A Deal to Be Done

by Lucy Leven

  The Beast moved, a slow press and push of torment, of utter, wanton pleasure. In time — in glorious, sparking, shivering time — Nicolette found her release anew with the heat of the water around her, and the fiercer, hotter heat of the Beast sheathed deep within.

  The Beast’s Ball

  A ball was to be held in the castle, in the grand and gilded ballroom.

  “A ball?” Nicolette echoed, disbelieving, when the Beast told her so. She trailed after him, across the expanse of the ballroom, through the busy bustle of servants the Beast had conjured from smoke and shadow.

  “Yes, a ball,” the Beast said. He stopped, suddenly, confusingly, to consider a resplendent arrangement of flowers on a plinth by the door. “Do I not look like a man who enjoys a good ball, lass?”

  Nicolette could only stare at him, open-mouthed. “You look like a man who enjoys anything but.”

  “Ha!” The Beast’s attention retuned once more to the flowers. “More roses, lad.”

  “Yes, my lord,” said a footman, tipping a bow as he passed their way.

  “But— but why?” Nicolette managed, her voice as stuttering as her thoughts.

  The Beast smiled, and that smile made a decent attempt towards sincerity, but Nicolette could spy the mischief in it still. “You have worked hard to learn your letters,” he said. “You should have a reward for your endeavours, should you not?”

  “A reward?” Nicolette said, confounded, and never had she felt more a dunce than in that very moment.

  “A ball,” the Beast said, “and you, dripped in jewels and draped in silks, where any number of rich and handsome men will dote upon you, with the thought to make you their beautiful, witty wife.”

  Nicolette’s brow creased at the echo of those words she had spoken to him weeks ago in the library. “A ball…” she said. “A husband…” And her voice trailed off as the pieces finally took shape in her mind. “The ball would be in my honour, Beast?”

  “Entirely,” the Beast said, nodding, and on the doing of it seemed to notice Nicolette’s discombobulation. He reached out to trace a thumb across her cheekbone, to smooth back a fallen lock of her hair. “And you would be the belle of that ball, sweet lass.”

  “The belle…” For but a moment, clear and bright, Nicolette saw herself in her own mind’s eye: saw herself spinning a dance, the skirts of her beautiful gown like the whirl of a winter wind, her diamonds aglow like embers of a sleeping fire. “I think I should like that very much,” she said.

  “Somehow,” the Beast said upon a low, warming chuckle, “I had thought that you might.”

  Carriage after fine carriage swept down the castle’s grand carriageway, past the equally grand iron fire baskets that blazed to light their way. Nicolette could never recall having seen the carriageway before, nor the fire baskets, but such was life in the castle, with its smoke-shadows and its hidden hands.

  She watched the comings and goings from a window a little way up one of the taller towers, high enough to be hidden yet, but close enough to see. And watch.

  Watch as the Beast’s guests hastened into the castle, their thick cloaks heavy with the finest furs, affording but glimpses of their silks and velvets and jewels.

  Nicolette’s own gown, in which the castle’s hands had carefully dressed her, was of watered silk, a deep and floral pink, the embroidery picked out in threads of shining gold, the pearls exquisite in their pearlescent white. The sparkling diadem of pink diamonds in her hair was perfectly matched to her beloved parure, and to the tiny diamonds caught up in a gilded net she wore at the nape of her neck, the fall of her hair gathered there, a golden, coiled knot.

  She had taken her reflection in an ornate looking glass the castle had conjured for just that purpose, and she had thought then that perhaps she looked beautiful — truly so. And later, the appreciative murmur as the Beast led her down the ballroom’s wide, sweeping staircase, seemed to suggest that she did not think wrongly.

  Her dainty slippered feet had barely touched the ballroom’s gleaming floor before some young gentleman, whose cravat was pinned with a ruby as large as a quail’s egg, swept her up into the joyful dancing. A young officer, fine to look at in his bottle-green uniform, his hair as golden as hers, had her hand for the next dance. Then an elegant man, older than her, handsome though plainly dressed, his beard neatly trimmed. Then another man, and another, and another still, twirling her without end.

  Indeed, Nicolette danced so much and so vigorously that soon she had to excuse herself, and had to stop a moment at the edge of the springing dance floor to find her breath.

  And then she had to fight to hide the little thrill of surprise that sparkled through her when Willeme came to stand beside her in silence, dipping a typically uninspiring bow.

  Nicolette had not known he was to attend the ball. In fact, surprise took her — both that he had come at all, and that he had come to talk with her.

  Still, she did not turn towards him. Pretended, instead, while she sipped upon her iced cordial, only interest in the spinning, whirling dance. But her eyes she cut to his way when she was certain he could not see. “And will you not ask me to dance, Willeme?”

  A sharp shake of his head. “It is not my place, my lady.”

  “But I have a dance on my card yet to be filled.” A lie. Every dance on her card was filled a time and a time over. But Willeme need not know that.

  “Still, I should not think it proper, my lady. I am but your humble servant.”

  “You are the Beast’s man of business,” Nicolette snapped, her patience gone. “You are no servant, and certainly not one of mine.”

  “A matter of definition, my lady,” came the bland reply.

  Willeme. The gods! He was always so dour and sour and gloomy. What did it matter that he would not dance with her? And what did it matter what the castle thought or what the Beast said. How could Willeme be her heart’s desire? How could her heart desire something so terribly dull?

  It was nothing, then, but simple relief when her fine officer came back to claim her hand again, then a man whose glittering orders marked him as the highest of nobility.

  She danced dance upon dance upon dance — dances whose steps she had never be taught, but whose steps she knew all the same. It was as if the castle’s kind hands and the Beast’s warm, golden magic guided her feet and steadied her spins, as if they wished the ball to be the most wonderful affair, one that she would always remember, and always cherish.

  Still, such was the vigour of that dancing, that it was no small relief when the musicians in their gallery struck up a gentle, quietening tune, and the dancers stopped for watered wine and sugared cordials, for sweet, cooling ices, and for conversation.

  And from the exuberant crowd that soon gathered around him, it was clear that the person with whom the guests most wished to speak was the Beast.

  From afar, Nicolette watched how they orbited around him, eager that they might catch his attention for but a word or two. And most often, a word or two was all they were afforded. In fact, it was only to a select few guests that the Beast paid more attention than the merest of courtesies would require, and it was thus that Nicolette saw to whom the Beast paid most attention of all.

  A woman.

  A fine and upright figure. The wife of a merchant, or so the obliging gossips informed Nicolette. And a rich merchant that husband must have been, for the lady’s gown was understated and unadorned in the manner of only the terribly wealthy. Her jewels were unmistakably magnificent though. Sapphires as dark a blue as the velvet gown she wore, and rubies, deep and red, sparkling in the shining, coiled knot of her hair.

  She was, perhaps, of her early middle years, but only the faintest of lines feathering her eyes betrayed that. Her hair was as black as the night, no silver in it.

  Madame de La Roche, the Beast called her, when the time came for them to be introduced.

  “And my newest ward,” he said, his voice warm with some joke Nicolette knew not. “Nicolette.”


  Nicolette curtsied low, an affection she had practiced almost as much as the knowing of her letters.

  But it seemed Madame de La Roche did not wish for such attentions or affections. She took Nicolette’s hands and drew her upwards, and then tipped her chin up in turn so that she might take in Nicolette’s face more clearly.

  Her brow creased faintly upon the doing so. “Your father was a blacksmith, was he not?”

  “Yes, my lady,” Nicolette said, so overcome with her own confusion that she gave no thought to owning so humble beginnings to a woman such as the Madame. “In the village beyond the forest. He died when I was young yet, and my mother I never knew.”

  A shade of sadness passed across Madame de La Roche’s eyes. “He stayed then,” she said, not quite a question, so Nicolette did not answer. “Come,” she said, drawing Nicolette away from the Beast and the ball. “We will talk outside, I think.”

  To the ballroom’s tall glazed doors they went, and then out of them. The busy noise of the ball faded behind them, and the air outside was sharp and bitingly cold, and a welcome respite from the heat inside.

  “How is it that you know the Beast, my lady?” Nicolette asked, though she suspected she knew the answer. For if the Beast found need to employ Willeme, it would be no surprise that he must have some business in the Capital and across the far-flung seas. And Madame de La Roche was the wife of a merchant. Perhaps she had hosted fine dinners in honour of the Beast, perhaps she had—

  “I know the Beast in much the same manner as you know him,” Madame de La Roche said, amusement in her tone and in her sharp, dark eyes. “I was once also his ward.”

  “You—” Realisation washed over Nicolette. “You were the last tithe.” Her gasp was loud, though hardly a disturbance to the joyful chaos of the ballroom beyond, or to the crystalline hush of the gardens. “You are Cecille,” she said.

  Madame de La Roche tipped her chin. “Indeed.”

  Cecille. The tithe who had come before, a score of years past. The tithe, the whispers said, who had lived. The tithe, the whispers said, who had sent them.

  “The whispers…” Nicolette said, her voice barely more than that very same hush. “Your whispers…”

  Madame de La Roche smiled, slight but true. “They reached you then?”

  “They did. We all heard them, all the womenfolk, though most of us scarcely believed them.”

  “In your place,” Madame de La Roche said, “I doubt I would have believed them either. But still, I had to try. If it saved but one of you girls, I had to try.”

  “You did save me,” Nicolette told her, overcome with gratitude. “The Beast saved me, my lady. I should have died of the cold, had I spent but a night in the forest.”

  Madame de La Roche regarded her with a look of quiet contemplation. “Did he come to you in his beastly form, I wonder?”

  “He did,” Nicolette said. She shivered a little at the memory, though that shiver was too hot to be fear. “With his eyes aglow and his horns of shadow.”

  “He knew you to be brave then.” Madame de La Roche nodded, satisfied. “And full of wonder. For you knew that no matter how beastly he appeared, he was nothing to fear.”

  “Because I believed him.” It was Nicolette’s turn to nod. “And I believed your whispers — in the end.”

  “Good,” the Madame said, smiling. “Then when you are gone from the castle, my lass, you must send out whispers of your own. Let them intertwine with mine and grow in the doing of it. You must promise me that, Nicolette.”

  But Nicolette could promise nothing of the sort. Her mind had stuck only upon one word the Madame had said. “Gone…?”

  “Indeed.” Madame de La Roche cocked her head, a curious echo of the Beast. “There is a whole world to know beyond this castle, beyond this forest and this valley. Is not that world already calling to you?”

  A ball, the Beast had said, where any number of rich and handsome men will dote upon you, with the thought to make you their beautiful, witty wife.

  Somehow, in all her excitement, Nicolette had not taken those words to the truth of their meaning. The ball was to find her a husband, to make her the possession of yet another man, trapped in yet another marriage bed.

  Nicolette could not help the little huff of laughter that left her, could not help the taint of bitterness that soured her countenance. How had she not realised? And how had her realisation only just come to her? “The Beast holds this ball for he wishes to find me a husband and parcel me off. Just as you say, he wishes me gone.”

  She said those words, perhaps, expecting kind words of sympathy in return. But Madame de La Roche only laughed, a wonderfully inelegant snort. “He wishes you gone no more than he wishes the moon might fall from the sky. The ball is not to find you a husband, girl. You are the Beast’s ward, and so you are rich in coin and in reputation both. Richer than any husband could ever make you. You need not marry if you do not wish it. You might marry a pauper, indeed, if you loved him well enough. The choice is yours to make.”

  “A pauper?”

  “Or a prince,” Madame de La Roche said. “Any man you choose.” She smiled, and it was a smile of such knowing and such understanding as to make Nicolette feel terribly young and foolish.

  “The ball is for your enjoyment, and for your pleasure, and for those two things alone. The Beast likes well to gift pleasure. And of that, I’m sure you know.” The Madame said those words on the raising of one knowing, amused brow.

  And Nicolette felt her cheeks heat in reply. “Indeed, my lady. I know that very well.”

  The Madame’s mouth joined her brown in curved amusement. “Now,” she said, “let us back to the ballroom. Our men will be looking for us.”

  And indeed, it was a measure of Nicolette’s lingering bewilderment that she had no thought to correct the Madame, but correct her she should have — for, indeed, what man did Nicolette have?

  To the sparkling warmth of the ballroom, where Madame de La Roche’s handsome husband spun her away, though not into the whirling, laughing crush of dancers. To the grand staircase instead, then through the doors to the shadows beyond.

  Another officer, more senior than the last, asked for the next dance, but Nicolette declined him. After her sojourn in the garden, the heat and the noise of the ballroom had become too pressing again. She thought that she, like the Madame and her husband, might retire to the quiet of the castle proper for a moment or two, to find her breath there in the calm coolness. Or perhaps she might even venture to the library, to collect herself and her spinning thoughts.

  Yes. The library. That was where she would go.

  But her feet had borne her but halfway there when a strange sound caught Nicolette’s ear. It may have been a voice, one crying out, but so distorted was it by the castle’s twists and turns and thick stone walls that Nicolette could make no sense of it, though she followed it all the same.

  Followed it up twining stone stairways and down long vaulted passageways, followed it until the castle around her took shape into something more familiar, and all at once, Nicolette knew where she was: the torch-lit space at the door to the Beast’s chamber.

  It was there, as she stilled, that the noise came again, and it was a noise Nicolette knew just as well as her familiar surroundings. A woman’s moan — a moan shaped of pure ecstasy and of building pleasure.

  Nicolette’s breath caught on the realising. Beyond the heavy door, the Beast was tumbling someone, and tumbling her well indeed from the sound of it.

  One of his guests, surely? Some beautiful woman in a beautiful gown he had plucked from the dancing crowd? That thought sparked a flare of heat deep within that was both vexing and harkening. And it was a heat that would not lessen. Her imagination flared, the thrilling sight of those imaginings taking shape in her mind’s eye.

  Oh, but how she wanted to see the real thing. And surely her curiosity would be sated if she stole but one small peek…

  With a quick glance behind herse
lf, Nicolette lifted her skirts and bent low so that she might steal a glance through the keyhole.

  And what she saw—

  Madame de La Roche. Cecille. Laid out on the bed as the Beast took her, long and well.

  Nicolette gasped, a startlingly loud sound in the quiet hush of the low, little vestibule. A sound so loud it sent her heart beating double-time. What if they had heard? What if the Beast had heard?

  But oh, how foolish. The door was thick and locked. There was no way anyone could—

  With a snap of his head, the Beast looked to the doorway, his eyes golden and aflame, as if somehow he could see through a clear handspan of solid oak.

  Nicolette froze in her ungainly crouch. Indeed, it felt as if her feverish heart stopped beating in her chest. And frozen she stayed — until the Beast looked away. Until he looked back down to the woman he tumbled with his wondrous prick and his clever hands and his unforgiving tongue.

  Whatever pleasure he administered then, whatever words he bent to whisper in her ear, they sparked another moan from the Madame. It stirred, in turn, a whine from Nicolette, one she had to bite her knuckle to hide, trying so hard not to be heard.

  But the Madame’s moan had barely quietened when the Beast pulled back from her, one last lingering kiss, and stepped away from the high bed.

  Nicolette was all confusion. The Beast had not spent his pleasure. And if the Madame had, it was not like the Beast to leave her so, caught at the edge of her next release.

  And thus Nicolette remained in confusion, until, that is, from the shadows the Madame’s husband stepped, and took his place between his wife’s spread-wide thighs.

  He pressed into her heat, deep into her core, sparking another shivering cry of pleasure and want from the Madame. He looked a little like the Beast, her husband. Not nearly so tall nor so broad, but with his dark hair and his sunwarm skin…

  And so it was as a strange echo in Nicolette’s eyes and in Nicolette’s mind when the Beast stepped up behind Madame de La Roche’s husband and took him, just as long and just as well, in the way men sometimes took other men.