“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—”