I draw out the ring on its ribbon, but I’m not sure where to go. I need to find where Jean-Loup is, if I mean to unlock Beast, but I cannot very well appear out of the air beside him, as Rose did in Beast’s garden — especially if he is doing some public thing, like standing to receive a toast to his health. So when I slip the ring on my finger, I desire only to join the wedding feast.
Instantly, I am standing in the courtyard before the grand front steps of the chateau. The courtyard is so thronging with people, nobody even notices when I am suddenly among them. At least half the folk of the town are still here, roaming about, feasting to their fill from long, narrow tables laden with roasted meats and bread and cheeses and fruit that are set up between the newly formalized rose beds. Brewers’ and vintners’ wagons are parked under the arched porticoes alongside the east wing, and legions of servants, some in Beaumont livery and others attached to the wagons, wander among the crowd, pouring wine, ale, and mead out of large, full-bellied country pitchers.
More formal tables for invited guests are set up to one side of the steps. Rose’s father sits at the head table, chatting happily among some of the chevalier’s titled guests, but Rose’s sisters and three young men I take for her brothers — the would-be monster hunters — are seated at a middle table, not as close as the nobler guests, but not so distant as to show disrespect. Musicians playing horns and bladder pipes and crook-necked lutes stroll between the tables, sweetening the air with their lilting harmonies beneath the general din of talk and laughter and toasting.
At the center of it all stands an elevated platform, like a mummers’ stage, on the other side of the chateau steps. There the wedding party is enthroned, under a canopy of burgundy and gold. It’s an imposing structure, trimmed in flounces and rosettes and bearing the Beaumont device.
In the middle of the long table sits Rose, radiant in a gown of palest blue silk the color of moonbeams. She is flanked by a few of the chevalier’s closest companions-in-arms and their ladies, although some of the chairs are empty now. And as I circle nearer in the crowd, I see their table is littered with the remains of much feasting: fruit pits, cheese rinds, various small animal bones, and many, many kinds of drinking vessels, from delicate crystal and pewter goblets to more formidable steins.
Most noticeable about this grand table is that the chevalier is not sitting at it.
I peer all around, but I don’t see Jean-Loup anywhere. A half-dozen ladies and gentlemen knights still occupy places at the table, chattering idly at one another, but the thronelike chair beside Rose is empty. Rose herself is occupied with being charming to a line of supplicants and well-wishers from the town who come bowing and scraping to the chevalier’s table. She has a smile and a friendly word for every ironmonger or lace maker or washerwoman or shepherd who dares to approach her.
But I see the way her eyes dart fleetingly from side to side between these brief interviews. I notice one of the noble ladies at the table speaking behind her hand to the gentleman knight beside her, who responds with a sly look. No doubt they are wondering why the Lord Beaumont is not here beside his new bride.
This may be the perfect opportunity for me, perhaps the only one I will ever get. I duck behind a rosebush thick with blooms and muster out the ring on its ribbon. A dream of Beast still exists somewhere, but to find it, I must go to wherever Jean-Loup is. And so I seek the chevalier and slip the ring on again.
I open my eyes inside the sitting room, in the middle of Jean-Loup’s private apartments upstairs. I shudder to find myself here again, in my human form, but I know I must confront Jean-Loup in person if I’m to have any prayer of reaching Beast. Still, I keep the ring clutched close in my palm, ready to slip it on again in an instant if I need to escape.
His sitting room is empty but shows all the signs of habitation. The wardrobe door is partly open with a jacket thrown over it and muddy hunting boots discarded beside it. An empty wine decanter sits beside a goblet on the table next to the armchair. The carved stags still vault over the marble fireplace, and the mirror beneath them has been restored. An unlit pipe trailing ashes lies abandoned on the mantelpiece, and a plumed hat has been rakishly hung on the stone head of the god in its center. But even without these objects, these clues, I would know he is nearby. I can feel him.
No servant will dare to enter without the master’s permission. Jean-Loup and I will not be interrupted.
The doorway to the bedchamber stands partly open, but no sound breaks the quiet. Is he sleeping? Is he ill? I creep to the doorway and see articles of fresh clothing — breeches, doublet, linen, smallclothes — neatly laid out across the foot of the bed in preparation for the wedding night. The chamber does not appear to be occupied, yet the very air crackles with his presence; I can feel him nearby, and yet I can’t see him. Where is he?
But as I pause, heart hammering in my throat, I hear the soft, placid lapping of water. The gentle rippling sound fades away, and I hear a deep human sigh of contentment.
Jean-Loup is in his bath.
The mirror above the fireplace opposite the bed reflects the far side of the room that I can’t see around the door, including the half-drawn velvet curtain. Behind it must be the bay window where the tiled bathtub is located; I remember gazing down into it from my cupboard in the attic. I grip the ring more tightly in one hand and step around the door into the room.
“This way, mademoiselle,” comes Jean-Loup’s most honeyed voice as he pokes his head out from his bathtub beyond the partly drawn curtain.
But his voice falls away as his eyes rise to me. His jaw gapes open for an instant as he straightens up in the water. The carpeted steps leading up to the level of the inset tub suggest a throne, and Jean-Loup looks regal enough as he peers out at me, even though he is naked and up to his rib cage in bathwater.
“Lucie,” he whispers. He remembers me, but I don’t seem to be the one he’s expecting.
His hair is loose and mostly dry, except for the ends that cling to his neck and scatter across his shoulders in wet curls. His damp skin has a golden sheen in the afternoon sunlight as his arms rise to rest along the rim of the tub. How peculiar his chest looks, slick and naked, without its covering of fur or a long mane curling over it. He seems unformed, somehow, an embryo, not yet born.
“Chevalier,” I respond with a nod.
He glances at the door for an instant, then back at me. “And what are you doing here?”
“I’ve brought you . . . a wedding gift,” I tell him.
“Why, you astonish me, Little Candle.” I bristle inwardly at the smugness in his voice, but I don’t let him see it. “I thought you cared little enough for my charms.”
He pushes aside the curtain and stands up. He looks like a fairy king rising there, naked, dripping water, haloed in sunlight, like one of the perfect godlike statues carved in marble on his fireplace.
I forbid myself to shrink back or recoil in disgust as he comes down the three short steps, although I grasp the ring more firmly. At the bottom step, he plucks up a wine-colored dressing gown thrown over the back of a chair and wraps it around himself.
“You mistake my meaning, chevalier,” I say, pleased at how calm I sound. “The gift is not from me; I bring it on behalf of . . . a friend.”