How Sylvain treats his women (badly). A study of how some playboys try to explain themselves.
Women are bloodhounds for lies.
The trick about winning the hearts of women, Sylvain thinks, is to be completely honest with them. And he is honest; he falls in love with a woman in utmost sincerity.
Their beauty often takes him by surprise and brings him to skip a breath and exhale out the reserve capacity of air in his lungs with a stuttering cough. In those moments, he feels like a teenager again arriving for the first time at the Officer's Academy, learning the appreciation of women in the absence of the senior Gautier's gaze.
As attractive women come, they are of course aware of Sylvain's advances and pay no heed to him, especially in his youth. This was in part once he realized that the fairer sex was in no way tolerant of his initial tongue-tied attempts. What did give women a moment to pause and weigh him as a potential partner was when Sylvain began dropping the banal and instead tried for caring gestures.
Spilling details about his own private thoughts tends to bring them closer. For one he fears the subjection of his lover to the cruel realities of his house and crest. Another is that some would seek him only for the tool he was in raising their station to higher levels. A superficial attributed from a superficial man, he's aware. He has enough sense to know that he's a fool in that aspect.
A fair chance is all he needs.
Once he's permitted a level of trust, is when things start going south in the relationship. Ultimately, his tendency to wax and wane as the moon in his commitment to the other begins to reveal itself. Although his word may have had a ring of truth in them when he was wooing minds and hearts, Sylvain would wake in the morning one day to find his new flame unbearable and extinguished.
One had a laugh with a hoarse rasp that was hard on the ears. Another's cooking tasted much too brackish for his liking. The terror that this woman was too good for him and that this relationship would go to hell in a handbasket. The ensuing thoughts that followed thereafter: perhaps the woman actually didn't love him; perhaps any amount of excuses was the reason why he wasn't feeling the intimacy that he initial felt.
The problem does not lie within himself, Sylvain reasons.
Sylvain is a free spirit. A lover with gifts of rugged good looks, an easy smile, and a fun demeanor. He's a respectable man who doesn't need to tend to the gossip that stains his character inconsiderately. His actions are what they are. The problem is the others that he attracts.
His body is the future as the head of the house of Gautier, the purebred stallion whose seed can vouch for a winning chance at the races. His powerful crest an investment into the twilight years. The people around him who suffer for his existence. Sylvain's cards in life is damned so to hell with what people did or did not say about him. His was the fate that he would not wish on his worst enemy.
But to know the woes of your life as opposed to know how to solve them are different beasts and with much trouble, Sylvain compares it to telling a drunkard the solution to abstain from beating his wife and losing his cattle in repossessions. One simply did not tell the man to stop his drink - the ass would only nod his head in agreement and yet be found staring down the bottom of his mug that very evening.
At the end of things, he's left with having to choose between commitment or the dedication to experiencing the breadth of the feminine sex. And so, with sighs and proclamations that he too doesn't want these girls to cry are said in petulance. He'd break things off.
In search of a way to end his unique misery, he tends to the next flame, to coax from tinder into embers that would roar into being. Find a woman with a charming laugh or a different shade of hair. Pour his soul into this new woman who shone a brightness into his dull days. Find the first warm touch to be exciting and the subsequent kisses to be tender and toe curling.
Whereas others had only one lover in their lifetime, Sylvain truly confesses that he may not know the number of times he has fallen in love. But this time, he assures his lover, this time it's for real.
He says in practice made perfect with embrace and a steady gaze that seems gives urgency to more than just the undoing of his pants. You are my redemption.
At least, for now.