There was no thought of supper last night. Rose finally sank into her bed, leaving me here on the dressing table, and this morning, she is still too wary to leave her room. She tenses at every creak of wood in the chateau and every whisper of the breeze outside. But Beast does not come back.
This is not how I planned it at all! I thought she would be gone by now. What purpose does it serve for her to linger? The memory of last night will be a raw wound that Beast will never heal from as long as she is still here.
Rose circles back to the dressing table, plops down on the chair, and peers at her own image with still-reddened eyes. “I’m sorry, Papa,” she whispers. “I’m trying so hard, I really am! But I’m so frightened!”
Perhaps she fears that Beast will take revenge on the old man or the rest of her family if she leaves him.
Overnight, the things she disrupted in her tearful blundering about have evaporated into thin air; there are new bottles and powders here on her dressing table and a new gown of pale violet silk draped over the screen. Bread and cheese and wine enough to sustain her appear on her bedside table, but she has no appetite. She washes and dresses herself in her new gown, but she does not seem to know what to do next.
The sun has been up for hours when she finally dares to open her door and peep out. All is silent within the chateau, but Rose lets out a small gasp at something I can’t see. She opens the door wider, bends down, and carries something back into the room — a glass vase with a single red rose inside, which she places on the dressing table beside me. Her other hand grasps an elegant page of parchment, folded in half. She sits on the chair and unfolds the page. Her eyes scan whatever she sees there with a look of growing wonder, until at last she sets the parchment down beside me, her expression thoughtful.
I read the single sentence, written carefully in ink:
Your father’s debt to me is paid.
The penmanship is far from elegant, but it can be read. How long it must have taken Beast to compose it.
My spirits lift. Surely now, at last, she will go!
Rose shifts her gaze back to the looking glass before her, slightly biting her lower lip in perplexity. “I don’t know what to do,” she whispers.
A milky image begins to swirl in the glass. Rose catches her breath and blinks at it in surprise. Perhaps the magical forces here will respond to her plea. Two faces swim into focus, two women I have never seen before. But Rose has; she sits up in attention.
“Blanche!” whispers Rose. “Violette!”
The women are both older than Rose, yet they resemble her slightly, handsome ladies with determined chins. But their eyes are harder, their mouths more prim.
“Our sister lacks the civility to send us word from the chateau,” harrumphs the younger-looking of the ladies. She shakes something in her hand, a piece of linen she is attempting to mend with very bad stitchery. “Fine thing for her to run off and leave us with all the work!”
“Well, we couldn’t very well let Father go after her,” reasons the elder sister. “Then how should we live? Our brothers are content to play at farming, although their efforts yield up little enough. But as long as Father has livestock and furniture to sell, at least we shall always be clothed.”
“In last year’s fashion!” The younger sister pouts.
“Oh, hsst! Father still meddles in business affairs; one of his ventures may yet pay off.” The elder sister adjusts her fine headdress, slightly worn about the edges. “Besides, what use was Rose to us?”
“No use at all, and now she lives in a chateau, while we live here like peasants!”
“A chateau ruled by a monster! Whereas we may marry princes one day, if we but bide our time.”
This remark has a comforting effect on the younger sister, who smiles and smooths out her skirts as if in anticipation.
“Rose may be devoured by now, for all we know,” her sister continues. Her careless shrug implies it’s a matter of little importance to her. “And even if she is not, she must live in seclusion with a horrible monster. Either way, she is out of our hair for good, while we have Father here, alive and well. As long as he lives to mend his fortunes, we shall have prospects.” The older sister arches a brow. “And we shan’t have to share our dowries with Rose. We’ve made the better bargain by far.”
Rose is now sitting up very straight as the scene begins to fade. She lifts her own chin.
“I have made a bargain as well. And I will keep it,” she vows. “I shall not tarnish Papa’s honor.”
The image of Rose’s sisters appears to have strengthened her spine. By suppertime, she opens her door and ventures out.
Eight chimes sound in the dining salon, but Beast does not come. Nor the next night. How humiliated he must still be, how shaken to the core. Has he run off to the wood, unable to face her, never to be seen again? Rose must certainly leave now out of sheer boredom.
Then an even more sinister thought occurs to me: Has something happened to Beast? Has he thrown himself off the upper tower in shame? It makes a horrible kind of sense; he’s taken his leave of Rose and absolved her father of his debt. I try to focus my thoughts, direct them to wherever he is, but there is no sign that he has heard them. I try to blame Rose, her frantic outburst, her endless tears. But I know it’s not true. Rose has more spirit than I ever imagined. She has not run off.
No one here has hurt Beast but me.
Rose begins visiting Beast’s beautiful garden again; she takes me with her as a perch for Redbird to keep her company. Everywhere we go, I search fearfully from my position in her raised hand for any sign of a large, shaggy body drowned in the moat or crumpled on the ground beneath the balconies, but there is never any sign of Beast, living or dead. Rose still visits the library now and then, but she wearies more easily of the silly romances that once diverted her.
This morning, Redbird’s happy notes sang in the stairwell, luring Rose out of the library and down into the garden, while I am abandoned on a shelf, forgotten. I am idly watching the progress of the stained-glass figures across the carpet when I hear a solid tread on the stairs, and a familiar horned head rises up out of the stairwell.
Beast! The thought explodes within me, I’m so relieved.
He pauses at the top of the stairs, one paw on the railing, ears pricked. He turns his head to the corner where I stand, eyeing me cautiously.
“Lucie.”
It’s the first private word he has addressed to me since the day Rose came.
“I thought no one would be here,” he says.
Rose has left me behind.
Beast nods. “As she soon will me.” He says this without any particular malice, yet I experience a pang of shame. I would not blame him for stalking off, but he hesitates only another moment before stepping all the way up into the room. He perches his great bulk on the seat of the armchair with exaggerated care, patting his clean white shirt into place above his breeches. He looks calm enough, but it’s plain he is still smarting from the fury of Rose’s outburst. My shame intensifies for my part in it.
I’m sorry, Beast. I didn’t think she would carry on so. And I certainly didn’t expect her to hurt you so willfully.
Beast peers at me, his expression weary. “And what did you think she would do?”
I thought she would leave! Go home to her family, where she belongs! I try to put my thoughts in better order. You know she must not stay here —