HECTOR TOOK HER TO ONE of the new shops on Winter Hill, where he instructed her to buy whatever she pleased, then make her way back to his apartment. He had people to meet, he told her, and it was necessary that he proceed alone. He would join her for supper, he promised.
“Make sure you have a nice trousseau,” he told her. “And we can worry about a bridal gown later.”
It was not considered proper for a groom to provide his bride with her trousseau, as it would undermine the lady’s pride: a trousseau indicated a woman’s wealth and social standing. It took time and care to assemble one.
Nina did not have time, she knew this plainly. Her family would want her married forthwith, and since Hector had made no mention of having her return to her great-aunts’ home—and sending for her trunk might have caused the poor old ladies to faint or irritate her kin even further—it stood to reason she needed new clothes.
She tried to be as practical as she could about the matter; truth be told, she had not paid attention to her sister’s arrangements when it came to her trousseau. She settled for a handful of nightdresses, drawers, corset-covers, and petticoats. She stumbled as she had to consider how many pairs of gloves she required, because she often lost them and when she wanted to manipulate objects, she did not use them anyway. She also had a way of misplacing collars.
When it came to gowns, matters were simpler, and she acquired a couple of housedresses, tea gowns, visiting dresses. She did not want to seem like a simpleton who spent all her money on opera gowns in a display of frivolity when clearly what was required were everyday clothes, but she did acquire one evening gown.
Before she left the shop, Nina changed into a blue linen day dress with a narrow skirt and much lace and pin tucking. Dressed like this, she went to another shop, where she purchased necessities for the toilette, including a silver set of brushes.
She had the carriage driver help her up with her numerous parcels to the fifth floor, and once he’d stacked them by the door and departed, she made the lock open with a flick of her fingers—not even bothering with the keys Hector had pressed against her palm—and willed the packages to slide into her new home.
Nina stood in the middle of the living room and contemplated the space around her, a box in her arms. After setting the box on the table, she went to the window and looked outside, observing the clear sky and thinking this was the view she would see from now on. These trees below their windows, this street, that other building in front of their own.
Upon his return, Hector found her in the bedroom in front of the mirror, with one of the new dresses pressed against her body, trying to determine whether she ought to change into something else, doubting her original choice.
“You’ve succeeded in your venture,” he said as he stood in the doorway.
“I return like a triumphant conqueror,” she replied.
He nodded at her, a smile on his lips, before he removed his hat and began tugging at his cravat, his eyes unable to mask his worry.
“Where have you been?”
“I went to see your cousin, but he would not speak to me. I left a letter for him, but he sent a note back saying he is to be Luc Lémy’s second and cannot converse at this time.”
“Then I shall have to go see him.”
Nina sat down at the edge of the bed. In her childish excitement over purchasing new clothes, she had forgotten all about her mother and her sister and her cousin. She should have written to them at once; it might have smoothed the proceedings. They must all be thinking ill of Hector and of her.
“No, let it be. He has made a choice. After the duel, we can try to speak to him together and secure your family’s blessing.”
The duel. That, too, had been pushed from her mind, eclipsed by her mundane errands. Now the fear clawing at her heart washed over her anew.
“Luc hunts,” she declared.
“Yes, he does.”
“I mean he is a skillful shot.”
“I won’t deny it.”
“How good are you with a pistol?”
“I am a performer, not a hunter.”
At Oldhouse, Luc had made a show of riding on his horse and slinging a rifle over his shoulder. He’d know how to shoot; it was a gentleman’s pursuit. Hector had not been reared a gentleman, and even if he’d had a chance to toy with pistols at a later point in life, surely he could not overcome the edge Luc had.
“But then, what will you do?” she asked.
“I shall wait until tomorrow. Tomorrow he may have changed his tune,” he said calmly, as if they’d invited Luc over for tea.
“And if he doesn’t?”
“Then tomorrow my second is coming to see me, to relay and negotiate the conditions of the duel.”
“If you can’t shoot properly, we might as well call it an execution,” she said, unable to soften the grim words.
Hector removed his jacket and set it on the back of a chair. “Let us not discuss my mortality right this instant, shall we?” he asked, trying to make light of the whole affair. “There are more important topics to discuss.” He sat next to her on the bed.
“Like what?” she scoffed.
“Like you.”
“Me?”
He leaned toward her, his voice dipping, almost secretive. “I have a delicate question to ask. It is about us. About us last night. I hope I did not frighten you.”
Rather than feeling embarrassed, as might have been expected, she was incensed, guessing that he probably thought her a complete fool fresh from the countryside who could not say what went on in the marital chamber. They covered the genitals of statues with fig leaves, marble made modest in this manner, but not the drawings in anatomical books.
“Hector, I am a naturalist. I have read books discussing the mating habits of many species,” she told him.
“It is somewhat different when you are talking of something other than beetles.”
“It depends. Beetles have fascinating mating habits. When stag beetles emerge, all they want to do is mate, and the male encloses the female on the ground with its antlers.”
“I’m wanting to ask whether you are fine. Whether it was fine,” he said.
He ran a hand carelessly across the rumpled bedsheets, and it was that vague, intimate gesture that made her dip her head and blush.
“My cousin Cecily, all she’d say after she married Émile was that she wouldn’t rise for a week, but she is a liar and was surely trying to scare me, though her point about having to speak to the druggist, to ensure one doesn’t have a babe at the first opportunity, I think was true,” Nina said, frowning. “I don’t think I’d like to have a child now. But I didn’t think it was too awful.”
“Not too awful,” he repeated.
“Don’t take it like that. I hardly know what to say.”
He put both hands on her face, and she looked up at him.
“You can say, ‘Hector, you fool, you were too impatient’ or too unkind or anything at all. It is the way it gets better, if you correct whatever inadequate notions I may have.”
Nina considered this with care, her fingers twisting around a corner of the bedsheets.
“What?” he asked.
“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, where before he had been speaking almost in whispers. “What a lovely creature you are,” he said.
She kissed him and undid the buttons of his vest.
“I think you seduced me and not the other way around,” he said as she eased him from his shirt.
“You might be right.”
He had not kissed her for a considerable length of time, but now he kissed her slowly, over and over. He wasn’t greedy on this occasion—there had been a volatile impatience to him, as though he’d thought she’d vanish from his arms—and she thought it pleasant, the weight of him on her and even more pleasant later as she gripped his shoulders.
Nina had spent the previous night in the darkness of his room, feeling startled, her eyes wide open as he slept next to her, the thought that the priest from her church and the martyrs on the stained-glass windows would have been cross with her. In the morning, though, she had sneaked into his bathroom, and lying in the tub all that came to mind were the songs she sang whenever she went by the river, the water reaching her thighs. Then he’d walked in as she sat in the tub, and even though there was her immortal soul to consider and also the scandal, she’d shoved those concerns away. They didn’t seem important anymore.
It wasn’t dark this time. She could see him as he lay next to her, his chest rising and falling, and it was a substantially more attractive sight than the images of martyrs. Not that she was ever worried about damnation; it had always seemed an abstract concept.
Other, more practical matters did disquiet her.
Hector toyed lazily with her hair, wrapping a strand around his fingers, and Nina turned her head to look at him.
“We could run away,” she said.
“From Luc Lémy?”
She folded her arms across her chest, and fear filled her, as water fills the lungs of the drowning swimmer. “Yes. We could get on a ship. He is not going to chase us all the way to Iblevad, is he?”
“Perhaps we’d evade him. And you’d spend the rest of your life as an exile.”
Nina did not reply. It was heartbreaking having to picture her family lost, her mother and her sister and her cousin turned into a distant memory. But it was the logical choice.
“Never to set your eyes on Oldhouse again. You think I’d do that to you?” he asked.
She knew the answer even before he spoke, resolution sharp on his face. There was no convincing him. He would not relent. Matters of honor were paramount to gentlemen, and he was more stubborn than most.
“No,” he said. “Besides, I accepted. I gave him my word. A man is his word.”
Nina nodded and squeezed his hand.
“But I appreciate your generosity,” he said, his voice growing softer, “and know myself lucky that you’d give up everything you treasure for me.”
His gaze pinned her down against the pillows, steady and true.
“I love you, Nina Beaulieu.”
He had not said this yet, and his proposal had been almost an afterthought. It was perhaps silly how her breath caught in her throat when he spoke, given how obvious it was that he cared for her, but it was wonderful to hear it. The fears that, perhaps unreasonably, still dangled in a corner of her soul, were lifted with those few words.
“Would you say it back?” he asked rather timidly.
She bit her lip and then smiled.
“I love you,” Nina said, laying her hands on his chest, and she giggled when he spun her around, making her rest above him, her hair falling like a curtain over his face.