Read Chapter 30: The Brother's Arrival

The knock came at half past nine, three sharp raps against the wood of her garret door. Camille's pen froze above the page, ink blooming into a dark flower where she had not meant to pause. Julien knew better than to visit before noon. The editor's men came with telegrams, not knuckles.

She moved to the window first. The street below was empty but for a lean figure pressed against the doorway, collar turned up against the drizzle. He looked up, and her breath caught.

Gabriel.

She crossed the room in four steps and pulled the bolt. Her brother stumbled over the threshold, dripping and hollow-eyed, and for a moment they simply stood there, the smell of cheap wine and coal smoke clinging to his coat. He had grown thinner since she had last seen him. His jaw had lost its boyish softness somewhere between Lyon and Paris.

"You read my letter," she said, closing the door. "You were meant to stay away."

"I did." He wiped his nose with the back of his hand. "Read it three times on the train. Then I threw it in the river at Melun and came anyway."

Camille put the kettle on the little stove, more to have something to do with her hands than out of hospitality. He was here. He was alive. Relief warred with a cold fury she could not yet name.

"Is it done, then?" he asked. "What you did?"

"You know what I did."

"The whole country knows." He laughed, a short bitter sound. "They're tearing down the Baron's portrait in the Opéra foyer. Did you hear? The mob got to it before the authorities could. Ripped it to shreds and fed it to the fountain."

Camille poured the tea. Her hands were steady, which surprised her. "That's not why you're here, Gabriel."

His shoulders sagged. In the grey light of the garret he looked younger than his twenty-four years, and older all at once. He pulled a folded paper from his coat and set it on the table. She did not need to open it to know what it was—the crest of the Banque de Crédit Lyonnais embossed at the top, the damning column of figures beneath.

"Tell me how much."

"Four thousand francs." He would not meet her eye. "I borrowed against the shop. Against Maman's things. When the news broke about the Baron's scheme, my creditors got nervous. They called in the note. I told them I had nothing. They said they would take the shop."

She sat down. Four thousand francs. The sum sat in the room between them like a third person, patient and mocking.

"You were gambling again."

"I was paying what I owed." His voice cracked. "The shop was failing, Camille. You don't know what it's like out there. Every tradesman in Paris is watching his accounts now, waiting for the other shoe to drop. I had one good season. I thought I could turn it around—"

"You thought you could gamble your way out of gambling." She heard how sharp her voice had become and forced it lower. "This is the third time, Gabriel. I cannot keep pulling you from the river when you choose to jump."

He had no answer. He simply sat there, shoulders bowed, the defeated posture of a man who had run out of excuses and had only shame left to offer.

Camille looked at her brother and remembered him as a boy, kneeling in the garden of their mother's little house in the Marais, teaching her to press flowers between the pages of a Bible. He had been patient then. Kind. The world had worn him down to this.

"Listen to me," she said. "I will help you. But it will not be like before."

His head snapped up. "You've no money. I know what they did to your contract."

"I'll find it." She said it firmly, before her doubts could find voice. "But this time, you work with me. You repay me. Every franc. I will not be your charity anymore, Gabriel. When I pull you from the river next time, you will learn to swim."

He stared at her. Some emotion crossed his face—hurt, perhaps, or that particular resignation men feel when they are bested by a woman. But then something else replaced it. Gratitude, stripped of pride.

"I'll do whatever you need. I swear it."

She believed him, and she knew better than to trust belief alone. But the hour called for action, not introspection. The pawnbroker on Rue des Rosiers kept late hours. She had seen his lantern burning past midnight many times from the window of her old dressing room at the theatre.

"Where are you staying?" she asked.

He gestured vaguely at the street below.

"Stay here." She crossed to the small chest at the foot of her bed and lifted the lid. Inside, wrapped in a square of black velvet, lay the locket. She had told Julien about it last week, in fragments, one secret at a time. It was all she had left of Aurelie, and it was worth far more than four thousand francs in gold and stones alone. She had planned to sell it someday, to fund her own escape from the city if everything collapsed. The day had come sooner than she expected.

"What's that?" Gabriel asked.

"Something valuable." She tucked it into her coat pocket. "Stay here. Don't open the door for anyone. I'll be back within the hour."

The streets were slick with rain by the time she reached the Rue des Rosiers. The pawnbroker's shop sat between a kosher butcher and a tailor's that had been boarded up for years. A bell chimed as she pushed through the door.

The man behind the counter was small and precise, with spectacles that magnified his eyes to an unsettling degree. He recognized her at once—actresses came and went from his establishment with predictable regularity, leaving behind their best gowns and worst decisions.

"Madame Moreau." He folded his hands on the counter. "I had heard you were in hiding. The theatre world provides endless entertainment, even from a distance."

"I need money," she said, and placed the locket between them. "Four thousand francs."

He did not touch it at first. His eyes moved over the filigree work, the diamond at its center, the worn clasp. When he spoke, his voice had changed—less banter, more appraisal.

"Beautiful piece. Old work. The clasp has been replaced at some point—good work, but it lessens the value."

"I know what it's worth."

"Do you?" He lifted it, turned it over in his palm. "I would say six thousand. Perhaps seven, if Goldschmidt on the Boulevard was still buying. He's not. Times being what they are."

"I need a loan, not a sale. I'll return to reclaim it."

His smile was a slit in his face. "A loan against such collateral would bring you three thousand."

"Four."

"Three thousand two hundred."

"I need four." She put her hand on the locket. "This piece came from the estate of a baroness. It's been in her family for four generations. On the market, you could sell it for eight and still find a buyer by noon."

He pushed his spectacles up. "You're the actress who brought down the Baron de Vasseur."

"I am."

He was silent a moment. Then he nodded slowly, a calculation passing behind those magnified eyes.

"Four thousand, then. But the interest runs at two percent per week."

"One."

"One and a half. And you don't tell anyone where you got this—I'll have my own troubles if certain names come looking."

"Deal."

He wrote out the receipt in a copperplate hand, counted the banknotes twice, and slid them across the counter. The locket disappeared into a drawer beneath his desk, and Camille felt its absence like a physical thing, a warm weight removed from beside her heart.

She was halfway back to the garret, the money warm against her ribs, when she turned a corner and nearly collided with Julien. He caught her by the elbow, his eyes scanning her face with that particular intensity he wore when he was filing details away.

"You look like a woman who's just pawned something she loves," he said.

Her eyes went wide. "How did you—"

"I was at the editor's office. The Rue des Rosiers window overlooks his garden; I saw you through my glass." He released her elbow, but his expression remained serious. "You don't owe me an explanation. But if you're in trouble, Camille, you know you can tell me."

She was painfully aware of the folded receipt in her pocket, the chain of decisions that had led her here. She had promised him honesty. She thought of the letter from the lawyer, still unsent in the drawer of her desk, and Gabriel waiting in her room, and the locket locked in the dark beneath the pawnbroker's counter.

"My brother has arrived," she said. "He needs help."

Julien said nothing, only waited, his look steady and unguarded.

"Four thousand," she said. "What Aurelie left me is not yet in hand. And I needed the money tonight."

"Camille." His voice had an edge of urgency. "You could have asked me."

She shook her head. "That's not how I want this to work between us. I need to earn my own way."

"Your way is a letter away from being a lot larger." He said it carefully, as if testing the ground in front of him. "What are you going to write about tomorrow?"

The rain recommenced, a soft patter on the awning above them. She tucked the banknotes deeper into her coat and thought of the locket growing cold in its drawer. She had promised to reclaim it. She had promised Gabriel a fresh beginning. She had promised Julien her honesty.

But somewhere in the city, the Comte de Vasseur was walking free, unaware that she now had a desk, a pen, and a story that would drown him.

"I'm going to write about him," she said. "The Comte. What he did to Aurelie. What he's still doing."

Julien's mouth tightened. "That's dangerous."

"Everything is dangerous now." She began walking again, and he fell into step beside her. "At least this way, I choose my own risks."