Carefully she walked along the planks that led to the front door. As she hesitated on the doorstep, the house went completely silent.
She raised her fist to the door and knocked.
8
The door whipped open. A hand reached out, grabbed Camille hard by the wrist, and yanked her inside.
She stumbled into a lamplit room full of girls. Some were dressed in costly secondhand gowns that had been sliced to fit; others wore pants and jackets, their hair tucked up under a tricorne hat or cut boyishly to their shoulders. Some wore bright stockings and shoes, others were barefoot. A couple had tattoos twining from under their cuffs. Almost all were her own age.
“Let go,” Camille cried, trying to twist loose from the girl’s vise-like grip.
“Not until you tell us what you’re doing here!” the girl said. She was strikingly beautiful in a red dress that set off her light brown skin, freckled from the sun. Her wary stare took in every detail of Camille’s appearance, from her too-extravagant hat to the deep hem of muck on her green dress. The girl gave her arm a last vicious twist, forcing Camille to let go of the flower seller’s tray. It dropped to the floor with a rattle.
“You stole Giselle’s tray!” the girl cried.
“I haven’t stolen anything,” Camille blazed. “I brought it back for her!”
“Giselle!” one of the other girls called out. “Hurry and come here!”
At the back of the room, a curtain covering a doorway was flung aside and the flower seller emerged. Beneath her large, wide-set hazel eyes her pretty mouth fell open in a shocked O. “Dieu, Margot, let her go! That’s the mademoiselle who saved me at Sainte-Chapelle the other day! Remember? When I was attacked by the nobleman who thought he could have me for a louis?”
The girl in the red dress frowned. “She hasn’t come to throw us out?”
Another girl, tall and black-haired, laughed. “Doubt she’s strong enough, Margot. It’s going to take the cavalry to drag us away. That or they’ll have to pry the house loose.”
“She’s the fancy girl?” Margot said to Giselle. “She’s smaller than I’d imagined.”
Beaming, Giselle strode over to Camille. “She is as fierce and brave as any of us.” Gently she pried Margot’s fingers off Camille’s arm. “And see, she’s brought my tray.”
“My apologies, princess,” Margot said gruffly, though she did not sound sorry at all.
Camille rubbed at her wrist as she took in her surroundings. While the outside of the house had filled her with foreboding, the inside of the house was not at all what she’d expected. Instead of stepping into a fearful room from her own past with her drunk brother holding sway, she found herself in a surprisingly cozy place. Beds and trundles and straw pallets hemmed the room, and a fine, if somewhat threadbare carpet covered the packed dirt floor. There were cheerful, mismatched flowered curtains at the windows, and the walls had been newly whitewashed. Hanging on them were tiny but beautiful ink drawings in chipped frames—portraits of the girls themselves, Camille realized—as well as other small objects. Looking closely, Camille made out a door knocker in the shape of a bird and an unusual lock in the shape of an apple, its shank the apple’s stem, the key that sat in the keyhole shaped like a worm. Between the rafters ran lines of laundry hung with red and white petticoats as well as a few printed sheets.
Camille murmured, “It’s so different from how it looks on the outside.”
“Sleight of hand,” Giselle said, pleased. Picking up her tray, she lovingly brushed it off and set it behind a chair. “Thank you for bringing this to me. I cannot make my living without it. I thought your gatekeeper would have me arrested for asking for it!”
“He’s very protective,” she acknowledged. “But how did you know where I live?”
She laughed. “You’re conspicuous, with your red hair and your big hats. All us girls know Paris inside and out—it wasn’t hard to find you. I’m Giselle, by the way,” she added. “What name do you go by?”
It was a good question. Neither her title nor her married name suited her at all. “Camille Durbonne.”
“Well, Camille, welcome to Flotsam House!” she exclaimed. “I noticed you were looking at what’s hanging on our walls. Those pretty portraits, they were done by our Henriette.” She nodded at a small girl, blond and whip-thin, who stood by the stove. “Henriette makes things what they’re not.”