Here, too?
Her fingers suddenly awkward, Camille fumbled with the glass’s rings.
Lazare was bowing to the others in the box, preparing to leave. He wore a close-fitting suit, its pale blue silk a gleam against his skin. A haze of powder tamed his fiercely dark hair and expensive lace frothed at his wrist and throat. His face, as he said his adieux, was kind. Happy. As if he did not wish to go.
“Dreamy, isn’t he?” Aurélie sat forward, her décolleté on full display. “See his parents? They’re at the front of the box.”
Now, Camille thought, she would have a chance to see the people that compelled Lazare to come to court, the father who’d both traveled to India and, in a fit of anger, had docked the wages of Lazare’s tutor. Through her glasses she saw they were powdered and haughty, though there was something in his father’s straight nose and easy posture that was very much like an older Lazare, though he was white-skinned where Lazare was tawny brown. And next to him, Lazare’s stepmother: disdainful, dripping with jewels. She frowned at the commoners on the floor as if she wished they would be swept away. Camille knew that stare—she had seen it on Grandmère’s face.
“C’est pas possible!” Aurélie gasped. She grabbed the glasses from Camille’s hands. “Do you see who’s in the box with him?”
“Who?”
“That blond ninny, the one who’s practically paved with diamonds. She’s been flaunting her wealth at Versailles while her parents search for a husband.” Aurélie lowered her opera glasses in disgust. “She might as well stuff her dress with gold louis—it’d be more subtle than what she’s up to.”
Aurélie reached across Camille and waved determinedly at Lazare with her fan.
“What are you doing?” Camille protested.
“Not letting that blond fool get the best of me,” she said cheerfully. “Besides, wasn’t it sweet that he offered to get your ball for you at paille maille?”
“In exchange for a kiss? It seemed too easily won.”
Aurélie laughed. “It’s the thought that counts. He was dreadfully sentimental about the constitution at that old tennis court and does tend to go on about how awful and terrible we aristocrats are, but underneath? He’s wonderful. Really, he’s just your type—ready for anything.”
As Lazare was leaving his box, the blond girl tipped her face up to him and smiled, as pretty and self-assured as an angel. While Camille herself felt so out of place that she needed Chandon to translate for her. How fervently she wished that she could see Lazare—elsewhere. Not here, but somewhere in Paris—a boat on the river, the workshop, the Place des Vosges—anywhere she was Camille and neither of them were wearing disguises or webbed in secrets.
“I must get some air,” she said.
“What are you thinking?” Aurélie asked, astonished. “The best part of the opera is yet to come, and Lazare’s on his way to see us.”
But Camille couldn’t face him again. To see him and not be able to truly speak to him—to know what he was thinking—it was too much. She recalled the frank stare he’d given her on the lawn at Versailles, and how she’d almost given herself away. “Forgive me, I cannot stay.”
“But Cécile! Are you ill?”
If not ill, very close to it, Camille thought as she pushed through the chairs to the curtain at the back of the box. She was halfway there when the velvet panels parted.
43
“I hope I’m not intruding, mesdames,” Lazare said, coming into the box and nearly bumping into Camille. He grasped her hand to steady her, but it did nothing of the kind. She had completely lost her bearings and all she could think was, He is holding my hand.
“Not at all,” Camille managed to say.
Below, the orchestra tuned their violins.
“Intrusions such as yours are most welcome.” Aurélie fluttered her eyelashes at him. “I know Cécile was hoping to see you again.”
Camille glared at her. Of course it was true, but why did she have to say it? Was it so obvious?
“You were?” Lazare faltered. “Even though you would not let me fetch your ball in paille maille?”
She took a deep breath and felt the answering embrace of the dress, steadying her. However he behaved, whatever he did, she must continue to play the game. Court manners, she reminded herself. Court guile. “You’ve recovered from your trouncing, I see.”
“Have I?” he teased. “We’ll have to play again. Double the penalties.”
“Enough, mes amis!” laughed Aurélie as she patted the empty place next to her. “Come, Lazare, sit by me. Chandon and Foudriard will be thrilled to see you. You know Chandon fears one day you will fly away and never return.”
“In my balloon? Not without the rest of you.” He hesitated, his hand on the back of the chair. “But that’s the baroness’s spot, isn’t it?”
Camille froze. Sit next to him? For the remainder of the opera? “I was just leaving.”
“You are always going,” Lazare observed.
“Nonsense,” Aurélie said. “You sit here, and Cécile will sit on your other side.”
After the chandeliers rose and the curtain swung away to reveal Count Almaviva considering the charges brought against Figaro, Chandon slunk in. Foudriard was gone; instead the Vicomte de Séguin—her breath caught—followed Chandon into the box. It was clear that Chandon was trying to get away from him. His face was flushed, his eyes red. Séguin wouldn’t have hurt Chandon, would he? Here, at the opera?
But her own experience whispered that it was not at all unlikely.
Séguin took the last seat in the box, behind Camille. He sat so near, she could smell his heavy cologne, and under it, the drifting smell of ash. She resented that he was here, suspicious of her secrets. Closing her in.
Next to her, Lazare stretched his long legs out in front of him, his elbow propped carelessly on the arm of his chair. The candles’ glow caught on the edges of his cheekbones and the curve of his mouth, outlining them in gold. The air between her and Lazare felt like a living thing whose every curve and indentation she was aware of.
As if spellbound by the performance, he faced the stage. But when she resumed watching the actors, she felt the heat of his gaze on the side of her face, as charged as a touch.
He was looking at her.
On the stage below, a long recitative punctuated the drama. Camille had lost track of the story; the poor countess, whose husband no longer loved her, was terribly upset. Chandon now sat in front of her, too far away to ask. The countess approached the front of the stage, handkerchief in her hand. As she began to sing, her face took the shape of anguish and pain. Chandon’s shoulders began to shake. Camille put a comforting hand on his back. “What is it, Chandon?”
He shook his head and waved her off. “It’s nothing, nothing. Just the music.”
What was the countess singing that was making Chandon so sad?
Turning to Lazare, she asked, “You speak Italian—what’s happening? What is she singing?”
“You know I speak Italian?” he said, surprised.
“Didn’t your tutor teach you Italian?”
He stared. “Élouard?”
Merde! He must never speak of Élouard to anyone at court, or he wouldn’t be so taken aback. Playing these roles, being two different people—she was losing track of what she knew and what she was supposed to not know, who knew what about her.
She pretended nonchalance. “Oh, that was his name?”
Lazare nodded slowly, his brows drawn together. Wondering. “You know him? I’ve mentioned him before?”
Camille clutched the arm of her chair as if it would keep her upright. “I assumed you had an Italian tutor, like everyone else.”
Only as Camille—not Cécile—had she heard him mention Élouard. Only in confidence. She’d made another slip, this one more perilous than the last. If he did not know who Cécile was by now, he must at least suspect there was something more to the Baroness de la Fontaine than met the eye.
Her
thoughts ran on, shaky and unstoppable. If he suspected, what exactly did he suspect—that she was in disguise? For that might be explained, though it wouldn’t be exactly comfortable. Still, it would only be as bad as what Lazare himself was doing by not telling her he was an aristocrat.
But if he suspected she was working magic? She thought again of Sophie’s horrified face when Camille had first worked the glamoire. She’d looked at Camille as if she were a monster.
If Lazare knew what she was doing, would he feel the same?
She wanted more than anything to push her way out of the box and disappear.
At that moment, he shifted in his seat and the side of his hand touched hers. He did not move it closer nor move it away. Their two hands, each one on its own armrest: one white, one brown. Camille tried to breathe as if everything were ordinary. But it wasn’t. It was as though the infinitesimally small place where their bodies touched was the only thing that existed, as if all the candles in the opera house had been blown out except one that flickered between them.
“The countess is desperate and angry,” Lazare said quietly. “She’s wondering what happened to the count’s love.”
Camille pressed on, reckless, as if she felt nothing. “Oh? What is she saying?”
Lazare’s breath was electric in her ear. “She says, ‘What happened to the promises that came from those lying lips?’”
Did he mean she was lying? Or that he was? But all she managed to stammer was, “Lips?”
Instead of replying, he leaned in and kissed her.
His mouth was soft against hers, honey sweet, searching. Before she understood what was happening, she was kissing him back, her neck curving to bring him closer.
Lazare inhaled—then pulled abruptly away, as if he could not believe what he had done. “Pardon, Baroness! It must have been the music—I don’t know what came over me—I would never—”
Stunned, Camille pulled her hand from his. What a fool she was to have kissed him back!
He knew. He must. Or worse, he didn’t know. Utterly bewildered, she said, “What do you think you’re doing?”
Lazare’s voice shook. “I’m terribly sorry. I—I don’t know what happened—How—”
From the stage, the singer’s voice soared to an aching crescendo, but all Camille could think of was Lazare. Being with him was like standing in the Hall of Mirrors—between the two of them there were so many selves that she didn’t know which one was real, and which one a reflection. At the end of the aria, everyone in their box stood, clapping, except Chandon. He was coughing and shaking. Before she could say or do anything, Lazare squeezed past Camille, put his arm around Chandon’s shoulders, and led him out of the box.
When Camille had finally elbowed her way into the crowded lobby, Lazare and Chandon were nowhere to be seen.
44
Late June grew hot, the river stank. The city held its breath.
A restless week had passed since the opera. Camille had tried to occupy herself with reading, or shopping, but those pleasures felt hollow. Following Sophie’s lead, she considered buildings where she might set up a printing shop, but her heart was not in it. The king had not granted true freedom of the press. And she was tired of striving.
Wandering the streets, she hoped to see Lazare.
She’d even walked past the workshop, but its high windows were dark. Disappointing. Of course, she’d seen him at the opera. And before that, playing paille maille. She’d stood with him and cheered as the members of the National Assembly took their oaths. But she hadn’t really seen him, had she? Since that time when Rosier had sketched her and Lazare at the workshop, she’d only been with him as Cécile.
And the more she saw him as Cécile, the more desperately she longed to see him as Camille. To talk with him about ideas, to share her concerns about buying a press, to look into his eyes and see reflected there only herself. She was so tired of her own questions, of not knowing, of being double.
When she returned to the Hôtel Théron, she played the music box balloon he’d given her and watched the balloon spin. She waited until it wound down, then put it away. Its tune was too mournful.
Perhaps the kiss at the opera house was nothing, she told herself. But it could not be nothing. Either he had kissed her as the baroness, in which case he did not love her, that is, Camille—or he had kissed her as Camille, which meant he had seen through her glamoire and she was found out. Trying to work it through made her grind her teeth.
Except for the kiss itself, there was nothing good about it.
Perhaps he was not in Paris at all, but at Versailles. Expecting to see her—or not. She’d stayed away, apprehensive of Séguin.
Since witnessing the oath in the tennis court, she waited eagerly for the news that France was changing. The king had agreed to some of the National Assembly’s requests, but his concessions were so full of exceptions they meant nothing. That wave she’d imagined at the tennis court, the one that would sweep away all injustices? The one she’d pledged to support, that would vindicate Papa and give purpose to her own life? It now felt like one of her false coins, dissolving back to scraps.
But the people of France did not give in. In the newspaper she read of angry demonstrators by the Tuileries palace who’d thrown garden chairs at a troop of foreign soldiers. Two companies of soldiers who’d pledged to protect the people had been imprisoned, only to be released by a Parisian mob. Unrest in the countryside grew worse as the price of bread doubled; any landowner suspected of hoarding grain might find his house on fire or his family dead.
Unsettled, uneasy, unsure.
That morning, the suffocating weather broke with early rain. Camille and Sophie were at home, doing nothing but relishing the cool air coming in through the windows, when the maid delivered a folded, violet-colored note on a silver salver. “This just came for you, madame. Footman brought it.”
Joy burnished with relief flooded through Camille. At last: something. “It’s from Aurélie!”
“Maybe it’ll be some news about Monsieur le Ballon,” Sophie said. “Then you won’t have to keep flailing around Paris looking for him.”
“Hush.” Camille mock-glared at Sophie. “I don’t flail. I—swan.”
“You swoon. Open it. Or I will.”
Camille unfolded the cover. A small card, shaped like a beech leaf, tumbled into her lap. On it were written a few lines, followed by Aurélie’s flourish. It was a clever invitation, the date and time and place radiating out like veins. In the center it said, Fête Galante, and along the stem was written: woodland dress. “What in the world is ‘woodland dress’?”
“Oh, it’s a masquerade!” Sophie started bouncing on the sofa. “Please, Camille, me, too! Can’t I come this time? I’ll be disguised—no one shall know me.”
Perhaps, perhaps. The waiting and the silence from Lazare was wearing at her. She could not be at peace. Sophie seemed to be drifting from her; Chandon did not answer her letters. She felt isolated, cut off. “The second of July—that’s in three days.”
“Lucky for us, you can work magic and I’m clever at sewing. Three days to us is as a hundred to mere mortals. I see you as a magpie, all black and white. And I will be a pretty little dove. We will be utterly enchanting.”
“I thought you preferred I not go to Versailles anymore,” Camille said, almost serious.
“Can I not change my mind?”
“You’re feeling well enough?”
“I haven’t felt better in ages!”
Camille reminded her, “You haven’t even been presented at court.”
Sophie shrieked with laugher. “Presented at court? Do you hear yourself? And who, may I ask, would have done the presenting?”
Camille glared. “You know what I mean.”
“You were never presented, Widow Fontaine. Nor widowed. Nor even married, come to think of it. As for being too young, think of the queen, when she first came to Versailles from Austria. Thirteen.” Sophie dropped prettily to her knees
. “S’il te plaît!”
She did not wish to see anyone on their knees. With a pang, she understood how Sophie must feel: left out, ignored, forgotten. She’d hope for the best.
“If you insist,” she conceded.
Sophie shrieked with joy. “You are not to worry about anything, ma soeur! I promise to be completely forgettable.”
45
The Grand Trianon shone like a fiery lantern.
And she, a winged creature to its flame.
She’d come for a frivolous distraction from the empty ache of waiting and not knowing. But as she and Sophie entered the colonnade packed with courtiers, the air crackled with uneasy energy.
The revels were underway. Laughing men with antlers branching from their heads passed women masked with feathers or moss, delicate wings harnessed to their shoulders. A costume of organza leaves, a furred bear; girls in the gauzy dresses of woodland sylphs, veils hiding their faces. Some masks were elaborate confections, outstanding examples of the mask-maker’s art, but others were simply bands of sheer silk tied behind the head, with holes cut for seeing.
And everywhere, there were eyes. Glinting in the masks’ recesses, stealing glances, searching, appraising. Underneath the masks, crimsoned mouths curved, laughed, tightened. Eyes and mouths and teeth, Camille thought with an unpleasant shiver.
In the whirling revels, she and Sophie were a small, still spot. Sophie squeezed her hand. “Where are your friends? Aurélie de Valledoré? Monsieur Ballon? The other one you’re always talking about, the Marquis de Chandon?”
“Somewhere, no doubt.” Camille tried to shrug off her growing sense of foreboding. “It’s just—there are so many people, and they’re all in disguise. It makes it difficult to recognize anyone.”
Joining the stream of partygoers, they were swept into a long gallery that had been transformed into a wooded grove. Birch trees mingled with boxwood in planters, crowded thickly to make a forest. High above them, dark blue crêpe de chine swathed the ceiling, so that the candles in the chandeliers burned like stars. Green walkways of turf zigzagged across the floor; tame rabbits and deer nibbled at the grass, their long ears twitching. In the trees, finches warbled.
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