Everything That Burns Page 4

  “Or magic?” He raised one dark eyebrow, the one cut by a scar. “Though that hasn’t prevented you from enchanting me.”

  “I didn’t intend to.” Though perhaps longing was its own kind of magic?

  “I’ll need to study you more carefully to know for certain.”

  “Like you were studying the birds just now? Or was it the clouds?”

  His gaze traveled like a caress from the collar of her cloak and along her cheek before coming to rest on her mouth. “Not exactly.”

  It was like feeling the warm sun on her face. “I’m glad you’re back in Paris.”

  “Me too, mon âme. And I am determined to stay. You will become quite sick of me, I’m certain.” Camille was about to say that it was impossible when she heard Sophie coming toward them.

  “Lazare! Welcome home!” she called out as she ran lightly down the stairs. Her dress billowed behind her as she kept one hand pressed to her head, to keep her extraordinarily wide hat from blowing away.

  Lazare bowed. “I was only gone for five days.”

  “To some,” Sophie mused, “five days can seem an eternity. Wouldn’t you agree, Camille?”

  The heat climbed in Camille’s cheeks.

  Lazare suppressed a smile. “I imagine Rosier is feeling eternity stretch on ahead of him at this very minute. Shall we go?”

  Once inside the carriage, Camille took her seat opposite Sophie, who remarked, “I see you’d prefer a different companion on your bench and I wholeheartedly approve.”

  “You are hopeless!”

  “The opposite, in fact.”

  Lazare climbed in and closed the door behind him. He knocked on the ceiling and the horses stepped out and away. Flinging himself down beside Camille, he stretched his legs out in front of him. “A few minutes and we’ll be there.”

  “It was kind of you to take us,” Sophie said, “when we might have walked. Perhaps you might tell us why we’re going to the workshop?”

  He crossed his arms and grinned. “I really couldn’t say.”

  Thwarted, Sophie yanked back the curtain and watched the streets roll by. Lazare shifted so close that his legs tangled in Camille’s skirts. In her ear, he said, “Rosier hopes to—”

  “What are you whispering?” Sophie asked. “It’s rude to keep secrets.”

  “You want me to break my vow of silence?” He tried not to laugh. “Rosier will have my head.”

  Diverting the conversation, Lazare asked them what they had done while he’d been away, and told them stories about the latest crop of foals at Sablebois, and the vineyards that had been planted. As they talked, Camille luxuriated in the joy of simply being next to him again, the late summer unfurling in front of them like a grand map of adventure, her worries fading to a distant hum, inaudible over the carriage wheels whispering soon, soon, soon.

  6

  At the far end of the lane, a cobalt-blue door beckoned.

  Above it, Camille knew, was written in faded letters: L’ÉCOLE DE DRESSAGE. To anyone else, it could very well be a riding school where students cantered around a dusty ring, practicing flying lead changes. But to her, it was a doorway into dreams.

  Inside was pleasantly cool and dim. Overhead perched scores of slate-gray pigeons, and a few flapped into the air when Lazare opened the door. The packed-dirt floor was as it’d been when she’d first came to the workshop, but the viewing stand, once filled with failed balloon experiments, had been cleared out. The gaggle of judgmental seamstresses was also gone, though there remained, at one end of the long space, an uninflated balloon and two wicker gondolas, as well as a table piled with books and papers. In the middle of the riding ring stood a small stage, facing a row of chairs. From the way the red curtains bulged, something—or someone—stood behind it.

  Questioningly, Camille looked at Lazare.

  “Don’t ask me! All I can say is Rosier’s been hard at work.”

  Odd. Rosier was hardly one to be quiet about anything.

  The curtains twitched and, as if he’d heard his name, Rosier appeared. As always, he seemed to be in perpetual motion. From his coat pocket protruded the stem of the pipe he always carried with him. His clothes seemed an afterthought, as if he were thinking of something much more exciting than what to wear, and without a hat, his light-brown hair curled exuberantly. But his dark eyes were as searching and clever as ever.

  “Thank you for coming, all of you!” He made a particularly low bow to Sophie. “Welcome to my marvels!”

  “Is it a play?” Camille asked.

  “I will not prejudice your reaction with categories!” He gestured to the waiting chairs. “Please sit.” Once they were settled, he clapped his hands. An ethereal tune, played on a violin, rose from behind the curtains as slowly, they drew apart, revealing … an empty stage.

  “Oh!” Sophie’s face fell.

  “Merde!” Rosier exclaimed. “What am I saying—forgive my mouth! Forget this happened! Scenery is forthcoming. In the meantime, please imagine the backdrop: a row of trees, an ancient forest.” Once more he clapped his hands, and two puppets emerged. They had painted papier mâché faces and wore colorful costumes that suggested the play was set in a distant and magical land. One puppet wore a pair of gilt paper wings tied to its back, the other carried a red rose. When they met in the middle, they bowed: first to each other, and then to the audience.

  “Just wait!” Rosier said under his breath.

  One of the puppets—a young man—produced a box and presented it to the other puppet, who was, judging by her long horsehair wig, supposed to be a young woman. When she opened it, a puff of smoke drifted from under the lid.

  “Ignore,” Rosier muttered.

  “But what—?” Camille wondered.

  “A firework. It’ll work next time.” He waved his hand at the puppeteers. “Continuez!”

  The play continued. At times the characters spoke to each other, but Camille could not tell whether their speaking was part of the story or directions the puppeteers were giving each other, in which case, she should be ignoring them. As the violin played faster and faster, the players too sped up their actions, until, at a blistering pace, they gesticulated, danced, kissed, pretended to sail in a boat, and finally, after stripping off their masks and flinging them away, bowed low as the curtains swung closed on top of them. If puppets could have panted, they certainly would have.

  “Bravi!” shouted Rosier, applauding enthusiastically. “Well done, well done!” To his audience, he said, “Did you not think so?”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Lazare said, straight-faced. “What do you call it?”

  Rosier beamed. “Les Merveilleux, naturally.”

  “The Marvelous Ones is a beautiful name,” Camille remarked. Even if the show had not quite lived up to its name—not yet.

  “What about you?” Rosier stooped solicitously by Sophie’s chair. “Tell me your thoughts, Mademoiselle Sophie!”

  Regretfully Sophie replied, “I may never have been to the Opéra or the Comédie-Française, but dear Rosier, if you plan to use these costumes, which should be beautiful but … are not … I’m afraid people will laugh. In the wrong way.”

  Rosier looked at the stage and muttered something inaudible.

  “It’s only his first attempt, Sophie.” Seeing how he’d angled for Sophie’s verdict, Camille couldn’t help but defend him. There was perhaps more to this than she’d thought. “You always try out your hat designs in paper first, to see how they might be improved. Maybe this is like that?”

  “That’s true,” Sophie demurred.

  “A brilliant strategy! I should have done a paper trial long ago. I’d thought to take the show to the streets in a few weeks’ time, but perhaps,” he said significantly, “there is no point. With things so hard in Paris, I thought I might bring a smile to the face of a child, a happy memory to an old lady, or perchance, a bit of the marvelous, the extraordinary—”

  Lazare cleared his throat.

  �
��Some hope,” Rosier said, reining himself in. “That is the most important.”

  “An admirable goal,” Sophie conceded. “What do you two think?”

  “It has a great deal of promise,” Camille said truthfully. “I’m certain it could be improved in time for a performance … in the near future?”

  “But how?” Rosier wondered.

  How strangely he behaves, Camille thought, but Lazare remained silent, as if he didn’t want to break a spell. Finally Sophie spoke up. “I might have some ideas to improve the costumes. The rest…” She bit her lip. “It would take a lot of work.”

  “You are right to focus on their clothes!” For someone who was receiving a lot of criticism, Rosier seemed strangely glad. “I had aimed for a ragamuffin je-ne-sais-quoi, but clearly my aim was dreadful. With your eye for design, the show will be vastly improved. And you’d be bringing hope to our city.”

  Sophie beamed. “I am rather good at things like this.”

  “It’s true, she is a great talent,” Camille encouraged. “She even works wonders with tricolor stripes.”

  “That will not enter into this!” Glaring at Camille, she rose from her chair. “I can show you what’s not working with the costumes right now, if you wish. It shouldn’t take long.”

  “I would like nothing more!” Rosier said happily. “And it takes as long as it takes, n’est-ce pas?”

  As they strolled together to the stage where the puppeteers held out the puppets for them to examine, Camille whispered, “Did he make it flawed on purpose, in the hope she would help him?”

  Lazare’s dark gaze met hers. “The things we do for love.”

  The way he was looking at her—sometimes it was almost too much to simply sit next to him. “And will hope make a difference with everything that’s happening in Paris?”

  “It’s strange,” Lazare mused, “but I distinctly remember being captivated by a girl who made a passionate speech about the power of hope to a packed audience at a salon. Wasn’t that you?”

  The corners of her mouth twitched. “It was.”

  Searchingly, he asked, “Something’s bothering you, isn’t it?”

  “Yesterday I went to another bookseller.” She tried to keep her voice light, but still, it wobbled as she remembered how hopeful she’d been. “He said my pamphlets were dull and no one would ever buy them.”

  “I know how frustrating it is to try something and not have it be good enough. Think of the balloon! But another bookseller will see the strength of your work, I know it. It’s just a matter of time.”

  “But what if time is running out? There was a flower seller…” She dug at the dirt floor with the toe of her shoe.

  “Where? What happened?”

  “At Sainte-Chapelle. A wealthy man propositioned her. She was defiant, and he became enraged.” Unbidden, her fear and anger came rushing back. “I stepped between them and told her to run. And she did, the mob he’d whipped up chasing her.”

  “No!” he said, shocked. “She escaped?”

  She nodded. “But the nobleman made me furious!”

  He had done more than that. He had made her see how close she still stood to the flower seller’s precarious uncertainty. Not physically, for while they had the Hôtel Séguin and enough money in the bank, they were safe, but rather in her own head. There the everyday terror of not knowing if she would survive remained. That wound had not yet healed, for it was deep, and the flower seller’s plight had exposed it. Though she and Lazare had spent hours talking in the garden and telling stories, this hurt wasn’t one she wanted to share.

  “You were brave, mon âme.”

  For a moment, but what then? How could she be satisfied with the little she’d done? “It wasn’t enough. I helped her in that moment, but what about today? Tomorrow? She is the reason I keep trying to sell those pamphlets.”

  She looked up to see Rosier and Sophie standing in front of them, both looking strangely satisfied. “We’re ready if you are?”

  She hated to leave the workshop, where so many dreams had begun. As long as they stayed here, she thought to herself, everything seemed possible. But as they got to their feet, Lazare said quietly, “You must not give up. There will be another way, I know it.”

  * * *

  The ride back to the Hôtel Séguin was all too short. Sophie had decided to take the puppets and their costumes home with her and the gilded wings would fit into the carriage only at an angle, separating Camille from Lazare. She wanted to ask him how he could say so confidently that there would be another way. Was it because that’s how it had happened for him? Or was it because that was what he wished to believe? She thought of what he’d told her about his experiments: did he know from observation—or was it a hypothesis?

  But separated from him by the puppet’s wings, she couldn’t ask. Instead she listened as Rosier animatedly proposed ideas for how to curl the female puppet’s wig and better operate the curtains. In response, Sophie promised to come to the workshop a few times a week, and if she could, find a seamstress to sew new costumes for the puppets.

  “I could not be more elated!” Rosier said. “You are truly a marvel yourself, mademoiselle.”

  Was that a blush that rose in her sister’s cheek? “You must call me Sophie, if we are to work together.”

  Rosier’s smile dazzled. “Now that is settled, and what with Lazare’s new adventure unfolding—”

  “What? You hadn’t told us!” Sophie chided.

  “I didn’t have a chance!” From the other side of the wings, Lazare said, “Lafayette is creating a balloon corps—part of the National Guard. I’ll be training the men who go up.” He shifted in his seat to see over the wings. “Balloons are already being sewn. There will be four or five, two aeronauts each, both capable of piloting.”

  Sophie gave Camille a sharp kick under their skirts and a look that said, Say something! “It’s very exciting, n’est-ce pas, Camille?”

  “Very exciting!” she said brightly. And it was. Wasn’t it? “What will you do?”

  “We will be a small unit of observational balloons,” he added. “Surveilling the borders, that kind of thing. Gathering information. Scientific, really.”

  “You’ll be doing a lot of flying?” Camille tried to keep loss from tugging at her voice. Hadn’t he just said he’d be staying in Paris with her?

  “In the training, yes.”

  “Tell us, how did it come about?” Sophie asked.

  “Could this be more in the way?” He shifted the puppet’s wings and his gold-flecked eyes, framed by the swoop of dark brows, reappeared. “The Marquis de Lafayette made a surprise visit to Sablebois when I was there. He’s an acquaintance of my father’s and came to propose the idea of a balloon corps.”

  “How flattering!” Rosier observed. “The great man himself!”

  Lafayette, Camille remembered, had been interested in balloons from the time she’d made her speech at Madame de Staël’s salon. There he’d thrown his arm familiarly over Lazare’s shoulders, guiding him away for a private talk about the military possibilities for balloons. “He can be very persuasive.”

  Lazare’s mouth twisted in a wry smile. “So I discovered.”

  This wouldn’t be the demonstration flights over Paris he yearned for, but it was something. Even if it meant he’d often be away from Paris, even if it meant their own journey over the Alps would be delayed, she wished this for him. But at the same time—knowing it was selfish—she couldn’t help but feel as if an open door she’d been walking toward had suddenly closed.

  “Will you invite us to the launch?” she managed to say. “I should like to see you go up.”

  Lazare shrugged. “If you wish. I’m guessing it will be a fairly ordinary send-off.”

  “If I have anything to do with it,” Rosier scolded, “ordinary is the opposite of what it will be! And I cannot imagine that the Marquis de Lafayette will do anything halfway.” As they neared the Hôtel Séguin, he outlined in enthusiastic detail
a scheme by which the balloon corps could draw a large and celebratory crowd—“which would only cast you in the best possible light, Lazare. How impressed your parents will be—”

  Suddenly the carriage shuddered to a halt not far from the Hôtel Séguin.

  “Can you see what’s happening?” Sophie asked.

  Camille peered out. “A wagon carrying bricks has blocked the road.”

  A flicker of movement by the iron gates of the Hôtel Séguin caught her eye. It was a girl, gesticulating at the gatekeeper Timbault. While she pointed toward the house, he gestured angrily for her to leave. But the girl did not relent. There was something about the proud tilt of her head that Camille recognized.

  Camille leaped to her feet.

  Lazare half stood, tussling with the wings. “What is it?”

  “I must speak to that girl—she’s the flower seller I told you about!”

  “Wait, I’ll go with you—”

  But she’d already flung open the door and, grasping as much of her dress in her hands as she could, leaped to the ground. She stumbled, caught herself, and raced to the gate. But by the time she reached it, the girl had vanished.

  “Monsieur Timbault, what did she want?”

  “She made no sense,” Timbault grumbled. “Said you had something of hers. A tray? She said she needed it to sell flowers. Did I do wrong, madame?”

  Merde! “She was telling the truth, but there was no way you could have known.”

  “She’ll be back. That type always is.”

  He thought the flower seller a beggar, a cheat. Resentment flared inside of her. Imagine if Timbault knew how the mistress of the Hôtel Séguin had been living only a few short months ago. She was not at all certain the flower seller—proud, defiant, but also wary—would return.

  She hesitated. The carriage door yawned open as if in surprise, filled with her friends’ alarmed faces. Could she leave the others like this, with hardly an explanation? She could practically hear Sophie calling her reckless.

  But it wasn’t enough to stop her. For here was a mystery and a chance to do something right.