Antonina swallowed and tossed away the towel she had been holding. “You will return the letter to me,” the girl said.
“I shall do nothing of the sort.”
“It’s not yours!”
“It is now. Listen to me carefully, beloved cousin. If you even think to breathe a word of what you saw today or what I told you to anyone, I will immediately produce that letter and hand it to Gaétan. I will say you are accusing me out of spite and madness, to cover your indiscretions. I will prove that you have tossed away your virtue to a man who then decided he would not marry you, making a mockery of you.”
Antonina looked like a wild creature from the forests she loved, her black hair gnarled and her teeth bared. “That is a lie,” Antonina said.
“But those are your words on paper, Cousin Antonina! Your words don’t lie.”
“That is not … You are twisting the intent of my letter!”
“It could be read that way, could it not?” Valérie asked. “Gaétan will be terribly disappointed. And think of the scandal if the letter ended up in the wrong hands! Would you like to see your name emblazoned in one of the dailies? It has the right ingredients: daughter of prominent family and a world-famous performer, embroiled in a salacious tale. One way or another, I think you’d end up in a convent far away, in a place where you can’t see your mother or your sister. I don’t think you’d make a satisfying nun.”
She watched Antonina waver as the full implication of the words she’d penned became obvious. A girl could be destroyed with half as much.
“Gaétan wouldn’t send me away. He wouldn’t believe your lies.”
“After your performance?” Valérie asked, spreading her arms. “They are sweeping away all the shards of glass you left on the floor. Half of Oldhouse thinks you’ve gone mad.”
“Gaétan cares about me,” Antonina said, stubbornly gnashing her teeth.
“Shall we find out how much he cares? If you ruin me, believe me, Antonina Beaulieu, I will do everything in my power to ruin you, and I guarantee I will succeed. All a woman has is her reputation, and you won’t have one shred of it once I’m done with you.”
There was boiling rage in the girl’s eyes. Valérie was afraid for a moment she might attempt to throttle her—though if she did, Valérie would use this to her advantage. Nothing would please her more than to yell for help and have the servants pry the girl off her. She could affirm the child had gone mad.
A book—no, two—fell to the floor as if scattered by an invisible wind, but that was all. Perhaps exhaustion had set in and Antonina could summon no more power, or else she was trying to control herself.
“I won’t tell,” the girl said at last, and gave Valérie a severe, proud look. “Know that I do it for my cousin. He does not deserve the pain this would cause him.”
Valérie could not read Nina’s words as anything but the marks of a weakling; she appreciated only one type of strength.
“I’m glad we understand each other,” Valérie replied, satisfied, and thought her a dolt.
Antonina sat at the edge of her bed. Her eyes were weary and she clutched her bedsheets ferociously, but Valérie could tell her will to fight had evaporated. This was the still after a storm, and the girl was her own wreckage. She could do no harm now.
Valérie went to the door, her hand resting upon the handle when she heard Antonina speak.
“You said he loved you and always had,” Antonina said in a low voice. “And do you love him?”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“It matters to me.”
Valérie sighed and turned her head. In ruins, still, the girl tried to clasp a shred of tender feeling to her heart. It was not to be had.
“Dear, dear Antonina. Don’t be silly. The point is he’s never loved you. And he never will. Dry your tears and be a good girl; when they ask you tomorrow what happened, tell them you mistook his intentions and he will not marry you. It won’t be too far off from the mark,” she concluded.
She closed the door and she heard the loud scattering of books upon the floor. The girl had lost control, in the end. Valérie shrugged. There was a pang of regret in her heart for Hector, and perhaps a dull sympathy for Antonina, but she pushed both feelings away, knowing she could not afford to pay them heed.
CHAPTER 20
“Is either one of you going to tell me what happened back there?” Luc asked.
They were in the dining car because Luc wanted to eat, but Luc immediately took offense with the menu when he saw it. He was the kind of man who demanded lobster and truffles for lunch, changing his mind at the last second, deciding it ought to be veal and asparagus soup. The reduced offerings available did not please him. There was nothing to be done about it. Had they taken the Thursday train, they would have been able to travel aboard the more luxurious Southern Express. But they had left Oldhouse two days before their scheduled departure.
Hector could not bear to remain there a second longer.
He had attempted to speak to Nina before he left, knocking at her door and trying to coax her out, but she had not responded. Not a word. Her mother and her sister both were terribly embarrassed and spoke apologies. Hector could do nothing more than nod his head. He had no idea what to say.
Hector promised himself he would write to Nina later, once a sensible amount of distance remained between them. He’d write from Bosegnan, he’d atone.
“Eat your cake,” Étienne said laconically.
“Truly, Brother, can you treat me more like a child?” Luc replied as he lit a cigarette and frowned, looking at Hector. “They were saying Nina Beaulieu barricaded herself in her room and has gone mad, all because you did not propose to her.”
“Stop it,” Étienne said. “You’ve asked thrice already and he is not answering.”
“I ask because it seems extreme. No wonder I don’t dare to propose to a girl.”
“You don’t propose to girls, because there is not one who would be willing to endure you.”
“Again with the jabs, Étienne!”
Hector watched the men squabble, as they often did, and raised a glass of wine to his lips. The train was moving but Hector felt as though it were going nowhere. He saw flashes of green, trees and rocks and mountains, pass by. They blurred together and he turned the glass he was drinking from between his fingers, examining its facets.
He knew, sitting there in the dining car while others ate and smoked and chatted, that Valérie was correct. It was all over. Not merely his courtship of Nina, but his eternal pursuit of Valérie herself. He had been able to love her, hopelessly, for years and years. She was married, she was far from him, and when he saw her again she was cold. Yet his love did not diminish, his adoration of this woman did not cease. He was chained to her, to this brilliant ideal of a perfect love.
Because he had always known that if he could have Valérie in his arms again, all would be well. It would be as though the decade that separated them had never happened and they would return to the happy days of their youth when everything was possible. It was as if he could unwind the clock with her aid. And once this happened, there would be nothing but joy.