I’m sorry, Beast. I knew it would upset you. I . . . hoped I would not have to.
Beast sighs heavily and nods. “Well, you were right to tell me now,” he agrees, frowning over what this might mean. “But . . . how do I know he doesn’t have some kind of . . . control over me?”
I thought he did at first, I admit. When Beast looks even more horrified, I hasten to reassure him. But you are nothing like Jean-Loup! From the moment you took me out of that attic cupboard, you have proved to me in a thousand ways how different you are. I searched for evidence of Jean-Loup in your every word and deed, to be sure he was suffering as he deserved.
But I could never find any trace of him anywhere in you, Beast. You would never behave with such cruelty. You have far too much honor and compassion and sense. You have defeated him!
“Unless he comes back,” glowers Beast.
I am glad his response is so spirited; he is far from giving way to despair.
Jean-Loup is never coming back! I have dedicated my life to it.
Beast sits up straighter, muzzle raised, eyes fierce. “And I will dedicate mine as well! From this moment on.”
You see now why you must send Rose away.
“Of course we must! It is far too dangerous to have her here!” His glance falls to his paw sitting on the desktop, the one she could not bear to touch. “Although there’s little chance of her becoming my bride,” he adds wryly.
No chance at all if she is gone.
“Yes,” he agrees. “If she, for any reason . . . if Jean-Loup . . .” But before he can complete this dreadful thought, he draws away with an abrupt hiccup and then another. His paws fly to his mouth, and his shoulders begin to heave. He scrambles off the chair and leaps across the room for the stairs; a moment later, I hear him retching in the dark passage below.
Beast does not return for me, but I am busily plotting. Rose must leave here; that is the only way to preserve Beast and see that Jean-Loup stays buried. I can think of one way for it to be done, but first she must find me.
Rose has toted me all about the chateau since her first day here as a kind of lucky charm. She must have missed my light in the shadows of her bed last night. I wait until the soft glow of dawn shimmers in the colored glass window, for Rose would never prowl the chateau alone in the dark.
Rose. Come to me. It is my only thought, and I repeat it over and over like a spell, with all the force of my being. Rose. Come. She does not understand that I’m alive, as Beast does, yet some spark of common humanity might connect us. There is nothing to fear. Rose.
I hope that Beast took himself off to some hiding hole after last night and is not collapsed in a drunken stupor in the stairwell. He has endured enough humiliation.
Please, Rose.
I banish every other thought until I hear, at last, a soft, timid tread upon the stairs. Rose’s head rises cautiously from the stairwell, and she glances around. Satisfied that no one else is here, she climbs up into the room and hurries toward me and my comforting light. She must have cried herself to sleep again last night, ashamed, perhaps of the way she treated Beast; delicate tear tracks have dried on her cheeks, and she’s still dressed in her pale blue gown. She doesn’t know why she is here, but she reaches for me like an old friend.
“I wondered where you’d gone,” she murmurs.
With another guilty look around the room, she hurries back to the stairs and carries me down. To my relief, there is no evidence of Beast slumped and miserable in the shadows as we enter into the passage through the gloomy attic corridor and down to her own room on the second floor, where she feels safe. She sets me on her vanity table, where the looking glass reflects the warmth of my flames into the room, and sits on the chair before me.
“I must be strong for Papa’s sake,” she tells her reflection in the glass, then shakes her head sadly. “I never meant . . . It just happened.” She sighs. “If only Sir Beast can forgive me.”
Her remorse feels genuine enough; I believe she would not hurt Beast’s feelings on purpose. But it’s disturbing that she still hopes to stay. So I concentrate on my goal and abandon myself to the unseen otherworldly forces that thrive here. They have shown Rose her family before, the life she left behind. The natural powers — witchcraft, miracles, whatever they may be — will do their work well when there is enough at stake.
Rose’s deep blue eyes suddenly widen with alarm. “Oh!” she cries out. “Papa!”
She sits up straighter, eyes fixed on the vision that swims into being in the glass, an old man, weary and white-haired. It takes a moment to recognize him as Rose’s father, the merchant, his face is so creased and drawn and tired, his cheeks so hollow. He reclines on threadbare pillows, a bedraggled nightcap slipping off his white head. I hoped to conjure her father, but I had no idea we would find him in this condition. I only thought to make her so homesick, she’d wish to go home.
Turning this way and that, he moans, “Rose! Rose! Oh, my poor child!”
“Papa!” Rose cries again. “I’m here! I am well!”
“Oh, Rose,” groans the old man, and sinks back into his pillows, spent.
She can’t scramble to her feet fast enough. She roots out her walking boots and pulls them on, grabs her old grey cloak off its hook by the door, and catches me up to ward off the early morning shadows before racing out into the hallway.
“Sir Beast!” she cries, poking her head in at the ballroom door, then hurrying to the dining salon. “Sir Beast! Come quickly!”
She’s hovering around the staircase, uncertain whether to go up or down, when Beast’s head appears, peering down from the third-floor landing. Even from here, I see the disarray he is in after last night’s attempted debauch, his clothing wrinkled and undone, his mane spiking out in odd twists and clumps. But Rose doesn’t notice.
“Sir Beast!” she cries when she sees him. “Oh, please, forgive me waking you. Forgive me . . . everything.” And she bows her head in shame and curtsies so low in her gown, the great mounds of blue silk all but engulf her. Beast claws back his unruly mane as he stares down at her.
“Rose,” he says, “please rise.”
But she only raises her head enough to fix him with her eyes. “But I must beg your pardon for last night, Sir Beast. I behaved horribly. I am a very foolish girl.”
“Of course you are pardoned,” rumbles Beast.
“And . . . I must beg yet another favor, if you would be so good as to hear it.”
“Please get up, dear Rose,” Beast insists. “I will come down.”
By the time he trots down the stairs, he has found his wine-colored cloak, which he is hastily swirling over the bulk of his shoulders; I notice bedraggled black-tipped feathers trembling below the hem of the long, rumpled shirt, its bib still stained red from last night. Rose rises only to her knees as he joins us.
“Please, good Sir Beast, my father is very ill,” she pleads. “He may be dying.” She points me vaguely in the direction of her room, where she saw her vision.
Beast slides a sidelong glance at me.
“Please, please, let me go to him!”
“Of course you must go,” Beast says. “I would never try to keep you here against your will. You must go at once.”
Rose blinks up at him, surprised. Clearly she expected an argument. “But — of course, I will be back. And soon!”
“But your father’s welfare comes first,” Beast agrees. “I understand, Rose.”
He extends a paw, and with only an instant of hesitation, she places her trembling fingers upon it and rises to her feet. She withdraws her hand immediately once she has regained her balance, but Beast seems to appreciate her effort.
Then he pulls out the thin red ribbon from around his neck, on which hangs the golden ring with the tiny red jewel heart — the one he found in the library. He lifts the ribbon over his head and holds it out to her.