It seemed to Beauty that Lionheart’s imposture was so fragile and dangerous a thing that even thinking too much about a curse—which might only be a folk-tale—could topple her. And then, if it weren’t a folk-tale, destroy them all.
If it weren’t a folk-tafe, surely it would have caught up with them—or whatever it was that curses did—by now? When they first set foot over the threshold to Rose Cottage, when they first went to Longchance. when they had lived there for a year and a day? And Mrs Greendown had said that the greenwitch had been a good one and that Long-chance had been fond of her—the greenwitch who had left Rose Cottage to three sisters.
Well, three sisters did not live at Rose Cottage now.
What had the princess who married the Phoenix felt about her fate?
And using the same force of will that had enabled her to sort through and comprehend her father’s papers, when his business failed and his health broke, she thrust all thoughts of the curse away from her again and pretended that her last thoughts had been of bats and butterflies.
The Beast will release me, she repeated to herself. He will release nie because ... because he is a great sorcerer, and I am only a ... a gardener.
He was waiting for her just inside the doorway of the same hall where she had eaten dinner—and he had not—the two nights previous. For the first time since she had closed her balcony windows and turned away to come to dinner, her heart truly failed her, and an involuntary gesture towards her little embroidered heart did not reassure her.
Her heart had not sunk when she set eyes on the Beast, but when her eyes had moved past him and into that dark hall She hoped Fourpaws would come again.
She turned back to the Beast and smiled with an effort. ;’My Tor—Beast,” she said. My Beast, she thought, and Felt a blush rising to her face, but the hall was not well lit enough for him to see. But what did she know of how a Beast’s eyes saw? And she remembered, and did not wish to remember, how quickly and surely he had walked into the darkness when he had left her the night before. And the strangeness of him, and of her circumstances, washed over her like a freak wave from a threatening but quiet sea, and she turned away from him and moved towards her seat, grasping at the tall stems of the torcheres she passed as if she needed them for balance.
He was at her chair at once, moving it forward as she sat down. She thought of dinner-parties in the city, when some tall black-dressed man would help her with her chair, and of her dislike of making conversation—laboriously with dull, or distressedly with maliciously witty—strangers, and tried to be glad she was here instead. But the effort was only partly successful. The Beast bent to pour her wine, and she wished both to cower away from the looming bulk of him and to reach out and touch him, to know by the contact with solidity and warmth that he was real, even if the knowing would make her fear the greater. She stared at his reaching arm. candlelight winking off the tiny intricacies of black braid, dipping into the miniature pools of shadow in the gathers of his shirt cuff. She folded her hands securely in her lap.
He sat down where he had sat the night before, and the night before that, at some little distance down the table, on her right hand. If she had leant forward and stretched out her arm, she might still have touched his sleeve. She could think of nothing to say after all; distractedly she reached out, took an apple off a silver tray, and began to peel it.
“You have found my poor roses,” he said, after a little silence. “That is, you found them on your first evening here and then knew why I did not wish to show them to you. But today—
“I—oh, I had not thought!” she said, a whole new reading of the day’s work she had been so proud of opening before her mind’s eye. She dropped her apple and looked up at him, reaching forward after all, and touching his sleeve, but without any awareness that she did so. “I love roses—I wished to do something for you—for them—I did not think—I should have asked—but I cannot bear to have nothing to do. Oh. are you offended? Please forgive—please do not be offended.”
“I am not offended,” he said, obviously in surprise. “Why would I be offended? I love roses too, and it is one of my greatest sorrows that mine no longer bloom. I honour and thank you for anything you can do for them.”
One of my greatest sorrows, she thought, caught away from roses by the phrase. One. What was—were—the others? Why are you here? You would not have killed my father if 1 had not come. Why did you say you would? “They—they needed tending,” she said hesitantly. “Your roses.”
“And why have I not done so myself?” He raised his hands again. “I am clumsier than you know. Lifting chairs and pouring decanted wine is the limit of my dexterity. I feared to hurt my darlings worse....” There was another little silence, and then, so low Beauty was not quite sure she heard the words: “And besides, I do not know how.”
He paused again, and Beauty thought: Who is it that conjures gloves and ladders out of the air, who is it that hauls my rubbish to the mouth of the carriage-way—the mouth and no farther? When the Beast showed no sign of continuing, Beauty said timidly: “But... sir ... the ... the Nu-men of this place is very powerful.”
“Yes,” said the Beast softly. “It is. But it can touch nothing living.”
Silence fell again, but for the first time in this hall, the silence did not oppress her—although she hoped that did not mean Fourpaws would stay away. She thought: I have something to do; I have earned my bread, and I may eat it.
As she was reaching for a platter of hot food, the Beast began: “I thank you again for your...” and his hand approached hers as she touched the platter. There was a raek of caudles just there, and for a moment their two hands and the platter made a graceful shape, the shadows crisp and elegantly laid out, a bawl of fruit and a decanter adding height and depth. Still Life, with Candles, she thought, or perhaps Portrait of Two Hands.
“But—” rumbled the Beast, and his face curled terrify-ingly into a frown. Beauty snatched her hand back, shrank in her chair. “What?” he said, standing up, making a grab at her hand as she drew back, and then standing still, visibly restraining himself. He sat down again, leant towards her, and held out his hand. Slowly, feeling like a bird fixed by a snake, Beauty extended her own, laid it in his. The palm of his hand was ever so slightly furry, like a warm peach. “You have hurt yourself,” he said, in his lowest growl; she felt she heard his words through the soles of her feet rather than in her ears.