CHAPTER THREE #2
Nathaniel had offered a tiny, gentle smile, his dark eyes crinkling at the corners. “A fine bird, Miss Cécile. Tell me where it built its nest.”
Sitting alone in the dusty schoolroom a year later, clutching his handwritten music to my chest, fresh tears spilled over my eyelashes and soaked into the heavy paper.
I had not loved Nathaniel with the feverish devotion described in novels. I had never lain awake imagining his kisses or written his name in the margins of my books. When our engagement was announced, I felt no lightning strike through me. I felt something quieter.
Relief.
My parents had spent years speaking of my future as though it were a damaged piece of furniture they might still persuade someone to purchase.
Every young man invited to Le Champ des Fleurs had been made to sit beside me at dinner, escort me through the garden or suffer through one of Mother’s painfully arranged afternoons at the pianoforte.
Some were kind until I tried to speak. Others became kinder afterward, which was worse.
Nathaniel treated me the same before and after he heard my stammer.
He never told me not to be nervous. He never advised me to breathe. He did not stare at my mouth as though the correct word might be dragged from it through sufficient attention. If I required time, he gave it without making the gift visible.
I was impressed by him long before I trusted him.
He had traveled farther than any man I knew and had seen countries my father spoke of as though they existed solely to supply our tables with coffee, sugar and wine.
Nathaniel never boasted of storms survived or foreign ports visited.
When Lucien asked about battles, he answered briefly.
When Mother asked about European fashions, he admitted he had noticed very little beyond the necessity of keeping his uniform clean.
But when I played the pianoforte, Nathaniel listened.
He did not use the music as an excuse to converse with someone else.
He sat near enough to turn the pages and watched my hands without making me feel examined.
If I stumbled over a difficult passage, he did not pretend not to notice.
He simply returned the page and said, “Again, Miss Cécile. You nearly had it.”
He made failure feel temporary.
That was rarer than love, or so I believed then.
Our engagement had been settled during the previous winter.
My father approved of Nathaniel’s family, his commission and the respectable income that would become his upon the death of an elderly uncle.
Mother approved of his manners and the likelihood that naval duty would carry us away from Virginia often enough to make my difficulties less visible to local society.
No one asked whether I loved him.
Nathaniel did.
We were in the schoolroom when he asked, although the engagement had already been agreed upon downstairs. Rain struck the windows, and the glasshouse beyond the lawn appeared pale and distant through the winter mist. Nathaniel stood beside the pianoforte with one hand resting upon its closed lid.
“Your parents believe we will suit,” he said.
I nodded.
“But that was not my question.”
He waited until I looked at him.
“Do you wish to marry me?”
The honest answer formed immediately in my mind.
I do not know.
The first word refused to come. My throat tightened around it until even the beginning became impossible.
Nathaniel pulled the bench away from the pianoforte and sat, removing the advantage of his height. He did not rescue me from the question.
At last, I crossed to the writing table and wrote my answer.
I believe you would be gentle with me.
He read it without smiling.
“That is not love.”
Heat flooded my face. I lowered my eyes, ashamed that I had failed another test I had not known I was taking.
Nathaniel placed the paper on the table.
“No,” he said. “Do not be embarrassed. Gentleness is not a small promise, and trust is not a poor beginning. I would rather receive an honest uncertainty than a declaration you were frightened into making.”
I looked at him then.
He was not handsome in the way Adrian Fairhaven would later teach me to understand beauty.
Nathaniel’s face had been weathered by salt and sun.
A narrow scar crossed one eyebrow, and the bridge of his nose had been broken sometime before I knew him.
Yet there was steadiness in him. A life with Nathaniel might have been quiet.
I imagined a modest house overlooking some harbor, music in the evenings and breakfasts at which no one commanded me to rehearse a greeting.
I imagined being safe.
I mistook the absence of fear for the beginning of happiness.
The rumors began in April.
No one told me what Nathaniel was supposed to have done.
The offense changed according to the person whispering it.
Mrs. Dewey spoke of missing naval papers.
Reuben George referred darkly to an irregularity connected with Nathaniel’s final command.
Mother said he had made accusations against respectable men and then failed to produce evidence.
Warren claimed Nathaniel had accumulated gambling debts in Norfolk, although Nathaniel had once told me he disliked cards.
Within two weeks, invitations stopped arriving for him.
Within three, men who had shaken his hand crossed the street rather than greet him.
My father removed Nathaniel’s name from the guest list for our summer gathering. Mother collected his letters from the silver salver before I could see them. When I asked where they had gone, she told me correspondence with a disgraced man could only injure me.
“What d-d-did he—”
“It does not concern you.”
“He is to m-m-marry—”
“He is not.”
Mother said it so calmly that I thought I had misunderstood her.
She stood before my wardrobe, examining a length of Belgian lace while my future disappeared behind her.
“The engagement is at an end,” she continued. “Your father has written to Commander Vale. No formal announcement was published, so there will be very little embarrassment provided we behave sensibly.”
I gripped the back of a chair.
“N-no.”
Mother turned.
It was not the answer she expected from me. Perhaps it was not the answer I had expected either.
“Cécile, you do not understand the seriousness of the situation.”
“Then t-t-tell—”
“There is nothing to tell. Commander Vale has placed himself outside decent society. Whatever future he possessed is gone.”
I wanted to say that a man did not cease to be decent merely because decent society had abandoned him. I wanted to ask whether Father had spoken to Nathaniel or merely to the men accusing him. Most of all, I wanted to demand the return of his letters.
My tongue gave Mother only broken sounds.
She watched me struggle until impatience hardened her face.