The next day the weather was gray, the chill of autumn in the air. Above Paris, the clouds stretched into wisps. She wondered what Lazare would make of them. What weather did they foretell? A change to sunny skies? Worsening into storms?
As promised, he’d come to the house yesterday, but she had been at Lasalle’s. The note she’d sent back had narrowly missed him, her messenger said as he showed her his empty hands. She guessed Lazare had gone out with his parents, or perhaps on an errand for the balloon corps. But she ached to be with him, her need for him a hunger, no different than food or warmth or shelter.
A brisk wind rattled the branches of the trees, and she tugged the warm collar of her coat higher around her neck. She’d been up late, trying to lose herself in her work, and had taken the last exclusives to Lasalle herself, despite the magie-weariness deep in her bones. They were in demand, he told her. Could she write more?
She had said yes.
But if she was to keep writing and printing, she’d have to find a way to manage the magic. If it was true what Odette had said, and effigies at Versailles were not the work of a few but were instead showing how all of Paris felt about magicians, each new pamphlet she printed with magic put her in danger.
Though she waited for one of the magical notes to arrive, telling her of a discovery, nothing had come from Blaise or Chandon since they’d searched the library. She thought of the bonfires, the Comité’s hounds, scenting the air for magical things—for hadn’t it looked as if that was what the dog was doing? What if the books they desperately needed were lost, burned, and there would be no knowledge for her, no way out for them—
“Madame!” At the edge of the park, her apron flashing white, stood Adèle.
Worry gripped Camille as she hurried toward her. “What is it? Is Sophie not well?”
“Nothing so bad as that, madame! Monsieur Mellais is at the house, and he says he wishes to speak to you before he goes.”
Disquiet spilled through her, cold as ink. “Goes? Goes where?”
“I wish I knew, madame. He said only he couldn’t wait long.”
But when Camille rushed into the sitting room, her heart hammering beneath her stays, Lazare stood at ease by the fireplace, his elbow on the mantelpiece. His hair was loose, his cravat hastily tied. He straightened when he saw her. “My love.”
At the sight of him the events of Versailles flooded over her, dark and devastating. Her whole being longed to throw itself into his arms—to take refuge there—but she held back. He was leaving Paris, Adèle had said. The longer she stood there, her dirty shoes on the thick carpet, her hat and gloves still on, she was certain that there was something wrong, a stiffness in his shoulders, a tightness around his mouth that set a warning ringing in her.
He bowed, and then, taking her hands, drew off her gloves. How could she still take pleasure in it, the flood of heat through her body, when she knew he was leaving her? But she did. Slowly he kissed her fingers, as if he were trying to impress them on his memory. When he looked at her, his eyes were deep, unreadable.
“Your mantel clock has stopped, did you know?”
She felt close to tears. How could he speak about the clock as if nothing were happening? “Is that why you’ve come, to fix the clock—before you leave?”
He flinched. “She told you?”
“She fetched me from the square, thinking it urgent. Is it?”
He didn’t answer, but rapped at the glass with his knuckles, listened, then unhooked the clasp on the case and opened the curved glass. “It just needs winding. Do you have—ah, I see it.” The clock’s key lay on the bottom of the case.
“Lazare, what is it? Your parents? The balloon corps?”
“I came yesterday to tell you.” His hand shook a little as he fitted the key into its hole and began to wind. “It started two nights ago, the night we returned from Versailles. A family was walking back and forth near my house. A grandmother, her daughter, and a little boy. In the morning I asked my parents if anyone had moved in nearby, but no one had.” He turned the key again.