“It’s nearly two o’clock,” he told Étienne. “That’s not nearly enough time to go out. You ought to have told me you would be visiting.”
He walked with quick, purposeful steps, and Étienne had trouble keeping up and evading the people walking by them.
“If I’d told you I was coming, you wouldn’t have seen me. You spend your days locked up either here or in your home. I’m surprised you even deigned to appear at my wedding.”
Étienne had been married five months before. Most brides preferred a spring wedding, which would allow them to travel in the summer, but Étienne’s new bride knew her name would stand out in the papers if she wed in the winter or fall. She was a tactician, Étienne’s wife.
“Nonsense,” Hector muttered.
“Come, now, let us go eat.”
“I can ask for food to be brought to my dressing room for the both of us. Is that not enough?”
“No. It’s a ghastly idea. It’s already annoying that you must eat your meals at that desk of yours, but I won’t do it. You can’t possibly be needed here every single moment of the day.”
“I am rehearsing a new routine,” Hector said. “A spinning glass box, and I wouldn’t want to drop it.”
“As if you’ve dropped a prop in your life.”
“It’s filled with water, and even a moderately sized shark. The weight of the device is not inconsiderable.”
“Hector, come along and forget about the shark for one minute.”
Hector sighed. He turned to a man with steely gray hair who was at that moment instructing two young women carrying cutouts of giant anemones, part of the scenery that needed to be set up.
“Mr. Dufren,” he said, “I am thinking of stepping out for an hour. Are there any pressing matters?”
“I think we can manage, Mr. Auvray,” Dufren replied.
Hector nodded and ducked beneath a cutout, heading toward one of the side exits. The painted backdrops and silver moons of the Royal gave way to the bright day outside as he opened a door. However, the vision of the boulevard, full of carriages and passersby, did not fill him with joy. Truth be told, he was most comfortable in the confines of artifice, in the perfect world created by the stage.
“Where would you like to go?” Hector asked. “Anywhere nearby. I can’t spare more than an hour.”
“How about the Golden Egg? There should be a table available at this time of the day.”
Hector nodded and they walked three blocks to the ostentatious restaurant known as the Golden Egg because the owner had decked every wall with a gilded mirror wider than two men. Any surface that was not covered by a mirror had wood paneling with inlaid paintings.
The food there was excellent and the service appalling, which was a requirement at any chic restaurant. Anyone who was somebody, or on the way to becoming somebody, was supposed to make an appearance at the Golden Egg. Hector had already made a requisite visit to the place and resented having to make another, but he decided to bite his tongue, lest he make Étienne cross. He realized that he was being insufferable and he did not want to be if he could help it, not when it came to an old friend.
They sat in chairs of plum-colored velvet, and the waiter handed them a menu. Hector ordered the soup before even glancing at the offerings, hoping it might be faster than another dish. Étienne and the waiter both frowned since it was bad manners to pick an item quickly, one must fret at the offerings and ask for advice, but Hector did not care what anyone thought when it came to his lunch.
“Tell me, then, how have you been?” Étienne asked.
“Busy,” Hector said.
“You look fatigued. It’s not that business with Valérie, is it?”
He’d let his hair grow even longer than usual, and the dark circles under his eyes testified to nights spent staring at the walls in his room. “The business with Valérie is done,” he said.
It was not the exact truth. He did not pursue Valérie any longer and had accepted that whatever they’d once had ended long ago, but this did not mitigate the heartbreak. The bruise he’d suffered, however, had faded from black to a faint yellow.
“To tell you the truth, I worry about Nina mostly,” he added.
I should have written to her, he thought while he unfolded his napkin and placed it on his lap. The waiter arrived with the wine and poured them each a glass.
Étienne made his selection for a main course and then turned toward Hector, an eyebrow quirked. “I don’t know if what I am about to say will make it better or worse, but I suppose I should tell you before you hear Luc babbling on about it. Nina Beaulieu is in the city and I believe she is fine.”
“Is she with her cousin?” Hector asked.
“No, she’s staying with those great-aunts of hers, I forget their names.”
Hector had not thought she’d return to the city. The notion left him speechless. Was she spending the whole spring there? The Grand Season, yes. He had not imagined her attempting it. He recalled, dimly, that her birthday was in the winter. He had jested he would buy her an insect.
He had missed that birthday.
She was now twenty.
“How did Luc come upon this information?” he asked.
“He ran into her the other day. I think she was buying books. She looked in good spirits, he said. That’s all I was told. He spent most of an hour chewing my ear off about a card game he lost.”
Hector shifted a saltshaker without touching it, making it slide across the table, an annoying mark of restlessness. He checked himself immediately and stopped the motion.
“I’m happy to hear that.”
“All is well, you see,” Étienne proclaimed. “Now, if you’d only have lunch with me more often, you wouldn’t be looking this damn tired all the time.”
“I like to work hard. Nobody ever made anything of himself by lying around all day.”
“Share that philosophy with my youngest brother when you can. All he does is beg me for money. Father doesn’t give him a cent and Jérôme wouldn’t mind if he perished in a ditch, but I’m far too generous and he drains me every month.”
Étienne launched into an impassioned speech about the negative aspects of all his brothers’ characters, beginning with the eldest, Alaric, and ending with Luc, the baby of the family. Hector listened to him, and although normally this talk would have distracted him, even amused him, he could not be amused now.
When they parted, Étienne reminded Hector that he must come by for supper one day, now that he and his wife were installed in an abode of their own.
“We have one of the best cooks in town,” Étienne said. “I’ll be overly plump within a year.”
“You’ll be fine,” Hector replied.
Étienne patted Hector’s shoulder. Their long friendship must have clued Étienne about Hector’s ruminations, or else he was exceedingly simple to read that day. “Hector, you could always try to make amends to her.”
“To Nina?”
“Why not? Do you want me to ask Luc if he knows her address?”
“No,” Hector said quickly.
“Take care, then,” Étienne said with a shrug.
Hector went to his dressing room, his spirits curiously doused, and sat behind his desk. It was not a large dressing room, rather cramped for an important performer. A painted screen hid the area where he kept a couple of changes of clothes. Not all his costumes—he had too many, though a stray one sometimes ended up there—but a dining jacket and a couple of shirts in case he was required to attend a function after work. Behind the screen there was also a full-length mirror and an area where he kept ties, shoes, and a comb.
There were shelves piled with books and props, sheets of paper upon his desk, in a corner a potted plant. A wall showed a poster with his name emblazoned on it, the first big engagement he’d ever played. HECTOR AUVRAY, MARVEL OF OUR TIMES, the large letters read.
He sat upon a couch, brushing aside the newspaper he’d left there.
He had in fact writ
ten to Nina. He had not been able to mail the letters, pausing when he had only one paragraph down, then tossing his efforts in the wastebasket. Pages suffused with horrid guilt and imprinted with another, ghastly feeling he couldn’t even name, but which caused him to count the days since he’d last seen her and to rip the letters to shreds. Six letters, and the sixth he did finish but it was terrible, so lacking in every sense that he’d given up and decided that his first instinct, never to write to her, had been correct. Now she was in the city and he thought, I should have written to her. The thought circled his mind, refusing to leave.
He performed that evening and the bit with the shark went well, the applause rising like a wave from the crowd. He bowed low, a hand pressed against his chest. When he was leaving the theater, he caught sight of Mr. Dufren.
“Mr. Dufren,” he said, “I have a novel request for you. Do you think you can find me someone who sells beetles in the city?”
“Beetles?” Dufren asked, looking baffled. “For a new act?”
“No. I need pinned specimens.”
“I suppose I can manage that.”
Hector nodded. He hoped it wouldn’t be too difficult. There must be a market for collectors, and anything you could imagine could be purchased in Loisail. He grabbed the door, ready to open it, and paused.
“Mr. Dufren, not mere beetles. Get me precious specimens, pretty ones.”
“Pretty. Why … yes, Mr. Auvray. When do you want it?”
“As soon as you can. And I’ll need something else. The address for Lise and Linette Beaulieu,” he said.
“Very well.”
Two days later, Mr. Dufren ushered an old man into Hector’s dressing room. He came accompanied by an assistant who carried a large box, which they set on Hector’s desk. They opened the box and showed Hector the contents: a multicolored collection of beetles, carefully preserved and mounted. Azure, yellow, red specimens.
“Green,” he told them.
The men nodded and laid out green beetles until Hector paused over one that had a delicate metallic shimmer.
“I’ll purchase this,” he said.
The men nodded and began putting their specimens back in the box. Mr. Dufren waited patiently to escort them back outside. Hector, behind his desk, tapped his fingers against its surface, frowning.
“Twenty of them,” he said.
The men looked at Hector in confusion.
“I don’t need one beetle. I need twenty.”
“Twenty beetles like that?” the assistant asked.
“No. Nineteen more. The rarest specimens you have, if you must go back to your shop to get them, do so. Twenty total. Mr. Dufren, do you have that address I asked for? I want you to send this one beetle there. Find a box for it, will you?”
“Yes, of course. Gentlemen,” Dufren said, and motioned to the men.
A while later, Dufren returned and stood in front of Hector’s desk. He placed a box on the desk. Hector raised his head and nodded at his assistant, handing him his calling card.
“Please send it,” Hector said. “Tell the messenger it should be delivered into the hands of Nina Beaulieu.”
“Sir, shouldn’t you attach a note to this?”
“The card will be all. Please make sure those men bring me the beetles I need.”
“If you don’t mind me asking, what do you need twenty beetles for?”
The question caught him by surprise. He had not considered what he meant to do; it was all knitting itself together, a wild amalgam of thoughts coalescing into a single thread.
He wanted to make amends. He had no idea if it could be done but he wanted to try. She deserved it.
He’d been frozen in listlessness and self-pity for a long time now, and he finally felt himself thawing, as if the spring and her presence had spurred him into action.
How strange, he thought.
“I forgot a lady’s birthday,” he said.
“You do realize it would be more appropriate to send flowers for a birthday, don’t you?” Dufren said with a sigh.
“She will like this better.”
Hector turned his attention back to his papers. It’s done, he thought. It’s done and nothing may come of it, but I hope something does.
Chapter 3
LISE AND LINETTE LIVED IN Three Bridges Quarter, a section of the city where the river flowed beneath the eponymous three bridges, and tiny houses, all painted white, rose three stories high. The color was traditional in the quarter. Once, twenty years before, the mistress of a famous composer had attempted to paint her home a pale shade of blue, but this had been met with such ardent opposition that she had to refrain.
Each house in the quarter was a century old and had a garden at the front of it, with an iron fence bordering it and a path that led three steps up to the door. For the homes on the easternmost side of the quarter, the back door of the house led five steps down to a canal. Once upon a time barges had sailed there, following the current, though most of the traffic had now been diverted and went down the Erzene.
Lise and Linette’s house was humdrum; the only detail setting it apart was the profusion of crocheted items inside. Lise had a passion for it, and she had made tablecloths and many doilies. There were doilies under cups and glasses, doilies on the sofa, doilies on the bookshelves. If Lise could have wrapped their cat in crocheted dresses, she might have done it.
Lise and Linette welcomed Luc Lémy into their crochet museum, wondering at the sight of him. He was outfitted in a plaid jacket, a jaunty cap angled on his head, as befitted a man engaged in a sport.
“Which is this one? Is this the Lémy who was married last fall?” Lise asked, taking out her spectacles. “Let me see you, young man.”
“No, Great-aunt, this is Luc,” Nina replied.
“Bah, if they bothered to look different, I might tell them apart.”
“What?” Linette yelled.
Nina could not help but giggle. Luc, however, was the picture of courtesy. He greatly flattered both women and he was as charming as he had been at Oldhouse, which meant it took them nearly an hour to leave since her great-aunts kept chattering with the young man.
Once outside, Nina surveyed the promised motorcar. She’d seen a couple from afar, but they were rarities and carriages dominated Loisail. Etiquette said a lady could ride with a man in these contraptions, the same as a man could escort a woman home in a carriage after a ball, but driving one was another story. The devices were the toys of city boys who, like Luc, might drive them around the block to impress their friends with the apparatus.
The motorcar was a two-seater, finely constructed and painted a glossy black. Luc held the door open for her, and she admired the upholstery. It suited Luc well, she thought, being as new and ostentatious as he was.
The streets nearby were empty and Luc was able to maneuver the motorcar with ease, humming to himself as they went around. At length they stopped by an area of greenery bordered by more of the white houses that characterized the quarter. It was not a park proper, merely a plot of land where the locals had once cultivated vegetables in an impromptu communal garden, now abandoned and growing wild with weeds. Someone would build more tiny houses there one day, but for now it was forgotten.
Luc helped her out and they strolled through the grass until they reached a stone bench, solitary and weathered, that stood in the center of the plot. Nina sat down, surveying the plants and the yellow flowers that grew all around them. She could hear insects buzzing, everything around them teeming with life.
“How do you like the motorcar, then?” he asked, sitting by her side.
“I like it, though you should let me take a turn at it. I’ve seen how you drive and can imitate you.”
“No, that’s impossible.”
“It’s not. I’m sure I could drive it without even using my hands,” she said, and as if to prove it, she cut a flower that grew by the bench using her talent and lifted it in the air, offering it to Luc.
He held the flow
er, examining the petals. “I think you would kill me with fright if I let you drive the motorcar with the powers of your mind.”
“I can open a lock without touching it,” she said. “That takes more effort than spinning a wheel.”
“I’m sure—still it is not my motorcar, I’ve only borrowed it from my brother. And why were you lock-picking, anyway?”
“It helped me pass the time.”
She did not specify that it had helped her pass the time during the winter months when she had needed to think of things that did not concern Hector Auvray, but Luc must have divined it because he eyed her with caution.
“Can I ask you what happened with you and Hector last summer?”
She had received in the past five days five boxes, each one containing a delicate beetle. A calling card came with every box, Hector’s name printed on it. When she had been handed the first two boxes, she had not opened them, but at the third, driven by her natural curiosity, she’d finally unveiled their contents and remained mutely staring at the creatures.
Nina did not know what they meant and did not attempt to interpret them. The specimens now rested in their boxes, stuffed in the back of a desk.
She wondered if Hector had sent Luc for this reason, or if the arrival of the beetles had nothing to do with him. Was he spying on her?
“We were not a favorable match,” she said, and her voice was beautifully calm and collected. If this was an attempt to gauge her state of mind, Hector would obtain nothing.
“I am sorry,” Luc said.
“It was a child’s fancy, anyway.” Nina raised a hand and pressed it against her chest. She lowered her lashes so that he might not take the measure of her gaze.
Luc nodded and lifted her free hand, pressing a kiss against it. “I am in luck, then, since I can cast my net and see if I may catch the prettiest girl in the city.”
She raised her eyes, frowning. Her hand rested firm and slender between his, yet she did not understand. “Are you jesting? I like your jokes, but this one would not be in good taste,” she said.
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