“Four years ago this fall.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You shouldn’t be. As I said, they expected him to die in childhood, and he grew to marry and become a father. He confided in me once that he was so frail, everyone let him do as he pleased while his brother had to do as the family said. He said sometimes being the runt of the litter has its benefits, which is excellent news for me, since I am also a runt.”
“How is that?”
“I’m the Witch of Oldhouse, Mr. Auvray. Do you think there is a region of the heart where you can find our talent? Or of the brain? I have a porcelain model of the brain,” she said.
She looked around, trying to remember where she’d put it. Nina was scrupulous about her insect collection and she did try to maintain a similar amount of order when it came to books and other items, but they were more slippery to handle. She picked them up and dropped them and left them, she pulled them down and promised herself she’d take them up again only to find three weeks later they were still resting against the chaise longue. Letters, letter openers, knickknacks, suffered a similar fate, scattered by her talent or her own hands.
“I do not know what makes me capable of manipulating objects with my mind alone, though learned men have tried to provide the answer and will continue to do it,” Hector said.
“The tests they did, what were the machines like?”
“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 enough boldness 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 FOR laxness. 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.
In Loisail, Nina did not display her talent in public and they did not practice tricks in Valérie’s presence. But upon his arrival at Oldhouse, Nina’s mother had asked if he would not perform for them. Hector obliged, presenting the sort of act he might have executed in cafés or taverns in his youth: spinning two plates, opening a book onto a page, making a coin dance above his open hand. When he was done and they’d all clapped, Hector turned to Nina and asked her if she wouldn’t show her family the trick with the coin. At first she had not wanted to, shy, but then she’d changed her mind and made the coin hover above her hand, blushing and glancing down when she was done.
Her family was surprised. He gathered that Nina’s talent had been more about knocking down book
s from bookcases by accident or shuffling cutlery in the kitchen drawers without realizing it than any formalized application of the ability, but that was no longer the case. Thus, in the evenings, they generally settled together to practice in view of all.
That afternoon was no different. Luc stood by the fireplace, Valérie rested on an overstuffed chair, while Hector and Nina occupied opposite sides of an old divan. They played with a pack of cards in the dim, cool room.
He shuffled the cards and then inclined his head, indicating it was her turn. Nina moved her left hand, making three cards slide from his deck and float toward her waiting fingers. He shuffled the cards again and again inclined his head.
“Dear me, how many times are you two going to do that?” Luc asked, hovering over Hector’s shoulder.
Luc was bored. He had been bored for the past half hour, fidgeting and circling them, frowning and stepping back. He was like a child, quick to pick up a toy and quick to forget it, always seeking a new, shiny amusement.
“We are practicing,” Hector said. “It’s important to get it right.”
“Whatever for? It is not as if Miss Beaulieu is a performer at the Royal, as you are.”
“It’s not the point.”
“What is the point? It’s all incredibly odd, this business with the cards. Weren’t you building a house with them yesterday? What shall that prove?”
“Physics,” Hector said.
“I’ll say, it’s peculiar to see a woman doing this,” Luc declared.
“Perhaps Nina means to reinforce her reputation as the Witch of Oldhouse,” Valérie said.
Valérie sat half-reclined, her lips curved into a sneer, her pale skin contrasting with the darkness of the room and granting her a provocative air. She was alluring, but when Hector glanced at Nina and saw the way her eyes went wide with quiet pain, he felt desire wilting from him.
“That is a cruel taunt to repeat,” he said, his voice hard.
Valérie leaned back haughtily. “Are you to reproach me? These idiotic parlor tricks are fit for rogues in gambling dens, not a proper lady. Not that Antonina behaves like a lady. Half the time she is close to a savage.”
“Pardon me, but Antonina is a true lady, unlike some others who put on airs and merely pretend to be gentlewomen,” he affirmed, his eyes firmly set on the older woman, the barb undeniable and as sharp as a saber.
Valérie stood up at once in a fury of pink damask and marched out of the room with such haste, several people stopped speaking. Hector sat in silence, letting the three cards that had been floating in front of him fall down upon the divan.
“Thank you,” Nina said.
Hector looked up at her and saw she was smiling. “You’ve slain a dragon for me,” she added.
“I’ve been crude and will no doubt pay dearly for it.”
“She deserved it,” Nina said, her voice low. “You don’t know how it was when I was small, how they’d taunt me for it. I didn’t mean to make the flour fly through the kitchen, I didn’t mean to make the stones rain or the porcelain shatter. It happened and they’d frown or they’d laugh or they’d say, ‘There goes the Witch of Oldhouse.’”
“It was like that, too, for me at times. I almost burned a guesthouse in Zhude—I knocked over a lantern. I did not mean it. They threw me out in the middle of a snowstorm.”
“You were angry?” she asked. “When I’m angry … it’s hard to keep a grip on it. I fear it will overcome me at times.”
“I was,” he said. This bit of their talent they had not discussed, both too afraid to voice the limits of their control. “But, the talent, you use it, it doesn’t use you.”
“That boy. I shoved him off a horse.”
“Yes, you mentioned it.”
“He was almost trampled. But I did mean it, I did,” she said, her voice faint.
“We all make mistakes.”
She looked at him, her eyes catching the light in the gloom of the large room, a winsome green shade in that instant. “Why were you angry, when the fire happened?” she asked.
“I’d had my heart broken.”
It shocked him because it was an honest and deep answer. He had hardly ever told people about his troubles; he guarded them. His secrets were not for Nina.
He turned his head. If they continued in this vein, if she looked at him longer, he might tell her about the times he wished to die in his bed, the moment when he’d contemplated the never-ending sea. Hector excused himself.
The next day they sat outside, on the grass in front of the house. Étienne lay on his back, hands behind his head. Valérie sat under a white parasol, shielding herself from the sun’s rays, although it was not a sunny day. A few of Nina’s cousins and assorted relatives were nearby, chatting with each other.
He had stayed out of Valérie’s way, but could not help frequently looking in her direction, magnetized.
“We should play a game,” Luc declared. “Have some fun.”
“What game would you like to play, Mr. Lémy?” Nina asked.
“Tag!” a younger cousin yelled.
Others agreed eagerly and Luc thought it a splendid idea. Even Étienne was roused to his feet by his brother.
Nina stood up, brushing bits of grass from her skirts, and looked down at Hector. “Are you joining us?” she asked.
“Not this time,” he said.
She smiled at him before running off with the others, their shrieks and giggles soon sounding distant. Only Valérie and Hector were left behind.
He turned toward her. Valérie wore an embroidered, white silk dress with a smocked waistline and her ever-present pearls, her blond hair carefully coifed and pinned in place. She had a book with her, but was not reading it. Several times he had seen her grab it, open it to a page, then close it and place it at her side again as if she’d thought better of it.
Valérie’s eyes were fixed on the sky, and when she spoke, her voice sounded relaxed, even languid. “You should have gone with her,” Valérie said.
“Valérie, I—”
“Good day,” she declared with a chilling finality.
Without looking at him, her eyes still on the sky, Valérie stood up, then walked back into the house.
Hector watched her disappear inside Oldhouse and instead of following her, as he badly wanted to, he took a side path and walked away from the house, his head down.
Valérie had never been gentle or simple. But her passion, tucked under her perfect exterior, had echoed the passion within him. They were both creatures of tempestuous seas and stormy nights. But how it hurt sometimes!
He walked for a while, attempting to fill his head with the songs of birds instead of memories of this woman, and failing. Hector tried to satisfy himself thinking that Gaetan had not inflamed her heart. No, he could not picture the pleasant Mr. Beaulieu inspiring anything but the most insipid feelings. Neither the rolling anger nor the yearning of their days past, nor the tumultuous reconciliations when—after a day of scowls—Valérie suddenly turned toward Hector and declared breathlessly that, alas, she loved him. They always came apart suddenly and suddenly rejoined, as if nothing had ever been amiss, caught once again in their joy.
But now, now this meeting did not take place, the gap between them only growing by the day, and he stood at the edge of a chasm. It could not end like this.
The clouds had multiplied and he sensed the impending arrival of rain. Hector retraced his steps and returned to Oldhouse, walking past the strange, ancient tower that loomed behind the main building, as raindrops began to splash more forcefully upon the land. He felt old and tattered and wanted simply to lie down and lie still.
“Hector, here,” a voice said.
He raised his head and saw Nina standing at the entrance of the tower, wrapped in its shadow.
“What are you doing?” he asked. “I thought no one goes in there.”
She’d said so herself the day she took them on a tour of the grounds, though he ought to have known the rules did not
apply to her.
“We are playing hide-and-seek. I’m hiding,” she replied.
“I think you’ll win. I did not see you standing there at all.”
“Good,” she replied. Even if he could not look at her properly—she stood in shadows—he could tell she was smiling. “You probably haven’t seen the room in the tower. Come up. It’s a gorgeous view.”
It was raining harder, the summer drizzle threatening to become true rain.
“I’ll break my neck. This does not look solid.”
“It has stood for a few centuries, it can stand one more day for us. You’ll get soaked if you stay there,” Nina said, and disappeared inside.
He looked up at the tower, which was square in shape and rose five stories above the ground. One could almost hear the stones groaning with exhaustion. Atop its entrance was carved the image of a lamb and a word that had been smudged with time, perhaps her family’s name? This must be a tower house, an independent structure and not a part of a manor in times past, though the ones he’d seen before were usually by the sea.
He wished to remain outside, with his melancholy.
Instead, Hector followed Nina up a spiral staircase.
“What is up there?” he asked, curious despite himself.
“You’ll see.”
“I can’t see, that is the problem.”
“Don’t be afraid now, I’ll catch you if you fall,” she joked.
He was right to be cautious about entering the tower. The steps were narrow, it was dark, and there was no proper banister, but soon they reached the top floor.
The tower had been uninhabited for a great deal of time and the chamber they walked into did not have a stitch of cloth or furniture left. But there was a tall window—its shutters long crumbled into dust—on the east wall. The builders of the tower had carved stone seats to contemplate the scenery with ease. This was the prize.
“See,” Nina said, rushing to the window and looking out.
The land spread beneath them, green and alive. Hector could see the river they had visited, its waters gleaming, and farther away, tall mountains. The ground was a chaos, sloping up here then down there; it was not neatly flat as in the north, and the air smelled of wet earth. Flocks of sheep grazed not far from the tower. Water and wood, this was her world, while he was forged in the city, on the road. He breathed in slowly, feeling better.
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