The Beautiful Ones

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  Gaetan turned off the lights. “He does bear a reputable name,” Gaetan said, now pulling up the covers and lying down, propping two pillows behind himself.

  “It’s crucial that we support his efforts,” Valérie advised him. “You might have a word with Antonina in his behalf.”

  “If you think it necessary.”

  “Certainly,” Valérie said with a vigorous nod.

  “Then I will.”

  Victory assured, Valérie allowed herself to smile in the dark and laid her head against the pillow. Gaetan was soon fast asleep.

  She did not have an easy time slipping into dreams. She’d accomplished much, yet she turned, restless. It was because Gaetan was there when she had wanted to be alone, she thought.

  It was because of this.

  But she kept thinking of Hector Auvray. It was as if by mentioning his name, Gaetan had conjured a demon, and Valérie could not order that linen be ironed and windows be washed to assuage herself. She could not walk to her garden and gaze proudly at her roses. She could not run her hands over her jewels, admiring the magnificent pearls Gaetan kept speaking about.

  All she could do in the dark was remember what he looked like when she’d last seen him, when he’d leaned down to kiss her. A single kiss after many years.

  And when they’d been younger and he’d curled his arm around her, brushing his lips against her hair. The way his voice sounded when he’d whispered against her ear. “Would you wait for me?”

  She hadn’t.

  He had.

  He’d wait forever, she thought. He must.

  At least she had this satisfaction.

  In her bitterness, in that oppressive bed, she thought Antonina Beaulieu would not know this devotion. She had all the wealth Valérie had ever hungered for and she’d have that pretty boy, but no devotion.

  Had I been given her wealth, I would have done as I pleased, Valérie thought. I would have waited.

  She turned her head and closed her eyes.

  She ought to have gone to the party, a place where there were lights and champagne, and she might admire herself in the mirror and think herself satisfied.

  Chapter 7

  THE HADUIERS’ HOUSE WAS TOO large, too bold to be considered genteel, and to make matters worse, Agnes had wallpapered it in a ghastly yellow that made visitors wince. But the Haduiers had a garden, which made up for their gaffes and served as a magnificent space for dancing under the open night sky. Many of the guests wandered around, glasses in hand, admiring the topiary, while the most adventurous sneaked into the hedge maze where a kiss or two would be exchanged.

  Nina lingered in the sitting room, with its paintings of fruits and flowers on the walls—nothing matched here. Agnes had no taste, and where she should have opted for modern views of the city, she instead placed pedestrian compositions of bread and cheeses.

  Four girls gathered around Nina, all of them in prim dresses, gloves on their hands. Nina had taken off her gloves because the business of manipulating objects with her talent was more difficult with them on.

  Nina made the fan floating before her spin in slow concentric circles. It resembled a bird in its movements, rather than an inanimate object, and one of the girls squealed in delight at the sight of it. Nina reached out and the fan stopped, sliding into her hand. Nina smiled at the girls.

  “How odd!” one of the girls said. “How interesting!”

  “Fascinating,” Luc chimed in.

  He was standing next to her, looking keen. He’d danced two dances with Nina. Yet Nina had not failed to notice that he had filled out his dance card with many other names not five minutes after his arrival.

  “That’s probably enough,” Luc told her, leaning down to whisper in her ear. “People are staring at you.”

  He was right. Two women were giving her an icy look, their fans pressed against their skirts. One of them spoke to the other, staring at Nina all the while. The girls smiled at Nina and stepped back, retreating, returning to the shadow of their mothers.

  This party was on the smaller side and everyone was well acquainted, which left Nina in a bit of a cumbersome situation. Luc had been solicitous, taking her to and from the refreshment room, introducing her to several people, yet she felt a stranger. And now she’d made a grievous mistake.

  “What is wrong?” she asked.

  “It’s not done,” was his reply.

  “But they asked me to,” Nina protested.

  “Yes. Best not make tongues wag, shall we?”

  A man laughed loudly and she looked at him. He was glancing in their direction and she wondered if he was laughing at her or if it was a mere coincidence.

  “Don’t be upset, I say this for your sake. You don’t want those old hens to be talking about you,” Luc said.

  “If they are old hens, then what does it matter?” she said, pushing back. She was tired of everyone judging her harshly.

  “You are a lady, not a member of a circus troupe.” His voice had a splinter of steel in it.

  Nina looked down at her fingers. Luc handed her back her gloves and she clutched them but did not put them on. The fan dangled from a cord around her wrist.

  “Nina, don’t be upset.”

  She ran her hand along the mother-of-pearl handle of the fan. She had wanted to have fun, and the evening was souring.

  Luc pressed a finger against her chin and tilted it up. He smiled at her and his eyes were soft, whatever slight unpleasantness had passed between them nothing but lightning streaking the sky, a moment there and then gone.

  He was quick to forget, she thought. If ever they did quarrel in the morning, all would be amended by the evening.

  “You look beautiful tonight. Did I say that already?” he told her.

  She had woven hairpins that resembled orange blossoms into her black hair. Her dress was saffron taffeta with a ruched and pleated waistband, pretty and sunny and modish.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Did I tell you I want to touch you?” he said. The timbre of his voice made her drop a glove.

  He picked it up and handed it back to her, and Nina gripped it tight.

  Luc lifted his head and smiled. He was amused. She guessed he’d wanted to make her blush, and he had accomplished it. Yet a second later, he was distracted.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “I see Guillem is here. I must talk business with him. Ah, my luck.”

  “Talk to him, then.” Luc hesitated and Nina chuckled. “I’ll be fine. It’s a party, Luc. We are supposed to chat with other people.”

  “Perhaps we can dance again later. I’ve not bothered penciling anyone after the faster dances. Or, there’s always a walk in the maze,” he told her. “You’ll be well? On your own?”

  “Yes, go,” she said, shooing him away.

  She saw him walking through the crowd of revelers, greeting a man with an expansive chuckle. Two ladies, who stood next to the man, smiled and held their fans in their left hands, half-hiding their faces and looking at Luc. Luc was exaggerated in his charms, taking their hands and bowing low. Nina was not filled with cleaving jealousy. He had not spoken of courtship. She thought he might, and she did not know if this pleased her or not.

  Nina felt eyes on her again and turned her head, guessing it was the “old hens” Luc had warned her about.

  She was wrong.

  It was Hector Auvray. Their eyes met, his gaze weighty then withdrawn.

  He drifted out, away, and before she could put much thought into it, she was following him into another section of the house, into another room.

  He stood in the middle of the library, his back to the door and hands in his pockets. The space was outfitted in crimson velvet, both on the curtains and the furniture. It was a small room, and the dark velvet made it seem even smaller.

  And he seemed to fill up the space entirely.

  “Do you always hide during parties?” she asked.

  He turned around, looking surprised, but the su
rprise morphed quickly into composure.

  “I don’t do too well at them, no,” he replied.

  “A man of the stage and he cannot mingle at a party?”

  “Being onstage does not require any conversational skills. I speak with my actions. At a party like this, though, everyone talks a secret language.”

  “Yes. They do,” she said, remembering the women who’d glared at her.

  Now that they were face-to-face, she did not know why she’d followed him. It had been a reflex, action before thought. She eyed the door and considered stepping out.

  “I saw you out there, with the fan. You were good,” he said tentatively.

  “You are saying that to please me,” she replied.

  “No,” he said. “I mean it.”

  She thought he did. His praise had always been measured and doled out slowly. It was hard earned.

  “You lacked a proper flourish, though,” he said, unable to leave a compliment be. “The ending. You can’t put your arms down and walk off a stage. You must give them a proper ending. It’s the most important part of the whole performance.”

  “How would you have done it?”

  “May I?” he asked, pointing to the fan.

  The door beckoned. A clean exit without another word, she owed him nothing. But her interest had been piqued.

  She removed the fan from her wrist and handed it to him. Hector let it rest on his left hand, then tossed it up in the air. As it fell, he opened it with the movement of two fingers and flung it to the right with great strength, but the fan then came recoiling back, snapped itself shut, and he caught it with his left hand.

  He bowed, presenting her with the fan.

  “If it’s moving that fast, how can you keep control of it?” she asked. The object had whipped by him rather ferociously. “And you were not looking at it.”

  She moved her right hand, imitating his gesture, but he shook his head.

  “No, not like that. Let it go, stop it at the last second, and don’t think that it will stop until that second. You don’t need to see, you don’t need to move your hands to know where an object is. If I tossed a coin behind you, you’d realize the sound came from behind. Most of all, believe you can stop it.”

  Nina flung the fan to the right three times, trying to catch it with her left hand as he’d done. She failed each time, but at the fourth she managed to grasp the basic mechanics of it even if she was clumsy in the execution.

  He had manipulated the fan like it meant nothing, with the carelessness that can come only from years and years of practice. Despite her crude handling of the fan, he seemed almost to be admiring her in his own fashion.

  She stopped, holding the fan tight in her hands. “I miss this,” she said softly. “The way you taught me things.”

  He looked sad at her words and Nina bit her lip, wishing she had not mentioned it. How odd it was to be in his presence now, like drifting next to jagged edges and knives.

  And yet.

  “I should be heading out now,” he said quietly. “I hope I was not a bother.”

  Hector inclined his head toward her, ever the polite gentleman, and she imitated him, not sure what she was doing. He’d be gone in another second. When she last saw him, it had been simpler to part, the memory of her misery giving her strength. But now she remembered the things that she enjoyed about him.

  She didn’t think, just as she didn’t think when she climbed atop the Devil’s Throne and her sister chided her.

  “Three Bridges Quarter is not far from your home. You could escort me to my great-aunts’ house,” she said abruptly.

  Nina should not have said that, and yet as soon as the words were out of her mouth, she felt she could not have told him anything different.

  “But you came here without an escort?” Hector asked, looking surprised for the second time that night.

  “My great-aunts are supposed to chaperone me, but as usual, they are lax in their obligations. I am here alone.”

  Gaetan was going to be in attendance at the party, so the matter had not been really dire, but he had failed to make an appearance. Nina did not mourn his absence. If he’d come, she would have had to talk with Valérie.

  “We did not arrive together, I am not escorting you to this party. If we leave now, it might be thought improper. They could gossip about you,” Hector warned her.

  “They are already gossiping about me because of the business with the fan,” she said, shaking her head. “I must leave or suffocate. Can you see me home, or should I fetch my own carriage?”

  There was a curiously cautious air about him, he who was at other times incredibly sure of himself.

  “I’ll take you home, in that case,” he said.

  They did not speak once they boarded the carriage. He sat in front of her, looking melancholic, his eyes lost, and she kept her gaze on the pretty fan upon her lap. She felt she would burst in that silence and finally did, laughing.

  “What is funny?” he asked.

  “Nothing. I got into this carriage so I could speak with you, and now I don’t know what we should talk about.”

  “Anything you want to talk about is fine with me,” he said sympathetically.

  “I do not understand how people are supposed to behave when they meet again. Considering the circumstances.”

  Hector drew a deep sigh. “I don’t either. But back in the library, we spoke without impediments.”

  “Back there, I could have left any second I wanted.”

  “I can get out if I offend you,” he offered.

  “It’s not necessary.”

  She examined him critically, like a painter ready to sketch a model. The shape of his mouth, the thick eyebrows, the strong hands encased in gloves.

  “I wanted you to accompany me … to ride the same carriage, to prove that I could do it,” she said, thinking out loud. “That I could sit still and in control of myself. From now on, if I bump into you, I can ignore you or speak to you or do whatever I wish.”

  “I see.”

  “Not that … not that I want to particularly ignore you. You must not think me cruel. But it’s strange. I’m not mad at you. I don’t see how people … I look to books for advice, you see, but they don’t write these scenes.”

  What a mess, what nonsense. She ought to have stayed at the party. She frowned, her fingers dancing over the fan.

  “Perhaps we can figure it out. Would you ever consider seeing me again?” he asked.

  “Because you still want to make amends,” she said, her voice almost cracking, to her annoyance. After she’d told him she was in control.

  “Because your absence is noticeable.”

  “What is that suppo—?”

  “I miss you, too,” he said. “You also taught me.”

  The exasperation that had gathered at the tip of her tongue dissipated and she stared at him, baffled. They had arrived in front of her great-aunts’ house and he exited the carriage, holding out a hand to help her down.

  “Miss Beaulieu, I would like to see you again, but I won’t pressure you to say yes,” he concluded. “Thank you for your company.”

  If he’d been Luc Lémy, he might have punctuated their conversation by reminding her once again how pretty she looked, declaring that her hair was as dark as midnight. Hector was not Luc, and he’d say no such words.

  She looked at him carefully, and saw a man. Not the romantic notion of a man she’d glimpsed before, her vision colored with memories of books and plays. A man, flawed and sad, who’d hurt her once, but whom she nonetheless esteemed. She saw, too, his genuine regret and the honest emotion lurking in his eyes.

  “Have you been to the aquarium?” she asked.

  “I had to fetch a shark from it at one point,” he replied cautiously.

  “Did you look around it?”

  “Not on that occasion.”

  “I am headed there tomorrow morning. I should be arriving around eleven. I wouldn’t think to demand that you escort me,
and I imagine you are busy. But should you find yourself in the vicinity—”

  “I will be there,” he said at once.

  He kissed her hand and she did not know whether to smile or not.

  What kind of fool am I? she wondered. Because she could feel it there, in her chest, that flutter of affection, the thrill racing down her spine. She disliked it somewhat, how easily it came, and yet she lingered at his side for one more moment.

  Chapter 8

  HECTOR WOKE UP RATHER EARLY and he dedicated himself to his reading before finally heading to the bathroom for a hot shower and a shave. He always dressed well, knowing the kind of outfit that befitted a gentleman—he was studious, had learned to copy others—therefore, he should not have lingered before the mirror as he did, contemplating his reflection.

  When it came to breakfast, he had no appetite and could hardly make himself drink his coffee.

  It was because he had not slept well, he thought. He had not returned from the party at an untimely hour, but he’d had a fitful sleep.

  It was too warm in the city. It felt more like summer than spring, and even if he left the window open, it did not help. There was no breeze to cool his bed.

  That explained it, then, the restlessness, he told himself.

  He boarded a carriage two streets from his home and arrived at the aquarium at the appointed time.

  He saw Nina standing by the entrance and was relieved.

  He had wondered if she might desert him. He offered her his arm and she took it.

  The aquarium’s ceilings were high, of cast iron and glass, allowing the light to flood the interior of the building. The floor was decorated with bright mosaics featuring mermaids and sea lions. There were many tanks filled with water and sea life, bright fish beckoning at every corner. Several tanks were shrouded with velvet curtains, and an attendant would pull them apart, giving people a chance to peruse the sea creatures, creating a sense of drama. Nina stood before each one of the tanks, whispering to him about the animals they were looking at.

  Sometimes she’d stop, her back too straight, as if she’d remembered an important detail, and the smile that was blooming on her lips died. But it was not as painful as he’d imagined it, even if, for an instant, it might feel like his palm was sliding upon a piece of broken glass. Because she would also look eager and forget whatever worries plagued her, and her voice would rise and dip as they watched the animals.