“Besides, he is trouble, he got himself in all those scuffles,” Gaétan said. “There was also that unpleasant business with a young woman.”
When it came to the Véries, they should be a paragon of virtue and decorum. Valérie gave him a hard look, but she ceased in her protests. After walking around his office nervously, Gaétan finally agreed he would deposit the money in her cousin’s account.
How she hated these performances! When they were over, she had to act the grateful wife and kiss her husband’s cheek when she wished nothing more than to spit on him. Antonina was not forced to beg like this. A snap of the fingers, and she had whatever she wished, and Valérie seethed that afternoon as they waited for the brat to finish dressing and join them for a walk in the park.
Hector sat in the drawing room and Valérie stood, resting a hand upon the mantelshelf. She was more restless than usual, which he noticed, leaning forward.
“Is everything all right?” he asked.
She gave him a sarcastic laugh and a wave of her hand. What a silly question. There was no way to answer it. She let herself fall upon a chair in front of him, propping her head on her right hand, and glanced at him with her usual dismissal. She had a thought to say a cruel phrase, for the amusement of it. But as he sat there, looking rather earnest, Valérie let out a sigh.
“Do you remember what it was to be young?” she asked. “Every trouble would be solved by sundown, and every dawn you’d have a new chance to remake the world.”
He paused for the longest interval, nodding. “Yes,” he said.
“I’m tired,” she said.
He stood up and she thought he might try to approach her. Quickly she shook her head and returned to her place by the mantelshelf.
“We might have a picnic, if you’d like it. It always lifted your spirits,” he proposed.
“‘Always,’” Valérie said with a chuckle. “We only went on two picnics.”
“And it worked like a charm each one of those times.”
Distant Frotnac. Thinking of it was like viewing a scene through frosted glass. She might have done anything back then, reckless with youth. Now she did nothing, encased in iron.
“Let us have a picnic, Valérie. I’ll arrange for the food and drinks, and afterward we can go to the theater, watch a silly, light performance.”
He had moved to her side and was smiling. Valérie, bewitched by his dark eyes, smiled back. “If you insist,” she said in the tone of her girlhood, more a purr than proper words.
There came Nina’s breathless voice as she walked into the room, her weightless laughter. “Mr. Auvray!” the girl said as she always did, while Valérie bit her lips.
CHAPTER 11
Hector planned for everything. He rose early, shaved, and dressed in a dove-gray double-breasted waistcoat that was molded to his lean frame. He went to the market, fetching bread, cheese, and wine. He’d already bought a picnic basket the previous day. He stopped by the florist for a bouquet of pink roses rather than the white lilies he bought for Nina.
He planned for everything except the rain, which fell, sudden and aggressive, as soon as he stepped into the carriage. No spring shower, a full-blown downpour. By the time he reached the Beaulieu household, it was obvious there could be no picnic. He walked into the drawing room and set the picnic basket down on a table, along with the flowers. A few droplets of water had caught on the shoulders and sleeves of his coat.
Nina and Valérie were sitting in the drawing room. The younger woman had a book in her hands, while Valérie lay on a divan, a hand resting on the back of it, the other upon her knee, submerged in deep thought. Valérie did not notice his entrance. Nina rose at once, as she tended to do. She either forgot or did not care that a gentleman was to approach her where she sat and then, after he kissed her hand, she might stand up.
“Mr. Auvray,” she said with a chuckle. “Can you believe the rain? I think a thousand toadstools will sprout tomorrow morning.”
“It is a bit of a deluge,” Hector replied.
“I imagined you’d send word you were not coming,” Valérie said casually, sitting sleek and still.
“My word is like iron. I keep my promises,” he told her.
There was no secret meaning in the comment; the thought merely sprang to his head. But Valérie must have interpreted this as a veiled barb at her faithlessness because her face blanched and grew hard.
“You needn’t have bothered. Clearly, we are not going anywhere,” Valérie said.
“The theater is dry. We can sup at a restaurant instead,” he replied, attempting to pacify her.
“The intention was to have a picnic, I thought. Not a restaurant.”
“We could have a picnic inside,” Nina suggested. “We did that when we were children back home. Lay down a blanket and eat here. We can make a game of it.”
“I am not a child who plays games, unlike others,” Valérie said, snappish. “If you will forgive me, I have more important things to do than to pretend I’m making mud pies.”
Valérie made a motion to rise, to leave the room, and Hector, monumentally furious—at her dismissiveness, at himself for having spent the morning in a state of idiotic merriment at the thought of this outing, at the stupid rain—could not allow her to leave first. She always abandoned him, and now he meant to make his exit before she could.
“Good-bye,” he said, and rudely stepped out without bothering to give her a second more of his time. He heard Nina gasp and hurried out of the house without a look over his shoulder, back to his apartment, where upon walking in, he threw all the windows open at the same time with a snap of his fingers, shutters banging in unison. He was boiling and he was lonely and outside it rained.
He let the water drip inside, form puddles by the windows.
During the night, he considered his idiocy, the way he milled around the Beaulieu household, searching for the crumbs of Valérie’s affection. She must have a good laugh at him.
He should stop visiting. It had been a blasted idea since the beginning. There was nothing saying he had to go back, no need to knock on that door again. He thought Nina might find his disappearance confounding, but what of it? Yet he resolved to apologize to her for his uncouth getaway and to inform her, politely, that he might be scarce from now on.
Therefore, the next day he returned to the Beaulieu house, meaning to make a short trip of it. The maid told him Valérie was out and Nina was napping, but she’d go fetch the girl if it was important. Hector said it was, and he was pressed for time. The maid frowned, but went off to find her.
He waited by the foot of the stairs. Nina came down, not in an afternoon dress, but instead wearing a green lounging robe, her black hair falling freely to her shoulders. Worn slippers peeped beneath the robe, painting a bafflingly intimate picture. She noticed how he stared at her, and stared back at him in turn, standing three steps above Hector.
“Pardon me, but you said you had to speak to me quick,” she told him as she clutched the collar of the robe with one hand.
He realized she’d headed downstairs in haste, for him, and the sweetness of the gesture struck him dumb.