The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,131
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.
“I will have his name, damn you!”
He was angry. Finally true emotion coursed through him instead of the tepid affection he had always granted her, she who demanded a roaring fire and had been given but a tiny match to light her heart. No wonder he disgusted her.
“Hector Auvray,” Valérie said. “We were engaged once. But I was forced to wed you and then he came back for me. From across the water, from Iblevad, as he said he would. He waited ten years for me.”
A decade, she thought desperately. Despite everything, it meant something.
“He’ll ask you for Antonina’s hand in marriage. Can you possibly grant it, knowing this?” Valérie asked, a smile dancing on her lips.