Léon pursed his lips. ‘If you’re asking me whether the duc is their customer, then I can’t tell you for sure. Don’t have anything to do with the snatchers if I can help it.’
Camille sagged in disappointment. They were so close.
‘There is one thing,’ said Léon. ‘They say they’re delivering all the bodies to one address.’
He named an abbey on the main road out of Paris that passed through the Faubourg Saint Martin.
‘I can’t promise anything. But it seems an odd coincidence. And if someone were to investigate, I imagine they might find quite a lot of interesting things.’
Camille smiled, a flare of hope catching in her chest.
‘Thank you.’
She tossed him a small bag of coins.
‘Much obliged.’
They left, Léon blowing a kiss to Al, who turned a furious pink and dashed back to kiss him properly before finally being dragged out by Camille.
The theatre was emptying, and they blended into the crowds flooding onto the Boulevard du Temple with its chaotic mix of carriages and promenaders and street performers. Camille stopped at the turning that went towards the city centre and bought a news-sheet. The story of the balloon crash was still plastered across the front. Al snatched it off her before she could read very far.
‘Hey! Buy your own.’
‘I thought you wanted me to be in charge of information?’
‘Oh, now you listen to me? Give it back, it’s been days since I’ve read one properly. You keep squirrelling them away.’
He flipped through the pages as they turned down the Rue du Temple. ‘Sorry, very busy, have to research more on today’s mad plan. Not to burst your bubble or anything, but don’t you think barging into the duc’s secret lair a little too on the nose? I’ve avoided getting my head chopped off so far, I’m not keen on risking it now.’ He crumpled up the sheet and shoved it in his pocket.
Camille sighed. The pain in her chest was only getting worse.
‘Do you have an alternative?’
‘No.’
‘So what’s your point?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. To annoy you. To remind you that you aren’t a genius with a solution to every problem. To bring to your attention that you might get us all killed.’
‘The battalion isn’t a death sentence.’
He didn’t reply for a long while, his expression clouding over. As they crossed the Place de Grève, his eyes tracked the weathered gallows that had been abandoned for the guillotine on the other side of the city.
Camille shivered. The battalion might not be a death sentence, but sometimes living in Paris felt like one.
6
The Parlour, Au Petit Suisse
Ada took off the delicate muslin dress she’d worn to the theatre. It was the kind of dress she really needed a maid to help her in and out of, but she’d learned how to do it herself. She didn’t have many fine things left, so she took extra care with what she did have, mending torn lace and stitching velvet ribbon around hems. Finally, she took off the emerald earrings that had been her mother’s, folding them into a silk handkerchief and tucking them into the toe of a shoe. The best hiding place she had. She had cheap things scattered across her dressing table, costume jewellery with paste rubies and sapphires, faux-tortoiseshell combs and bottles of expensive scent, rosewater, lavender and sandalwood, watered down to extend its life. Her mother had always told her to ask for jewels as presents: they were the only things a woman could legally own outright, and if she ever needed to run, they could be sold.
She sat on the edge of the bed, touching her earlobe and feeling the ghost of the emerald’s weight. She had taken her mother’s earrings when she’d left home. Maybe it was finally time to pawn them. She didn’t have to keep turning to her father for money. She could be better than that.
But then they would be gone. The only thing she had left to remember her by.
No, it wasn’t time yet.
On the way back from the theatre, Camille had explained what Léon had told them about the duc’s likely hiding place. It was agreed they would go there at dawn next morning, once they’d had time to prepare.
