The idea had been buzzing through his head all morning long. When he’d caught sight of her at the party, they had been together and he’d thought that was the case, but then she said he had not escorted her.
“He flirts with me but he has said nothing of the sort yet. He might. It’s difficult to know.”
“He’s not a bad man,” Hector said.
“An underwhelming endorsement,” she said.
He wanted to be fair in his assessment. He thought Luc Lémy volatile, movable, and perhaps lacking in imagination, but he had his positive qualities. When he wanted to, he could be a pleasant chap. To pretend otherwise would have been a lie.
“May I ask you a question that may seem indelicate this time?” she told him.
“You may.”
“You and Valérie—”
“I have no interest in discussing Valérie,” he said, cutting her off.
She grew serious, a frown upon her brow. “If there is a chance that we might be friends again, then we must be honest with each other. If you do not wish to tell me the truth, then I might as well leave now,” she said, sitting firm and straight.
“What truth do you want?”
“You love her still?” Her tone was neutral; she might have been asking about the weather or the time a shop opened.
“No,” he said with a similar coolness.
“She said you came back for her.”
“I did everything for her.”
“And yet she has vanished from your heart this effortlessly?” Nina asked. A flicker of emotion flashed in her eyes before she angled her head and he was not able to look at her.
The fountain behind them murmured in the language of water as he tried to find the right words. He spoke slowly.
“I have always loved artifice more than anything in the world. The painted backdrops and the lights on the stage, transforming the ordinary into a land of wonder. And it was like that with her. I met her in Frotnac, one summer. I had never seen anyone that lovely, of noble family, with fine manners. I imagined her a princess and ours a fairy tale. I’d spent my youth in the gutter and suddenly there was a chance for enchantment.”
He did not wish to elaborate any more, but Nina had asked for the truth and he had the feeling anything in half measure would not satisfy. He pressed on, certain he would sound like an idiot by the end of the conversation.
“She fancied me, but I was penniless and we couldn’t marry. I left, determined to make my fortune. I gave her an engagement ring, and for months we wrote to each other. The letters grew scarce and then she told me she’d married someone else, a wealthy man.”
“Gaétan,” Nina said.
“Yes. It was like I lost my mind. I couldn’t sleep, I couldn’t think. One evening in Zhude, I made the draperies in my room catch on fire and they tossed me out. It was cold.”
He could almost see himself, snowflakes in his hair and eyes shiny with tears, half-drunk with cheap wine, stumbling through the snow, his cap pulled down low.
“I got to the end of a street and I was near the sea and I stared at it. I thought ‘What is to stop me from sinking in it?’”
“What stopped you?” she asked quietly.
“I thought … I thought, ‘I’ll show her. I’ll get her back.’ And insanely, this thought kept me alive. That thought became me.”
He wondered if she judged him an absolute fool, but having begun his tale, he supposed he should finish it.
“She did not love me as I loved her, what I wanted she could not give. Ardor she might grant me, yes, but that is not the same as love. I did not understand that then, too lost in flights of fancy, but I see it now. I was enamored of an illusion for years on end, living on memories half-remembered and half-fabricated. At Oldhouse, something gave away. Even a sleepwalker must open his eyes at one point.”
So many wasted days spent pining after a phantom. When he considered it now, he could hardly believe it. It had been madness, he thought. Like those men who would one day open the front door of their homes and step out and simply walk away for miles on end until they could walk no more, overtaken by a mysterious impulse that could not be explained. A “fugue,” they called it. Pathological.
“It was not effortlessly. It tore me apart, but the poison has bled out,” he concluded.
Hector felt her heavy gaze upon him, though he could not discern its essence. He stared back at her.
“You do not believe me.”
“It is difficult to do so, considering the circumstances,” she replied.
He recalled the way Nina had found them in the library, locked in an embrace, and he understood how it might seem somewhat improbable.
“There was a desperation in me last summer,” Hector muttered. “I think I was trying to avoid the end of my old dreams because I could feel their demise dancing in the air. But they have ended. I was afraid of losing myself, of changing, and here I am and it’s done.”
“I’m sorry.”
She meant it and her kindness as she spoke; it was beautiful and terrible because he realized how little he had appreciated it, how foolishly he had squandered his days staring across the table at Valérie. And Nina was there now, and despite it all, she had space enough for kindness. One more quality to admire—he had not lied when he told her that—he liked her intelligence, her humor, and her pluck.
“Thank you,” he said.
Nina nodded, looking down. She dipped her fingers in the water of the fountain and the cuff of her dress was getting soaked, but she did not seem to mind.
“I have a gift for you,” he said, reaching into his jacket.
He gave her the black box and she took off the lid, admiring the contents. The insect gleamed like gold.
“You said I shouldn’t send the rest of them, but I did buy twenty. I thought you might want this one. It’s like the one I saw you catch by that stream, and you were pleased with it.”
“A water diving beetle. You remembered that,” she said.
“Not at first. I told them to get me twenty beetles, but then there was one that looked like this and I recalled the one you caught. Do you want it? If you don’t—”
“Yes,” she said quickly.
She held the insect up to the light, and when she did, it seemed to change color depending on the angle, now growing brighter or duller. She placed it back in the box and secured the lid on.
“I did like the other beetles you sent,” she said.
He chuckled at this only because the way she spoke it made it seem like a shameful secret.
“What amuses you?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he replied.
Nina was peeved, blushing at his words even though once again he did not think he’d done or said anything that could cause any shame. He chuckled again, which, if he’d pause to consider it, was a feat since he tended to silences and a bit of starchiness.
“Thank you for the gift,” she said once the color had faded from her cheeks.
“You are welcome.”
“Twenty, you say?”
“One for each of your years.”
“Whom did you buy them from?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.
“Ferrier and Ferrier.”
“You’ve been had. I wager you could have bought them at Theo’s for a fraction of the cost,” she replied cheekily.