The weight of her regard—it was leaden—hurt him. For a momenthe 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 Iwouldshoot 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.
