I lit it with great effort. It was difficult in the dark, and I hadn’t much experience of late with lighting candles. When it was finally done, I held it close and shone it upon my beloved.
In the light, I could tell that Phillip was not a monster. Far from it. Instead, he was the most beautiful man I had ever beheld. He could have been a movie star like Leslie Howard or Laurence Olivier. Tall and elegant, as I had seen at the party, with a shock of blond hair, Phillip had the features of a Greek god in a statue. I remembered, in school, reading of Cupid, the most beautiful god, whose wife, Psyche, could not look upon him. Phillip was like Cupid! The blanket didn’t cover him, so I could see that his body was lean and muscular. My sisters would be even more jealous if they could see him! I stared, wanting to touch him but afraid. He stirred a bit in his sleep, moving his head to one side, and then I could see why he had worn the mask, for on the other side of his face, the flesh was seared away from his mouth to the top of his cheek and around his eye so the skin was puckered, shiny, and angry red. One brow was half burned off. I remembered him telling me about the water on fire. Had this happened then?
It didn’t matter. He was still beautiful, so beautiful. If anything, the flaw only made him more so, for he appeared more real.
As I stood gaping at him, my hand moved, and a bit of hot wax fell from the candle and onto Phillip’s hand.
He started awake.
“What? What is it?” he yelled.
“Oh, darling, I’m sorry! I was—”
“I know what you were doing. You were trying to see me.”
I nodded, unable to conceal the truth of it. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” he demanded.
“My sisters . . .” I was sobbing. “They said . . . I didn’t think it would matter if you didn’t know.”
He turned his face so that the scalded skin was faced toward me. “Well, now you know.”
“I don’t care about that, this little scar.” That must have been why he was hiding in the dark. “It is nothing, inconsequential. You have no need to hide it from me.”
He shook his head. “I had every need to hide it from you. I told you it was part of the curse, or rather, part of the cure. I had to find a woman who would marry me, both marry me and trust me for a year. I tried to win your trust. I was kind to you. I gave you no reason to believe—”
“I only wanted to see what my husband looked like.” The wax from the candle fell on my hand, and I jumped, then blew it out.
“Well, now you know. But I cannot be your husband any longer, I fear. I am sorry, for I love you, my Grace.”
“What do you mean?” I felt the wax searing my hand, over and over.
Now we were in darkness again, and his voice came out of it, so soft against the nothingness of the night.
“On the day the Lancastria sank, I watched the men around me die. Many, so many, died even before the ship sank, when the bombs hit and tore it to shreds. The lucky ones, I among them, had a small chance to swim away, but there were many of us and few lifeboats, only little bits of flotsam to hold on to. I was injured, burned, and as I swam for my life, I thought I saw a woman. In the dim light, she looked like a fairy with long white hair and skin the color of seafoam. She looked like one of the Dames Blanches.”
Had this fairy been the one who had cursed him?
“I begged her to help me. With all the dying men around me, I became a coward, and I pleaded with her to save me. I said that if I lived, I would do anything. Anything. So she reached out her hand where I could almost touch it. She said, ‘I will save you if you promise to marry my daughter.’
“‘Anything, anything,’ I said, imagining my poor father receiving news of my death. I am his only son, and my sister died as a young girl. He would have nothing without me.
“So I took her hand, and she pulled me out of the melee to a waiting lifeboat. But, when I went to shore, in Saint Nazaire, covered in oil, I learned that the daughter was not a fairy as I assumed she would be, but a troll princess who would surely kill me in my sleep. I begged the one who had saved me to relieve me of the burden, but she said no. I could go home to bid my adieux to my family, but I must come back.
“I went with heavy heart, but on the way here, I met Kendra, who has an odd interest in shipwrecks. And witchcraft. I told her of my situation, and with her mirror, she helped me bargain with this woman, this fairy, this whatever she was . . . until finally she agreed that she would free me under the condition that I found a young woman to marry me, sight unseen, and that she would not look at my face for one year from our marriage.”
“Why that? Why that condition?” But I knew. It was because she wanted to give him an impossible task. Any woman would want to look upon her husband’s face.
Any woman, or just me?