SHE WOKE WITH A START and discovered he was gone. She thought to weep, but there was no time for that, there was no time at all. She needed to find him. Now that it was morning, now that the day of the duel had arrived, she could not possibly allow him to walk onto that field.
Nina dressed as quickly as she could and did not even bother looking in the mirror, running down the stairs and onto the street. She found a carriage to take her to Clocktower Hill.
The tower rose, bone-white against the sky: a pale portent of disaster in the early-morning light. The Lawn could be accessed by foot only. She paid the man and rushed up the hill, the dew wetting her skirt.
It was not yet six. It wasn’t. She dashed toward the Lawn, and she saw them there, the witnesses and the duelists. Hector and Luc were already in their positions, their pistols in hand.
“You must stop! Stop it, Gaetan!” she yelled, stumbling as she approached her cousin.
“Nina,” he said. “Nina, I—”
“You must stop it!”
“It’s a duel, dear child. He can’t stop it,” Valérie said.
Nina turned to look at the woman. For a moment she thought she could not possibly be real, that she had to be an apparition, but Valérie was there, solid, calmly glancing at the duelists as if it were another day at the park.
“Valérie, you must speak to my cousin. You must help me stop this,” she pleaded.
“Must I?”
“Nina, for God’s sake, shield your eyes,” Gaetan said, taking hold of her and pulling her back.
She pushed Gaetan away, her hands slapping his chest for a second.
The clock struck the hour. The men raised their arms and fired their pistols.
She wanted to scream but could utter no sound, and her fingers curled against the palms of her hands, the nails digging into her skin.
She saw the shining pistols and she thought, I love you.
There was no time to say it, no time to utter a single syllable, but the word broke through and echoed in the space around them anyway, because her love was will.
And her will was an arrow, slamming both men with its strength and knocking them down; it made the grass waver in its path, the blades bending under an invisible wind for a second.
And her will was wind, but it was also iron. It clutched in its grip the bullets that had been destined one for the shoulder and one for the heart. The bullets stood in midair, as if they had been painted upon the landscape and had not been cutting through the air at an incredible speed a fraction of a second before.
She thought no.
The birds in the trees took flight, frightened by the noise.
Smoke rose in the air.
She opened her hands.
The bullets slid down onto the ground, rolling on the grass.
Nina ran toward Hector, who was lying on his back. She knelt at his side and touched his face. His eyes were closed.
“Hector,” she said.
“What have you done?” Valérie yelled.
Nina looked at the woman, who was stomping toward her. Nina, her fingers shaking, did not bother answering. God, she hoped she had not hurt Hector.
Hector stirred and opened his eyes, wincing. Slowly he lifted his head and looked her full in the face. “Nina,” he mumbled. “You are here.”
“I couldn’t let you do it,” she said.
His hand reached up to her cheek, and Nina pressed a kiss against it, squeezing her eyes shut.
The physician was speaking excitedly to Gaetan, asking whether he needed to tend to the men and which one would he tend to first.
She heard Luc groaning. “What in seven hells was that?” he asked.
“It was her. The silly witch. You must load the pistols and proceed anew,” Valérie replied.
It was the tone Valérie employed that cut most acutely. How neatly she spoke. It made Nina furious. She looked at the woman and noticed Valérie’s face was as pale as bleached linen and her eyes were bright with pain, and yet she dared to speak those words.
“You are a viper,” Nina told her.
“Call me what you want, you fool. Lémy issued a challenge, and it will be answered. There are rules to this game.”
“It’s no game.”
Luc was now standing. He had picked up his revolver from the ground and held it between his hands.
“Step aside, Nina. Valérie is right. There are rules,” Luc said.
Nina turned around. Luc had not raised his pistol again, but he was itching to load another bullet into the barrel and shoot. She might stop that second bullet, too, but there could be a third and a fourth. Her talent could not solve this conflict.
Hector’s hand was on Nina’s arm, and she gave it a light squeeze before stepping away from him.
Nina went toward Luc, slowly, without haste. Up close, he appeared as he always had, gilded, but also different, his luminosity tarnished.
He looked at her curiously, not knowing exactly what she intended to do. She pressed her hands together.
“Luc, you kept me company on many a day and we spoke of numerous things, in honesty and confidence. I want to think that we were friends,” she said. “I think you meant what you said when you proposed to me about making me happy. I apologize if I hurt you, but you cannot make me happy, despite your best intentions.”
He opened his mouth as if to utter a sharp word, but ended up observing her with eyes that were very blue, very confused.
“If you must be angry at someone, it should be me. Not him. I do not think you truly want to do this.”
“You do not understand,” Luc said.
“Luc, I want to believe … I know you are a good man. You are silly and impulsive, and you are a good man.”
There had been a wild and unpleasant spirit inside Luc, but when she spoke, it died out, like cooling embers from an extinguished fire.
“Luc Lémy, do not be a coward now,” Valérie said. “Will you allow this man to stomp over your honor and ruin your future? Remember why you are here.”
“Will you let him be?” Nina exclaimed.
Valérie held her shawl with one hand and chuckled in indignation as she approached them. “They’ll be laughing at you throughout the city, Lémy. Engaged for scarcely a day, and suddenly your bride is missing. And there are many other considerations one must not forget.”
“Are you truly that desperate for blood that you must goad him?” Nina asked.
“Do not be weak now, Lémy,” Valérie said, ignoring her. “Do not allow this silly child to take away what is rightfully yours.”
Luc’s eyes had been on the revolver, but when Valérie spoke, he raised his head and his eyes fell on Nina.
She knew he had loved her a little, just as she’d cared for him, the gentle love of friends. He had forgotten, and now remembered this detail and it was that memory that doused him.
“Nothing is rightfully mine, and it never was,” Luc said slowly.
Valérie’s body was as tense as a wire, her shoulders raised. As Luc spoke, she grew stiffer, her jaw twisted in its tightness.
“You are wrong to think me a good man. I have been terrible. I wanted to arrange a lucrative business deal using land owned by the Véries, but lacking the proper funds, I thought I could obtain the money by marrying you,” he said. “When you went with Hector, Valérie and I decided the only way to ensure the marriage took place, the only way to obtain the money I needed, was to kill Hector in a duel.”
The weight of her regard—it was leaden—hurt him. For a moment he was more boy than man. A boy who had been caught tearing the wings off insects and now faced his punishment with a quivering mouth.
“No. You can still prove me right,” Nina told him. “Call it off.”
Embarrassed, Luc lifted his eyes to the heavens and then looked down again at Nina, examining her face.
“Shots were exchanged today,” Luc said, his voice broken. “I thus consider the terms of this duel satisfied.”
“Fine words from a gutless coward!” Valérie said.
“Shoot him yourself if you desire blood,” Luc replied sharply.
“If I had a revolver in my hand, dear Lémy, do not doubt I would shoot him myself and then shoot your former fiancée,” Valérie said. “Hand me yours, and I will be happy to prove this point.”
Valérie extended her hands, as if to take Luc’s pistol.
“For heaven’s sake, what is wrong with you?” Gaetan asked.
Nina remembered a groom who had been kicked by a horse and had to walk around all summer with his arm in a sling. Gaetan was like the groom when the horse had kicked him, startled and horrified and not sure if he had broken his arm.
“For heaven’s sake!” he repeated, clutching his wife by the shoulders.
“Let go of me, you oaf.”
Valérie was as sharp as glass then, as sharp and perhaps as fragile, for she moved back and stumbled. It was as if the veil she had worn each day had grown frayed, revealing the naked, desperate truth beneath. Her eyes darted ferociously; her fingers flew into her hair as she spoke.
“Are you happy now, Hector?” she asked him. “I hope you are happy, you faithless vermin.”
Gaetan stared at his wife, and she stared at Hector. Valérie had the look of a woman who has spent many days in the desert and lies starving upon the sand.
“If you spoke but a word,” Valérie said then, her tone changing, a note of warmth in her voice, as she took a step in Hector’s direction.
But there was no warmth in him to mirror that change in her. There was only a chilling, polite inclination of the head, which stopped her from taking another step.
“No,” Hector said.
Valérie’s lips trembled, but she did not say anything else. She whipped her skirts up and began walking away, back toward the clock tower.
Nina pressed her hands together, holding them beneath her bosom. She felt Hector drifting to her side, his hand circling her waist. They both stood in front of Luc.
“I apologize for dragging you here,” the younger man said.
Luc tossed his pistol to the ground with that. Not quite believing it was all over, Nina took a deep breath and exhaled. Her cousin seemed to have turned to stone, but now he lifted his head as they approached him.
Gaetan and Hector looked at each other.
“I will speak to you plainly, Mr. Beaulieu, for you deserve that,” Hector said. “I came to your house without love for Nina in my heart. Had I been a wiser man, I would have loved her from the moment I met her, but I cannot claim this wisdom. I am sorry I have caused your family any strife, but I love Nina now, and I want to marry her.”
Gaetan was somber, but he nodded his head. “I don’t think I could stop her from marrying you even if I wanted to, Mr. Auvray,” he said. “You must wed in Oldhouse. Her mother will want it.”
Gaetan clasped Nina’s hand and gave it a kiss, then he spoke to the others, and they walked off together, leaving Hector and Nina to stand alone under the shade of the elm trees.
He did not seem certain what to say, his brows lifted in surprise as he looked at her. “You stopped two bullets in the air.”
“Yes,” she replied, not knowing what to say either, drained and shaken as she was.
“How? It’s the kind of trick one has to rehearse a hundred times before getting it right,” he said, his analytical mind trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle.
A breeze was blowing, toying with her unwound hair and whispering against the branches.
“I am not sure.”
“You are not sure,” he repeated.
“You said to believe.”
She looked up at him, and he gave her a dazzling smile before leaning down to kiss her breathless.