He pinched the bridge of his nose between two fingers. “Well, I know that whatever happened to me last night, I didn’t break out of this cell. All I can think is that somehow the door failed to lock. I don’t know, perhaps it jammed. I’ll make certain it is secure tonight. I have contacted Godmother Elena, or rather, I have sent her a message, so if she doesn’t already know by her own methods about what has happened to you, she will soon know from me. I have also arranged for Granny to come here.” He smiled wanly. “That was fairly simple. I just rode out to the cottage and asked her to come.”
Bella had to throttle down her indignation. What? He could come and go as he pleased, but she was a virtual prisoner here?
But good sense completed the throttling. He had no reason to trust that she wouldn’t run off—after all, hadn’t she actually been contemplating just that?—so of course she was a virtual prisoner, at least for now.
Wait, hadn’t he just said he had ridden out?
“I thought horses couldn’t abide werewolves,” she replied, watching as he carefully oiled the lock mechanism.
“Mine are fine with me as long as I’m not hairy,” he replied absently. “I really don’t know if that has something to do with me, or is another sign that I’m not the usual sort of werewolf. I would have asked you to come along, but you were asleep, and I didn’t know if you could ride.”
She bit her lip. “Not…very well,” she admitted. “I mean, I can ride a hired horse that has to be goaded into anything faster than a walk, but…”
“Ah.” He contemplated her for a long moment. “I don’t think I actually have anything you would feel safe in riding. All my horses are…well…spirited. And large. Hunters, actually. They—erm—like to jump.”
She swallowed. The one time she had been on a horse that had jumped over anything, she had nearly felt her heart stop. She considered herself to be brave, but to be nearly the height of a man above the ground, on something that was moving, that then attempted to fly through the air—well, it had been unexpected and rather unwelcome. “Perhaps…not,” she said.
“If you end up remaining here for a while, I can see about getting a mule?” he offered.
“I hope I won’t, but that might be an option.” A mule, now, that would be better. She liked mules, although Genevieve would have been horrified at the idea of riding something so plebeian. Mules were quiet and sensible, and although you couldn’t get one to move very quickly, they were also a great deal more comfortable to ride than horses.
“Well, Granny said she will come in the next few days.” He smiled. “At least she will be company for you. Who knows? She might have some good ideas.” He looked as if he might say more, but she saw his sleeve moving vigorously, as if something was tugging on it. “And I beg your pardon, but sunset is drawing near, and I would really rather be certain that I was locked up securely. Follow your servant—that was a good idea with the armbands, by the way. Your servant will either take you to the dining room, or your own rooms, and bring you dinner there, if you like.”
Involuntarily, the memory of that horrible beast trying to dig her out of her flimsy shelter last night swept across her, and she shivered. Charming as Duke Sebastian might be, she had no desire to encounter the wolf again. Ever. She had the feeling she wouldn’t be so lucky a second time.
“Good evening, then,” she said, and turned to follow the floating scarf out into the cellars. Just as she reached the staircase, she heard the cell door slamming firmly, followed by a heavy rattling as Duke Sebastian tested it.
She hesitated at the top of the stairs. The dining room was impressive but…it would be odd and lonely to sit by herself at that enormous table. “I would like dinner brought to my rooms, please,” she told the invisible servant, which turned back toward the direction from which they had come.
She had a very good memory for direction, evidently. Where such a thing had come from, she had no idea, but she found she didn’t really have to follow the floating armband; she was picking out her way without its help. But when they got to her rooms—and she was resolved to try the other doors on that corridor, just to see what was in those rooms!—she was quite glad that she had left Duke Sebastian when she had. It must have been much, much later than she had thought, because the light coming in through the windows had a distinctly golden-orange tint.
I must have slept far longer than I thought. Sunset cannot be far. She went to the window to look, but the high walls around the courtyard prevented her from seeing anything other than the sky. To her left, it was a very deep blue, and to her right, getting redder by the moment. The courtyard was so deeply in shadow that all she could see were the mounded hummocks of snow-covered bushes.
She turned toward the armband. “I would like to go to the kitchen, please.”
The armband went absolutely still, as if with shock.
She tapped her good foot impatiently. “I am accustomed to running a household,” she told it. “I write the menus. How can I know what to order for dinner unless I see what is in the pantries?”
And I can only pray that my orders are holding at home, or there will be war in the kitchen and nothing will be edible….
There had to be a way to get word from home. And to home! Her poor father must be frantic. Genevieve, of course, wouldn’t notice unless things started going wrong, but the twins would certainly miss her, if only because they would be missing out on more of the Guild festivals. Surely she could appeal to the better sensibilities of the staff at this point to pull together and—
She stopped, right there. Of course she could. The servants were probably just as upset about this as anyone; she had always treated them decently, and as if they were human beings and not automata without feelings and lives. She needed to get word back to them, not to chide them, but to reassure them.
Heaven only knows what wild rumors and crazed stories they are hearing now. It stood to reason that if the King had gone to all this trouble to keep the truth of Duke Sebastian’s condition secret, he would not be breaking that secret by allowing her family and household the truth.
Genevieve would have it spread all over the city before you could say gossip.
She realized that she had been standing there, lost in thought, while the armband waited.
“Do you have a name?” she asked it. I cannot keep thinking of it as an armband or an invisible servant, she thought. Especially since there are more of them.
The armband did not bob. “I assume that means that you don’t,” she said to it. “Then is it all right if I give you one? It won’t be terribly original, I am afraid. I would like you to all wear different colored scarves or ribbons on your arms, and I will call you after the colors of those.”
The armband bobbed enthusiastically. “Very well, then, you are Verte,” she told it. The scarf was a very verdant green indeed. With luck, any other “green” servant would bear a different enough color that she could use Verdigris, Emerald, Lime and so forth.
“So, Verte, would you please take me to the kitchen?”
The scarf—Verte—bobbed slowly. She sensed reluctance. Oh, well, that didn’t change the fact that she couldn’t order menus without knowing what was on hand. The waste that had prevailed at breakfast was not the sort of thing she wanted to see continue, pleasant though it had been.
She took the precaution of taking a candle with her. It was going to be dark soon. She resolutely turned her mind away from what moonrise would bring. She really didn’t much want to think about it.
The trip followed the same path that Verte had followed to get to the cellar, which only made sense, but turned off before they got to the staircase. Whoever had built this place must have decided that the kitchen area could easily be a point of penetration, for they proceeded down yet another murder-corridor.
She wondered if these servants ever thought about that—or if they knew what the corridors were. At some point she was going to have to find a better way to communicate with them. This was very one
-sided, and she was beginning to doubt the Duke’s assertion that they were not very bright.
Well, it seemed that the servants might be invisible, but they still needed light. Verte sped ahead to open the door at the end of the corridor, and a flood of light and the scent of baking bread spilled out of it. She walked into a kitchen that was just as commodious and well-ordered as the rest of the Manor had been.
It was also uncannily quiet.
It looked unnervingly as if the kitchen had been abandoned in midpreparations. That was just an illusion, of course; a spoon poised in midair over a bowl proved that the servants were still here. She cleared her throat.
“First, I would like to tell you that I very much enjoyed breakfast,” she said into the silence. “You are all very, very good. However… Oh, dear. I hate to call this a problem but—still, it is. There was far more food prepared than either of us could eat. I am told that the only other person here is the Gamekeeper, and I rather doubt he could have devoured the remainder by himself, not unless he is actually a Fire Elemental in disguise.”
The spoon slowly lowered into the bowl. Otherwise there was no other sign from the servants.
“Verte, are you and your fellows eating what remains when a meal is done?” she asked the servant still at her side.
The armband waved from side to side.
“So you are disposing of it?” Bobbing. “To the poor of the city?” Waving. “Merely throwing it on the midden?” Bobbing. She tried not to show how appalled she was.
She took on a firmer tone of voice. “That sort of waste must stop. Don’t worry. I am going to help you. I shall do what I have done at home—I shall write out menus for you, and you will follow them. Do not concern yourself with the Duke. He is a man, and in my experience, since I’ve fed my father’s workers when he’s given them a dinner as a thank-you, and when I have ordered dinners for my father’s guests, as long as the food is as good as I know you can make it, and there is enough of it, he really will not care what it is. Now…could the lot of you please put on some sort of armband, as Verte has? And stick a sprig of herb into it so I can tell you apart.”
There was a general…flurry and scuttle, was the best way she could describe it; when everything settled out, it appeared that there were a dozen servants here. Rosemary, Basil, Thyme, Mint, Parsley, Sage, Bay, Mustard, Lavender, Fennel, Lovage and Rue.
“Which of you is the chief cook?” she asked. Thyme stepped forward. Well, drifted. “I should like you to come to my room every morning for the menus,” she told it. It bobbed. “And now I should like to see your stores.”
She emerged from the storerooms, the pantries and cupboards with her head reeling. There was enough food here to supply an army under siege for a month. She supposed there was some sort of magic preserving it, otherwise she could not imagine how it all kept from rotting away.
Why would they keep so much on hand? Was it that they were still holding stores for the horde of human servants such a Manor would require? Or was it only that they were so isolated?
I suppose that they don’t often get supplies, she mused, a little dazed. So they have to keep things stocked up. Still!
It appeared that virtually anything she wanted to order for menus, she could.
“What are you making now?” she asked Thyme, who displayed the lovely little dinner loaves she had smelled being taken out of the oven, and a finished meat pie of some sort. “I shall have a hot loaf, butter, a piece of that pie so big, asparagus, a watercress sallat, and cheese and fruit for dessert,” she told it. “I shall have wine with the meal and a cordial with dessert. I assume that when the Duke…is himself again, he is ravenous?”
Thyme bobbed.
“Very well, then, split the remainder of the pie between him and the Gamekeeper. Squash with butter, the bread, mashed turnips, a cheese course with the bread, a soup to start and cakes to finish. Plenty of wine or ale, whatever they usually drink.” Sebastian would probably not notice; she hadn’t seen him drinking very much. But Eric was the sort of man who would think himself ill-done-by if he didn’t have his drink. The very last thing she wanted to do was make him think she was being heavy-handed with him on that score. “I should like you to always keep a soup of some sort ready. Two, if possible—a thin, broth-based soup, and a thicker soup, pea or a soup with thick gravy. If either of them seems to be discontented with the amount of food served, add a second soup course, and if that does not serve, fry some fish and add a nice sauce.”
Thyme bobbed with enthusiasm, and there were little stirrings about the kitchen, as if her reforms were being greeted with pleasure rather than unhappiness. She tilted her head to the side. “You are all discontented because so much food returns from the dining room uneaten, yes?”
Now the entire room was full of bobbing armbands.
So much for them being not very bright.
“That is simply because you were giving them more than they could ever possibly eat. We will change that. Platters will return mostly empty and you will know that you have done a very good job.” She smiled around the kitchen. “Now, if either the Duke or the Gamekeeper expresses a demand for something other than what I have ordered on the menu, make it for him. It will probably be beef or venison. A steak will be easy and fast to cook. Always obey the men about food, even if it contradicts my menu.” There was no point in making life difficult for the servants, and there was so much food here that such simple additions would not make much difference.
Again, the armbands bobbed. This was the most satisfying thing that had happened to her all day.
“I am going to have a hot bath, and I would like my dinner waiting when I am done. Thank you all very much.” She turned toward the door, which Verte took as the signal that they were to go back to her rooms. But before she had quite reached the door, there was a tugging at her skirt, and she turned to find an enormous bunch of lavender being held out for her—
When she took it, she saw that it was Thyme that had presented it.
Well! It seems I have struck a chord! She held it to her nose and inhaled, smiling. “Thank you,” she repeated. “This is lovely! And one of my favorite flowers!”
Where on earth are they getting fresh lavender at this season? she wondered as she made her way back to her rooms. Ah, well. The same place the rose and the other flowers came from, I suppose. If this was Sebastian’s doing, he was a much more powerful magician than he claimed to be. And if it was the Godmother’s doing—it argued a level of interest in Sebastian and his welfare that was unusual, to say the least.
The bath was heavenly; her dinner was waiting, perfectly hot and ready, when she came out, clothed in a flannel nightdress and a warm dressing gown. Verte bandaged her foot again when she had finished eating, and she made a random selection of the books to take with her to bed.
That was when it all hit her, as she settled into the comfortable, soft bed with books she had selected—why had she proceeded to take over the ordering of the household as if she was in charge of it? As something more to distract her from a situation that was as horrible as a velvet-lined prison in which she was to await her sentence?
Because that was, long and short of it, what this was.
The bed might have been warmed, but there was a hard, cold lump inside her, a frozen ball of fear that nothing was going to thaw.
And she could try to distract herself all she liked with taking over and ordering this household as she did her own, with trying to make sense and allies out of the strange creatures that passed for servants, but that did not change the fact that in a month’s time, she might well find herself locked in a cell beside Duke Sebastian—
As if to drive that thought home, a long, heartbroken howl throbbed through the corridors of Redbuck Manor.
Isabella Beauchamps burst into uncontrollable tears.
In the end, she stopped crying, not because she had run out of fear and grief, not because she was too tired and wept-out to continue, but because there was an insiste
nt tugging at the coverlet she huddled beneath.
She turned over, and started to dry her eyes on her sleeve, when a lavender-scented handkerchief was thrust into her hand.
She took it, too tired to be angry that one of the invisibles had violated her privacy and seen her crying. “Verte?” she croaked.
The floating fabric was a ribbon, not a scarf, and blue, not green. “Oh. You will be Sapphire, then,” she said, and blinked her sore eyes in surprise when a child’s slate and a bit of chalk floated into view.
“We R Veri sori,” the chalk scratched onto the slate.
“It’s not your fault,” she sniffed, dabbing at her eyes and blowing her nose. “If anything, it’s my own stupid fault. I was the one who tried to go home through the woods after dark.”
The previous words were erased. “Erk shud have warned U.”
“Well, yes, he should, instead of trying to bully me into indecencies,” she said, a rekindling of her anger burning away a little of the grief. “Especially since it was the full moon!”
“Erk sposed to guard wuds at ful moon.”
“As you can see, he didn’t do a very good job of it.” She sighed, and her throat closed again. “I don’t belong here. I don’t want to be here. I want to go home!” The last came out in a little wail.
An invisible hand patted her knee through the coverlet. “We like U. Not B sad, Godmuther fix.”
Privately she could not imagine how. If the Godmother had not been able to fix Sebastian’s werewolfery after all these years, how could she expect the Godmother to help her? But instead of saying so, and descending into inconsolable crying again, she made an effort to put a good face on things. No amount of crying was going to change what had already happened. All she could do was fight to fix it, or find ways to cope if the worst came. “I hope so,” she replied.
“Godmuther fix evrthing.”
If only that were true. She felt her eyes starting to burn again. No matter how hard she tried to make herself brave and practical—it didn’t stop the fear.
Beauty and the Werewolf Page 7