Valérie’s lips trembled, but she did not say anything else. She whipped her skirts up and began walking away, back toward the clock tower.
Nina pressed her hands together, holding them beneath her bosom. She felt Hector drifting to her side, his hand circling her waist. They both stood in front of Luc.
“I apologize for dragging you here,” the younger man said.
Luc tossed his pistol to the ground with that. Not quite believing it was all over, Nina took a deep breath and exhaled. Her cousin seemed to have turned to stone, but now he lifted his head as they approached him.
Gaétan and Hector looked at each other.
“I will speak to you plainly, Mr. Beaulieu, for you deserve that,” Hector said. “I came to your house without love for Nina in my heart. Had I been a wiser man, I would have loved her from the moment I met her, but I cannot claim this wisdom. I am sorry I have caused your family strife, but I love Nina now, and I want to marry her.”
Gaétan was somber, but he nodded his head. “I don’t think I could stop her from marrying you even if I wanted to, Mr. Auvray,” he said. “You must wed in Oldhouse. Her mother will want it.”
Gaétan clasped Nina’s hand and gave it a kiss, then he spoke to the others, and they walked off together, leaving Hector and Nina to stand alone under the shade of the elm trees.
He did not seem certain what to say, his brows lifted in surprise as he looked at her. “You stopped two bullets in the air.”
“Yes,” she replied, not knowing what to say either, drained and shaken as she was.
“How? It’s the kind of trick one has to rehearse a hundred times before getting it right,” he said, his analytical mind trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
A breeze was blowing, toying with her unwound hair and whispering against the branches.
“I am not sure.”
“You are not sure,” he repeated.
“You said to believe.”
She looked up at him, and he gave her a dazzling smile before leaning down to kiss her breathless.
CHAPTER 27
Valérie looked in the mirror at the almost imperceptible lines of dissatisfaction across her brow and bracketing her mouth. She ran a hand down her neck.
She could not rid from her mind Hector’s eyes when he’d spoken to her. How cool they were. Not hard or cruel, but lacking in any profound emotion for her and able only to reflect an odd clemency.
If he had hated her, she might have felt relieved.
She heard Gaétan walk in and did not bother looking at her husband. She wished he’d let her be, but he began talking at once in a hurried, anxious tone, as if he intended to vex her even more.
“I have spoken to Luc Lémy, and he has explained how you two confabulated, how you plotted to have Nina married off to him and Hector removed from the picture. You will explain yourself this instant, and do not attempt to lie to me.”
“Why? You said you’ve spoken to Luc,” Valérie said, rubbing her hands together.
“Because I want you to do it.”
“So you can judge me?”
“You have tried to wrong my family.”
Valérie stood up and faced her husband. Even in his anger, he had the quality of an insect, and she was not afraid to look him in the eye instead of feigning contrition. She was not going to crawl at the feet of this man.
“Your family. Always your family. The sacrosanct Beaulieus of Montipouret are the only thing that fills your mind. It has always been them. Camille and Madelena and most of all that worm, Antonina.”
“I have given you everything, Valérie,” he said, looking heartbroken, but she did not care.
Trinkets, she thought. Rings and necklaces and earrings, everything accounted for.
“No. Not at all,” Valérie said. “You could have lifted my family from the muck, but you decided you’d only toss them crumbs. My cousin, you wouldn’t buy him that post in the army, and my uncle—”
“I do not believe posts should be bought.”
“Not merely that. Always, always the Beaulieus have been the most important concern in your life. Is it any wonder I would attempt to try to help my own kin? That when Luc spoke to me, I seized a business proposition that could benefit my family for a change?”
“At the expense of my cousin’s happiness,” Gaétan said dryly. “You have done nothing but manipulate and deceive me, and slander her.”
Valérie curled her hands into fists against her skirts to keep herself from slapping him. “I was sacrificed. Why should she escape her fate?” Valérie asked. “I was forced to marry a man I did not care about, dragged to the altar by my elderly relatives, and told to repeat the words the priest said.”
He looked more astonished than if she had hit him, and this filled her with a deep satisfaction. All the loathing, all the hate she had kept bottled inside was oozing out, and it was delightful. In her misery, she was able to find the beauty of spite and cling to it.
“I had nothing to gain from my marriage to you,” Gaétan said. “You came to me without a dowry and the debts of your father, which had to be repaid.”
“A fact you reminded me of every day.”
“When?”
“In every look, Gaétan. Every word. Do you think I could not tell? How kind Gaétan Beaulieu is to have married her,” Valérie said in singsong. “How kind, how generous, how marvelous of him to pick a piece of trash from the street, dust it off, and set it upon the mantelpiece.”
“I did not think that,” Gaétan said, pointing a finger at her. “You might have thought it, but I did not.” He inclined his head slightly, every fiber of his being alight with sadness in that instant. “I have loved you,” Gaétan said.
“No, no, you never loved me. You loved Camille and Madelena and that stupid girl, Antonina,” Valérie said. “I know what it is like to be loved, and you have never loved me.”
Gaétan could not possibly deny it. All his tenderness had been intended for them. He did not smile at Valérie the way he smiled at Madelena or Antonina. He never was half so delighted with Valérie, even if Valérie was more accomplished, more learned, more beautiful than his silly cousins. Gaétan knew only the pull of blood, the bonds of familial duty.
“Only one man has loved me,” Valérie insisted.
It hurt to admit this, and yet she had to. She was burning inside, consumed with a roaring pain, and if she did not speak this truth, she would be reduced to ashes. Hector had adored her. But even Hector had not been enough. Even his love had not been enough. Nothing could ever be sufficient for her.
Her hands shook. She might have wept, humiliating herself in this man’s presence, but then Gaétan spoke.
“At last I understand your indifference,” Gaétan said.
His tone, the disappointment in his voice, made her snap up straight. She was the one who had a right to be disappointed! What could Gaétan complain about? How dare he look at her as if she were at fault.
She had been dutiful. She had been a proper wife.
“I would have his name,” Gaétan said.
“Do you really want me to say it? Can’t you guess it?” Valérie replied.