“I am sorry,” she replied. “You’ll judge me a flirt and a poor example of a lady now.”
“Nonsense,” he said. “Nina, Nina, I don’t understand why you must look somber and begin to overthink—”
“I do not overthink anything, but when I see you looking at me like that, I don’t want you to imagine—”
“When you see me looking at you like what? Like I want you? By God, I do want you, but there’s nothing I can do about it. I can cross my arms and keep a decorous distance, and perhaps that would make you happy, but that doesn’t change the fact that I want you.”
His good humor had evaporated, and the naked anger beneath the mask of courtesy made him ugly, which was a feat for someone thathandsome. But he was not made for rage, and his lips should not be mouthing words as he did, the teeth tearing at each one.
She felt the warmth in her cheeks and knew she, in turn, must look a sight, trembling with embarrassment and also excitement that had not yet dissipated. Because she wanted him in turn, but that was not enough. Her intellect told her this, that it would be ruinous to be guided merely by the drum of the flesh.
She needed more.
“Do you wish it were him, here, with you?” Luc asked abruptly.
Nina pressed her lips together and turned her head, but he caught her face and made her look at him.
“Nina, don’t be evasive.”
“No, I don’t wish it were him with me now,” she said. “But that does not make everything better.”
“Why not?”
“I do not know if we would be right together.”
“What? We’d be fine together! You’d certainly be better off with me than with that bitter fool, he has the personality of dried codfish. I know him better than you do—three days married to him and you’d slit your wrists.”
“Luc, be serious,” she chided him.
“I am serious! I am absolutely serious! Why is he special?” Luc asked, sounding as if he was being denied a particularly tasty treat.
“I can’t speak with you when you are like this.”
“How the devil should I be?”
Nina began making her way toward the lake, ducking under a low tree branch, but he caught hold of her again and pulled her to him, her wrists trapped between his fingers.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” Luc smiled at her and pressed a kiss on her knuckles. One moment he was a raging storm; the next he had quieted and spoke gently.
“I’ll row you around that lake, how about that?”
She nodded at him. The trip around the lake, however, was not fine. She felt miserable, he looked terrible, and by the time they were walking out of the park, Nina could not make heads or tails of her thoughts. They took a carriage, and she did her best to avoid conversation by looking out the window. He did the same.
“Nina, I truly am sorry,” he told her when they arrived back at her great-aunts’ home and before she could step out of the carriage. “I’m not used to… Girls, they usually—”
“Fall in love with you within the hour?” she replied.
He chuckled and was embarrassed as he nodded his head. Their good-bye was friendly and light.
When she’d spent her evenings flipping through the pages of romantic books, she’d always been enthralled by the heroes who declaimed their passion at the top of their lungs. Shouldn’t she be happy, then? Luc was eager to play the part of her hero.
She ought to write to Madelena and ask for her counsel, although she worried her sister might share her letter with her mother, and everyone would make a fuss of the matter. Until now she had avoided mentioning Luc in her letters, preferring to be discreet until she had a firmer foothold on the situation. But by now, Gaetan must have informed the family at Oldhouse that Luc Lémy courted her.
She went up to her room and wrote a long letter to Madelena. It rambled, but overall she was happy with the final result. When she was done, she opened her desk drawer to look for an envelope and found the first box Hector had sent her in there. She’d placed the others all together in a chest at the foot of her bed, but this one she had left there.
“A man may change his mind,” she whispered, echoing his words in the dressing room.
What about a woman? Could a woman change her mind, her heart?
