“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.
Chapter 27
VALÉRIE LOOKED IN THE MIRRORat 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 hadthe 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 benefitmyfamily 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, andyouhave never loved me.”
