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.
“Tell me, Timbault—which way did she go?”
7
The river, Timbault had guessed. Camille struck out toward the Seine, following