“Measuring devices, for the pulse and respiration. A needle traces a line upon paper and they look at it.”
“It’s supposed to be a congenital condition, isn’t it? Like being color-blind,” Nina mused. “Did they tease you about it when you were a child? Or was it different for you?”
“I started performing when I was but a child, and there was not copious teasing. I was another act set between the pretty dancers and the man who could make dogs jump through a hoop. When I was older and we’d go into towns, sometimes the locals would give us trouble, but it amounted to naught for the most part.”
“What kind of trouble?” she asked, drifting to the other side of the room and climbing on the tall stepladder to see if the porcelain brain might be hiding behind the atlases she had been inspecting the previous day.
“The trouble bored lads like to get into. They’d taunt us and try to pick fights, but they’d generally stop when they saw I could hurl a man across the room without setting a hand on him. They were rowdy young men looking for another type of performance.”
Nina willed an atlas aside, and another. It was not there. She began stepping down. “Did they ever hurt you?”
“Someone cracked a bottle across my back one evening. But I was drunk and silly that time. And then, there were a couple of beatings.… I lost a tooth. I have a false one now. You’d never be able to tell, but it hurt like hell when it happened.”
He lifted an arm to steady her as she climbed down the last two steps. “I’m sorry,” she said gravely.
“I didn’t play the best of venues when I was starting out. And for a while after that.” He smirked, trying to make light of it. “You’ll think me a rogue now.”
“I would never. You know a gentleman by his deeds, my sister says.”
“Wise of her.”
Nina touched the ground and smiled at him. Their walk had left him in high spirits, and she was grateful for this. He’d been upset a few days before, when they’d skipped stones by the river. One moment he had been warm and near; the next he was a block of ice, impenetrable. In the love stories she’d read—books borrowed from this library—the men were always solicitous, sweet, and pledged their love in long, effusive speeches that ended with a tender kiss.
Hector said nothing of the sort and he did not try to hold her in his arms or kiss her like the polite gentlemen of those narratives. Neither was he like the highwayman or the pirate who appeared in yet another type of book, this one peppered with more adventure, which required that he kidnap her.
In short, she was not his sweetheart, and this confused Nina. If he was to marry her, shouldn’t he spare a kiss for her and declare his love? She was certain they’d wed and had written practically as much when she corresponded with her cousins and her sister. The whole household watched them both with expectant eyes. It could not be her imagination, as Valérie implied. That day, when she invited him to Oldhouse, she’d thought he’d kiss her.
The answer, then, must be he was shy. She’d have to have enoughboldness for the both of them. Should he remain aloof, she would put pen to paper and express her affections. She did like him, although she had not ever thought how a lady would go on about revealing this to a man.
As she was considering this, she saw a white object on the floor, half-hidden behind a curtain.
“There!” she exclaimed, and rushed to pick up the model she’d been looking for. It was heavy and Nina could not imagine how it had ended up there—though, when she was nervous or excited, she did have the tendency to move things around the room without touching them.
Nina held the model up between her hands.
“My brain, Mr. Auvray,” she joked.
“A fine one it is,” he said, grabbing the model and turning it around in his hands.
His finger traced the porcelain ridges and folds, the names of each region, which had been engraved upon the white surface.
“It’s chipped,” he said, showing the chunk missing.
“A tad of frontal lobe, gone,” she said. “Do you know that the physiologist Bertrand Ariste has been studying this area?”
“I did not know.” Hector set the porcelain brain upon a shelf and patted it before turning toward her. “You’re an exceptional specimen yourself,” he said. “Do not forget that point, ever.”
Nina decided it was the best compliment anyone had paid her. But he gave her a curious look that was, she thought, half sadness.
She wanted to extend her hand and touch his face, to ask him what made him sorrowful, and then, to kiss his mouth, to lavish caresses upon him. She did not dare, not yet, but she knew well that the quivering feeling inside her could not be contained any longer. If he didn’t, she would!
Chapter 16
HECTOR WAS NOT ONE FORlaxness. He’d spent his whole life climbing up the social ladder, running from place to place, jumping from task to task, asking his assistant, Mr. Dufren, to fetch him one prop or another. In fact, upon learning Hector was going to spend a few days resting in the countryside, Dufren had not believed Hector at first, thinking it was a practical joke.
Hector liked having markers in his life, elements that could guide him. Now when he opened his shutters in the morning, he did not know what he was supposed to do. A relaxing country stay baffled him, though it did not irritate him as it irritated Luc Lémy, who yearned for the city for entirely different reasons.
Hector quickly found a rhythm to Oldhouse. There was an early breakfast in his room, and then he’d venture down either to accompany Nina on one of her insect-hunting expeditions or for a walk around the house. Once this purpose had been accomplished, Hector tended to camp in the library. In the afternoon, there was supper to be had, everyone piling into the dining room. Afterward, several of them usually retreated to the great hall for conversation. There, or in the library, Nina and Hector put their talent to use.
