Read Chapter 11: A Slip of the Tongue

The salon of the Duchesse de Polignac smelled of powdered wigs, orange blossom, and desperation. Camille had been here barely an hour, and already her jaw ached from smiling at women who collected her like a curiosity—the Queen’s new seamstress, the peasant with the clever hands.

Étienne stood across the room, locked in conversation with a florid-faced baron about grain tariffs. His eyes found hers every few moments, and each time they did, warmth spread through her chest that had nothing to do with the roaring fire.

She would tell him tonight. About the diary, the alignment, the portal. Three nights. Only three nights remained until August 22, and she could not keep him in the dark any longer—not when he had offered to accompany her into the unknown.

“Mademoiselle Dubois.”

Camille turned. A thin man with sallow cheeks and dark, watchful eyes bowed with mechanical precision. His coat was fine but unadorned, no family crest on his cufflinks. The kind of man who made a career of being forgotten.

“I am Monsieur Drouet, secretary to the Austrian ambassador.” His French carried the faintest Viennese lilt. “I could not help but overhear your conversation with the Comtesse de la Roche-Guyon regarding her trousseau.”

Camille tensed. The Comtesse had been indiscreet, cooing loudly about the “magical” speed of Camille’s sketches. “The Comtesse is generous with her praise.”

“Modest, as well.” Drouet smiled, and the expression did not reach his eyes. “I confess myself fascinated by your methods. You spoke of ‘fit systems’ and ‘standardized grading’—unusual terms for a dressmaker.”

Her blood chilled. She’d been careless, slipping into professional jargon in front of a salon full of gossips.

“Trade secrets, Monsieur. Every artisan has them.”

“Indeed.” He inclined his head, but his gaze remained fixed on her. “I have traveled widely, from Vienna to London to St. Petersburg. I am always interested in new ideas. Especially those that seem to come from... nowhere.”

Camille laughed, a bright, hollow sound. “I assure you, my ideas come from hours of tedious labor. But the Duchesse’s champagne encourages a certain giddiness of speech.”

She made to move past him, but his voice stopped her.

“Tell me, Mademoiselle—what do you think of Mr. Montgolfier’s flying machines?”

She paused, more than she should have. The Montgolfier brothers had only recently conducted their public balloon demonstrations. In her time—her real time—they were quaint footnotes in the history of aviation. Children playing with hot air.

“Remarkable,” she said carefully. “Though I imagine they are more amusing than practical.”

“And what of the future of such machines? In a hundred years, might they not carry passengers across continents in mere hours? Perhaps even cross the ocean?”

The salon seemed to grow quieter around them. Camille’s instincts screamed at her to retreat, but Drouet’s eyes held her in place—dark, probing, hungry.

“I am a seamstress, Monsieur,” she said. “I know nothing of the future of flight. I only know how to sew a straight seam.”

“Ships,” Drouet said suddenly, as if testing her. “Do you think ships might one day cross the Atlantic in under five days?”

She opened her mouth—and caught herself a hair’s breadth from saying *they already do, in jetliners* . The word fused to her tongue, hot and dangerous.

“I should hope not,” she managed instead, forcing a prim smile. “The ocean voyage is half the adventure, is it not?”

Drouet’s smile sharpened. He had seen her hesitation. She could see it in the satisfied curl of his thin lips.

“Indeed. Half the adventure.” He bowed again. “I shall not keep you from your admirers, Mademoiselle. But I should be honored if you would permit me to call upon you sometime. I find our conversation uniquely... stimulating.”

He was gone before she could refuse, swallowed by the crowd like a shadow sliding between candle flames.

Camille’s hand went to her bodice, where the diary rested against her ribs. The pages seemed to burn through the fabric. The warning the other tailor had scrawled in faded ink: *Watchers follow the one who chases the sky. Trust no one who asks about tomorrow.*

Drouet had asked about tomorrow—or its equivalent. He had probed for knowledge that no dressmaker in 1785 could possess. And she had nearly given him everything with a single careless slip.

“Camille.” Étienne appeared at her elbow, concern etching lines between his brows. “You are pale as bone. Was that man a friend of yours?”

“No.” Her voice came out strained. “No, I have never seen him before.”

Étienne glanced after Drouet’s retreating figure. “He is the Austrian’s shadow. Attends every salon, speaks to everyone, remembers everything. I have heard whisperings that he reports to Vienna directly, though what intelligence he gathers from gossip and flowers is beyond me.”

He says he reports to Vienna, Camille thought. But what if he reports to someone else entirely? The diary’s unfinished warning about “watchers” pulsed in her memory. Bertin, the silk merchant who knew too much, and now an Austrian secretary with questions about the future.

Three nights until August 22. Three nights until the alignment opened her doorway home. But suddenly she was no longer certain she would be the one standing at the chapel spire to walk through it.

“Étienne,” she said, lowering her voice, “that man just asked me about the future of ships and flying machines. As if he expected I might know.”

He went still. “What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. But he knows—he suspects something. The way he looked at me, Étienne. Like I was a locked chest he intended to pick.”

Étienne’s jaw tightened. He glanced around the crowded salon, then took her hand. His palm was warm and calloused, grounding her.

“We must meet tonight,” he said, low and urgent. “In the atelier behind the tapestry. At midnight.”

“You want me to tell you everything.”

“I want you to stop carrying it alone.” His thumb traced a small circle against her knuckles. “Whatever you have found, whatever awaits you on that path you will not yet name—you cannot walk it without someone keeping watch at your back.”

The salon glittered around them, oblivious. But at the far edge of the room, by the doorway, Camille caught a flicker of movement. Drouet raised a glass in her direction, his smile thin and certain, before he stepped into the corridor and vanished.

“Tonight,” she said. “I will tell you everything.”

Étienne squeezed her hand once before releasing it. “Then let us survive this evening first.”

But as Camille turned back to the assembled nobles, her blood still singing with alarm, she could not shake the feeling that Monsieur Drouet had not gone far. That he would be watching, always watching, until he unlocked what she had so carelessly revealed.

August 22 was three nights away.

And she was no longer certain she would make it there alive.