He ran a hand through his hair and let out a low “no.”
If she’d been wiser, she might have chosen this moment to leave him, mortified by the whole sorry chain of events that had led her to his home. Instead, Nina stared at him. It was the folly of youth that gave her courage.
“You are a coward,” she said.
He snapped up straight, tall and firm again, his shoulders stiff.
“Yes,” she pressed on. “I see it now. You can act the part of a secure man onstage, but you are nothing but a coward. You fear what they’ll say about you.”
“No, I fear for you,” he said vehemently.
He looked scared to death, and she felt like calling him every terrible name she’d ever heard because she could see him receding inward, his head falling. She thought, He intends to leave it at this.
Nina shook all over in disbelief.
“I fear for my heart, too,” he said, raising his head and piercing her with his eyes.
Hector made a noise—it sounded like he was chuckling, she could not be sure. His thick eyebrows were furrowed, and he raised his hands, then dropped them heavily at his side, his fingers curled tight.
“You have no idea, Nina, what it is like to love someone so much, it tears you apart, that you think you will die when you lose them. And after experiencing such awful pain, you never want to feel it again any more than a man wants another limb hacked off.”
“I have some idea,” she whispered.
He did not reply, but she noticed how his jaw clenched at that.
Hector walked away from her, moving along the table, to the other end of the vast room, which served as parlor and dining area alike, this odd home he filled with its jumble of eclectic objects.
“You are a coward.”
“Nina—” he began, and she bridged the distance between them as quickly as he had established it, reaching his side.
“Do you think you can put your heart in a box of iron and throw away the key? Do you think that is the best way to live? Keep your damn heart in a box and let nothing touch it!” she exclaimed.
Ready to depart, now that she had said her piece, she whirled away from him. Her chest burned with ardent sorrow, but at least she was glad she was not weeping.
“No, I do not think it is possible, because you are in there already!” he yelled back.
She gasped but remained afraid that if she said or did a single thing, he’d stop speaking.
“You are everywhere in my life. I did not want that,” he confessed.
She turned around. Hector was severe and the look in his eyes was that of a man in pain, not one declaring his love, but there was a sincerity that had been lacking when Luc promised her eternal happiness.
Nina slid closer to him. “Then why won’t you let me beside you instead of keeping me in a solitary corner of that box?”
“What happens when you stop loving me?” he asked tersely.
That was the crux of the matter, the invisible dividing line on the floor.
“Why should I?” she replied. “Because Valérie stopped loving you?”
She looked at him, straight in the eye. There was no room for coyness.
“I am not Valérie,” she said.
“I’ve noticed.”
“Then?”
“Then,” he muttered. “You were speaking of leaving the city a few days ago, of Luc Lémy, and I—”
“And you said nothing.”
He replied with a speechless stare, looking humbled. He was older than she, but one would have thought her the senior if they’d seen them then and noticed her carefully crafted boldness. “What would you have had me say? It would have been improper … and I thought you liked him, I thought—”
“I’ve thought silly things, too,” Nina said. “It doesn’t matter. But now? What will you do now? For a man who once gave me a pack of playing cards, I don’t think you’ve ever learned one must gamble in order to win. And despite all your talk of teaching me, that’s one lesson I can give you.”
She extended a hand and smoothed the cuff of his faded lounging robe, wanting to touch his fingers and not daring, because he looked like he might bolt out of sight, as he had bolted when they were in the tower at Oldhouse.
“Will you kiss me now, or shall I let you be?” she asked, and couldn’t help the fragility in her voice though she was attempting to sound resolute.
Hector pulled Nina to him, bending down to kiss her. She gripped his shoulders and kissed him back, her fingers dipping under the fabric of the robe, touching his skin.
He lifted his face and looked at her.
She thought if he pulled away from her this time, she might collapse in tears, but he smiled gently. Slowly, hesitantly, he caressed her cheek.
“You’ll stay with me?” he asked in a hushed tone.
“Yes,” she said, knowing he didn’t mean for a while, that she could not possibly go back after this, and he was right, there’d be a scandal. “I’ll stay.”
Nina removed the diamond comb from her hair, drew several pins from it, too, and shook her head, letting the heavy mass of hair spill down her shoulders.
She raised her hand and took off the engagement ring, setting the precious emerald everyone had fawned over on the table, next to his papers and books and a bright, painted wooden box.
Then she pressed the same hand against his chest. His heart leapt up, like a wave, drawn by her touch.
CHAPTER 21
No one knew what to say or what to do in the wake of the colossal disaster. Instead they sat together in the drawing room, in a mute stupor laced with horror. Antonina’s mother and her sister were on a couch; Étienne Lémy sat on a chair while his brother paced in circles, a glass of wine in his hands. Valérie had lost count of how many glasses that made.
Luc was not sure at what point in the evening Antonina had stepped out for a breath of fresh air, but by the time the photographer from The Courier asked that they take the official portrait of the bride- and groom-to-be for the paper, she was nowhere in sight. When she was not found in her room, Valérie manufactured a lie and told everyone that the girl was a bit sick—this had a basis in reality, as Luc had explained she had not been feeling well.
“Nerves,” she had told the guests.
They had to endure another hour of the party, Luc gripping his glass, his favorite brother standing at his right while Valérie smiled at everyone, pretending all was well. As soon as the last guests were dispatched, the inquiries and recriminations began. Why hadn’t Luc stayed with her? Where could she be?
Gaétan walked in, and they all turned their heads. “She is not at our great-aunts’ home,” he announced.
“We must find her, wherever she is,” Madelena said. “She took nothing and could not have gone far.”
“We know where she is,” Valérie said, unable to contain herself any longer. “If there was any doubt, it has been erased. She has run off with Hector Auvray.”
Luc Lémy looked like he was about to hurl his glass at the wall, while Camille and Madelena clutched each other’s hands.
“It is late. We do not want to cause a scene, knocking on someone’s door at this hour,” Gaétan said, composing himself, ever tactful. “Come morning, we must head to Auvray’s home and see if she has indeed taken shelter in his abode.”