“I did. What are you doing here?” he asked.
“I’ve come to talk about Antonina.”
Valérie tossed her hat onto a chair upholstered in crimson velvet, a pattern of golden vines upon it. She ran a hand carelessly upon his desk, picking up a black box and looking at its contents. A beetle lay inside. This was so indicative of Antonina’s taste that it immediately confirmed Luc’s suspicions, and Valérie dropped the box as if she’d been scalded by boiling water.
She pressed her hands together.
“What about Antonina?” Hector said. His voice was hard as granite. But she’d expected this. She’d expected to meet his resistance. And she knew she could move him.
“She has a suitor. Luc Lémy. Young, handsome, charming, well connected. I think they’d make a lovely couple.”
“What seems to be the problem, then?”
“The problem is you,” Valérie said, her voice light, like crystal shining under a beam of sunlight.
Hector was leaning on his desk. In the privacy of his dressing room, he’d taken off his jacket; thus he stood in a gray vest and his white shirt, the top two buttons undone, no cravat. The casualness of his attire reminded her of their time in Frotnac when formalities were a distant consideration.
If Antonina had had a chance to see him like this … Valérie could understand her reluctance with Luc. Hector was terribly attractive.
“She’s very young, you see. I think she’s gotten it into her head that you might marry her one day, despite everything, and this holds her back from opening her heart to Luc,” she said, measuring him with her gaze. “I am certain you’d want her to be happy. For that reason I’d ask that you cease speaking to her. It can’t be that difficult, can it?”
“How do you know I’ve been speaking with her?”
“Hector,” Valérie said, smiling, “do you take me for a fool?”
“If Nina does not want to see me anymore, she can let me know herself,” Hector said, and he sat down again.
He began to scribble on a piece of paper, their meeting apparently at an end. His irritation only amused Valérie more. It always had. Like a match against the box, she’d caused the flame to bloom and enjoyed the ensuing fire.
“I understand your resistance. You’d be giving up a toy. But I’m sure you can find more amusing pursuits.”
Valérie rounded his desk and took ahold of another black box with a beetle inside. This time the sight of it did not upset her. It was but a lifeless thing, devoid of any power.
Like Antonina.
“Last summer, you wanted me to run away with you. That option is out of the question, but I believe I could entertain your company a few times,” she said.
Valérie let the box slide from her fingers onto the desk. It landed next to a silver letter opener.
Hector frowned, his attention focused on the box, his eyes narrowed. “You find yourself suddenly in need of a lover, Valérie?”
“I never find myself in need of anyone, Hector. I am merely offering certain terms.”
A tryst or two should be enough, she thought. She did not intend for it to amount to more than that. Valérie saw no point in a long affair, not when it was weighed against the danger it entailed. But a meeting, perhaps a couple, if it might pry him off Antonina, seemed a fair exchange. There was much to gain with Antonina’s marriage.
And there was also the personal satisfaction it would bring Valérie. Hector was hers. He had never belonged to another, nor would he ever. Whatever it took, he was hers.
“Do you think I am a dog to whom you can throw scraps?” he asked in a low voice.
He was attempting, she knew, to appear cool and distant. But it was an act, like his performances in the theater. The line his mouth traced was not born of irritation alone. She knew him better than he knew himself.
“I am Valérie Véries, and these are no scraps,” she told him.
She extended a hand to touch his cheek and he allowed the gesture, turning his chair to look fully at her. Then he stood up, his gaze never leaving her face, and she tilted her face up, smiling.
“How foolish of me. I should get on my knees and thank the heavens that you would open your legs to me for five minutes.”
The words hurt more than they should have, but more than that, it was the way he shook his head that made her want to dig her nails into his face. There was derision there.
Yes, yes, you should get on your knees, she thought.
“How dare you!”
“How dare you, Valérie.”
“Is this not what you wanted?”
“I wanted you to go away with me, to marry me, to be happy with me,” he said, and for a moment she held her breath as his eyes fixed on her, intense and full of an awful feeling. “But I would never hurt her again, not like this.”
“She is nothing,” she declared. “They’d mock you with such a wife. The little dolt and the entertainer. You’ll be humiliated if you chase after her.”
“Valérie, don’t you dare say anything against her.”
The quality of his anger surprised her, not the emotion itself. She had expected anger; they were no strangers to it. But this was black and ice cold, not the red-hot anger they had shared. It was dead, festering.
For the first time, she doubted herself, and this doubt made her sputter, her voice too shaky for her own liking. “Try to pretend all you want. You still want me. You want me and not her.”
Hector scoffed and glanced down, as if examining the pattern of the rug beneath his feet.
Valérie’s hands twitched at her side. Close to panic, she shivered. “We both know it,” she told him.
Hector did not reply and she grasped his arm, maneuvering to ensure that he was looking down at her.
“You think me beautiful. Thrice as beautiful as she might ever be.”
Valérie was indeed magnificent in that moment, anger making her eyes shine like a delicate glaze had been applied to them, every line in her body harmonious. He looked at her, appreciative, and she was aware he recognized this perfection, that he could not turn from it.
“You are beautiful, Valérie. I don’t think you’ll ever cease to be beautiful, and you’ll continue to drive men crazy with your beauty. But there is no goodness in you, just poison, and a desire to wound,” he said without malice, as if he were explaining a difficult arithmetic operation.
She faltered, astonished at how painful it was to speak, how her heart coiled and snagged. But she did find words aplenty after a minute, each one bathed in animosity.
“And there is goodness in your virgin girl? What do you hope to gain? Blood on your bedsheets, the clumsy caress of a child. She has no more wit than a fish snatched from water, and a face as enticing as a piece of blank paper. You’ll be tired of her within a fortnight.”
She looked at him in triumph, satisfied by her speech, her indignation neatly laid before him. Her experience told her now he would reply with equal fury, and that, being familiar territory, she could navigate with ease. She could guide him through the waters of rage.
But he looked more confused than angry, and then he didn’t look angry at all.
“You know what is wrong with you, Valérie? You think everyone has the same low opinion of the world that you have. But the world need not be cruel and everyone in it a jackal. And affection need not be a terror and a curse and agony. It is only that you wish it to be that way.”