the thought that haunted me during that trip across France, over the stormy waters of La Manche, as I walked the streets of Dover…” His hands tightened on the arm of the chair.
She was trying to stay strong. Even if it would be easier, she could not settle by simply returning to the way things were before. She reminded herself of how she’d felt when they parted: so small. If they were to be together again, it had to be in a new way. Remade. “What was it?”
“Over and over in my mind’s eye, I imagined landing in the Champ de Mars and not seeing you there.” In the firelit room, his eyes had gone black with despair. “A magic lantern slide I never wished to see. It was worse than the sea at night—an endless expanse of nothing.”
An ember jumped out from the fire and landed on the hearth. She extinguished it with her shoe. “But you needed to go. Not just for them, but because that’s who you are: kind, caring, noble—in the right way. All the things I try to be.”
His voice dropped, rich and teasing. “You try?” He moved nearer, until he pressed against her leg. “You are.”
“Don’t distract me by sitting so close,” she said, allowing herself a small smile. “If I’d tried to make you stay? I would hate myself for forcing you to be someone for me. Instead of being someone for yourself. All my life people have wanted me to be something for them. But you—”
Lazare was very still. Waiting.
“You did not.” She blinked to keep the sudden tears at bay. “Until the time when you said you wished I was not a magician.”
He clasped her knee. “Camille, please—”
She held up her hand. “I could have told you about the pamphlets. How there was some force of magic in me that I couldn’t control and that I didn’t understand. But I was ashamed. I’d determined to leave magic behind after I killed Séguin.” A log tumbled in the fireplace, the fire crackled. “So many times I intended to tell you. But when you said how extraordinary the pamphlets were—how extraordinary I was—I couldn’t.”
“Merde,” he swore. “What an ass I was!”
Despite herself, she laughed. “I was in love with your vision of me as hardworking and talented and magic-less. It was as if I were living in a hall of mirrors, wanting to believe that what I saw was true.”
“My love,” he said, his voice rough with emotion, “the day of the king’s speech, I wondered. But I didn’t want to believe it. I abetted you in your silence, when I could have made it easier for you to talk to me about it.”
“You are already forgiven, for you’ve forgiven me.” She picked up an iron poker and jostled the logs in the fire, sending up sparks that rose vanishing into the chimney’s mouth. “I used to think about the adventures we’d have, the voyages we’d go on by balloon. But the revolution has taken our dreams from us.”
“The places we saw in the magic lantern … our flight over the Alps … those dreams will never die,” he said softly. “They are my dream of a life with you. The dream of us.”
He took her hand. In the fathomless deep of his eyes, she saw love and heartbreak. “Let me help you with whatever it is that you are planning. Whatever it takes, whatever magic is in it.”
She brought his hand to her mouth and kissed it. The scent of him, the warmth of his skin, the callouses on his palm and the pale scars across the knuckles of his fingers—all of him was precious to her. “You may help me, Lazare Mellais, under one condition. Please, be careful of my heart. I cannot lose you again.”
“I promise.” Gently he drew her down to him until they both sat on the carpet. In front of the fire, their tired bodies pressed close. Each exhale pushed them apart, each inhale brought them together. “I will stay. I am yours to command.” And then, teasingly, he said, “Your magic doesn’t frighten me anymore.”
“Not even a little?”
“Well, perhaps … but only in the most intoxicating way.”
She tucked her fingers under the collar of his coat, next to his skin. As she rested her head against his shoulder, the world receded, dim and distant and far away, until there was only this moment, only him and their hope.