“I would be eternally grateful for your assistance.”
“I shall try. In the meantime, will you be supping with us next week? My husband was dearly hoping you and Gaetan would come to our Thursday soirée, a last-minute reunion I’ve organized. Gaetan is a busy man, hard to talk to these days.”
Yes. That was it. Tit for tat. Valérie didn’t like Agnes, but now she’d have to make an appearance at her stupid get-together while Gaetan would be whisked away to the smoking room to discuss money matters. The Haduiers were not paupers, but everyone knew they spent more than they should and their extravagant lifestyle was funded with generous loans, which they repaid haphazardly. They owed Gaetan money and would try to defer payment.
Vipers and scorpions,she thought.
“I believe we can make it,” Valérie said.
“Thank you. I have taken up too much of your time. It has been lovely speaking with you.”
“Thank you, dearest Agnes. You will forgive me if I do not rise and escort you out. I suddenly feel rather tired,” Valérie said.
It was undeniably rude not to stand and kiss the woman on the cheek, but then Valérie was trying to make a point. Agnes gave her a stiff nod.
When the perfumed cow had exited the room, Valérie allowed herself to dig her nails into the arms of her chair.
Antonina. That stupid whore. What else could be expected of her? But most important, what was Hector thinking?
They are on speaking terms, but that means nothing,she thought. But, no, it was bad. It could ruin all her plans. Say, for example, that he was merely being polite. That still meant a possible distraction, Antonina’s head turned away from Luc Lémy. And at worst, he was a true rival for her affection.
Valérie needed Antonina to marry Luc. Hector was a wedge between them.
Without meaning to, she also thought about him in other terms. Hector was hers. He was always hers, and even if she wouldn’t have him, he should remain so.
Valérie rose and went to the office, where she wrote a quick, stern missive. She instructed a servant to arrange for it to be delivered right away to the home of Luc Lémy.
Luc did not take too long to arrive, though the minutes were like sandpaper against Valérie’s skin. She gave word that he should be brought to the conservatory, where she paced among her flowers, and there he greeted her with that charming smile of his and a bow.
“You are, as usual, utterly lovely,” he said, and though he spoke with ease, the tone of her message had impressed the urgency of this meeting upon him: his eyes were anxious.
“Thank you,” she said tartly.
She needed him to understand the gravity of the situation—rather than trying to delicately explain the matter, she decided to be blunt.
“Tell me, Mr. Lémy, exactly how difficult is it to seduce a naive country girl?”
“Pardon me?” Luc replied. He had opened his cigarette case and froze in astonishment.
“Antonina. She should be head over heels in love with you by now. You’ve had many days to reel her in, and yet what happens? I hear Auvray may be interested in her again.”
“What exactly did you hear?” Luc asked.
“He escorted her home after Haduier’s party.”
“I was there. I had no idea Hector was there, too,” Luc said, flustered.
“Did you even realize she was gone?”
The guilt tattooed across his face would have been sufficient proof for her, but then he babbled a few words. “No, I did—”
“Of course not. What were you doing exactly?” Valérie asked.
“Talking to friends. Dancing.”
“Dancing. Not with Antonina, I would think, or else she would have been in your arms and it would have been difficult for Hector to extract her from them.”
She imagined how it had gone. Luc had talked to his “friends,” and after a bit of drinking and a bit of dancing, he’d forgotten all about her. Perhaps he had even left the party with these “friends,” looking for other sport, and had imagined that Antonina was still at the Haduiers’ home, safe and sound. He could not have predicted she would meet Hector or leave with him, but he should have been paying more attention. Now who knew what this would cost them.
