by E J Kitchens
Lady Violetta sighed. “I wouldn’t be the one giving the benefits, but I imagine a forgiveness of remaining debts and possibly the gift of a ship and cargo or something equivalent to set him up in his profession again could be arranged.”
Belinda’s heart thumped in a hope painful in its unfamiliarity, but she kept her face impassive. “I left unexpectedly today and don’t want to return home, even for a few minutes. Could you send a note for me to Ben Harrow, a local youth, about him caring for the poultry and goats while I’m gone? And leave a note at our house saying I’m away? I don’t want anyone thinking I’ve been abducted. There is also a couple, the pastor and his wife, expecting me to dinner …” Guilt knotted her chest. How could she have forgotten Lettie and Winthrop? Wonderful as they were, though, she didn’t regret being free of Gaspard for six weeks.
“Of course. I’ll take care of everything.”
Trying to hide her relief, Belinda gave the enchantress’s request one last consideration, then nodded. “I’ll do what I can.”
The enchantress gave her that “you’ll never do” shake of her head. “If you’d said, ‘I promise,’ I could have given you such useful aids—a magic mirror, an enchanted rose, maybe even a traveling ring—but you—” She waved her hand dismissively in Belinda’s direction and gave her head another shake. “But you have your reading spell and your domestic help, you’ll have to make do with that. Well, that’s settled. You’re an official Curse Breaker now. May you be successful.”
What good was an enchanted rose or magic mirror? “But you didn’t say who—”
“Good afternoon, dear,” Lady Violetta said hastily, taking up a silver watch hanging from her bodice. “Oh my. Look at the time. We’ll talk later. Remember, Curse Breaker, the rose is dying.” A storm-gray cloud engulfed her, and she disappeared in a flash as of lightning.
Gaping, Belinda watched as a neat square of parchment tied in gray ribbon fluttered to the floor.
Belinda picked up the parchment and opened the envelope. It contained a letter with a few lines written in an elegant hand. Sighing, she forced her way through the words. It was a temporary spell for ease of reading and another for reading quickly. Belinda’s shoulders sank in relief, and she smiled gratefully: the spell was a palindrome.
Chapter 3
Belinda wore a new-to-her gown down to dinner, as hers weren’t ready yet. The slightly used gown swept the floor around her in an elegant train of too-longness and hung loosely about her shoulders and chest. Breathing in deep, quick breaths to keep her chest expanded and the dress up, Belinda walked into the cavernous dining room, fervently praying Beast didn’t sigh strongly enough to blow her hair out of position.
Much to the maid’s distress, Belinda had taken her hair from its lovely updo to let it hang like a shawl over her shoulders and chest. She’d find what those conniving maids did with the safety pins—and her clothes—before tomorrow if it was the last thing she did.
Beast looked up from the table in surprise as she entered. His intelligent eyes among the soft brown fur of his face was as startling as a blue bird among winter-brown leaves. He continued to stare at her, his surprise evidently freezing him in place, for he didn’t rise.
Belinda huffed. He may have forgotten she was there, but she’d make sure he didn’t forget his manners completely. An invisible servant pulled out a chair for her across the long table from Beast, but she swished her way down the length of polished wood to stand beside the chair at Beast’s side. Cursed or not, the man cared for clothes, for he was dressed for dinner when he apparently expected to eat alone. The dandy.
“Good evening, Beast.” She smiled demurely at him as he continued to stare at her. I’m Belinda. Remember me? “The maids tell me you have an excellent cook. I look forward to gauging his quality for myself.” She flicked a glance at the chair and the place setting that quickly appeared at her chosen spot, and continued to smile at Beast.
He cleared his throat and rose to pull back the chair for her. “I am certain you will find him a superior chef, Miss … ah … Miss Lambton.”
She nodded, impressed, as he pushed the chair in under her. Seated, she attempted to straighten, only to be jerked to a halt. The excess fabric she needed for the top portion of her dress was currently caught under the chair leg. Scooting the chair forward, she yanked on the skirt with one hand and used the other to keep her hair out of the soup.
Cheeks flushing as she successfully sat up, she glanced at Beast, but to her relief, he was glaring at the air beside him, growling something to do with the fragile bowl of soup placed before him. Belinda felt a brush of air on her shoulders as, she imagined, a servant made a hasty exit.
“Beast, dear, might I trouble you for your jacket? It’s a little chilly in here. The servants couldn’t find a shawl for me earlier when I asked.”
Perhaps catching her tone, Beast gave her an examining look before he growled again to the servants, a rather longer growl than before. Belinda smiled smugly as another breeze rushed past her.
“Do you have guests often, Beast? Your family, perhaps?”
“No,” he said, draping a pillowcase-sized napkin across his lap. “I like to be alone.”
“Oh? How agreeable for you. I miss my father. If it weren’t for him, I might like to live alone too. Though I do have an aunt who lives a few days’ journey away whom I miss on occasion. Loving people adds a bit of pain to life, I find. Life is more pleasant in some ways when you don’t care for anyone, don’t you think?”
“I didn’t say I didn’t care for anyone! I—” Beast quieted as a breeze rushed back by. A sturdy mug of soup appeared in front of him, and a pale yellow shawl large enough to wrap Belinda twice floated in and landed delicately over her shoulders. When the servant had left and Beast had said grace, he continued calmly, “Beasts simply prefer to be alone.”
“Oh, it’s a territorial thing then. So did your parents eat a prince too and get his castle, or did you move up in the world?” Ignoring Beast’s glower, Belinda wrapped the shawl over a shoulder, around her chest, and over her other shoulder. “Did they eat an earl or a wealthy merchant?” she continued, tying the shawl in place. There. The maid could have a conniption, but Belinda was going to be comfortable.
The mug of soup halfway to his lips, Beast stared at her, as if she were the absurd one of the two. She was only wearing a shawl, he a curse!
“People of wealth and influence,” he said at last, then drank his soup in two gulps. Belinda carefully spooned up her own soup, and was immensely rewarded when Beast grumbled into his wine goblet a moment later, “And though we don’t visit, we keep in touch.”
She nodded sweetly at this. “Do give them a greeting from me and a congratulations on raising such a gentlemanly cub.”
Beast choked, then lost half his goblet of wine all over the newly served salad. Belinda politely covered the gaff with an, “Oh! Red wine sauce makes everything better. How clever of you to think of it.”
Beast spent the next few minutes coughing and giving her strange looks, which she politely ignored while tucking into her meal, pausing only at the main course, when she noted Beast darting a glance between her and the serving tray–sized haunch of venison and dainty silverware at his place, a hungry, sad look in his eyes.
“Don’t mind me,” Belinda said cheerily, holding out a speared piece of meat. “I only eat with a fork because I keep my nails cut short. They break if I try to grow them out.”
“Thank you …”
“Don’t mention it.” She was quiet the rest of the meal, intent on her food and on ignoring the ripping of meat going on beside her.
After the shredding ceased, Beast put aside his napkin and pushed away from the table. Belinda hastily swallowed and called up The Uncurse Plan, Part B: Tampering with Proposals.
“Now, if you’ll ex—”
“Join you for a tour of the castle? I’d love to. How kind of you to offer.”
“That’s not—”
Be
linda continued to smile expectantly until his shoulders sank in resignation and he pulled her chair out for her. It was amazing how well smiles worked on him.
“I’m very interested in your library,” she said as he offered her his arm.
The crinkling of a turning page. The pop of a warm fire. The ticktock of a polished grandfather clock. The frantic beating of Belinda’s heart as she stood on tiptoe and scanned the shelf of language books. There had to be at least three books on every language on the continent!
She couldn’t stuff more than one volume in her shawl and expect Beast not to notice. How was she going to purloin an entire shelf?
They’d finished their brief castle tour and had retired, as per Beast’s custom, to the library for the evening. Retire was right. He hadn’t moved for the past half hour. She itched to be doing something. She was almost desperate enough for an embroidery hoop.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She glanced over her shoulder to see Beast eyeing her like a mama cat whose kitten was too close to a stranger. Easing back to her heels, she asked, “Do you have a catalogue of your collection?”
“On the desk by the globe.”
Glancing around, Belinda spied a neat little desk in a recess of the wall. It held a globe, a handwritten book of titles and their location, a stationery set, a vase of thorns and thistles, and a few broken knickknacks. Belinda adored it. She settled down at it and began writing the titles and locations of the books she needed to hide, then calculated how many books from random places she would need to take to fill in the gaps she was going to make.
Ascertaining that Beast was intent on his book, she rose quietly and casually walked around the giant room—it had twenty-foot-high bookcases and was half the size of her father’s house. She slowed near the ladder that ran along a rail on one of the upper shelves and gave it an experimental shove. It slid quietly along the shelf. Hiding a smile, she towed it along toward the language section. She paused one unit before that and plucked out a book with a similar color binding to a few of the language books, then, with a glance at Beast, inched the ladder over and put her foot on the bottommost rung.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up. She peeked around her shoulder, then stepped back down. Beast didn’t say anything, but she didn’t like the way he was looking at her. “What are you reading? I’ve been having trouble deciding,” she said by way of distraction.
He cocked a light, bushy brow at her. “It’s a book of fairy tales.”
“How entertaining.” A strange choice for someone who had no problem being cursed. Lessons on how to act like a beast, perhaps? The title read Exploits and Defeat of the Mysterious Prince Dokar of the Unseelie Faerie. How to be a villain then. Unlike the “fairy godmother” Lady Violetta, Prince Dokar was a genuine fairy, and as wickedly mischievous as they came, if the tales were true.
Beast didn’t reply but seemed to be trying to read the spine of her own book. She glanced down at it: Trade by Water: Oceans and Rivers and the Laws Pertaining Thereunto.
Providence must be with her. She held it up for him. “My father was a merchant once. I thought it would be nice to learn more about economics and trade and maybe help get the family business up and going again.”
His other eyebrow rose, making a blaze of almond fur across his forehead. “How productive of you,” he said, a suspicion in his voice that piqued Belinda’s pride.
“My family—that is, my father and I—have that tendency. Father usually goes over the accounts in the evening while I darn socks and shar—” sharpen the hunting knives “—listen to him share about his day or what he read in the paper.” She continued on, praising her father’s diligence and even throwing in for good measure a comment about a recent tariff and the effect of a forecasted storm on the value of shipping goods.
Beast made no response, and his contemplative stare made her uncomfortable. For whatever reason, he seemed a bit more intimidating seated comfortably in that overlarge wingback chair than he had in the forest, more like a bear in his cave. A place he was more likely to defend, she sensed. His ears flattened back like a cat’s.
She cleared her throat, deciding that harping on her father’s good example was not likely to stimulate Beast to a profitable life in his rightful position.
“Did you learn a trade alongside your father?” she ventured, still standing by the shelf, refusing to give up ground near the language books just yet.
“Yes.” He eyed her over the gilded edges of the children’s book. “Eating princes.” He said it with intentional clarity, his lips pulling back to allow the candlelight to dazzle itself against his razor-sharp teeth.
Drawing back despite herself, she croaked out, “Everyone must have their work, I suppose.”
He turned a page, then another, without actually reading them. “Rest and relaxation have their place too, Miss Lambton.”
Not for years at a time. Restraining an unladylike huff, Belinda hunted up the leadership section and picked up the most worn volume and sat down with that and Trade by Water to make use of the reading spells. The gilded title on the worn cover elicited a double-take as she laid it on the desk. On Kingly Behavior and the Rights of the People? Surely he wasn’t—
Her nose itched violently, drawing her thoughts away.
If she read enough books, she considered as she wrinkled her nose and tried not to scratch it, and asked enough educated questions, maybe she could stumble on a topic she could engage Beast in. Surely he’d have something to say about whatever area of responsibility he was reared to. If nothing else, he’d hardly let her be more informed than himself and would exert himself to something more than fairytales.
Belinda had a splitting headache when she sneaked back down to the library in the wee hours. It was a pity Lady Violetta hadn’t given her an ease of understanding spell to go with the reading spells.
One hand gripping a pillowcase and candle and the other gliding over the banister, she felt her way down the stairs. She wasn’t exactly sure why she wanted to make it harder on herself to ignore Beast’s forced proposals, but she figured obeying an enchantress was a good idea.
Once in the library, Belinda lit the candle in the low-burning fire, gathered books at random, scurried up the ladder, and began exchanging books and loading the language ones into the pillowcase pressed between her and the ladder.
The steady tick-tock of the grandfather clock, the slight chill of the night air, and the crackling of the dying fire eased her headache.
Or perhaps it was the effect of the soft, steady huff of breath against fur.
Belinda froze for six heartbeats, then turned slowly toward the fireplace. She could just see Beast’s arm dangling over the side of the enormous chair he was apparently using as a mattress. Was he too lazy even to go up to bed? It wasn’t as if he’d done anything useful during the day, that she could tell.
She eased down the ladder, her muscles pleasantly straining with the weight of the loaded pillowcase, and padded across the rug—a rather diseased-looking bear rug—to the door, then jerked to a halt, cursing herself. Beast was bound to want the books she’d purloined to study for his proposals, and when he couldn’t find them, he’d set the servants to hunting for them. If they found them in her room, he’d kick her out for sure. Maybe even eat her, as much as he loved to read. But the enchantress had warned her to get them all.
Belinda spied a half-open book on Beast’s lap. It wasn’t the volume of fairytales.
Curse her. All her curses upon herself!
Belinda set her stash down, then, swallowing hard, shuffled closer to Beast. Stopping about a foot from him, she slowly reached toward his lap. Don’t breathe. Don’t make a sound. You’ll be fine. Worst case, he’ll kick you out the gate to the wolves. Belinda shivered and pinched the edge of the book cover. It slid smoothly forward over his lap and off. She jerked it up and hurried to put it in her pillowcase, but the firelight caught on an unexpected word: Tactics. Belinda turned the cover toward her and
held up the candle. Naval Tactics of New Grimmland. She cocked an eyebrow. Was her scheme working already?
Or was it simply something to fall asleep by? It wasn’t as if New Beaumont and New Grimmland, though trade competitors, were ever likely to go to war. Come to think of it, hadn’t Winthrop mentioned that they were doing some maneuvers together?
Beast shifted, and Belinda darted behind the mate to Beast’s enormous chair. He returned to his even breathing. She waited nine heartbeats this time, then crept out and laid the naval book beside Beast’s chair, next to a thick envelope. Sneaking a peek at Beast, Belinda picked up the envelope, rubbing her itching nose. She blinked as she struggled to make out the handwriting and seal. The spell must be wearing off, for she couldn’t make sense of a thing she read.
Or maybe it was the hour and the returning headache. She could investigate Beast’s identity in the morning.
She retrieved her bag and looked around the room again, pausing at the language shelf. What if he did search for the books? Why had she listened to that enchantress? She couldn’t even do a proper curse! She—
Belinda’s gaze flew back to the little desk she’d claimed. Her lips twisted into a wicked grin. There was more than one way to skin a beast down to his human hide.
Chapter 4
Belinda didn’t expect to fall asleep quickly in a strange—a very strange—new place, but she did, and she dreamed.
Beast jumped up and down, pushing out a cloud of smoke-like breath into the gray dawn of the castle lawn. Yawning, he jogged in place for a moment before reaching down to touch his toes.
“Good luck this morning, Master.” The masculine voice came from a smaller cloud of escaping breath. “Will you be bringing back anyone with you today?” Beast’s fur overcoat appeared near the mist, and Beast took it and pulled it on.
“I sincerely hope not, Jenkins,” Beast said, shrugging his shoulders to get the fur to hang to his satisfaction. “Right, I’m off.”