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“Nina,” she said, stretching out her hand. “Antonina, really, but I rather hate it. I’m named after a witch of a great-aunt, the most awful wretch who ever lived. Well, not quite, but I resent the association, and therefore it is Nina.”
She missed her beetles and her butterflies and was horrified when she considered all the species she would not be able to collect that spring.
The truth of the matter was she considered Antonina half a savage, though her vulgarity was not truly her fault and must be laid at her mother’s feet.
“I have not forgotten you, Valérie,” he said quietly, and he tried to pour every inch of his soul into those few words, hoping she might see and feel and grasp how he’d loved her, how many nights he’d dreamt of her and tossed in his bed in despair, how many times he’d pictured her face. Now she was there, real and solid, and he wanted to die without her and wanted to live for her. As when they’d been young.
The limits of Valérie’s power and influence chafed her. She begrudged Antonina for this reason and also because she was by nature a jealous, possessive creature. She had to have every bit of everything, and that included every bit of everyone. Gaétan’s love for others struck her as a personal insult, and if he could not love her absolutely with no room for another, she did not believe he could love her at all.
When she was but a child, I remember how she used to make furniture move, pots clang. It scared the other children. They called her the Witch of Oldhouse. And now that she has grown up, even now they remember these things, and she’s not had many suitors in Montipouret.”
she was afraid Gaétan might notice something was amiss even if he would not have noticed a conflagration in the room next door.
How he’d managed this in ten scant years was explained rather easily. Hector had been possessed. He’d felt it necessary to show Valérie he could achieve what he’d said he would do. To amass the fortune, the prestige they had dreamed about. Every step he took was inspired by the echo of that long-lost love. Even now, Hector knew he was still possessed. Perhaps even more than before.
She’d been thrust into the company of a husband who was like damp wood that could not be kindled, but Hector burned bright and fast; setting him aflame took but a gesture.
Her grandmother eyed her as she would a goose being fattened for a feast, and the feast had come, and Valérie had bowed her neck in sacrifice.
During the night, he considered his idiocy, the way he milled around the Beaulieu household, searching for the crumbs of Valérie’s affection. She must have a good laugh at him.
“I’m the worst of friends to you. You ought to spend more time with people who are more animated than me, younger and lively. I am like a rickety, haunted house, Miss Beaulieu. Best find a new abode.
The hard look of a Madonna of unkindness, a blind stone idol who did not see him yet demanded sacrifice, worship, blood upon its altar.
Won’t you join us at Oldhouse?” “It’s a serious request,” he said, and his face was grim, as though she’d asked him to witness an execution with her. He was like this; a dark cloud would periodically blot out the sun and drain all mirth from his body.
She had thought he would be pleased at the idea and now found herself considering that he might not want to spend an extensive number of days with her.
He helped Nina into the carriage, and when he released her hand, he smiled again, and in that fluttering second she knew she loved him, loved him true, and it wasn’t the coy flirtation of a young woman.
Hector had spent so many years being the man who loved Valérie that he could not conceive of becoming anything else. She was a goddess at whose feet he worshipped, and to cease in his adoration of her would imply he had spent a decade following a false idol.
You truly are a simp
Nina set her specimen bottle upon a table and opened the mahogany cabinet for Hector to see. “This is what I was telling you,” she said, holding up a tray. “All my specimens are kept here.”
If he hurts her, we riot
“You’re an exceptional specimen yourself,” he said. “Do not forget that point, ever.” Nina decided it was the best compliment anyone had paid her. But he gave her a curious look that was, she thought, half sadness.
She was alluring, but when Hector glanced at Nina and saw the way her eyes went wide with quiet pain, he felt desire wilting from him.
“You think it is that simple? To bring dishonor to my family? You think I can throw away everything I have ever worked for? You have no understanding of the world. You are as you always were, with your head in the clouds. You do tricks for adoring crowds onstage and forget that it is not all artifice and sleight of hand when you step off. The pauper does not get the princess, Hector Auvray.”
That is why I married Gaétan. Because I was ready to throw everything away for you. My name and my honor and my family. No one—no one, you hear me—can have that power over me.”
He had been riddled with the disease of love, but Valérie had operated on him and finally, brutally, cut out the putrefied flesh.
He had wanted to look at it so he could tell her about it later, sharing his impressions. He did not understand many of the other things she fancied, like her precious insects, but he did enjoy when she spoke about them. He missed her already.
You don't deserve her
“I think she wanted nothing from me,” Hector added, “nothing at all but to let her love me.”
She’d recall the exact way his mouth curved when he smiled, and this memory was utterly painful, drawing forth the wretched longing she’d hidden away. She could not wash this so easily, and the memory remained in the dawn; it stained her heart, like the sap of trees, which clings to clothes, to skin, to everything.
Valérie had been given no choice, but Antonina was allowed to have her heart’s desire.
“You do not know what it is like to want something for so long, you forget why you even wanted it in the first place, until the only thing left is a gnawing need and there is nothing that can fill it. And even though everything in your body tells you that you are killing yourself wanting it, you cannot stop.”
“I thought I could never forgive you, but I realize that is not the case. I stand here before you, and I do not hate you as I thought I would. But I cannot forget either,”
It must be amusing to forgo duty and submit yourself only to silly pleasures, Valérie thought with quiet contempt.
“Anything you want to talk about is fine with me,” he said sympathetically.
My standards are really low
He’d taught himself how to dress properly, how to speak properly, what items to order from a menu, and the fashionable dances. All for that one woman. What good had it done him? None. And now, this woman, nothing of what he knew could help with her. That was the crux of the matter. He’d learned so much and yet so little.
But the world need not be cruel and everyone in it a jackal. And affection need not be a terror and a curse and agony. It is only that you wish it to be that way.”
Valérie might ordinarily have retreated to her conservatory, to walk among her flowers, but the violence she had inflicted upon the roses the day before was fresh on her mind. That space had been corrupted. Antonina had ruined even that. She was a poisonous creature.
“You should not be nervous. This is not an arithmetic test.” “I’m not bad at arithmetic,” she said.
This might ordinarily have irritated Valérie, who took each one of Gaétan’s gifts and attentions toward his family as an attack against herself, possessive creature that she was. But she did not mind this time. She imagined the diamond comb weighing the girl down, like an anchor, tying her to Luc.
Go to therapy
Now that she had started speaking, it all became easier. She was nervous but determined. She had broken to the surface. She was not drowning but living, everything inside her eager and awake. “I am in love with another man. Since Oldhouse and before that. He is intelligent and dedicated and kind. He understands me, and I believe I understand him. I like the way he talks and the way he smiles. I like many things about him, I cannot ever remember all of them.”
“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.”
“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.
“No, I do not think it is possible, because you are in there already!” he yelled back.
“You are everywhere in my life. I did not want that,” he confessed.
Uh oh
He was a ready ax, and all Valérie had to do was swing it.
Lot of violent imagery with luc
She could see her words were having the intended effect on Luc. His rage was now laced with greed, a powerful combination. And he was foolhardy. The fuse had been lit. He would explode.
But this upstart man thinks he can do what he wants, that he can stomp on all of Loisail. We are Beautiful Ones. He is a nothing.”
Each word she had spoken to him since they met, he thought, had been like kindling, until in wonder, he had to admit he was on fire,
As though she were a goddess, he built a temple to her every morning and knelt before her, supplicating. She rewarded him, once in a while, with a smile or a touch of her hand, a kiss on the lips. But even when she gave nothing, he was happy because she was everything.
She took the golden band from the bottom of her jewelry box, and it was cool against the palm of her hand. This angered her. She thought it should burn, it should scald her, as if to punish her for her wickedness. It was nothing but a thin piece of metal, a trinket given to her by a boy who had loved her and thought of her no longer.
If Valérie had been in his place, if she’d been a man, she would have put a bullet through Hector’s brain herself.
She wanted Hector’s blood soaking the grass. She wanted Antonina’s tears when they lowered him into his grave, with a marble headstone to mark his final resting place. She wanted to stroll one day by that cemetery where he lay and kneel by his grave. When the weeds grew upon his tomb and no one stopped to place flowers, she wanted to know he slept upon that narrow cage of earth. She wanted, most of all, to watch his face as he lay dying. She wanted to be the last person he ever saw. A curse upon him, yes.
“All we ultimately have to do is believe. We focus our mind on one single point, one single purpose, and we push. We grasp. We manipulate wood and glass and iron. However, the greatest trick is the belief. Belief is what makes it real. “I’ve now told you all my secrets,” he said. “You’d better not reveal them to my competitors.”
