“A baron’s daughter?” Curtius is uncertain. “Wolfgang—”
“I would like to meet Abrielle,” my mother says.
Dinner is spent thinking of the ways in which Abrielle can be convinced to elope.
“You could pretend to ravage her,” Johann suggests, “like Mirabeau.”
“Mirabeau was a comte.”
“And now is not the time for buying titles,” Curtius says.
“Even if I had money, I wouldn’t spend it on a title. I’m not—” He almost says “Edmund,” then glances at my mother. “Robespierre. I don’t wish to pretend to be something I’m not.”
“The baron has noticed Wolfgang’s service,” Johann says. “He might give his blessing.”
But who can believe that this is likely? She will have to either run away or be caught in a position of dishonor. In both circumstances, Wolfgang might be arrested.
“The baron’s blessing then,” my mother says. “We must all pray for that.”
AFTER I WATCH the carriage with Wolfgang and Johann drive away, I’m thankful to see Henri sitting on the steps with his barometer and a lamp. He comes out once a day to record the weather. It helps him predict when to launch the balloons. His face is set in concentration, and though I feel as if I’m interrupting a tableau of
He looks up at me, then nods. “He asked if I helped to build the new room.” He moves the lamp to make room for me, and I take a seat beside him. “He sounded enraged.”
“Curtius and I tried to warn my mother,” I say. “She wouldn’t believe us. And the things he said to her …” My eyes fill with tears for Maman, because she loves him so much. “He threatened never to return.”
“Do you think he’ll keep that promise?”
“I don’t know.” There is very little I know about Edmund. We are seven years apart, but we might as well be twenty. “Tomorrow, my mother will be writing to him, begging for forgiveness,” I predict.
“But she has two other sons. Why does she need him?”
“Because it’s always that way.”
He is quiet for a moment, thinking, perhaps, of whether he should go on. Then he says, “Jacques is not my only brother. I have a younger brother named Guillaume.”
I didn’t know. “Is he dead?”
“It’s possible. He and my father used to fight about his gambling debts. My mother would come weeping to my father, begging him to pay them off and swearing that if he didn’t, the debtors would kill Guillaume. Then one night, my father refused. He told Guillaume that if the debtors killed him, they would be doing us all a favor.”
I cover my mouth. “He didn’t mean that.”
“No. But then my brother didn’t come back. Not for my father’s funeral, and not when my mother was dying. Bitterness does strange things to people.”
“Yes.” Edmund has carried the anger of not being born to a man of great lineage like a shield on his back, turning a hard shell to the world whenever it threatens him. “But your father must have been beside himself with regret.”
“I don’t know. Perhaps he felt relief. Every night it was Guillaume. What has Guillaume done? Whom does Guillaume owe? What brothel are we going to have to drag him from in the morning? And there were always the fights to set him free. But he was my mother’s youngest child. Her
I study Henri by the light of his lamp. His full lips are turned down, and his eyes are lidded. There is no bitterness in his voice. Just sadness.
“Edmund can be very cruel,” I say. “He called my mother a
“Is that what’s angering Edmund? That your mother and Curtius don’t marry?”
“And a thousand other things. That we aren’t descended from Bourbon kings. That he isn’t entirely Swiss by birth. That he doesn’t have a father …”
“Some men are born searching. Perhaps Edmund would be that way even if he had a father.” He hesitates before asking, “So why doesn’t your mother marry Curtius?”
I take a deep breath. “This can never go beyond us,” I warn.
“Of course not.”
“She doesn’t know if my father is dead. He was wounded in the Seven Years’ War. When he came home, he was a different man. Before he left, he liked to sing and play billiards. And he had friends all over the village. But after the war, all he wanted to do was drink. And he was a violent drunk. Edmund was seven. He must remember how it was. No money. No food. She gathered us up one night while he was drinking, and we ran away. She had been saving money. Washing neighbors’ clothes. When we came to Paris, Curtius’s exhibition at the Palais-Royal was the first business she approached. He agreed to give her work when he discovered she cooked sauerkraut.” I stare into the night. “A woman with four children and not a sou to her name … Anything might have happened. But they became partners. And now …” There’s no need to say what she is now, or how incredibly important they are to each other. “But she can never marry Curtius. She would have to prove my father’s death. And what if he’s alive?”
“Does Edmund know?”
I shake my head. “And he must never find out. He would go searching for him.” The bell of Saint-Merri begins to chime. It is nine o’clock. I should go, but there is something in Henri’s face that compels me to stay. If I sculpted him, it would be like this. With the golden light of the lamp falling across his hair, shadowing his chiseled features.
“So do you think you will ever marry?” he asks.
I search his eyes, and my palms begin to sweat. Does he plan on proposing? I try to imagine life as Henri’s wife and find it impossible. But then I think of how he told Curtius that he was fortunate to have me and I wonder. “I … I don’t know.” Now I sound like Camille. “Until the Salon is successful—”
“What is success?”
“A place in the Academie Royale,” I say quickly. “And two hundred patrons a day.”
“I should think you had that this weekend.”
“Yes, but to sustain that … think of the work. How would I do that with children?”
“There are men who will wait to have children,” he says. “And there are ways—”
I flush. “But it’s not a science, is it? An accident might happen.”
We watch each other in the candlelight, and the noise in the street seems to disappear. There are no carriages or horses or drunken brawls. The woman on the corner selling roses to the theatergoers melts into the background. There are only Henri and me on the steps. He smells of amber. It’s a scent I gifted him last year from Fargeon’s, the best perfumery in Paris. He reaches out to take my hand, and I let him. But I must remember my ambition.
“I can wait. I’m in love with you, Marie. You don’t have to say it yet,” he tells me. “I know you like to think things through. Make plans.” He kisses my neck, and I close my eyes. It is greater bliss than anything I have known. “But plan on this,” he whispers. “I want to marry you.”
JUNE
4, 1789
—KING LOUIS XVI’s JOURNAL
THE DAUPHIN HAS BEEN RELEASED FROM HIS EARTHLY PAIN.
Though his death has been expected for many months, the royal family is deep in mourning, particularly Madame Elisabeth, who loved her eight-year-old nephew like a son. The news comes just as I arrive, and we spend the week in prayer while the rest of France forgets the little dauphin and the Estates-General continues.
