The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,130
as sharp and perhaps as fragile, for she moved back and stumbled. It was as if the veil she had worn each day had grown frayed, revealing the naked, desperate truth beneath. Her eyes darted ferociously; her fingers flew into her hair as she spoke.
“Are you happy now, Hector?” she asked him. “I hope you are happy, you faithless vermin.”
Gaétan stared at his wife, and she stared at Hector. Valérie had the look of a woman who has spent many days in the desert and lies starving upon the sand. Hector looked back at her, perturbed.
“If you spoke but a word,” Valérie said then, her tone changing, a note of warmth in her voice, as she took a step in Hector’s direction.
But there was no warmth in him to mirror that change in her. There was only a chilling, polite inclination of the head, which stopped her from taking another step.
“No,” Hector said. “I’m sorry.”
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.