she gasped. “I thought you were going to lead them in the air!”
A muscle ticked in his jaw. “I’m sorry if I gave you that impression—”
Camille turned to Rosier for confirmation and saw that Lafayette now stood beside them. The marquis clamped a hand on Lazare’s shoulder. “Sablebois is too valuable to send up into the air. Not simply because of his expertise, but because he is the future of France.”
Rosier blinked. “Is he?”
Lafayette’s voice was smooth and rich. “He is a young man of science. He is a nobleman but also of the people’s cause, as am I. A foot in both worlds, one might say. Revolution is a delicate balance, especially if we wish to avoid war.” Lafayette released Lazare from his grip. “Your friend was born for this great task. He is, as you said at Madame de Staël’s salon, our hope. And you two are patriotic in your support of him.” He bowed slightly to Camille. “As his commander, I appreciate your understanding.”
Lafayette wished them to say nothing. He had wrapped it in tricolor ribbons, but his demand was clear: be silent and complicit and keep Lazare doing what Lafayette wished, not what Lazare wanted to do. It made her furious. “But can’t Lazare also—”
Lazare didn’t look at her. “Is it not time for launch, monsieur?”
“Indeed,” Lafayette said. And with a curt nod to Camille and Rosier, he steered Lazare toward the small stage that had been erected in front of the line of balloons.
Camille’s heart sank. “Rosier, what’s happening?”
“I hardly know. Whatever it is, our friend is not happy about it.”
A bright bugle rang out, and the crowd swayed forward. Anticipating.
With Lazare beside him, Lafayette addressed the crowd. His voice carried easily over the parade grounds. “Mesdames, messieurs—welcome to the inaugural launch of the National Aeronautical Corps! You will now witness an expression of France’s unsurpassed military strength and innovation.” Indicating that Lazare should stand by the balloons, he said: “Monsieur Mellais, our head aeronaut and leader of this unit, has helped make this possible. Please, a round of applause.”
Lazare made a modest bow.
“Now, messieurs,” Lafayette cried to the aeronauts, “prepare for departure!”
A gun fired a shot, and the cadets released the first balloon. It rose smoothly into the air, one aeronaut at attention, the other filling the brazier with fuel. Another shot rang out and the second balloon took flight. The balloons rose gracefully into the air, one after another, without any difficulties, until the last one was released. As the crowd gasped, the balloons sailed higher and higher, until they were no bigger than birds in the sky. The pilots would be cold now, she remembered from her time in the air, putting on extra coats and dampening the fires once they reached the correct altitude.
And Lazare?
While she’d been watching the balloons rise, he’d rejoined his parents. As he listened to something his father was saying, his face was a careful blank.
“Grace à Dieu, it went so well,” Rosier muttered. “He would have been devastated had anything gone wrong. This is rather more of a high-stakes game than I had thought.”
She thought of Lafayette’s hand on Lazare’s shoulder. “Because Lafayette is calling the shots?”
“That,” he mused, “and his parents. It didn’t strike you as strange that Lafayette showed up at the Sablebois estate, balloon proposal in hand? Why not wait until Lazare returned to Paris?” He took a thoughtful drag on his unlit pipe. “Though, as Lazare said, perhaps he was in a rush, worrying about Austria at the borders.”
Camille watched as Lafayette pointed to the balloons, explaining something to Lazare’s parents. His father, who had seemed so stiff and formal when Camille had last seen him, had become jubilant, his gaze never leaving Lazare. “Do you trust Lafayette?”
“He has the face of a good gambler. Working all the odds. Though what he believes in, I can’t say.”
It was true—no great emotion altered his features, only small ones: a smile, a circumspect frown, a careful nod. Instead, he seemed to be thinking several moves ahead, as in a game of chess.
“I’d guess he believes in France, the way my papa believed in the People and the journalist Marat believes in Change. But because of that,” she said, as the memory of her parents’ argument about magic and revolution came back to her, “they forget the big ideas are actually made up of people.”
Rosier raised an impressed eyebrow. “Well said, pamphleteer.”
She gave Rosier a sidelong glance. “Do you think Lazare always knew he wasn’t