rising sun would glimmer on its silk as it descended over the frost-tipped grass of the Champ de Mars. And Rosier would be there to embrace him.
She would be here, in the Hôtel Séguin.
It was safer this way. No one would be searching for Rosier, not the way they’d be searching for her. It was also safer for her wounded heart.
On the table beside her lay the small, wrapped package Lazare had entrusted to her.
She shook it gently, but it made no sound. Tomorrow would be soon enough to give it to him. Until then, she did not wish to part with it. Dropping it into the hidden pocket, its weight was like a talisman. A wish for good luck and a safe landing.
Almost imperceptibly, the sky beyond her window lightened.
She took another sip of coffee. As she did so, her fingers brushed against a piece of paper, lying on the cup’s saucer. Where had it come from? It was a ragged scrap, densely printed with words. A piece of rubbish? In the corner was written 345; clearly, it’d been torn from a book. Strange. She rose, intending to toss it on the fire, when a prickling on the back of her neck made her turn it over. On the reverse—page 346—in the margin, was scribbled:
Balloon
Champ de Mars
She frowned. What did it mean? And who had written it? She didn’t recognize the handwriting. Could it have been one of the servants? She hadn’t told them about Lazare’s journey—he had asked her not to say anything, and she had told no one but Sophie, and last night, Rosier. Besides, why would one of the servants care?
Then she remembered.
After she and Lazare had argued, and she’d rushed from the room to try to stop him in the park, the servants had been outside in the hall, flattening themselves against the wall as she ran past. Adèle had called after her to know if Camille were well, if there was something she might do. But there had been others—she tried to recall. The late-afternoon hall, the dust motes suspended in the wash of light through the circular window. Adèle, Daumier, a housemaid. Odette.
Odette, in the printing room, furious at the nobles leaving France. Those émigrés are traitors and cowards. Odette, warning Camille that she had made an enemy of her.
Down the hall she raced. She threw open the door to the room where Odette had slept. It had been cleaned, the bed stripped and covered, the moonlight-blue curtains drawn. Nothing out of place, as if Odette had never existed. Camille opened the garderobe doors: empty. The drawers in the bureau, one after another: nothing. Odette had taken everything with her when Camille had asked her to leave. Except, she realized, a book lying on the small table by the bed.
It was the gothic romance Camille had been reading when Lazare was in Lille, The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne. She picked it up, and opened it—her own name stared up at her from the flyleaf. But what else had she expected to see?
Something, she thought. A sign.
From the hall came the faintest sound, the feathery brush of a moth’s wing: Hurry.
Roughly she felt along the tops of the pages. She flipped to the page where her bookmark lay, thinking maybe Odette had placed it there it to mark some important passage. That it might be a thread, a clue to guide her, but the bookmark lay exactly where she had left it. It was the evening before they reached the castle—
The font. It was the same as on the scrap she’d found. Quickly she paged forward: 300, 342—345. Along the margin was scrawled: Tell the police to watch for him.
The bottom corner was torn away.
What had Odette said to her next? Imagine if we had a net to catch them in.
Lazare was in terrible danger.
Racing into the hall, she rang the bell that hung there. The sound echoed through the house until the ringing tolled like a summons. “Daumier!” she shouted as she raced down the stairs. “I need the carriage immediately!”
44
When the horses pulled to a stop at the Champ des Mars, the sun had not yet risen over its flat expanse. In the vague dawn light, the wide band of river gleamed like tarnished silver. Arcing over the marching ground, the sky was the palest blue, almost gray, the only clouds low and inconsequential along the horizon.
On the enormous empty field there was no sign of a balloon. Or, thankfully, any