“Isn’t it enchanting, Camille? If Madame Bénard could see this, she’d faint with happiness at how beautifully everyone’s gone along with the theme. Well, except that one there.” She made a moue of distaste. “He’s not wearing any kind of a costume, unless you consider a plume stuck in your hair to be something.”
Camille realized she knew him. “Lord Willsingham!”
Willsingham straightened his cravat and stalked over to them. He wore a strangely flattened wig, pierced with a bent peacock feather. He hadn’t even reached them before he burst out: “Damn me, I’m at the end of the wits! Tell me, my lady, have you seen the marquis? The one with the blond hair?” He peered at her. “Blue, like me?” His French was terrible.
“Blue eyes, do you mean? The Marquis de Chandon?”
Willsingham nodded emphatically.
“I haven’t. Have you?”
“Obviously not. I was hoping to get up a game. I’m terribly in debt, you know, and need to ah, improve my situation.” Willsingham scanned the crowded room, as if Chandon might suddenly appear. “They say he’s ill.”
Still ill? A finger of worry ran up Camille’s spine. “He isn’t any better?”
“Last I saw him he looked as if he’d aged twenty years. I thought he was pretend. Apparently I was wrong.” He bowed abruptly and moved off into the crowd, lost as always.
“How rude,” Sophie said.
“It’s just because he’s English,” Camille said vaguely, following Willsingham’s progress through the crowd. “Chandon seems only to get worse. Aurélie promised to send her physician but Chandon didn’t think he could help.”
Too much magic. And the uneasy feeling that Séguin had something to do with it.
She needed to find Aurélie.
As they passed among the revelers, servants offered silver trays arrayed with glasses of lemonade and champagne, tiny canapés shaped like acorns, clusters of grapes dusted with gold. Standing under a haze of birch leaves, she sipped champagne, trying to appear as easy and nonchalant as everyone else. It was all very beautiful, but standing at the edge of everything, surrounded by beauty and laughter and twirling motion, Camille felt very alone. At first, the magic had been a way to beat the aristocrats at their own game, to punish them. But after all these weeks playing at being one of them, she wasn’t so sure. She’d become an imposter, both here and at home.
Dancers swept past, none of them her friends. Why had she bothered to come? She’d wanted to please Aurélie, who’d invited her, and to give Sophie a treat. But deep down, she knew. Despite her attempts to scrub her confusion over Lazare from her mind, it remained, darkly impervious to all her deliberate forgetting. And the kiss at the opera had only made things worse. Sophie insisted that his being an aristocrat did not matter, and maybe it didn’t. But the gnawing secrets did. She wished he would say why he had not told her.
Both of them were impostors. She had her reasons. But his? They were unguessable.
An accordion player joined the orchestra and played a few bright notes. It would be a country dance—Marie Antoinette loved to pretend she was a simple country girl. Camille felt a surge of resentment at a queen who could pretend whatever she wanted while everyone else followed happily along.
“Camille!” Sophie whispered. “I think we have partners!”
Two boys, dressed in the blue and white of the King’s Guard, were making straight for them. Over their faces they wore strips of white silk with holes cut out; their only other concession to the masquerade was a sprig of apple leaves pushed through their buttonholes.
“How seriously they’ve taken the theme,” Camille said under her breath.
“Hush.” Sophie’s face glowed with anticipation. “I won’t dance without you, so be nice and say yes when they ask.”
“Sophie—”
But when the guardsmen stopped in front of them, bowed low, and asked for the dance, Camille gave in and took the taller one’s hand. For a moment they stood, holding hands, in a circle of other dancers. He asked her if she was much at court, but before she could answer, the violins joined the accordion and the dance sped into motion. As they promenaded forward, and then backward, his hand lightly holding hers, he said, “You make a very fine magpie, madame.”
“What if I stole the buttons off your coat?”
“You have already stolen my heart,” he flirted, as they stepped together, shoulder to shoulder. “Isn’t that enough?”
It was all a dance. Things were said that had to be said, things were done that had to be done, like steps in a dance, a pattern that everyone followed because—because if they didn’t, what would happen? No one wanted to know. It would mean chaos, collapse. No rules would mean the end of the nobles’ power—so they followed them, assiduously, and laid mighty punishments on those people, like Papa, who didn’t.
Forward and back they went until he spun her away to the man dancing behind them. “When you come back to me in the dance,” the guard said, “I’ll toss salt on your tail. That’s how you tame a magpie, isn’t it?”
“You’ll have to catch me first.” She ducked under his arm and away, clasping hands with her next partner. This one was tall, dressed in black silk, wearing a raven mask and a short cape of glossy dark feathers. He wore his hair fanned over his shoulders and held her hand high between them.
“Madame Magpie,” he said, tipping his head to her so that the feathers on his mask danced.
Lazare.
“Monsieur Raven,” she said, endeavoring to be witty. “Two thieving birds, aren’t we?”
“I stole a kiss,” he said, as they took two steps forward. “It was wrong of me.”
Perhaps. “And what did you think of it, once you had it?” she dared.
“I shouldn’t say.”
“Why not?” They came together, shoulder to shoulder.
“It might be too revealing.”
All these double entendres! Knowing and not-knowing, saying things but not saying them—it was a torment. But she replied, sweetly, “Revealing what?”
The raven smiled. “Myself.”
The mood of the dance swept her up; emboldened, she asked, “Are you planning to kiss me again?”
“Is that what you wish?” His voice was honey rich in her ear.
They pressed their palms together.
“What kind of kiss would it be? Raven and magpie?”
“Marquis and baroness?” He turned his head and met her gaze. His dark eyes in the darker mask gleamed. “Or—something else?”
What did he mean?
They were walking backward now, hands clasped; they would face each other only once more before they changed partners. Her time with Lazare was slipping away.
As they stepped backward with pointed, measured steps, heads up, side by side, a moving part of the great wheel of dancers spinning under the blazing chandeliers, all Camille wanted was for it to be finished. She wanted the confusion and guessing to be gone, the masks and disguises to be stripped away—even her own. Once, she’d been safe, hiding in her glamoire, but the girl who’d come to court to gamble and flirt and fill her pockets with louis was gone. She didn’t want to be a magpie any longer, nor the Baroness de la Fontaine. She wanted to be herself, to hear Lazare to say: I know you.
At the last moment, he spoke, low and earnest. “Tell me,” he began. “At the opera—”
But before he could finish, the dance propelled him away.
Why all these riddles? Why could no one say what they meant? Frustrated, Camille took the hand of her next partner. He wore a fox mask of glossy fur, his lips red over white teeth. When he spoke, she answered by rote, watching Lazare move on without her in the dancers’ circle.
Dutifully, she gave her new partner a small smile. “How many foxes there are in the king’s forests this evening!”
“I’m pleased to see you, Madame la Baroness. Did you enjoy the opera?”
That melodious voice, the burn of incense and smoke. Séguin.
She w
as grateful that in this movement, the dance let her turn her face away so he could not see her apprehension. “Did you?”
“From where I sat,” he said, his voice slippery as silk, “I got quite an eyeful.”
“The opera was beautiful.”
“I meant the kiss.”
Camille bit her lip.
“Though somehow I don’t think you’re the kind of baroness he wants,” he added. “He’s searching for one a bit more—how shall I say?—authentic. Madame—careful you don’t stumble!” he said as he caught her up, holding her tightly by the hand.
Camille tried to pull free. “Let me go.”
“I didn’t mean to tease you. Besides, our dance is nearly finished.” He held her hand high for the promenade.
She wrenched her hand from his. “It’s finished now.” As she stumbled away from him, the toe of her shoe caught on the hem of her dress and she nearly fell.
“In case you are dealt cards you don’t like,” Séguin called after her, “you know you can change them.”
“Mademoiselle?” she heard a man saying. “Do you wish to sit down?”
When he’d found her a seat by a potted birch, she asked him for lemonade—just go, leave me, she wished at him—and he vanished into the crowd. She could no longer doubt that Séguin knew she was a magician. And that he wanted her to know that he knew. But why? Her head ached.
Near where she sat, groups of courtiers bent their heads together, gossiping.
“Dieu,” exclaimed an older woman. “Have you seen young Sablebois tonight?”
Camille froze.
“Who could miss him?” said her companion in a high, nasal voice. “He’s a glorious dark angel.”
“Do you see how he dances with the white-blond daughter of the Comte de Chîmes? Money and a title.”
“They’re dancing together now! Even his parents watch with approval.”
As in a nightmare, she felt her head swivel like a puppet’s on a string toward the movement of Lazare’s black cloak in the mesh of dancers. She had to look.
The blond one wore a moth costume, her hair coiled down her back to where her white wings flared out. Blonder than the queen had ever been, a kind of northern beauty, she moved with fairy grace. As she danced with Lazare, her white hand intertwined with his brown one, her face was radiant, as it had been at the opera.
And Lazare?
His back was to Camille, so she could not see his face. But whenever he said something into the curve of the girl’s ear, the pretty play of emotions on her face made Camille sick. And there, at the edge of the crowd, stood Lazare’s parents, with alabaster faces and crimson-painted smiles of approval.
The dance spun, its wheel turning, and Lazare and the daughter of the Comte de Chîmes were lost from view. She told herself it meant nothing. The court loved to spread rumors—she knew that. She tried to let the worry go but it persisted, a heavy hand on her shoulder.
Why could she no longer tell what was real and what was not?
Her hands trembled in her lap, as if her glamoire were fading, and, sure enough, the black-and-white-striped gown had taken on a grayish cast. Unpinning her brooch, she thrust the needle into her arm. Blood welled up, red and alive as always, and dropped onto her skirt. Almost instantly, fresh black bands raced up from the hem as if an invisible hand were stitching it anew. Revived, the dress drew in protectively around her, giving her strength to stand up. The glass doors to the gardens beckoned and she shouldered her way through the revelers to reach the parterres.
In the gardens, she stopped, caught her breath. Compared to the hectic burn of thousands of candles, here it was cool inky darkness, the moon a scimitar in the sky. The clipped yews at the edge of the Grand Trianon had ceased to be trees and become pointed tips of a deeper shadow. The stars were out, fierce and knowing, as if they had been watching dances and lost loves for thousands of years. Over the Grand Canal, fireworks shot up and bloomed into bluebells, then sprouted into vines of wild eglantine.
It was all so beautiful, and none of it for her.
She strode out onto the gravel path. But the farther she went from the Trianon, the more the dress rustled. Warning her. Urging her to return.
She was halfway to the lower parterre before she remembered Sophie.
Camille gathered her skirts and ran. Back up the stairs, along the paths, through the open doors, she plunged back into the sea of silk and tulle and feathers—all the masked faces spinning blind in the dance. She saw the queen, dressed as a berry-picking maid, her basket filled with raspberries; the king clothed as a woodsman, an axe poised on his shoulder. Fears of something happening to Sophie—a darkened room, a chair against the door, rough hands—kept her searching the crowd. Where is she? Camille wanted to shriek for the musicians to stop playing, for everyone to stop dancing, so she could find her.
And then she did.
Sophie was dancing with the Vicomte de Séguin. As they came together, Séguin bent his head toward Sophie’s, his fox-ears pricked, as if he were about to devour her. She ducked her head and smiled.
Camille’s pulse raced as she neared them. How dare he? She tapped Séguin on the shoulder. He spun around, and where the long, toothed smile of the fox should have been there was instead his own thin mouth, curving up at the corners as if he scented something good to eat. His strong cologne burned in her nose.
“Madame la Baroness,” he said, in that low, thrilling voice. “You never told me you had a sister.”
Sophie smiled knowingly.
And in that silence, Camille realized she was perilously close to being unmasked. Séguin might know she was a magician, a fraud—but he did not know she was Camille Durbonne, the girl whose sister he’d nearly run over in the Place des Vosges. She clung desperately to this last scrap of self and would not let it be taken from her. “My sister is in fact too young to come to court,” Camille said, grabbing Sophie’s arm so hard she winced. “And it’s late.”
“But—” Sophie shook off her sister’s grip. “I don’t wish to go. I wish to dance and speak with the vicomte.”
“Any later and our carriage will become a pumpkin,” Camille said through gritted teeth.
“What a pity,” Séguin said. He took Sophie’s hand and pressed it to his too-red lips. Sophie flushed. “I will live in hope of our next encounter,” he said.
“You were ruder than that Englishman to drag me away,” Sophie complained as they left for the colonnade where Madame de Théron’s carriage would be waiting. “He said he would live in hope of our next encounter. Isn’t that polite enough for you?” She glared at Camille. “Can I not be my own judge of character? I see nothing wrong in it. Would it have been so terribly unbecoming if I had said I could not wait until next time?”
“There won’t be a next time.” Camille hated how cruel her voice sounded, how mean and unfeeling, but she couldn’t shake the picture of the fox and his prey. Those watchful eyes behind the mask.
Sophie’s voice was hard. “He’s a rich nobleman, Camille. He likes me—perhaps he’s the one, n’est-ce pas? Isn’t he everything I’ve been wishing for? Why is it that you can take what you want from the nobles and I can’t?”
Camille shook her head. It wasn’t the same. Was it? “The difference is I don’t like doing it.”
“If Alain were here,” she grumbled, “he would have congratulated me on my conquest.”
“Of course he would have. He thinks that’s the best we can do, we girls—marry a man with money.”
“But that’s what I want,” Sophie countered, hopefully. “Don’t you see?”
It was useless to try to convince her.
Once in the carriage, they untied their masks. “How ravishing everything was,” Sophie said as the carriage rolled down the linden tree allée, her anger at Camille seemingly forgotten. “The ladies’ dresses, the costumes, the men in their masks—so mysterious! I had many partners besides Monsieur le Vicomte. And what they murmured in my ear! The things the men will say
—c’est incroyable.”
“At court, no one means what you think they mean,” Camille said, tossing her mask to the side.
Lazare, least of all.
In the tower of Notre-Dame, they stood so close under the stars, and everything was as it should have been—except that at the center of it were their secrets. She saw how he’d danced with the daughter of the Comte de Chîmes, how prettily she’d flushed and laughed. Wasn’t that the way Lazare once smiled at her, before, under the stars? Wasn’t that how she’d flushed, too, in his arms?
She had perhaps lost him with her pretending.
Camille sank back in the seat, her mask next to her. It stared up at her as the carriage jostled across the cobbles of the grand court and through the palace gates.
Sophie murmured, “It was perfect, except for the candles. Someone should have taken better care of them. What’s the point of all the lovely flowers if they can’t cover up the smell of the candles? Couldn’t you smell it, Camille?” She yawned and snuggled her head against Camille’s shoulder.
“Smell what?”
“Snuffed candles.” Sophie’s eyelids fluttered. “When I was dancing with the vicomte, all I could smell was the stench of snuffed candles.”
“Like the smell of the glamoire box, Sophie? Like fireplaces? Burned wood?”
Did her sister know the smell of magic? Had she realized what Séguin was?
But Sophie was fast asleep.
It doesn’t matter now, Camille thought, as she slipped off her cloak and tucked it around Sophie’s shoulders. Her cheeks were flushed, her mouth slightly open, like a child’s. Against her best judgment, Camille had let her go to the masquerade. Grâce à Dieu nothing had happened to her. It would have been Camille’s fault and she never could have forgiven herself.
Séguin had come dangerously close.
And she had been too caught up in her own agony to notice.
46
“What’s this?” Camille said when the maid came in the next morning. She and Sophie were drinking chocolate in their dressing gowns and Camille was rubbing her aching forehead, trying not to think of the masquerade, Lazare’s talk of kisses, the blond girl—or Séguin’s predatory smile. It was not going well.
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