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He rose early, shaved, and dressed in a dove-gray double-breasted waistcoat that was molded to his lean frame.
would miss you if I were not to see you for months on end.” “You may write to me.” “Bah. A letter is not the same at all. I’d have to write a dozen a day in order to keep you well informed. You know how I go on.
Perhaps he’d find some rustic charm in it, as he apparently found some rustic charm in Antonina. Valérie, reared watchfully like a flower in a hothouse, could not see any prettiness in Antonina; her luxuriant qualities were to her an affront. It was like staring at a weed. Her upbringing made her want to stab it with a spade, stomp on it quick, lest it contaminate the garden.
“I saw a drawing once, it purported to show the regions of a woman’s heart,” Hector mused. “It mapped the lands of coquetry and sentiment.”
She did like him, although she had not ever thought how a lady would go on about revealing this to a man.
not stay in that room
The books talked about men set aflame, pursuing women, but it was she who was burning and knew not what course to take. The only thing the heroines in her books did was weep until a man rescued them. Or kidnapped them, if he was a pirate.
Piratd
Viridiana,
Color
Luc Lémy could probably get a bear to remove its own fur so he could make himself a coat, and she smiled, indulging him.
“There were many times when I would be amazed at how easily you could make me smile. You do not realize how difficult a task that is. I
Hector knew what she’d written. Not the words but the meaning. It was engraved in the space between them.
Without meaning to, she also thought about him in other terms. Hector was hers. He was always hers, and even if she wouldn’t have him, he should remain so.
Valerie bitch
When the sun shone through the colored windows, painting martyrs upon the floor, all she could think about was the moment she might go outside and chase dragonflies by the river.
Cburcb priest
“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.”
Hector pulled Nina to him, bending down to kiss her. She gripped his shoulders and kissed him back, her fingers dipping under the fabric of the robe, touching his skin.
He had shared his bed with a few women over the years, but it had not been something so intimate and cordial that one of them would have wound up in his bathroom, singing,
“The place an intelligent person sings is in the bathroom. One sounds better.
“I am not the easiest man to live with, and I am sure more than one person might say I am rather bothersome, but I will try to be the best man I can be for you.
“We could try again, and I can keep better mental notes next time you seduce me and discuss the results of this experiment with you later.” He laughed loudly,
experiment
appreciate your generosity,” he said, his voice growing softer, “and know myself lucky that you’d give up everything you treasure for me.”
But even when she gave nothing, he was happy because she was everything.
She knew he had loved her a little, just as she’d cared for him, the gentle love of friends.
He was struck with the incongruity of it all, wondering how he had arrived at this precious moment. So securely she had nestled in his heart, it was impossible to map his trajectory.
“You didn’t. I found you. At the library of the De Villiers, at the party of the Haduiers, and that night I went to Boniface,” she said lightly. He thought that truly it had been so, but that he had also been drifting toward her since the beginning, magnetized, a compass that had spun wildly and then gently settled upon a true north. Not love at first sight, because those fancies were best left for books and songs, but she had extended her hand
and invited him to follow her into a dance, and he had found after a few steps that though he had never danced it before, he did not want to stop. “Keep finding me, then,” he said.
He knew that in the years to come, even when they were old and gray and their spines were bent by the weight of time, he would remember her as she was in that moment, with a couple of stray yellow flowers in her hair, her lips parted.
He stood still, holding the moment against his heart. Then she turned her head and smiled at him.
