She found Chandon by the library’s marble fireplace, warming his hands over the fire in the grate. Which wouldn’t have been strange if it hadn’t been the middle of July.
“Why did you do that? Cheat him?” Camille challenged.
“Camille.” Chandon stared at the fire. “You shouldn’t have seen that.”
“But I did. Explain yourself! Why would you do such a thing? He’s drunk, lost—I thought you and he were friends. Since you were little, taking fencing lessons together!”
“We are, as much as anyone can be in this nest of vipers.” Chandon seemed even more exhausted than he had at the faro table. His once lively, handsome face was ghastly white. “I would have thought that you, of all people, would understand.”
“Tell me how I should understand this, Chandon. You betrayed him.” Camille felt that betrayal as if it were her own.
He inclined his head a fraction of an inch. “I did. But Séguin forced me to do it.”
A finger of ice ran down her back. “How? What did he do?”
The cords in Chandon’s neck were taut as wires. “Blackmail. Magic.”
“Over what?” But then, with a sickening lurch, she knew. “Foudriard?”
Chandon’s mouth worked, his lips struggling to shape the words. He could only nod.
Her heart ached to see him like this. “What he’s done to you—has it made you ill?” All those times she’d seen Chandon sick, exhausted, coughing as if he would retch up blood. Growing weaker and weaker. Aurélie had offered her physician—and Chandon had refused. Too much magic, he’d told her, but only now did she see that whatever the magic was, it hadn’t been his to control. It was not something a physician could cure.
“And worse.”
She clasped his hands. They were fever-hot. “What can I do?”
The tears that had been welling in Chandon’s eyes spilled over. “As a magician, you are in grave danger—you must flee Versailles. Now that I am so—broken—Séguin has grown desperate. Promise me you’ll go now,” he said.
Impulsively, she threw her arms around his neck. His chest convulsed with sobs.
“We will put an end to this,” she said into his ear. All magic eventually wore off. Didn’t it? “Can we not get you away from Versailles? What if we took you over water—to England?”
“I don’t know that it would help,” he faltered. “I suspect Séguin has set a plan in motion in which I am only a bit player. If it succeeds, he will no longer need me. And in any case, I am almost finished—another week or two of this and I’ll be neither pretty to look at nor fun to talk to.”
“Don’t say those things!” She remembered how Maman, exhausted from working la magie, had succumbed so quickly to the smallpox. And now her friend, too? “I won’t watch you die. There has to be something we can do.”
“There is.” He brought her hands to his lips. “Promise me. Stay far from this monstrous place. And get Sablebois away before he discovers Séguin’s cheated him. It will not end well.”
Chandon nodded toward the room beyond the library, where the refreshments had been laid out. “You’ll find him there. Hurry.”
54
Lazare stood in the center of the room, drinking wine, alone. All the others had edged away from him, as if bad luck were catching. Under the costly silk of his rumpled coat, his shoulders slumped. Some of the powder from his wig had drifted, like snow, onto his jaw. All the light seemed to have gone out of him.
Camille’s fingers ached with sadness.
Séguin had laid out an extravagant spread of food for his guests but Lazare did not seem to see it. He picked up a miniature sandwich and, as he stared into the distance, put it in his mouth. He chewed it as if it were dust.
She didn’t know what to say, how to convince him to leave the palace with her. Would it make a difference for her to tell him who she was? Would he even listen?
He looked over as she approached. “You were clever not to play.” Taking a glass off the footman’s tray, he raised it. “To your good fortune.”
“I won’t drink to that. Not when the game ended as it did. And now that it’s over—”
“I was a fool to play on. I have been very unlucky of late, in every way.” He drained the wine, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
“Why don’t you go home, then? It’s never a good idea to stay when your luck is bad. It never changes as fast as one would like.”
He focused on her for the first time. In his eyes was desperate longing, a wish for her to understand. “I’m short on cash, for the balloon.” He made a choked sound that might have been a laugh.
She wanted to press him, ask what that laugh meant, but just then Lazare swayed on his feet. She reached out to steady him. “I’ll send for someone to call your carriage.”
“Not yet, Baroness. I’m going hunting.”
“Now?” she asked, uneasily. It had to be nearly midnight. No one would venture into the woods at this hour. “I don’t understand—what can you possibly hunt in the dark?”
“Foxes.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve set a trap and I’m sure I’ll catch one.”
He was making no sense. “Here?”
“Of course,” he said. “The palace is full of traps, did you not know?” Grabbing another glass of wine off the table, Lazare passed through the crowds and was gone.
She needed to go after him. She slipped behind a group of older bewigged and rouged men, their portly bellies straining the silk of their waistcoats. They were so involved in their conversation they hardly noticed her. The aristocrats were talking politics and discussing whether the nobles and the church could ever side with the commoners against the king. A heated debate broke out but Camille did not hear it.
For something had happened in the gaming room. Women were exclaiming in high voices, men booing loudly. She stood on her toes to see.
Lazare was leaving the faro table. Men clapped him on the back as he staggered away. Hadn’t he lost everything? Where had he gotten the money to keep playing? And then, Séguin was leading him to an alcove by a window, very close to where she was standing.
“What’s wrong, messieurs?” she said, coming forward.
Séguin gave her a small, resentful bow. “Nothing for you to worry about,” he said. “Now, Sablebois, don’t make a mountain out of a molehill. This is nothing. A minor setback.”
“Perhaps to you it’s nothing.”
“You lost all you had, you’re saying?” Was there a note of glee in Séguin’s voice? “What about your father?” he went on. “Couldn’t you appeal to him? Surely it’s no sum for such a man.”
Lazare seemed to grow bigger, taller. There was something ferocious in him Camille had never seen before. “You don’t know me at all if you think I’d ever go to my father with my debts.”
“Forget I said it.” Séguin extended a hand but Lazare shrugged it off. “I’ll write up an agreement so you can pay the debt off over time.”
“Don’t speak to me of debts. I’ll agree to nothing, Séguin, and you know it. You cheated.”
“Careful, Sablebois.”
“You are the one who should be careful, fox.” Lazare was breathing hard now, as if he’d been running. “At the end of the first game, I called the turn. No one had kept track of the cards, as is usually done to assure the players that the banker isn’t cheating. I wonder why. But it didn’t matter, because I have a very good memory for details.”
Séguin stood very still. Waiting. Lazare’s arms were straight at his sides, his hands hardened into fists.
“And I lost. Strange, non? Before I played in the next round, I examined the cards in the deck we’d played with. And do you know what I discovered? The card I’d bet on wasn’t even in the deck.” He jabbed his finger at Séguin. “I played one more time, to see what would happen. And you know what I discovered? You’re a cheat.”
“How dare you accuse me,” Séguin said coldly. “It’s obvious you’re only doing it to get out of your debts. And I understand why.
Certainly your father the marquis would hate to hear of them.”
Lazare glanced behind him as if his father were there. “He will never hear of it because you will return my money to me. Chandon was the dealer, but it was your game.”
Séguin shrugged. “I’ll give you a letter to sign. You can pay me back with interest.”
“Shut your mouth, Séguin.” Lazare’s voice was low, dangerous.
For a split second, Séguin’s eyes went to where Camille stood by the curtains. “You can’t have everything you want, Sablebois.”
Then she knew.
It had gone so wrong. Always watching, Séguin had discovered she cared for Lazare. It couldn’t have been difficult. He had seen them first together so long ago—at the Place des Vosges. With a deepening sense of dread, she remembered he’d seen them kiss at the opera. He had watched her at the masquerade. Always watching, always tallying the score.
Waiting.
She had to stop this, do what Chandon had said, and get Lazare away before something worse happened.
“Please, stop your argument,” she begged. “Surely there’s another way—”
“No one can have everything he wants,” Lazare said. “I know that full well. But you’ve cheated me out of my money—twice in one night—and I refuse to sign a contract with a cheat, even if he pretends at being a nobleman.”
“Pretends?” hissed Séguin. “How would you know what a nobleman is? Sauvage.”
In an instant, Lazare’s hand was on the pommel of his sword.
“Lazare!” Camille threw herself at him, grabbing hold of his sword-arm. An argument like this, a challenge to a duel, went against all the rules. The king had forbidden it. It was one thing to draw swords in the gardens as Chandon and Séguin had, when there was no one to see. But now the whole court was watching—Lazare would be banished.
Or worse.
“Step out of the way, madame,” Séguin snarled. “This is an affair d’honneur, and I will not be prevented from getting satisfaction.”
Camille turned to the crowded room, the white staring faces. “Cannot someone stop this? Won’t you people do anything?” Was it because of who Lazare was, that no one did anything? Because he was somehow not a true aristocrat?
“Come away, madame,” the Comte d’Astignac called. “This is between them.”
“Heathen,” Séguin spat into the expectant room.
In one fluid motion, Lazare drew his sword free.
The room broke into chaos. Men shouted for the queen’s guards. Women were screaming; someone fainted. A tray was overturned; glasses splintered across the floor.
“Once more, I’m telling you to step away, madame,” said Séguin, his voice pointed as daggers. “This is not your quarrel.”
But it was. If she had not come tonight, what would have happened? Had Séguin been intending to cheat Lazare all along, or did he decide on that path when she’d gone to see Lazare? A sickening feeling came over her.
She had wandered into a trap.
“Don’t do this!” She pulled at Lazare’s arm. “Please!”
“No.” Lazare tried to shake Camille off. “You’ve insulted me, Séguin, and I will be satisfied—”
The room hushed.
Baffled, Camille watched as all the guests crowded close. Their faces were blanks. Stunned. Aurélie was there at the front, her arm outstretched, her finger pointing at Camille’s skirt.
It was changing.
55
Lazare’s arm around her was a wing, or a sword.
With his open coat, he shielded her from the nobles’ shocked stares and muffled their cries of alarm. As her disguise and her defenses fell away, there was only this: the shelter of his arm, the solid comfort of his chest against her cheek. She wished desperately she might close her eyes and lose herself in this moment. This safety.
He knew.
He knew, and he had not abandoned her.
Diving forward, shoulder first, he seemed not to care whose slippers he stepped on as the astonished crowd parted ahead of him. He half-carried her across a cool marble entryway and then out through glass doors banging closed behind them, over a gravel parterre, and down into the twilight shadows of the gardens.
In the darkness of the orangerie, they stopped. He still held her pressed to him, his hand cradling her head. Her ear against his chest, his heart drumming.
He took a ragged breath. “Are you well enough to stand?”
Camille struggled to make sense of what was happening. Without warning, the glamoire had faded. Everyone at the party had seen the dress change. Even Séguin. But they hadn’t seen her face change—she was sure of it. A dress could be explained away, but not her face. That was happening now, her skin crawling as the magic left it.
Lazare had saved her.
Tears burned behind her eyes. All this time, she’d been so afraid to tell him. And now he’d guessed what was happening and hadn’t cared about her magic. He had kept her safe.
Séguin must have arranged for fireworks, for suddenly, a flower of light burst high over the palace. Up above them, past Lazare’s head, the windows of Versailles flamed with candlelight and, Camille knew, watchers hiding at the edges of the curtains. But here in the gloom, they were alone.
“Thank you,” she said quietly. “For rescuing me.”
Gently, he let go of her. Her dress was dissolving to tatters, her red hair flaming through the powder, the hollows and the fatigue once more excavating her cheeks, her neck, her eyes. She knew how ugly it was, the falling away of the magic. She blinked back tears.
“It is you, then,” he marveled. His expression was uncertain. “Camille.”
“It is.” She exhaled. However awful she looked, she was relieved to finally be done with the hiding. “How long have you known?”
He took her hand, brought it to his lips. She felt his smile against her fingers. “Almost immediately, at the game of cache-cache. I suspected, anyway.”
“And your flirting with the baroness?”
“I thought I was flirting with you.”
He’d known her, under the magic, all this time. It was a strange joy: he’d not been fooled by her masquerade. He had seen her. “Why did you not ask?”
A melancholy expression tugged at his mouth. “I didn’t understand how you did it. Nor why. Would you have told me?”
Behind Lazare, two silhouettes descended the stairs and crunched along the gravel walk. Camille and Lazare stepped off the path to let them pass; they were an older couple, the woman walking with her hand tucked confidentially around her husband’s elbow. They all smiled as they greeted one another. It was like seeing two rare creatures, unicorns or giraffes—a court marriage that lasted.
When they had passed, Camille said, “I couldn’t. The things you said about magic. I thought”—she steeled herself—“you would despise me for it.”
“I don’t like it because of how people have used it. But that’s not important. I was worried about you.” Cautiously, he said, “If I figured it out, don’t you think that others will?”
“But no one else has.” Except the other magicians.
“Are you sure? This is a dangerous game, Camille. Louis XIV, the Sun King, burned magicians at the stake! The National Assembly has promised us a constitution, there’s rebellion in Paris—each day the people’s attacks against the nobles grow. If an aristocrat magician were discovered at court, what do you think our Louis XVI would be forced to do?”
“He wouldn’t kill us.” But she wasn’t sure. A king trying to stay in power might do anything.
“What if killing magicians—the symbol of all that’s wrong with the aristocracy—would make the people of France love him?”
Why couldn’t he understand why she’d done it?
“Lazare, you knew me, in my Paris life.” The glamoire was fading; the trembling was coming on.
His grip tightened on her hand. “But why? Why risk death?”
“Don’t you know?” It was like ex
plaining why she’d saved the balloon from crashing. “I had no choice. My parents died of the pox, my brother took everything we had and gambled or drank it away. He might have killed me, with a knife or his fists. His debts were huge and his creditor wanted recompense. With my father’s press gone, I lost my only skill. Magic was the one other thing I knew to do.”
Once more, a flare of light cascaded over the palace roof.
“But surely, someone could have helped—some other way than this—”
Camille exhaled, exasperated. “Only someone like you would say that.”
“Someone like what?” He let go of her hand, suddenly sober.
“Someone with choices.”
Lazare turned his head to the midnight sky, as if searching for answers there. “You think I have choices?”
“You’re an aristocrat. I saw your parents at the opera—they have money. An estate. Rooms at Versailles. They gave you a tutor!” she said, unable to stop bitter envy seeping out.
“And that means I have choices?” Lazare swallowed hard. “Look at my skin and tell me I have choices. Look at my clothes.”
He pulled off his wig, grabbed hold of his own hair. Its beautiful inky darkness absorbed all the light. “Vous voyez? No French nobleman has hair like this. This is my mother’s hair. My Indian hair. Didn’t you hear what Séguin called me? Sauvage. And the rest of them?” he asked, angrily. “The courtiers ask me if I am the son of Tipu Sultan. They ask me if, when I’m ‘at home,’ I ride on elephants, and if a person can make his fortune simply by collecting huge pearls from the sand in Pondichéry. They think me exotic, like a tiger in the king’s menagerie. The ladies covet my father’s fortune, but only as long I wear a nobleman’s disguise.”
Lazare’s chest rose and fell. White powder drifted on the air between them.
“You feel you have no choices.” She’d believed changing her appearance would free her from the cage she beat her wings against. But somehow, even though she had money and every material thing she needed, she only felt more and more trapped.
“Do I?” His voice was wandering, lost. “I was thirteen when I was brought to Versailles. On the day my father and I arrived, we walked in these gardens. I had a little sailboat with me, its motor one I’d made myself. We passed a fountain, I put it in, but it stalled. So I did what I would have done at home, with Élouard: threw off my hat and coat and jumped in to fetch it. When I climbed out, my father was furious. Like an idiot, I asked he if was displeased the boat had failed. He told me he was displeased because a nobleman does not jump into a fountain to fetch a plaything. He didn’t understand when I said it was an experiment, not a toy.”
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