VALÉRIE LOOKED IN THE MIRROR at the almost imperceptible lines of dissatisfaction across her brow and bracketing her mouth. She ran a hand down her neck.
She could not rid from her mind Hector’s eyes when he’d spoken to her. How cool they were. Not hard or cruel, but lacking in any profound emotion for her and able only to reflect an odd clemency.
If he had hated her, she might have felt relieved.
She heard Gaetan walk in and did not bother looking at her husband. She wished he’d let her be, but he began talking at once in a hurried, anxious tone, as if he intended to vex her even more.
“I have spoken to Luc Lémy, and he has explained how you two confabulated, how you plotted to have Nina married off to him and Hector removed from the picture. You will explain yourself this instant, and do not attempt to lie to me.”
“Why? You said you’ve spoken to Luc,” Valérie said, rubbing her hands together.
“Because I want you to do it.”
“So you can judge me?”
“You have tried to wrong my family.”
Valérie stood up and faced her husband. Even in his anger, he had the quality of an insect, and she was not afraid to look him in the eye instead of feigning contrition. She was not going to crawl at the feet of this man.
“Your family. Always your family. The sacrosanct Beaulieus of Montipouret are the only thing that fills your mind. It has always been them. Camille and Madelena and most of all that worm, Antonina.”
“I have given you everything, Valérie,” he said, looking heartbroken, but she did not care.
Trinkets, she thought. Rings and necklaces and earrings, everything accounted for.
“No. Not at all,” Valérie said. “You could have lifted my family from the muck, but you decided you’d only toss them crumbs. My cousin, you wouldn’t buy him that post in the army, and my uncle—”
“I do not believe posts should be bought.”
“Not merely that. Always, always the Beaulieus have been the most important concern in your life. Is it any wonder I would attempt to try to help my own kin? That when Luc spoke to me, I seized a business proposition that could benefit my family for a change?”
“At the expense of my cousin’s happiness,” Gaetan said dryly. “You have done nothing but manipulate and deceive me, and slander her.”
Valérie curled her hands into fists against her skirts to keep herself from slapping him. “I was sacrificed. Why should she escape her fate?” Valérie asked. “I was forced to marry a man I did not care about, dragged to the altar by my elderly relatives, and told to repeat the words the priest said.”
He looked more astonished than if she had hit him, and this filled her with a deep satisfaction. All the loathing, all the hate she had kept bottled inside was oozing out, and it was delightful. In her misery, she was able to find the beauty of spite and cling to it.
“I had nothing to gain from my marriage to you,” Gaetan said. “You came to me without a dowry and the debts of your father, which had to be repaid.”
“A fact you reminded me of every day.”
“When?”
“In every look, Gaetan. Every word. Do you think I could not tell? How kind Gaetan Beaulieu is to have married her,” Valérie said in singsong. “How kind, how generous, how marvelous of him to pick a piece of trash from the street, dust it off, and set it upon the mantelpiece.”
“I did not think that,” Gaetan said, pointing a finger at her. “You might have thought it, but I did not.” He inclined his head slightly, every fiber of his being alight with sadness in that instant. “I have loved you,” Gaetan said. “I have been a good husband.”
“No, no, you never loved me. You loved Camille and Madelena and that stupid girl, Antonina,” Valérie said. “I know what it is like to be loved, and you have never loved me.”
Gaetan could not possibly deny it. All his tenderness had been intended for them. He did not smile at Valérie the way he smiled at Madelena or Antonina. He never was half so delighted with Valérie, even if Valérie was more accomplished, more learned, more beautiful than his silly cousins. Gaetan knew only the pull of blood, the bonds of familial duty.
“Only one man has loved me,” Valérie insisted.
It hurt to admit this, and yet she had to. She was burning inside, consumed with a roaring pain, and if she did not speak this truth, she would be reduced to ashes. Hector had adored her. But even Hector had not been enough. Even his love had not been enough, and Valérie hated herself for it.
Her hands shook. She might have wept, humiliating herself in this man’s presence, but then Gaetan spoke.
“At last I understand your indifference,” Gaetan said.
His tone, the disappointment in his voice, made her snap up straight. She was the one who had a right to be disappointed! What could Gaetan complain about? How dare he look at her as if she were at fault.
She had been dutiful. She had been a proper wife.
“I would have his name,” Gaetan said.
“Do you really want me to say it? Can’t you guess it?” Valérie replied.
“I will have his name, damn you!”
He was angry. Finally true emotion coursed through him instead of the tepid affection he had always granted her, she who demanded a roaring fire and had been given but a tiny match to light her heart. No wonder he disgusted her.
“Hector Auvray,” Valérie said. “We were engaged once. But I was forced to wed you and then he came back for me. From across the water, from Iblevad, as he said he would. He waited ten years for me.”
A decade, she thought desperately. Despite everything, it meant something.
“He’ll ask you for Antonina’s hand in marriage. Can you possibly grant it, knowing this?” Valérie asked, a smile dancing on her lips.
“I have granted it. I will not rescind it.”
“Even—”
“You are correct on one point, Valérie. And that is that I care for Antonina very much. I would like to see my cousin be happy, and she loves that man with all her heart, as was obvious today.
“And he loves her,” Gaetan added.
She would have slapped him this time, but he moved across the room and opened the armoire, pulling dresses and tossing them on the bed as though they were old rags rather than precious silks and velvets.
“You will pack your bags tonight. You are leaving for Eli, near the northern border. There you will remain,” Gaetan said.
“You will attempt to send me away from Loisail?” Valérie asked. “As if I’d go.”
Loisail was as important as the air that she breathed. It was her city. She was in the society pages every other week, a constant fixture at the most lavish parties. The boulevards might as well have been named after her.
“You have no choice.”
“Attempt to put me on a train, and tomorrow The Courier will have the most scandalous story printed on the front page, and it will concern Antonina Beaulieu. All a woman has is her reputation,” she warned him.
He moved back toward her, clasping her arm with a force she did not know he possessed, his fingers tight.
“Attempt to say a word against my family, Valérie, and not only will I divorce you, I will see that you are left begging in the streets.”
She tried to shove him off, but Gaetan only squeezed her arm tighter until at last he flung her away. Valérie landed by the bed, stumbling and almost tripping as her foot tangled in a dress that lay on the floor.
She heard the fabric rip as she straightened herself up.
“You wouldn’t divorce me,” Valérie said. “They’d blather all around the city about it.”
“Yes, they would. Which is why I’m sending you to Eli. A separation of this sort is not unheard of and better for both of us. I’ll give you an annuity. But my kindness has a price, and that price is that you stay far away from me and my kin, that you never speak of us.”
“I am no fool, Gaetan. Kindness can run dry rather quickly.”
“So can my patience. I want you out of this house by nightfall.”
Nearly breathless and in shock, she tried to think of a solution, of a way to escape this maze she had trapped herself in.
“I’ll speak to The Courier today,” she said, and though she wanted to deny it, she was afraid. Gaetan’s eyes had an edge she did not know.
“As you’ve said, all a woman has is her reputation. Take Antonina’s, I’ll take yours, and as I’ve explained to you, my kindness will cease. Trash on the streets, you said? Pray someone lifts you up then. Pray very hard,” Gaetan told her.
He left her to sit at the edge of her bed, all her finery spread upon the floor. Valérie rubbed her hands desperately. For five minutes, she labored over a letter for the papers, then ended up tossing ink and paper upon the fine carpet when the futility of the situation hit her.
She rushed to her vanity and opened her jewelry box, thinking that she might sell the precious items in there and … and what? Return to her father’s home? To do what?
She pulled out necklaces and bracelets, until she found that lonely, thin circle of gold Hector had given her.
She clutched it tight, and as she grasped it, everything bled away from her heart. The anger, the desperation, until she was left hollow and cold. She felt herself disappearing. If she looked in the mirror, she thought she would not be able to make out her own face.
A maid came to help her pack. Valérie did not resist.
She went into the carriage, then boarded the train. As it was leaving the station, her fury returned for a moment as she watched the city speed by. She took the ring, which she had been cradling for a long time now, and tossed it out the window.
Valérie regretted the gesture at once, pressing both hands against the glass.
“It is gone,” she told a startled passenger who sat in front of her and surely thought her mad.
She looked down at her perfect hands, and she recalled how her grandmother had praised them. You can tell a lady by her hands, she had said. One day, she had promised, Valérie would marry a very wealthy man, she would bring glory to the family, and she would be very happy.
But Valérie hadn’t known how to be happy.
She turned away from the window.