer. “Why doesn’t she pay you more? It’s not as if she doesn’t have the means.”
“Bah! She doesn’t think she needs to.” Sophie dropped into an armchair, pulled her workbasket closer. “Wait until I set up my own shop and she discovers I’ve become her competition.”
Camille kept silent as Sophie rummaged through her basket, searching until she held up a hodgepodge hat ornament made of lace, feathers, and something like straw. “Isn’t this hideous?”
“Charming,” Camille muttered.
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