There were exceptions. No young girl could attend the theater or the opera alone with a man. Nor could she have dinner with him at a restaurant, although a light refreshment at a respectable tearoom, earlier in the day, might be tolerable. In smaller towns, these conditions were ignored, or others imposed, and the lower classes flouted these strictures.
But to wander onto a man’s doorstep like this? This behavior was not sanctioned. She trod on dangerous ground, the recklessness of youth on display.
“Well. It’s a thoughtful touch to bring the invitation all the way here, though you really shouldn’t have bothered,” he replied, taking the envelope carefully, as if it were made of porcelain and might break.
She vacillated, but only for a second. She’d spent most of the night rehearsing her words and it wasn’t too difficult to repeat the phrases she had memorized.
“The truth of the matter, Mr. Auvray, is that I came because I wanted to speak to you in private. The other night, you said you would tell me the secret with the cards. You could tell me now.”
“Now? In my home, Miss Beaulieu?”
“Valérie won’t ever let us discuss it when she’s around.”
“That may be true, but, Miss Beaulieu … you do realize it is unseemly to have you in my home by yourself?”
Nina stood up straight and looked him in the eye. If she’d come this far, she might as well speak plainly, not blush and be embarrassed by his words. At any rate, now that she had started this line of conversation, the words threaded themselves together and would not be pulled apart.
“Mr. Auvray, I have been warned endlessly about the liberties men may try to take with young women, but I think I’m correct in saying you are a gentleman and therefore above reproach. Also, when last a lad tried to take liberties with me, I soundly slapped him and that solved that problem.”
“You need not slap me, Miss Beaulieu. Come in, then. Voices carry and I’d rather not have the superintendent share every word we speak with the whole building, as she is apt to.”
Nina walked in and was amazed to see he had no formal foyer, the apartment instead extending and opening all around them. Four enormous windows on the east side let in an abundant amount of light. Lustrous armoires and chests and bookcases were set against the west wall. The dominant piece in the room was a table long enough for a dozen people to dine together, though that was impossible at this time since it was covered with papers, boxes, and a myriad of other items.
Paintings hung from the west wall, but others had been left haphazardly piled against a table leg or a chair. A six-panel lacquered dressing screen stood on the other end of the room, dividing it. Beyond it she could glimpse a dark hallway.
It certainly was a large apartment.
“You brought all these things from abroad?” she asked.
“Most of the furniture, except for a couple of pieces. But, yes. A great number of things. You wanted to ask me about my card trick?”
“I wanted you to teach me your card tricks,” Nina said, stopping in front of a wooden cabinet with the most darling hand-painted ceramic knobs.
“Whatever for?”
“I’ve tried it on my own, Mr. Auvray, but I cannot manage it.”
“Yes, but why? A proper lady learns the steps of a dance, not how to spin cards in the air.”
“You sound like Valérie,” Nina said, running a hand along the cabinet. “I thought you might understand.”
“I’m afraid not,” he said.
“I’ve had the ability since I was a baby. The maids claim I’d push dishes off the table without touching them before I had even learned how to speak. In the countryside, they say this means the spirit is restless. Your soul is trying to escape your body. Other times, they say you are a witch.”
She stopped to admire a still life depicting a vase with bright yellow flowers and kept her eyes on the painting as she spoke.
“My father was a modern, educated man. He put everyone in their place, informing them there was a rational and scientific explanation for my ability. But my father was not always around to correct people.”
She turned toward him, her hands behind her back.
“You must not think I am attempting to portray myself as a victim. I do understand their dismay. At times, I have not been able to control it. Everyone remembers that occasion four years ago when I shoved Johaness Meinard off his horse and nearly got him trampled. I didn’t mean it. It happened, though.
“But then I started reading about people like you. And I realized that there are those who have a better grasp on the ability than I do. The other night, you were completely in control. You made mirrors spin and cards fly through the air. It was effortless! I thought maybe you’d tell me how you do it.”
Hector’s face was serious. It reminded her of the statues lining the boulevards.
He digested every single word she had spoken, taking his time to think what he would say.
“It’s not a matter of telling you what to do,” he said. “You don’t tell someone how to dance.”
“You can’t teach it?”
“I can teach it. But it’s not a task you learn from one day to another.”
“I’m a quick study when I put my heart into it. And I’m good with memorizing facts. I can identify hundreds of butterfly and moth species with absolute certainty. You can ask Gaetan or Valérie or anyone,” she said, briskly moving to stand in front of him.
The suddenness of her movements jolted him, and he cleared his throat. “It’s not about memorizing, Miss Beaulieu. The dance metaphor is more apt than you can imagine. I can tell you the steps of the dance and I can even practice the steps with you, but if you have two left feet, I’ll never be able to make a dancer of you.”
“I do not ask that I be able to juggle mirrors onstage. Only that I not shatter them or make pots clang at an inconvenient time,” Nina said. “Besides, you don’t even know if I have two left feet. For all you know, I am more naturally talented than you.”
He quirked an eyebrow at her, looking skeptical.
“Let us see what you can do,” he told her, walking toward the table and uncovering a pack of cards that lay hidden under a pile of books.
He grabbed a handful of cards and tossed them on the floor; then he stepped back. “Can you move those, send them in my direction?”
If he’d seemed serious before, now he was amused. Perhaps he expected her to fail in this demonstration. But she had not been called the Witch of Oldhouse for no reason.
Nina looked at the cards, concentrated, and sent them scattering in his direction, as if a strong gust of wind had blown them away.
“Not bad. Do it again.”
She did. Three times. He was more amused than ever, a faint smile on his face.
“Not bad at all,” he declared with a hearty nod. “And you were, what, two years old by the time you were manipulating objects?”
“I’d say so.”
“Does anyone else in your family have the same ability?”
“If they did, they never said.”
“Let’s do it again, but this time I want you to move only the red card,” he said, shifting the cards. There were six black ones upon the floor and a single red one.
Nina concentrated again, fixing the red card in her mind, and pushed it. Unfortunately, she also pushed three black cards. She tried again, shoving four cards across the floor. By the fifth time, she was growing frustrated and unintentionally scattered all the cards.
Nina took a deep breath and another, her fingers curling tight.
“It’s fine, Miss Beaulieu, don’t fret,” Hector said, and as he spoke, the cards returned to their place on the floor in the same pattern they had been before she lost control of them.
“I’m sorry. It’s hard to focus on a single one.”
“I know. You need to use your hands.”
“My hands?” she replied.
“Yes. Use your hands to direct the objects, a bit like a conductor with an orches
tra,” he said, making a motion with his right arm as he spoke. “The hands don’t do anything per se. It’s your mind. But they help you focus your actions. I don’t always use my hands, because I’ve been doing this for a long time, but in your case it’s different.”
“How should I move my hands?”
He had been observing her, arms crossed, at a distance. Now he moved next to her and held her arm, lightly raising it in the direction of the red card.
“Point.”
Nina extended her index finger. His hand was on her wrist. He moved it in a sweeping arc, left to right and back again, though it accomplished little. He paused, his hand still resting on her wrist.
“When you manipulate an object, what is it like? What do you feel?” he asked.
“It’s strange. It’s like a tug,” she replied.
“The same feeling you get when you walk with your eyes closed and you are about to hit a wall.”
“Or the feeling you have when someone is coming behind you,” she said, turning her head slightly and looking up at him.
“It’s almost like you touch the surface of a still glass of water and there is this slight resistance until your fingers sink in the liquid. But when you move an object, you don’t break through the surface, you are gliding over it.”
“Like the pond skaters, when they walk on water.”
“The what?” he asked, looking down at her.
It was then Nina realized, abruptly, how close they were to each other. She felt an intense animation but did not dare move a muscle.
“You’ve not observed those bugs?” she asked, and managed not to stammer the words, although her nervousness must have been obvious. But he was busy looking at the cards now, which she was ruffling, unthinking.
“It’s not one of my hobbies, no.”
“They do glide on water,” she continued, and she had to bite her tongue to stop herself from detailing their life cycle. When she was flustered, she tended to go on.
“It’s like that, isn’t it? You have to feel the tension, but you must glide. Too much pressure, you lose control. That is fine for the unexpected shoving of dishes off the table, but not for purposefully manipulating an object. Miss Beaulieu, let’s trace the path you want that card to take and make it glide.”
He moved her arm again, left to right, gently. Nina decided to focus on the task at hand; otherwise, she was going to break into giggles or blush a terrible crimson. She looked at the card, felt the weight of his fingers against her wrist, felt the tug and the pressure he had mentioned. The red card slid across the floor.
“Remember to breathe,” he said.
She did. She breathed in and out, slowly, and the card continued to slide until it hit the frame of a painting left upon the floor. Hector stepped back and she dropped her arm.
“It works,” she said, spinning around to look at him. “It really works.”
She forgot for a split second that she’d been nervous, that he was close to her, that he’d touched her. She simply reveled in her triumph. Hector smiled, full of cheer; his gaze grew deeper. The remoteness he wore upon his shoulders like an ornate mantle had dissipated. He was truly there, not just physically, she thought, but absolutely. Then he appeared to recall something and ran a hand through his hair, glancing down at the floorboards.
“Yes, but the key is practice. You can start with one card, but you should move to two, three. Shuffle them without touching them, things like that,” he said, bringing his hands up. The cards, following his motion, assembled themselves into a neat deck. He retrieved the box from which he’d taken the deck, placed the cards inside, and handed it to her.
“Here,” he said. “You can keep this.”
Nina held the deck tightly, nodding. She had not been nervous when she walked in, but now it was as if a fiery red spark had started burning in her, and he spoke with a voice that was cool, in contrast to her warmth.
“You also need to remain collected. I could see the tension in your body when you failed to do it properly. You need to breathe. You need to calm down. I’m sure your bug does not skate across the water by thrashing around,” he said.
“No, it’s graceful,” she said, dearly wishing to stretch out a hand and touch his arm, but he was spinning around, looking for something on the table.
“You can be graceful, too, Miss Beaulieu,” he said, but he was not looking at her.
She smiled, delighted by his words. Grace was not her strong point. Women like Valérie could glide across the room, as if they were swans, but not Nina.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
A tall grandfather clock chimed, another echoing it somewhere in the vastness of Hector’s home.
He nodded. “I have to head out soon. I have a business lunch.”
“Yes,” Nina said, feeling mortified now that she considered the whole situation. She had barged in on him without caring to ask if he had affairs to attend to. “I’m awful, intruding on you the way I did.”
“Do not worry.”
They walked back toward the entrance. Hector kissed her hand quickly, bidding her good-bye, and Nina turned toward the stairs. She stopped and turned back.
“You won’t forget the invitation?” she asked, wishing to prolong their encounter.
“I’ll remember.”
“And I haven’t upset you, have I? For asking about the card trick.”
“No. It’s not every day I meet a lady who could toss all my glassware onto the floor without touching it,” he replied in a neutral voice.
“You are teasing me,” Nina said, smiling. “I’ll practice. I most definitely don’t have two left feet.”
“I don’t think you do.”
She thought, she hoped, he might edge closer to her. She felt dazed and giddy, and it was a miracle her talent had not manifested and sent a chair scampering across the floor. But it was there, she thought, this feeling, like the scent of the coming rain, all around them.
Hector did not step closer. He held firm by the door, insulated, far away. She guessed this was the gentlemanly, proper attitude a man should have and was disappointed.
“Good-bye, Miss Beaulieu,” he said with a slight inclination of his head.
“Thank you,” she said. “Good-bye.”
He smiled at her, and her disappointment turned to joy because he looked pleased with her, happy.
When the door closed and Nina was alone, she took two steps down, then rested her back against the banister, the box with the cards pressed against her chest. She’d lost her train of thought and remained there for a bit, until she recalled that Valérie might notice her absence. She’d be flayed alive, boiled in hot oil, if Valérie knew she had gone out without a chaperone to visit a man. Nina hurried down the stairs.
Chapter 9
DINNER AT THE BEAULIEUS’ WAS a carefully choreographed affair, everything from the beautiful white roses at the center of the table to the selection of each dish signaling Valérie’s superb taste. She dominated the room with a trained certainty that made Nina seem drab in comparison.
As for Gaetan. Having spent many years trying to envision the man who had married Valérie, imagining his every gesture and feature, Hector found Gaetan’s appearance almost anticlimactic. He had pictured Valérie’s husband as somewhat older and more imposing. Gaetan Beaulieu, however, was a man who could never be called imposing. There was a distinctive banality about him. Hector almost felt sorry for him.
The conversation was stilted, and Hector felt that, if she had wanted, Valérie would have seamlessly made the whole dinner vivacious, but instead she sat, sphinxlike, conscious of her power, unwilling to lift a finger, smiling coolly as dish after dish was set down before Hector. Gaetan kept talking about people and places Hector did not know, with a petulant tone that made Hector stab the pale fish on display with his fork.
“But you must have met the Ludeydens,” Gaetan said. “Isn’t that right, Valérie? Everyone knows the Ludeydens.”
“Yes,”
Valérie said. “Everyone does.”
“I don’t attend many parties,” Hector replied. He had given a variation of this answer now thrice, and Gaetan was incapable of getting the point. Irritated, he kept himself from making the glass of wine jump into his hand, as he wanted to.
“Hector says there are many odd butterflies in Port Anselm,” Nina said.
He’d almost forgotten she was there, at his side, and when she spoke, he was a little startled. He looked at the girl.
“Gaetan helped me catch a few when I was a child. He was a lepidopterist,” Nina added.
“Hardly! My cousin exaggerates,” Gaetan said. “But, say, you know about butterflies, too, Mr. Auvray?”
“I’m not a naturalist at all. But there was this occasion on which I had the chance to witness a moth drinking the blood of an ox. I’m told only the males do this and the females prefer to dine on fruits.”
“Goodness,” Gaetan declared.
Then the man began to explain his childhood hobby and how he’d pinned a series of fine moths, which decorated his room when he was a youth. The conversation was better after this.
Hector knew Nina had helped him out of an uncomfortable spot, and he wished he could have voiced his thanks, but since it was impossible at the moment, he looked at her again and smiled. She returned the smile. Sweet girl, he thought.
After dinner the men retired to the library, which, like the rest of the house, bore the imprint of Valérie’s hand in the deftly placed silver ashtrays, the potted ferns in the corners of the room, the white sofa near the fireplace, the plush carpet.
He could picture Valérie walking around that room, her fingers brushing against the spines of books, touching the curtains. It was harder to imagine Nina in this room, in this house, even though she obviously lived here. Valérie occupied every inch of space. He thought of her as the pale, sweetly fragrant moonflower, which extends itself up and can surround and cover the whole of a structure, cocooning it.
“Would you like a brandy, Mr. Auvray?” Gaetan asked, opening a cabinet and removing a decanter.
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