Read Chapter 31: The Locket's Price

The morning light was thin and grey when Camille left the garret, the pawnbroker’s receipt folded twice and pressed against her palm like a talisman. Gabriel still slept on the cot by the stove, his breathing shallow but steady, and she had not woken him. Some errands were better done alone.

The shop sat at the end of a crooked alley off the Rue des Francs-Bourgeois, its windows fogged with age and grime. A bell chimed thinly as she pushed the door open, and the smell of old wool, brass, and damp paper closed around her. Behind the counter, Monsieur Lefèvre looked up from a ledger, his spectacles perched on a nose like a hawk’s beak.

“Mademoiselle Moreau,” he said, without surprise. “I wondered when you might return.”

“I’ve come for the locket.” She placed the receipt on the counter and slid it toward him. “Aurelie’s locket. I believe the term has matured.”

Lefèvre did not touch the paper. Instead, he removed his spectacles and polished them slowly with a cloth that had seen better days. “The term has matured,” he repeated, as though tasting the words. “Yes. And interest has accrued.”

“I know the terms of the loan. The interest was fixed at—” She stopped when he named the figure.

“Forty francs,” he said.

Camille’s hand tightened on the edge of the counter. “The locket was worth ten. The loan was eight. The interest cannot be forty.”

“The locket was worth ten when you brought it in,” Lefèvre said, and now he did look at her, his eyes small and flat as stones. “But its value has changed. There have been inquiries.”

Her blood went cold. “Inquiries?”

“A gentleman came by some days ago. Well-dressed. Asked after items matching your description.” Lefèvre shrugged, the gesture almost apologetic. “I told him nothing, of course. Client discretion is the foundation of my trade. But such interest raises the cost of holding an item. You understand.”

Camille understood perfectly. The Comte de Vasseur had not forgotten her. He was probing, testing, and the pawnbroker—like every merchant in Paris with a ledger—knew which way the wind was blowing. She had thought herself sheltered by anonymity, by the humble address of her garret, by the careful way she had hidden Aurelie’s name from the transaction. But money talked in this city, and the Comte’s money spoke in a very loud voice.

“I don’t have forty francs,” she said.

Lefèvre spread his hands. “Then the locket remains here. You may reclaim it when you do.”

“And if the gentleman returns?”

“Then I am merely a businessman, mademoiselle.” He turned back to his ledger, dismissing her.

The bell chimed again as she stepped into the street, and for a moment she stood there, breathing in the cold air, letting the anger settle into something useful. Forty francs. She had earned six from her first article, and Julien had promised payment for the second upon delivery. At that rate, the interest would outpace her earnings before the month was out.

She walked home through streets that seemed suddenly narrower, the buildings leaning in like creditors. In her pocket, the receipt felt heavier than before. Aurelie’s face rose in her memory—the actress who had given her a locket and a legacy and, in dying, a burden she had never asked to carry.

Gabriel was awake when she returned, sitting at the table with a crust of bread and a cup of watered wine. He looked up at her entry, and something in his face—a flicker of hope, quickly suppressed—told her she had failed.

“No luck,” he said. It was not a question.

“The pawnbroker has raised the price.” She sat across from him, suddenly exhausted. “Someone has been asking after the locket. A well-dressed gentleman.”

Gabriel’s jaw tightened. “The Comte?”

“Or someone who works for him.” She pressed her fingers to her temples. “I need to find forty francs before the next term matures. Or the locket becomes his.”

“You could tell Julien.”

“I told Julien I would write an exposé, not burden him with my family’s debts.” She said it more sharply than she intended, and Gabriel flinched. She softened her voice. “I’m sorry. This is not your fault.”

“It is, though.” He set down the bread, uneaten. “If I hadn’t borrowed from those men, if I hadn’t failed at everything I touched, you wouldn’t be in this position. You’d be able to walk into any shop in Paris and buy a dozen lockets.”

“I don’t want a dozen lockets,” Camille said. “I want Aurelie’s. It was her mother’s, and her grandmother’s before that. It is the only thing of hers I have left.”

Gabriel was quiet for a long moment. Then he reached into his pocket and withdrew a small silver watch, its face cracked, its chain worn thin. “Take this.”

“Gabriel, no. That was Father’s.”

“It was Father’s,” he agreed. “And Father left it to me when he died, and I have done nothing but dishonor it since. Sell it. Use the money toward the locket.” He pressed it into her hand, and his fingers were cold. “Let me do one useful thing.”

Camille looked at the watch, at the initials engraved on the back—their father’s, worn smooth by decades of handling. She remembered him winding it each morning at the breakfast table, remembered the steady tick that had marked the hours of her childhood. And she remembered that her father had died believing his son would make something of himself, and that Gabriel had spent the inheritance on gambling and bad partnerships and a smile that promised more than he could deliver.

But he was trying now. That had to count for something.

“All right,” she said. “But this is a loan, not a gift. When I reclaim the locket, I will repay you.”

“You don’t have to—”

“I do,” she said firmly. “We are done with debts between us. Whatever I give you from now on, I give freely, and whatever you give me, you give freely. No accounts. No interest. No resentment.”

Gabriel looked at her for a long moment, and then he smiled—a tired, crooked smile that reminded her of the boy he had been before Paris had gotten its claws into him. “No accounts,” he agreed.

She sold the watch that afternoon to a different pawnbroker, one who asked no questions and offered a fair price. Twelve francs. She sold her good wool shawl—the one Aurelie had bought her for the premiere of *La Dame aux Camélias*—for seven. She sold a pair of silver earrings that had been her mother’s, saving only the ones Gabriel had given her on her eighteenth birthday, though they were paste and worth almost nothing.

By evening, she had twenty-six francs. Fourteen short.

She sat at her writing desk, the stack of paper before her blank, and tried to compose the second article for the paper. But the words would not come. She kept seeing the locket in Lefèvre’s grimy window, kept hearing his voice: *The interest has accrued.* And underneath it, the memory of the Baron’s smooth, cruel smile when she had refused him at the ball.

The Comte was testing her. He wanted to see how far she would bend, how much pressure she could withstand before she broke. And the locket was his lever—a chain he could pull to see what came loose.

She set down her pen and reached for the one thing she had been avoiding: the stack of Aurelie’s letters, tied with a faded ribbon. The will was there, copied by the Baroness’s hand, and the details of the inheritance—a small house in Brittany, a collection of jewelry, a modest sum in a bank in Lyon. Nothing that would make her rich. Nothing that would buy her safety from a man like the Comte.

But it was hers. Aurelie had meant it for her.

The law, the Baroness had said, was clear. With no living heir, the estate would pass to the crown if unclaimed. But Camille could claim it—if she could prove her identity as the beneficiary named in the will, if she could hire a lawyer, if she could withstand the scrutiny that would come with revealing herself as Aurelie’s heir.

That scrutiny would bring the Comte’s attention down upon her with full force. He had already sent someone to the pawnbroker. If she announced herself as the inheritor of Aurelie’s fortune, however small, she would be painting a target on her back in letters large enough for all Paris to read.

But the locket was already a target. And the interest was accruing.

She tied the ribbon around the letters again and slid them into the drawer. Then she took up her pen and began to write—not the article she had planned, but a letter to a solicitor in Lyon, the one the Baroness had mentioned in passing, the one who had handled Aurelie’s affairs.

*Dear Monsieur Delacroix,* she wrote. *I write to you regarding the estate of the late Mademoiselle Aurelie Desmarais, of which I have been named beneficiary. I should like to discuss the terms of the inheritance, and the process by which I may claim it.*

She paused. If she sent this letter, there was no turning back. The Comte would learn of her claim. Julien would learn of her inheritance. Gabriel would learn that she had kept this secret from him.

But the alternative was letting Aurelie’s locket—and everything it stood for—slip through her fingers for want of fourteen francs.

She signed her name, folded the letter, and sealed it with wax.

The candle had burned low. Gabriel had gone out to look for work, and the room was quiet. Camille sat in the silence and thought about what she had done.

Somewhere in the city, the Comte de Vasseur was counting his blessings. He thought he had won—had driven her from the theatre, had scattered her patrons, had sent his inquiries into the pawnshops to remind her of her place.

He did not know about Aurelie’s will. He did not know about her new position at the paper. And he did not know that the woman he was trying to crush had just taken the first step toward claiming the one thing he could never take from her: a name, a history, a stake in the world that was hers by right.

She would write the exposé. She would claim the inheritance. And she would reclaim the locket, if she had to sell every possession she owned to do it.

Tomorrow, she would mail the letter.

Tonight, she let herself dream of a world where the interest did not accrue.