revolutionary trims aren’t what I dream of making?” she mused. “Why, just today I hired another seamstress to help us, for we have far too many orders. My tricolor trims are as pretty as it’s possible for them to be. You should see the horrors Madame Paulette tries to sell at the Palais-Royal—”
Sophie fell suddenly silent.
Camille followed her sister’s gaze to the ragged anti-magician pamphlet that lay on the carpet like a stain. She lunged for it, but Sophie was too quick. “Give it to me!” Camille demanded. “It’s just a piece of trash I intended to burn—”
Sophie gleefully held it out of reach. But when as she read it, a worried V appeared between her brows. “How can people print these terrible things?”
“It’s nonsense, just ravings—” But a little voice deep inside her whispered: Is it?
Sophie sighed and handed Camille the scrap of paper. “My customers are breathless with the same kinds of malicious rumors. Magicians are causing the drought. Magicians are hoarding grain, so there’s not enough bread. Magicians are making the rivers flow backward. Oh, and Marie Antoinette dyes her gowns red with the blood of the French. Never mind that would make her dresses brown.”
“Magicians can’t even do those kinds of things,” Camille said with more certainty than she felt, for both Chandon and Séguin had revealed her knowledge of magic to be a very meager thing. “At least the ones I know.”
Sophie glanced sidelong at Camille. “I can hardly tell them that my sister’s friend the Marquis de Chandon is a very charming magician.”
Behind Sophie appeared Adèle, the youngest housemaid. She wore a black dress with a starched white apron and a cap over her wavy, coffee-colored hair. The expression on her face was often one of incredulous and barely hidden surprise at something Camille had done. It was, in fact, the expression she now wore. In her hands, she held a folded length of fabric, which she laid on the little table. “Mesdames?”
“Adèle, would you put these roses in water? And while you’re passing by the printing room,” Sophie added, gesturing to Camille, “leave Madame’s pamphlets there.”
The thought of those failures waiting for her sickened her. She did not want to have to face them tonight. Or tomorrow. Or even the day after. She would never be satisfied with them, not now. Shoving the densely printed page that had unnerved her into the middle of the stack, she tucked them tight under her arm. “I’ll take care of them.”
“So you’ll make a fresh start with your pamphlets?” Sophie said approvingly as Adèle disappeared down the hall.
Camille grasped them tighter. “I will.”
“Good. And now I’m afraid I must go.”
A surge of disappointment rose in Camille. But just as quickly, she reprimanded herself. Wasn’t this what she wanted for her sister: happiness, independence, a full life? “I did think you were dressed too well for dinner at home.”
Sophie ducked her chin and smiled. The undernourished look she had for so long was vanished, like a bad dream, and had been replaced with rosy cheeks and laughter. She wore her newest silk dress topped by a short, sapphire-blue coat, its collar and deep cuffs embroidered with chrysanthemums. Her golden hair waved becomingly over one shoulder, and the pretty flush in her cheeks showed that the ordeal she’d suffered at the hands of Séguin three weeks ago was finally behind them. This, Camille thought, was something to hold on to. And if it meant living in this uneasy, watchful house full of magic, she would do it.
“Where are you going?” Camille asked.
“First, to Le Sucre.” Sophie showed her the folded cloth Adèle had brought. “A client is desperate to have this shawl for a patriotic banquet tonight. All the tricolor tassels had my fingers aching! But since it’s done, I might as well give it to her, and get paid. And then,” she added happily, “the Marquis d’Auvernay has promised me cake at a decadent café run by Russians. They will be dressed as Cossacks, he tells me—it will be terribly romantic.”
Camille couldn’t help but think of the crowded streets, the flower seller, the nobleman who’d whipped up a mob for his own benefit. “Just be careful.”
“In the streets?” Sophie lowered her voice. “Or with d’Auvernay?”
“You are terrible!” Camille laughed. Though Sophie was only fifteen, since the events of the spring, she’d come into her own. She suddenly seemed capable of handling anything. “I trust your heart is in no danger?”