Readying herself was a long and elaborate process. Valérie was beautiful. She was blond and blue-eyed, and her skin was pale, unblemished by freckles or scars. She possessed a divine neck and the slender figure most favored by society. But nature’s gifts may take a woman only a certain distance. It was not a matter of looks, but of picking the dresses that were the most flattering, the ornaments that drew the eye, in order to rise from mere beauty to perfection.
She was the kind of woman who started and ended trends, who made heads turn when she walked into a room, whose name dripped all over the society pages. She was a feature of Loisail, as imposing and dazzling as the new opera house. And so Valérie dressed slowly and took meticulous care in her appearance.
Once she was satisfied with the results, she went downstairs, to the conservatory. Valérie was proud of this feature of her home because, more than anything, it signaled the wealth and position she enjoyed. The city was as it had always been: rather crowded. Space was a luxury, homes rapidly shrinking in size. Important families had to do with reduced quarters, for example, renting the top flat of a building and stomaching a view of an alley. Thus, even though conservatories were all the rage, when a household could afford one, it was a modest affair, a piddling thing the size of a closet. Valérie’s conservatory was massive, its walls rising high, iron and glass and greenery dazzling visitors. At one end of the structure stood a fountain with the figure of a kneeling stone boy next to it, a gigantic mirror placed behind it, reflecting the water. Baskets with plants dangled from the roof, and there was a bench where one might sit and contemplate the foliage.
Taste was the most important consideration in Valérie’s conservatory, not practicality. There was no point in toiling with geraniums in this space. She had dedicated herself to the cultivation of striking plants. Ferns, palms, heliotropes, azaleas, these offered the refinement she sought. Lately she had been taken with the notion of orchids, but these might require the construction of an orchid house, an idea she was still mulling over.
For now, Valérie bent over her roses, running a finger over the delicate white petals. She employed a gardener who took care of her plants, but Valérie believed in the value of proper supervision, and since her new roses—a delightfully fragrant variety, highly ornamental—were the most precious flowers she owned, she thought it prudent to look after them carefully. These white ones had budded, opening to the onslaught of spring.
After Valérie was satisfied with the state of the conservatory, she went to her office. Valérie received an infinite number of invitations, thank-you missives, and letters, which must receive a response. Ordinarily she did not mind this activity, but there was a letter from Antonina’s mother that had arrived two days prior and that she had been putting off.
With a sigh, Valérie sat down before the desk and opened the letter. It was, as she expected, the usual bit of nonsense from Camille Beaulieu. The woman worried endlessly about her daughter, asked how Antonina fared.
Valérie hardly knew how to answer. The truth of the matter was she considered Antonina half a savage, though her vulgarity was not truly her fault and must be laid at her mother’s feet. The Beaulieus were an old and wealthy family, and their original home was in the south, in the region of Montipouret. Gaetan’s father had been the eldest child, followed by another boy—Benedict—and two daughters. In an act that Valérie would never be able to comprehend, Benedict had married a nobody, the daughter of a local schoolteacher. As Benedict was the younger, sickly son, his possibilities were more reduced than those of his brother, but he ought to have done better than Camille.
At first glance, a casual observer might have questioned Valérie’s distaste for the woman, since Valérie herself had come from an impoverished family. However, Valérie considered her situation to be utterly different. First of all, although her family had lost practically all their lands and money, they had kept their distinguished name. Valérie was born a Véries, and that alone was a form of currency. Second, Valérie was young, beautiful, and charming, qualities she thought made up for her financial shortcomings. The most charitable point one might make about Camille was that she was plain.
It was no wonder then that Antonina had grown to become a confusing girl. At nineteen she lacked all the skills a young lady making her entrance into society should possess. She could not sing, danced mediocrely, and displayed neither wit nor seductiveness. She was not particularly pretty, having inherited the tall forehead of the Beaulieus coupled with her mother’s strong jaw and heavy-lidded eyes. But no matter, because Gaetan had decided his “darling” cousin deserved the excitement of Loisail and an engagement to a promising young man.
Gaetan was attached to Camille and her daughters, probably as a result of his mother’s death when he was but a four-year-old. When his cousin Madelena had married, he sent the girl a most extravagant diamond-and-pearl necklace in addition to a lump sum of money to help the newlyweds establish their household, even though Madelena’s father had already provided rather nicely for her. Gaetan’s affection for his cousins was likely compounded by his sterility: they could not have children, this they had discovered a few years after their wedding. This biological fault spared Valérie from the presence of crying babies, creatures she did not cherish, but it also ensured that Gaetan’s cousins acquired an even more crucial dimension. They would be his heirs.
Valérie therefore found herself in the uncomfortable position of having to introduce and cart around a girl who was not terribly fit for polite society. She, Valérie Beaulieu, chained to this lump of a child who at times proved annoyingly recalcitrant.
What to write, then? That after three weeks in Loisail, Antonina had not memorized the names, ranks, and particularities of the most important men and women of the city? That despite Valérie’s best attempts, Antonina remained friendless? That she had done her utmost to antagonize Didier Dompierre and the other suitable young men Valérie had introduced to her?
No, Valérie wrote none of that. She clenched her teeth and replied with a brief, polite letter. Antonina was adapting to her new home. Now that the Grand Season had begun, there would be a chance for her to make new acquaintances and there would be the usual diversions that came with it: the opera, the races, the balls.
Afterward, Valérie tackled the rest of her pressing letters, and it was well after noon when she left the office. Antonina had returned by then. Valérie, carrying her thick address book between her hands, paused to look at Antonina, who was sitting at the foot of the stairs, absorbed in an idle thought. This was often the case with her. It was up to Valérie to organize advisable entertainment for the girl, to get her invited to the best parties, to choose the correct soirées, and grind through the name of every eligible bachelor she could think of. Antonina did nothing.
“We are expected at Ledaux’s at two. You do remember, don’t you?” she asked, perhaps more acidly than she intended, but then Valérie still had to come up with the name of a young man who would escort Nina to the races in two weeks. She had been counting on one of the Hamel boys to submit to that pleasure, but she’d heard from a good source that the two blasted young men were chasing after Jeannette Solé.
“I do. Yes,” Antonina said, jumping to her feet and smoothing her dress. It was a dark blue, one of the stiff outfits Valérie had picked. If Nina had had her way, she might be walking around the city in a hideouscalico print more fit to be made into a sack and filled with flour than to be worn by any woman.
“Good. Did you have a nice walk?” Valérie asked.
“It was lovely. I ran into someone, in fact.”
“Oh?” Valérie said as she opened the address book, suddenly remembering that Esno had a son who was supposed to be visiting in the spring. Or was it a nephew? She must inquire about this, and quickly. “And who was that?”
“A gentleman I met at the ball thrown by the De Villiers. I’ve invited him to visit Tuesday evening. I hope that is not a problem.”
“Antonina, you should not extend invitations without my approval,” she said.
“But you told me I ought to make friends,” the girl protested.
The right friends, not any friend,Valérie thought. Who knew whom this child had been speaking with. “That is not the same as having a caller. Has he sent his card?”
“No, but I don’t think that should be an impediment. He’s nice and he—”
“Really, Antonina. Inviting a stranger to our home who hasn’t had the decency to introduce himself properly.”
“I’ve asked you before to call me Nina. Nobody calls me Antonina,” the girl muttered in that impertinent tone that irritated Valérie.
“Nina is not a name,” Valérie replied. “Attempting to shorten your name is a horrid habit, one you should outgrow.”
“I don’t like being called Antonina.”
“It is not a matter of what you like. As for this ‘gentleman,’ he has not sent a card and you should not have invited him,” Valérie said. She started walking and hoped Antonina would leave it at that.
