“I could,” he admitted. “The trouble is, we’ve struggled a great deal with bringing in any outside contractors. They tend to forget about the castle entirely the moment the contract is signed.”
She rolled her eyes. “The curse really is a headache,” she noted, less than amused by that knowledge.
“You aren’t joking.” Griffin sighed tiredly. “Every time I think I’ve discovered every way it can possibly limit us, a new one rears its ugly head.” He grimaced. “On the bright side, I’ve almost figured out all of its little permutations, so it has at least stopped surprising me.” He offered her a faint smile. “Also, Mrs. Martel really is a wonderful seamstress, and she takes care of all of our needs; so, since I’m sure you’re expecting the same gowns and jewels that your sisters acquired while they were here, you needn’t worry that there will be no way to—”
“Why?” Callista frowned at him.
“Excuse me?” Griffin frowned in return—or at least, that was what she thought the expression behind the fur was. It was difficult to tell.
“Why the gowns and jewels, of course!” Callista sighed theatrically. “Unless you think that what we came with wasn’t adequate.” She blushed suddenly as it occurred to her that, as a prince, Griffin might well expect much more of their evening dress than she and her sisters were able to produce, in spite of the fact that their father and brothers had all seen to it that they were outfitted very well.
“No—no, it’s not that at all! I just thought—” Griffin ducked his head. She wondered at the gesture until she realized that embarrassment filled his voice when he admitted, “I am trying my hand at wooing, you know.”
“Wooing?” Her eyebrows lifted entirely of their own accord.
“Well—it’s not as though it’s a traditional courtship, is it? But I can at least attempt to get off on the right foot, and—” Griffin grimaced. “Girls like gowns and jewels!” he grumbled irritably.
“Most girls, I suppose,” Callista agreed with a sniff.
“You don’t like gowns and jewels?” That frown was back on his face again.
“I don’t mind them, but they’re not the first way to my heart, either.” Callista hesitated, then added, “I don’t think they’re the right way to my sisters’, either. They kind of expect it, I think—that they’ll be taken care of, I mean—but they don’t find their hearts melting over it, either.”
Griffin growled. For a moment, she saw him as the monster that he appeared; but then she heard the genuine frustration beneath it, and her heartbeat steadied. “Well, what would be the way to your heart, then?” he demanded.
“I don’t know.” Callista toyed with a spoon without meeting his eyes. “I guess I haven’t ever thought about it.”
“Haven’t ever—” His hands tightened around his own spoon. Callista quickly stared down at her plate, but not before she realized that the spoon had been bent hopelessly out of shape. “What do you like, then?” he wanted to know. “Flowers? Chocolates?” The question sounded almost desperate.
“I like books.” Callista’s voice was very small.
“You like books,” Griffin said flatly.
She ducked her head still further, so that she couldn’t see him at all, and just nodded once.
The rest of the dinner was all too quiet. She was terrified that she had offended him in some way—terrified that she’d already set things wrong, and now he was going to send her back to her father in disgrace.
She hated the idea that she’d failed so easily. Even Millicent had managed to stay longer than this!
By the time dinner was over, Callista couldn’t wait to bolt from the table to the security of her room. She’d disappointed him. He wanted the kind of lady who was fascinated by jewels and dresses, where the truth was, she couldn’t care less. She’d tried to put effort into her appearance, but she was all too aware that her skirts usually ended up in disarray by the end of the day. She wasn’t the kind of young lady that anyone considered a brilliant companion, much less a future princess—and oh, she was all too aware that she certainly wasn’t beautiful.
She laid down across her bed, closed her eyes, and tried not to cry. This place might be filled with luxury, but she was fairly sure that for her, it was little more than a temporary stop in a life filled with…what?
Nothing. That was what—because that was what there had always been for her. God, I know that you have a plan for me. I know that. But I’m starting to wonder if I’m ever going to see what it is.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Questions and Answers
“Books. She likes books.” Griffin paced back and forth across the longest open stretch in his wing, wishing that he dared dart outside and just run as far as his legs could carry him—run until even his curse-enhanced body could no longer handle the strain. At least pacing burned some of the nervous energy. He had pushed himself as hard as he was able within the confines of the castle, but the downside to that was that he now required more effort to calm the pounding of his heart.
“It seems a simple enough thing,” Hemsworth pointed out cautiously—from across the room. Of course even his most devoted servant was standing across the room from him, because him in a temper with this new beastly form was downright terrifying!
Griffin flung his hands up. “Books are personal,” he snarled. “Picking out a book for another person is impossible. They’re so close to your heart—they depend so much on your interests, on what matters to you, on—” He growled, a low, deep sound that was all too satisfying to the part of him that had been trapped in this body for the last five years.
“Griffin,” Hemsworth warned him.
“It’s a big castle. She can’t possibly hear me from here,” he snapped. It was one of the reasons he was so adamant about keeping his room private: it kept anyone from being able to overhear him when he let the beast run free, however brief that exercise might be.
“I was thinking more that you should probably control yourself for your own sake. You remember what happened the last time,” Hemsworth pointed out quietly.
Griffin growled at him again—but oh, yes, he did remember what had happened the last time he’d let his temper run free. It hadn’t been pretty. He’d ended up injuring himself—and had very nearly injured more than just himself.
“So the girl likes books,” Hemsworth said lightly. “There has to be some way you can work that to your favor.”
“Gowns and jewels would be easier,” Griffin snapped.
“No one said the road to true love would run smoothly.” Hemsworth was all too familiar with him—and with his moods. He wasn’t going to simply stand there and let him snarl, no matter how satisfying the exercise might have been.
Griffin sighed, flexing his hands around the railing of the balcony. Living in an enchanted castle definitely had its advantages: when his talons gashed into the stone, it sealed itself within moments, as soon as he turned away.
Just his luck, he was going to finally break the curse, only to discover that all the damage he’d done to the castle over the last five years would come roaring back once more.
“Griffin,” Hemsworth warned again.
Griffin released the balcony and strode away. “All right, all right,” he grumbled. “I just have to find a way to use it to my advantage, right?”
“You could talk with the girl,” Hemsworth suggested. “Get to know her. Walk with her, perhaps, after dinner?”
Since he was actually able to eat at the table with Callista, this wasn’t as terrible a suggestion as it could have been. Griffin considered it for a long moment, then nodded decisively. “All right. I’ll walk with her, learn more about her, and then it will be easier to select a book that she will enjoy.” Or maybe many books that she would enjoy. He could do that, couldn’t he?
“You see? You just have to take a moment to think it through,” Hemsworth encouraged.
“Don’t be condescending,” Griffin snapped.
“Not I, your highness.” Hems
worth’s eyes sparkled with poorly concealed amusement. “There’s something different about this one, isn’t there?
“The fact that she doesn’t like jewelry, for example?” Griffin muttered.
“That’s a start,” Hemsworth agreed. “The fact that she has you eating dinner without your mask, at the table with her, says something about her character, too.”
“Fear of the unknown—”
“Kindness.” The correction was delivered in a low, calm voice, but Griffin felt the rebuke to his toes nonetheless. “Allow her the virtue. Give her permission to surprise you. She might just be the one.”
“You’ve said that about every lady that’s come through here.” He’d even said it about Millicent, and it had been obvious from the first day how much of a disaster that was going to be.
“The truth is, Griffin, any one of them could be the one,” Hemsworth pointed out quietly. “Don’t reject her—or yourself—before you have a chance to get to know her. It could change at any moment, as you well know.”
“Or she could run screaming from the house tomorrow,” Griffin reminded him bleakly. He wanted God to hear him. He trusted that his prayers would be answered. All too often of late, however, he’d felt that they just…weren’t.
Maybe that was even part of the curse: keeping his prayers from doing anything more than bouncing off of the ceiling.
Griffin had wondered more than once what would happen if he died as a beast, instead of as a man. He wasn’t sure what would happen to his soul under those circumstances. No, it wasn’t his fault—not truly. But…
He closed his eyes, hating his lot in life. God, I can’t bear it, he prayed silently. I want to trust her, to believe that she could be the one who’s more than any of the others, but it’s so hard to trust, after all this time! I can’t bear to be disappointed again. Isn’t it easier to not open my heart at all?
Hemsworth just smiled, his opinion clear in his face—and, as it turned out, he was right. Callista didn’t go running from the house the next day, nor the one after that. When Griffin—very cautiously, terrified of rejection—invited her to go for a stroll with him after dinner, she paced alongside him without so much as a flicker of trepidation, treating him every bit the same way, he was sure, she would have treated any other young man who had asked her to take a walk with him. She wasn’t the same sort of unfailingly polite her sister had been—Callista was too likely to blurt out exactly what she was thinking, as she had when he’d mentioned the gowns—but she had a unique view of many situations that made her a fascinating conversationalist. In time, he actually found himself looking forward to their strolls, anticipating the all too few hours that he would spend in her company.
Callista had been at the castle for three weeks when she glanced over at him one night, not quite sure of herself. Her confidence had increased slowly; he had the feeling that she had accepted that he wasn’t just going to pitch her out, though she was still sometimes tentative around him. The enforced togetherness, with nearly no one else to talk to, made it easier to forget all that he was; but as he could never quite bring himself to forget, she, too, still held that hint of hesitation. “May I ask you something?” she wanted to know.
“Go ahead.” Griffin gestured calmly to her, giving her his full attention.
“What do you do during the day?”
It was an odd question. Griffin frowned at her.
Callista twisted her fingers together in front of her. “Well, it’s only…” She took a deep breath. “We’re supposed to be getting to know each other, aren’t we? So that you can see whether or not I’m the one who will help you break this curse?”
“Yes.” He gave her the short answer, waiting for the rest of her question.
“Then what are you doing all day, that you’re only able to come out and spend time with me at dinner time?” She ducked her head, clearly feeling too shy to meet his gaze while she waited for his answer.
“I hadn’t realized that you would be, ah, amenable to more frequent visits,” Griffin admitted cautiously.
“I see no reason not to do things during the day.” She darted a glance at him, then away again. “I wouldn’t want to take you away from anything important, of course, but if you did have the time in your schedule—”
“I have the time.” He might as well be honest with her. “The truth is, I have nothing but time in my schedule right now—no kingdom to manage, few people to talk to, you know how it is. I do practice my instruments, and I’ve been training physically—building my strength.” He blushed a bit at that. It seemed conceited, now that he thought about it, to constantly push his body the way he did. The gym hidden away in his wing of the castle was one of his few luxuries, these days. “And I’ve been, ah…well, there are some programs that my father and I wanted to implement across the kingdom. Mandatory education for all children under the age of fourteen—that was one of them. We’d worked hard toward it, and of course it’s forgotten now. I keep up with the latest news, make sure I’m familiar with what’s going on around the kingdom so that someday, I’ll be able to take up the reins of rule again without making it a difficult transition for everyone. That sort of thing. But—” Now it was his turn to hesitate. “I didn’t want to force my company on you—but it’s true that those things don’t take up nearly as much of my day as I’d like.”
“It wouldn’t be forcing,” Callista said softly. “And I, um…I’d like to hear you play, if you’d like to share your music with me.”
He studied her. Because she wanted to spend more time with him, or simply because she was bored? And if it came right down to it, did it really matter why she had approached him tonight, so long as the result was that he was able to spend more time in her company?
He was drawn to her—he had to admit that. Whether this was love—well, who could tell? She had been here for barely two weeks, and thanks to the curse, he had the promise that it would be a year and a day together before he could be absolutely certain of his bride-to-be.
Callista was certainly off to a sparkling start, though.
Griffin considered her for a long moment. “Do you ride?” he wanted to know. He wasn’t willing to open his music up to her yet. She could well appreciate it; but she might also not understand how difficult it was to play many instruments with the beastly claws.
Callista nodded—perhaps a little too eagerly. Either she truly did love horses or she was trying her best to convince him that she was better than her sisters, better than the others who had come before her.
He wasn’t sure it mattered which one it was at the moment.
“I enjoy a good ride in the countryside—there are places where we can ride for miles without any chance of running into anyone, if we can just get past the village.” He took a deep breath. This was the hard part: the part when he learned whether or not she was just doing an excellent job of hiding her fear of him. If she was frightened, there was no chance that she would be willing to spend a day unchaperoned in his company—at least, that was what he was hoping for. “Would you like to go for a ride with me tomorrow?”
“I’d like that,” Callista admitted. She had that shining look in her big blue eyes again—the one that he was fairly sure men would send out armies in order to bring to her face. “Actually, I’d like that a lot.”
Did she mean it? His traitorous heart flipped over at the thought, bringing him a hint of joy for the first time in a very long time. He wanted her to mean it—wanted her to trust him.
It made dinner a little warmer than before.
*****
That night, for the first time in the weeks she’d been at the castle, Callista didn’t throw herself onto the bed in despair. Tonight, she bounced down with a feeling of anticipation—hopeful, for the first time, that she might not be making a complete mess out of everything. Please, God, she prayed silently. It doesn’t matter if he falls in love with me, not really. I know I’m not anyone’s first choice, especially when he’s had girls like—
like Erin, and Millicent, and all the others who have been through here to compare me to. But if we can become friends…I think I’d like to be friends. There was something about Griffin that drew her, something that made her trust him even though he’d said little to her thus far. He was a good man, underneath that beastly exterior—she was sure of it.
And anyway, who am I to talk about appearances? He might not be handsome, but what about me? She’d spent her fair share of time in front of a mirror. She cleaned up well enough—when she bothered—but Callista was well aware that her features were quite plain, that her hair would never shine the way her sisters’ did, that her teeth weren’t as straight or as white. She was, in short, a tomboy in skirts, even in makeup; and as much as she would have liked to believe otherwise, there was no turning her into a lady.
She snuggled into her blankets with a soft smile. She might not be pretty, but she’d convinced Griffin to take her for a ride in the morning, to see her somewhere besides the dinner table. That was something that as far as she could tell, her sisters hadn’t been able to manage.
It was a start.
When she woke the next morning, the invisible servants had set out her riding clothes: split skirts with something like pants beneath, so that she could ride astride. Callista blushed, looking at them. Griffin was a prince. He was probably used to ladies who rode sidesaddle, all elegance and grace with their skirts spread around them like something out of a painting.
She wasn’t going to be that. This was what she should have asked for, when he’d mentioned gowns: something to ride in that wouldn’t embarrass him.
She put on the clothes with care, did her best to do something with her hair; but of course, it would be tumbled in the wind within minutes anyway. She wasn’t going to impress him in this.
If he came down. If he even followed through with it.
Except, to her surprise, Griffin was waiting at the breakfast table when she slipped into the dining room.
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