Read Chapter 6: Brother's Debt

The knock came three times, quick and desperate, like a bird beating against a windowpane. Camille looked up from the small mirror where she had been pinning her hair for the evening performance. The clock on her mantel showed half past five. Marguerite would not call at this hour—she was likely already at the theatre, painting her face and complaining about the corset fit.

She crossed the room and opened the door.

Lucien stood on the landing, his coat collar turned up against the damp evening, his face pale beneath the gaslight. His hands were shoved deep into his pockets, and he would not meet her eyes. That alone told her more than any words could.

“Lucien.” She stepped back to let him in. “What’s happened?”

He stumbled past her into the narrow room, his boots leaving marks on the worn floorboards. He did not sit. He stood in the center of the space, turning in a slow circle as if he had never seen her lodgings before—the single window, the iron bed, the washstand with its chipped porcelain, the trunk at the foot of the bed that held her costumes and her few good dresses.

“I need five thousand francs,” he said.

The words fell into the room and lay there, heavy as stones.

Camille closed the door. “Five thousand. Lucien, I earn forty francs a week. You know this.”

“I know.” His voice cracked. He finally looked at her, and she saw that his eyes were red-rimmed, his jaw tight. “I know what you earn, Camille. I know what this room costs, and what you give Mother each month. I’m not asking you to pretend it’s nothing. I’m asking you to help me because I have no one else.”

She crossed her arms. “Gambling.”

He flinched.

“What else could it be? You work for the printer, you drink too much, you play cards at the Café Dupont. I know you, Lucien. You’re my brother.” She heard her own voice come out sharper than she intended, but she could not soften it. Five thousand francs. Half a year of her wages, gone in a night.

“It was a private game,” he said, finally sinking onto the edge of her bed. He put his head in his hands. “The stakes were higher than I thought. I lost. I kept losing, and I borrowed from the table to keep playing, thinking I would win it back.”

“You borrowed from who?”

Lucien looked up. The fear in his eyes was real—a kind of fear she had never seen in him before, not even when they had buried their father, not even when their mother’s cough had worsened each winter.

“His name is Marcel Bonnet.”

The name meant nothing to her. But the way Lucien said it, low and careful, as if speaking it aloud might summon the man himself, sent a chill down her spine.

“He runs the room in the Rue Saint-Denis,” Lucien continued. “He collects debts for others—men who lend money to those who cannot repay. He gave me a week. A week, Camille, or he says he will take things from me. Things I cannot replace.”

“What things?”

Lucien’s jaw tightened. He did not answer.

Camille walked to the window and looked out at the grey rooftops of the Montmartre quarter. Rain had begun to fall, slicking the tiles, blurring the distant glow of the city’s lights. Below, a carriage rattled past, its horses’ hooves loud against the cobbles.

“I have three hundred francs saved,” she said quietly. “I was keeping it for the winter. For coal, and for Mother’s medicine.”

“That won’t be enough.”

“I know it won’t be enough.”

She turned to face him. He looked smaller than she remembered, her brother who had once been so full of bravado, who had taught her to climb the lime trees behind their old house, who had promised to take care of the family when their father died. That promise had long since dissolved into drink and debts and a slow, grinding disappointment. She loved him still. That was the trouble.

“What can you give him?” she asked. “You have nothing of value. Your watch was pawned last year.”

“The coat.” He touched the collar. “It belonged to Father. Bonnet says he knows a dealer who would take it. He says he will take my fingers too, if the coat is not enough to satisfy him.”

She closed her eyes. Her brother could not keep a secret, could not hold a card hand, could not hold a job for more than six months. But he had carried her on his back through the crowd at the Bastille Day celebrations when she was seven. He had wept at her first performance at the Théâtre des Variétés, had said she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen on a stage.

Five thousand francs. She had no way to obtain such a sum. But she knew someone who did.

The thought arrived unbidden, and she hated it even as it formed. The Baron de Villeroy had offered to be her patron. She had sensed it in his looks, his lingering touch on her hand, the way he had kept her by his side in the garden and forgotten, for a time, that he had a wife and a reputation to protect. To accept such patronage would mean surrendering something of herself. She knew that. Every young actress in Paris knew what wealthy men expected in return for their generosity.

But Lucien would lose his fingers. Perhaps worse.

“Give me until Sunday,” she said.

Lucien rose from the bed, hope flickering across his face. “You have a plan?”

“I have a possibility.” She did not look at him. “Do not ask me for more than that.”

She saw him to the door. As he passed her, he reached out and touched her shoulder with a gentleness that nearly undid her. “I’m sorry, Camille. I know I have no right to ask this of you.”

“No,” she said softly. “You don’t.”

After he left, she stood alone in the room and counted the money in her small tin box. Three hundred and twelve francs, a few centimes in loose change. A laughable sum. She thought of the Baron’s silver-and-blue salon, the chandeliers, the gold-framed mirrors, the way he had looked at her as if she were something precious and rare. She thought of his wife, the Baroness, who had used her for another purpose entirely, who had lied about the contents of that envelope and set Camille on a path she could not now abandon.

And she thought of Julien Lefèvre, with his dark eyes and his damning questions. He had told her the Baron’s fortune was built on illusion. He had asked her to be his eyes. She had refused. But refusing Julien had not protected her from the Baroness, and Lucien’s debt was real, in a way that the Baron’s railway schemes were not.

She would attend the luncheon Thursday at the Baron’s home. She had no formal invitation, but the Baron had made it clear she would be welcome any time. She could write to him, could secure an invitation on credible grounds. He would be pleased to see her. Perhaps more than pleased.

She sat down at her small writing desk and drew a sheet of paper from the drawer. Her hand trembled as she dipped the pen in ink.

*Dear Baron de Villeroy,*

She stopped. She thought of what Marguerite would say—that a woman in her position had to be practical, to take what she could, to trade what she had for what she needed. Marguerite had done it herself. It was not a pleasant transaction, but it was a common one.

*It was such a pleasure to attend your soirée. I wonder if I might call upon you this week to thank you properly for your kindness—*

The pen scratched across the paper. The words felt like a surrender, and yet each word brought relief flooding through her veins. Where the Baroness had offered her a role at the Comédie-Française, the Baron could offer the money Lucien desperately needed. She would go to his luncheon. She would charm him. She would let him believe he had a chance with her, as she had done a hundred times with other men who mistook her stage smile for something more.

And perhaps, when she was seated among his wealthy guests, she would find a better prospect than the Baron himself—a banker, a senator, someone whose fortune was real and whose attention might lift her whole family out of the dirt.

She sealed the letter and addressed it to the Baron’s townhouse on the Rue de Lille. Tomorrow she would have it delivered.

The rain beat harder against the window. Camille looked at the list of names in the envelope beneath her mattress, the evidence of payoffs that would ruin the Baron if it ever came to light. She had begun this dangerous game to save her career. Now she was playing it to save her brother.

She had a feeling the game was only just beginning.

She blew out the lamp, lay back on the bed, and watched the shadows of the rain play across the ceiling.