Read Chapter 5: The First Favor

The Café de la Paix shimmered with the clatter of porcelain and the murmur of silk-dressed women gossiping behind their fans. Camille arrived at ten minutes to four, wearing her best remaining day gown—a deep blue wool that Marguerite had helped her mend twice—and took a table near the window where the Baroness could spot her easily.

She ordered a small coffee she could barely afford and watched the door.

At precisely four o'clock, the Baroness de Villeroy swept in wearing dove-gray silk and a hat adorned with a single black feather. She moved through the café as though the floor had been laid for her alone. Every head turned. Camille understood then that whatever favor was coming, it would be paid in the currency of the powerful: discretion.

The Baroness seated herself across from Camille without greeting, removed her gloves with deliberate slowness, and smiled. It was not a warm smile. It was the smile of a woman who had spent twenty years learning how to conceal everything except what she wished to reveal.

"Thank you for coming, Mademoiselle Moreau."

"You said you owed me a favor, Madame la Baronne."

"And I intend to repay it." The Baroness unfolded a napkin onto her lap. "But favors between women of our stations are complicated, are they not? A favor given without expectation is merely charity. And I do not give charity."

Camille lowered her cup. "What do you want from me?"

The Baroness's eyes flickered to the window, to the passing carriages, to anywhere but Camille's face. "There is a letter in my husband's study. In the third drawer of his desk, beneath a false bottom. I need it."

Camille felt the air leave her chest. "You want me to steal from your husband."

"I want you to retrieve what is already mine." The Baroness's voice sharpened. "That letter contains information about my son. My son, who died three years ago of fever. My husband has kept certain documents from me—documents that belong to a grieving mother."

"A document about your son is in your husband's desk?"

"Buried, yes. Hidden." The Baroness's jaw tightened. "My husband and I have not shared a bed in seven years, Mademoiselle. We share a name and a house and little else. Whatever he has hidden away, he hides from me deliberately."

Camille thought of Julien Lefèvre's warnings, of the papers scattered across the Baron's desk, of the ledger with its careful columns. She thought of the Baron's warm hand on her elbow in the garden, his whispered compliments, the way he looked at her like she was something rare and precious.

And then she thought of the Baroness's whispered vow at the soirée. The promise of a favor. The secret note.

"Why me?" Camille asked. "You have servants. You have influence. You could have anyone."

"Servants are loyal to whoever pays them. Influence is only as good as the secrets that uphold it." The Baroness's eyes met hers at last. "You, Mademoiselle Moreau, are an outsider. No one will suspect you of taking an interest in my husband's papers because no one believes you can read them well enough to matter. And you owe me nothing, which means you cannot be bought off by him."

"I don't owe you anything," Camille agreed. "Which means you have not yet given me a reason."

"There is a role at the Comédie-Française." The Baroness said it like a queen offering a duchy. "Marguerite Morel has been petitioning on your behalf. She tells me you are wasted at the Variétés. I have the ear of the directrice. The position is yours if I ask for it."

Camille's heart skipped. The Comédie-Française. The grandest stage in Paris. She could see herself there—spotlights, costumes of real silk, an audience that came to witness art rather than vaudeville distraction.

"And if I refuse?"

The Baroness smiled again. "Then we never had this conversation, and your career continues exactly as it has. Which is to say—" she looked at Camille's mended gown with a pointed glance—"exactly as it has."

Camille thought of the rent due at the end of the month. Of the broth she'd eaten for three days last week because the theatre's pay had been late. Of the roles she watched pass to actresses with richer patrons and better connections.

"Tomorrow afternoon," Camille said quietly. "The Baron told me he has business meetings in the morning. I will come when the staff is at luncheon."

The Baroness nodded slowly, then reached across the table and pressed a folded note into Camille's palm. Camille did not look at it. She slid it into her sleeve and finished her coffee, which had gone cold and bitter.

---

The Baron's study smelled of leather and pipe smoke. Camille had invented an excuse—a forgotten fan, left in the garden the night of the soirée—and the housekeeper had let her in with a distracted nod, too busy directing the luncheon service to accompany her upstairs.

The third drawer. False bottom.

Camille knelt before the desk, her borrowed day dress rustling against the carpet. The study was dark, heavy curtains drawn against the afternoon sun. She pulled the drawer open. Ledgers. Sealed correspondence. A cigar cutter shaped like a lion's head. She pressed her fingers along the bottom panel until she found the seam.

The false bottom lifted easily. Beneath it lay a single envelope, folded once, sealed with wax the color of dried blood.

She heard footsteps in the hallway.

Camille's blood turned to ice. She snatched the envelope and shoved it into her bodice, pressing it flat against her stays. She closed the drawer, smoothed her skirts, and was standing demurely beside the bookshelf when a servant appeared in the doorway—a young maid with a tray.

"Mademoiselle? I thought you had left."

"I was admiring the books." Camille gestured vaguely at the shelves. "The Baron has an impressive collection."

The maid's eyes narrowed, but only for a moment. "Shall I show you out?"

"Please."

In the carriage home—third-class, smelling of damp wool and tobacco smoke—Camille retrieved the envelope. The wax seal was unbroken. She cracked it with her thumbnail and pulled out a single sheet of heavy paper.

Columns of names and amounts. Familiar names. The Minister of Public Works. The President of the Bank of Lyon. A senator whose face adorned campaign posters across the city. And beside each name, a figure in francs. Five thousand. Ten thousand. Twenty thousand.

She read the list three times before she understood what she was looking at.

It was not about her son. The Baroness had lied.

This was a list of payoffs—men who had received money from the Baron's railway scheme, and the amounts they had been paid to look the other way. The names went on for two dozen lines. The total at the bottom was staggering.

Camille's hands trembled. She folded the paper and slid it back into the envelope.

Tomorrow she would give it to the Baroness. And the Baroness would smile her careful smile and tuck it away, and Camille would have her position at the Comédie-Française, and everything would be exactly as it had been before—except that Camille would know.

She would know that the Baroness had made her steal something that had nothing to do with a dead son.

And she would know that whatever game the de Villeroy household was playing, she had just become a piece on the board.