finding it, I hope. Besides, I cannot leave Sophie—”
His face shuttered. “Of course not. I was wrong to dream of it.”
He turned as if to go, and Camille grabbed his coat sleeve. “Lazare, please listen. What if magic isn’t wrong? I used it to help the girls”—she remembered her mother, clutching The Silver Leaf to her chest—“perhaps it might save me, too.”
“It will get you killed.” He shook his sleeve free. “You chose it, long before you chose me. I could never compete with it. I was a fool to try.”
“How am I not choosing you?” she said, bewildered. “I wish for you to stay. To not risk your life.”
“You have chosen to stay for the sake of magic and the magicians.” But his dark gaze said: You are breaking my heart.
“It’s not just for them that I stay.”
“What, then? Why remain in this country that wants neither of us?”
She did not want to be pushed out. She wanted, for once, to stop running. “For me.”
“What do you mean?”
“I did stop working it, you know. But it came back, just the same.” Servants stirred outside the door, murmuring in the hall. “What if magic is not something I do, but something I am?”
“It cannot be.” Lazare looked as if he were trying to pick up the pieces of something that had broken. “You said there might be a way to get rid of it.”
“Yes—no.”
“You might continue to use it? To be a magician?”
Sorrow rose like a tide beneath her skin and suddenly she despaired of making him understand. Tears coursed down her cheeks—tears of sadness and fury and regret so mixed she could not tell them apart. What if, in the end, magic was all she had?
“I never had a true teacher, not even my mother. I did it alone. Mocked and used by my brother. Lost, hating myself and what I had to do to survive. But no more.”
She yearned for him to embrace her and say he loved her. But he did not even reach out his hand.
Instead he said, “It’s rich that you warned me of the danger of taking this suffering family to England. Knowing all the while that you have been putting yourself in danger every day. Pretending to be a printer.”
“Pretending?”
“Apparently you have not lost your taste for it,” he said. “How could you do it again?”
She took an uncertain step back. “And you? Have you not been pretending?”
“I had been,” he said sorrowfully, “but not anymore.”
Camille took another step away. “Is that what you object to? My keeping this from you?”
“I don’t know if it is the magic, or the secret. Nor am I certain I wish to know.”
His voice was so cold. She had misjudged him, tallied everything up wrong. “Tell me, Lazare: What is magic to you?”
As if it were very clear, he said, “The thing that will forever keep us apart.”
She tipped up her chin, defiant. “And if this is the thing that makes me unlovable, unworthy, then you are finished with me?”
“No.” He unfroze, and with one step he closed the gap between them. He cupped her face between his warm hands, ran his thumb along the slope of her cheek. Anguish contorted his beautiful face. “I love you, Camille.”
“But you wish—”
“And am I wrong to wish for it? Isn’t it what you wish for, too?” He sighed as if he were in terrible pain. “I do not want to be second best in your heart.”
In his dark pupils, she saw herself reflected: insubstantial as a moth. What place did she have in his heart?
The clock on the mantel began to chime. She could think of nothing more to say.
“I must leave. If anyone asks,” he pleaded, “tell them I’ve gone to Sablebois. Promise me.”
Her voice caught on a sob, but she managed to say it. “I promise.”
“Dieu, this is not the meeting I’d hoped for.” From his pocket he produced a small object, wrapped in faded red fabric. “One favor, if you’ll grant it? Please keep this for me. It’s my father’s and I don’t dare take it up in the balloon.”
As she tucked it into her sleeve, he stepped close against her skirts, until their bodies were nearly touching. What if there was a kiss that would undo it all, a wave of feeling and desire that could sweep away the words they had said and the pain they had caused? She pressed her mouth to his, desperate and hard and fierce. His answering kiss was angry,