The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,49
“You should have gone with her,” Valérie said.
“Valérie, I—”
“Good day,” she declared with a chilling finality.
Without looking at him, her eyes still on the sky, Valérie stood up, then walked back into the house.
Hector watched her disappear inside Oldhouse and instead of following her, as he badly wanted to, he took a side path and walked away from the house, his head down.
Valérie had never been gentle. But her passion, tucked under her perfect exterior, had echoed the passion within him. They were both creatures of tempestuous seas and stormy nights. But how it hurt sometimes!
He walked for a while, attempting to fill his head with the songs of birds instead of memories of this woman, and failing. Hector tried to satisfy himself thinking that Gaétan had not inflamed her heart. No, he could not picture the pleasant Mr. Beaulieu inspiring anything but the most insipid feelings. Neither the rolling anger nor the yearning of their days past, nor the tumultuous reconciliations when—after a day of scowls—Valérie suddenly turned toward Hector and declared breathlessly that, alas, she loved him. They always came apart suddenly and suddenly rejoined, as if nothing had ever been amiss, caught once again in their joy.
But now, now this meeting did not take place, the gap between them only growing by the day, and he stood at the edge of a chasm. It could not end like this.
The clouds had multiplied and he sensed the impending arrival of rain. Hector retraced his steps and returned to Oldhouse, walking past the strange, ancient tower that loomed behind the main building, as raindrops began to splash more forcefully upon the land. He felt old and tattered and wanted simply to lie down and lie still.
“Hector, here,” a voice said.
He raised his head and saw Nina standing at the entrance of the tower, wrapped in its shadow.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I thought no one goes in there.”
She’d said so herself the day she took them on a tour of the grounds, though he ought to have known the rules did not apply to her.
“We are playing hide-and-seek. I’m hiding,” she replied.
“I think you’ll win. I did not see you standing there at all.”
“Good,” she replied. Even if he could not look at her properly—she stood in shadows—he could tell she was smiling. “You probably haven’t seen the room in the tower. Come up. It’s a gorgeous view.”
It was raining harder, the summer drizzle threatening to become true rain.
“I’ll break my neck. This does not look solid.”
“It has stood for a few centuries, it can stand one more day for us. You’ll get soaked if you stay there,” Nina said, and disappeared inside.
He looked up at the tower, which was square in shape and rose five stories above the ground. One could almost hear the stones groaning with exhaustion. Atop its entrance was carved the image of a lamb and a word that had been smudged with time, perhaps her family’s name? This must be a tower house, an independent structure and not a part of a manor in times past, though the ones he’d seen before were usually by the sea.
He wished to remain outside, with his melancholy.
Instead, Hector followed Nina up a spiral staircase.
“What is up there?” he asked, curious despite himself.
“You’ll see.”
“I can’t see, that is the problem.”
“Don’t be afraid now, I’ll catch you if you fall,” she joked.
He was right to be cautious about entering the tower. The steps were narrow, it was dark, and there was no proper banister, but soon they reached the top floor.
The tower had been uninhabited for a great deal of time and the chamber they walked into did not have a stitch of cloth or furniture left. But there was a tall window—its shutters long crumbled into dust—on the east wall. The builders of the tower had carved stone seats to contemplate the scenery with ease. This was the prize.
“See,” Nina said, rushing to the window and looking out.
The land spread beneath them, green and alive. Hector could see the river they had visited, its waters gleaming, and farther away, tall mountains. The ground was a chaos, sloping up here then down there; it was not neatly flat as in the north, and the air smelled of wet earth. Flocks of sheep grazed not far from the tower. Water and wood, this was her world, while he was forged in the city, on the road. He breathed in slowly, feeling better.