His incredulous look said he had not. "My face is hardly shaped for them."
"If we trimmed this up," I said, not quite touching the longer fur at the bridge of his nose, "I think they might work fairly well. And this only needs trimming so the glasses don't push the fur into your eyes."
"Amber," the Beast said after a pause, "are you proposing to barber me?"
A flush ran through my whole body. I said, "I suppose you could ask the servants," stiffly.
The Beast ducked his head, making his bulk as small as it could be compared to mine, and leaned forward toward my hand, like a dog seeking forgiveness before he seemed to remember himself and pulled back again. His voice, though, was low and remarkably apologetic. "I would be honored if you were inclined to do so."
"Very well," I said, wondering what I'd gotten myself into, "let's go see if we can make you presentable."
A downright genteel barbering area awaited us in the sitting room beyond the foyer. A copper bath large enough for me to swim in and filled with steaming water sat in front of the fire, with bath sheets big enough for most beds hanging nearby to gather the fire's warmth as well. The Beast's usual chair, which was of preposterous size and allowed him to curl up in a variety of cat-like positions, had been replaced by a proper tilting barber's chair, which made me laugh. "Can you even sit in that?"
"I believe so," the Beast said dubiously. "Whether I want to or not is another question entirely. And then there is the bath."
I regarded the bath, which had to weigh two or three hundred pounds empty. "Do you suppose invisibility lends unexpected strength and efficiency to the serving class?" I expected, and got, no answer, but the comment avoided the topic of the Beast bathing in my presence. He was a Beast; it should not, in any meaningful way, matter. But he was also, it seemed, a prince, and he was certainly a thinking being either way, and also male. I was not unfamiliar with either male anatomy or—the phrase that leapt to mind made me wince—animal husbandry, but somehow the entire activity seemed fraught. "Perhaps there could be bubbles."
"Bubbles," the Beast echoed so swiftly that I thought I wasn't the only one finding the situation questionable, and shortly thereafter I politely turned my back while the Beast settled into a tub full of bubbles.
I turned around again when he gave an unusually human-like groan, and found him jaw-deep in the foam, with his mane floating around him like spiderwebs. "I'd forgotten what a hot bath felt like. I don't usually bathe," he said. "Beasts…don't."
"No, I suppose not." He didn't, as I'd half supposed he would, smell of wet dog. His usual muskiness was strengthened, but not unpleasantly so. I smiled suddenly. "You soak there for a few minutes. I'll be right back."
He gave an agreeable grunt and sank a little farther into the bubbles. I hurried off to my room, there to test the khemet perfume on my wrist and to think of its spicy warmth melding with the Beast's scent. Yes: I thought it would do nicely. Pleased with myself, I returned to the sitting room, where the Beast was now little more than a blunt face ringed by bubbles, and on impulse put my fingers in the water to touch his mane. His eyes opened, meeting mine, and I asked, "Will I wash it for you?"
I believed that for a moment he actually stopped breathing, though it was hard to tell with the bubbles. Then he nodded, and sat up with a minimum of spillage. I found lightly scented soap and worked it to a lather before sinking my hands into the warmth of his mane. A quick laugh caught me off-guard and shattered my self-consciousness. "And here I'd thought my sisters had a lot of hair."
The Beast breathed laughter, but said nothing. His skull was huge and heavy under my fingertips, like a mastiff's, and the sheer mass of fur meant it took a long time to massage soap through it. The water never got as dirty or as cold as I thought it should. Nor did the bubbles fade, which I found both considerate and vaguely annoying. I was certainly not peeking, but neither could I deny a certain prurient interest that slowly intensified as I washed and rinsed and combed his mane with my fingers. My mouth was dry and my cheeks hot as I went through the ritual again, working my way from his scalp through to the ends. Coarse strands clung to my fingers and floated in the water until I captured them into a snarl and set them aside. A jug of warm lemon water appeared at my elbow and rinsed his mane with it, working it through to remove the last of the soap. When I was finally done, I set the jug aside and lowered my mouth to beside his ear, where I murmured, "Are you purring, Beast?"
His breath caught, putting a hitch in the purr, and I straightened with a smile. "You were purring. I didn't know you could."
"I don't often have reason to." His voice, for a Beast's, was very soft, as if the edges had been taken away by the purr. He shifted, but before he decided to rise, I cried, "Oh, wait! I forgot!" and withdrew the khemet perfume from my bodice to tap a little onto his own wet wrist. He cast me a curious glance, and though I doubted he needed to to catch the scent, lifted his wrist to his nose to inhale.
"You make perfumes?"
"I'm surprised you don't smell my room from half the palace away. Do you—do you like it? It's an ancient recipe, one I found in the library, and I thought—I thought of it, and you, tonight. I thought…I thought of you."
The Beast, smiling as best he was able, took the vial and pressed the perfume's liquid over his palms before raking his huge hands through his mane, scenting it with my perfume. Then he lowered his hands into the water, washing away the excess scent as I, half trying not to be seen, ducked my head to catch the mixture of his scent and the khemet's. It worked even better than I'd imagined, deep and rich and delicious, and I was dizzy when he turned his dreadful smile toward me.
I looked away while he stood, then shrieked with laughter as he shook himself just as any animal would do, spraying water everywhere. I turned with an accusing smile to find as guilty a look as his face could produce writ large across his features, and a bath towel draped around him like a toga. "Well, go on." I turned away again, still smiling, and a few minutes later he cleared his throat, suggesting a reasonable level of decency had been achieved.