Bryony and Roses Read online

  She stared at him.

  “It’s a simple enough question,” said the Beast testily. “You can say no if you like. I rather expect you to. I’m not going to kill and eat you if you—are you laughing?”

  Bryony sank back down in her chair, shaking with hysterical laughter.

  It had always been her besetting sin. Here she was in an enchanted castle with a monster and magic at every corner, her father dead and her family’s money gone, a sister who was going to have to marry the weaver’s son, and now, finally, someone offered to marry her?

  What she could see of the Beast’s expression was so nonplussed that she only laughed harder.

  God, she had been the despair of so many lady’s maids! All those ridiculous balls and all those poor women trying to make her look presentable in hopes of teasing out an offer of marriage from some scion of a great house. “Now Miss Bryony, stand up straight and don’t slouch.” All those pumice stones trying to whittle away at her big, bony hands, outsized compared to the rest of her, all those paints and powders trying to make her jaw less square and her nose less beaky. “Now Miss Bryony, don’t rub your eyes or you’ll smear your makeup!”

  All that effort wasted trying to catch the master of a great house, and now that she had no money and no prospects, she had the master of the greatest manor house she had ever seen asking to marry her?

  And he can’t possibly care that I’m not pretty, because he’s some kind of boar-bear-monster thing!

  She slid down in the chair and thumped on the arm and didn’t stop until her bladder threatened to mutiny.

  “Water closet,” she gasped, half-crawling out of the chair. A door opened out of the wall. She wasn’t sure if there had been a door there before or if House had made one, and she didn’t care. She sprinted for it.

  When she emerged, trying to settle the ruffled skirt again, the Beast was standing behind his chair.

  “Feeling better?” he asked.

  “Much,” she said. It was true. Something had unknotted while laughing. If she was going to be trapped in an enchanted castle, at least she would be trapped with her sense of humor intact.

  “If it is all the same to you, Beast,” said Bryony, inclining her head as if she were still that long-ago girl, “I would prefer not to marry you.”

  “I can hardly say that I am surprised,” he said dryly. “I did not expect to be laughed at quite so enthusiastically, however.”

  “Oh, well, that.” She waved a hand. “That wasn’t at you. That was at my father and a great many well-meaning maids and a little bit at myself.”

  “Then I shall take no offense,” said the Beast. “May I escort you to your room?”

  “I don’t know. Seems rather forward of you, doesn’t it?”

  One lip curled up in a toothy grin. “The foot of the stairs, then? I should not wish to cause any talk.”

  “Heaven forbid.” She took his arm. Her lungs immediately seemed shallower, but after such a good laugh, she was willing to put up with it as far as the staircase.

  When they reached the foot of the stairs, the Beast released her arm and bowed to her. She curtsied—the full skirts made doing so a rather silly pleasure—and ran up the steps.

  “Good night, Bryony,” called the Beast.

  “Good night, Beast,” said Bryony.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Bryony woke in the night and knew that there were things outside the window.

  She kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut, not wanting to give herself away. With the bed-curtains open, it was only the shadows that concealed her. Her blanket was pulled up over one shoulder. If she rolled over, pretending to still be asleep, could she pull it over her head?

  She was aware, even as she thought these things, that she was not being rational. If there were truly things outside her window, and not just childhood monsters hiding in the dark, then a blanket over her head would be no defense at all.

  Was there something there? Was this just a night terror?

  They’re there. They’re real. I’m sure of it.

  Had it been a sound that had woken her? Something tapping on the glass?

  If she opened her eyes and looked to the window, would she see a pale face pressed against it, watching her?

  Bryony had spent most of her life jumping into bed to avoid things grabbing her ankles, even when she was supposed to be grown up and well past that stage. A succession of nurses looking under the bed when she was a child hadn’t helped. She always pictured some shadowy thing pressed against the underside of the mattress, spread-eagled and thin so that a glance under the bedskirts did not reveal it.

  Later on, when she took her courage in her hands to look herself, she still wasn’t quite convinced. Bare floorboards and dust bunnies were all well and good, but perhaps it was listening for her and hiding behind the headboard when she checked. Then when she stood up, it would flow back down under the bed and wait.

  It was an old familiar terror, and Bryony was used to it. This, however…this was something else again.

  Something was there. Something unknown but real.

  Bryony opened her eyes a slit. Dread lay like a knot of roots in her belly.

  She dragged her gaze from the bed-curtains to the window. She could barely see and she didn’t dare open her eyes any wider.

  Something white flashed on the other side of the glass.

  It’s the birch, it’s only the branches, that’s why it looks so long and pale and twisty, those aren’t fingers, it’s only the birch, the birch, only the birch—

  Part of her knew that it had to be the birch tree. Another, rather larger part was sure that it wasn’t.

  I can roll off the bed. I’ll roll to the side, and…be at the mercy of whatever is lurking underneath.

  Shut up shut up there’s nothing under the bed there’s never anything under the bed you’re not a child why aren’t you over this?

  Something tapped, very quietly, against the window.

  It’s only the branches there’s nothing there branches tap sometimes…

  Could it open the window? Would House let it in?

  Was it part of the magic of this place?

  Had the Beast, for all his talk, brought her here as a sacrifice for the things outside the window?

  There’s nothing outside the window. It’s only a tree. If you can’t open your eyes all the way and look and stop scaring yourself silly, you had better pull the blankets over your head and try to go back to sleep.

  Feeling as if she were nine years old again, Bryony burrowed down into the blankets, trying to make it look as if she were asleep and getting comfortable. You couldn’t look as if you were awake, that was one of the rules. Monsters couldn’t get you while you were asleep.

  Indeed, the only monster she knew had gotten her while she was awake, and brought her to live in his enchanted manor house. Maybe there was something to the rules of childhood after all.

  She pulled the blanket over her head, leaving a crack between pillow and blanket to breathe through. It was hot and stuffy and uncomfortable, but it was safe.

  Happy now?

  Well, happier, anyway…

  She fell asleep like that, still listening for the sound of something at the window.

  When she woke the next morning, Bryony did not have any moment where she wondered where she was and what she was doing there. The pinkness of the room was a very efficient reminder.

  She hadn’t been able to draw the bed-curtains without feeling as if she’d been stuffed back into the womb, but the room was pleasantly warm, even with no fireplace in sight. She peered over the side of the bed, did not see anything—

  Like pale white hands reaching out from under the bed?

  —and slid her feet down to the floor.

  “Well. Still alive,” she said to the house. “Didn’t get eaten by monsters last night after all.” She glanced at the window, at the white tracery of birch branches, and felt foolish.

  I suppose the house is judging
me now.

  Of course, the house can see if I scratch my butt or pick my nose and it can watch me in the water closet if it wants to, so I suppose it was only a matter of time.

  She was washing her face when she heard her name spoken aloud.

  “Bryony…” said a high metallic voice. “Bryony...Bryony...”

  She froze with the cloth still over her face.

  “…Bryony...Bryony...”

  It’s in the room with me. It’s in the room and oh God, what if it came from under the bed, what if it was waiting and it’s going to grab me what if it’s right behind me oh God—

  She yanked the cloth away from her eyes and whirled.

  There was nothing, and then there was a great deal of pain because the soap had gotten into her eyes.

  Bryony cursed and rubbed and blinked and by the time her eyes no longer smarted violently, the voice had stopped.

  Had it been a person? A thing? What was it? She eyed the room with great suspicion, but there was no one there.

  Out loud, she said “Is someone there?”

  There was no reply. She suddenly smelled bacon.

  It was coming from the little table by the window. Eggs, bacon, a cup of hot tea, toast with jam…

  “House, you are wonderful.”

  She was instantly ravenous. If there was a voice, assuming it hadn’t been some fragment of a dream, it didn’t appear to be malicious. She sat down at the table and took a bite.

  Knowing that the bacon was not, in the strictest sense, real did not make it taste any less delicious.

  It can’t just be an illusion. I was full after dinner last night, and the Beast doesn’t seem to have starved to death. I wonder how long he’s been living here, eating the food?

  She wondered if it was one of those questions that the house didn’t seem to like.

  Is it the house that doesn’t like them? That does that strange listening thing when I ask?

  Another thing to watch for. Bryony’s questions were starting to pile up.

  “House, may I have paper and pen?”

  Something rustled. When she turned, an armoire in the corner had folded out to reveal a rosewood writing desk. An extravagantly curled quill pen stood beside several sheets of writing paper.

  The feather was pink. So was the paper.

  Bryony sighed. I should probably have expected that.

  She sat down and dipped the pen in the ink.

  How long has the Beast been here?

  Why doesn’t he leave?

  Has he always been a Beast?

  Where does the magic of the house come from?

  What does he want with me?

  What was that voice?

  She brushed the feather against her cheek and thought for a minute, then added a final question:

  How do I get out of here without the house bringing me back?

  “Of course,” she said aloud, “for all I know, he was lying about that, and I could walk out the front door at any time.”

  She didn’t think he’d been lying.

  “Oh well,” she said, blowing on the ink to dry it, “I suppose I’ll figure it all out eventually. Now, to see about the garden…”

  The grass cut easily and there was some lovely topsoil under the sod, but Bryony was still soaked with sweat by the time she came in for lunch. She took a hot bath in a pink enameled tub with dragon feet. The bubbles were pale pink and smelled of freesia.

  She added another question to her mental inventory—What is going on with all of these flowers? There were the rose candlesticks and the dahlia rug and all the little blossoms embroidered into her clothes, the enormous rosebushes in the courtyard, growing into the bark of the birch tree—

  Which is pretty strange, when you think about it.

  She liked flowers. She just liked them outside, where they belonged.

  Although I should probably do something about those roses and the birch tree. That can’t be healthy.

  It was a good soak. The bathtub was long enough to stretch out in. She hadn’t had a really hot bath since they left the capital. At home, in the cottage, she and her sisters usually filled an old wooden tub in front of the fireplace, and the water was never warm enough.

  She leaned her head back. “I could get used to this, House. This is lovely. Thank you.”

  She took a long nap again that afternoon and woke to find a blue dress laid out on the bed. It was the color of a late evening sky. It would have been magnificent on Iris.

  “It’s a pity you didn’t get my sister,” she told the house, trying to manage the little puffed sleeves. “She’d be much more interested in playing dress-up. No, still not wearing the tiara. No, nor the gloves either. I will wear earrings if you can make them smaller than a dinner plate—ah, yes. Perfect.”

  She checked her appearance in the mirror. The clothing was extremely flattering, but short of a veil, there wasn’t much it could do about her face. She grinned ruefully at herself.

  “On the other hand, Iris would probably not have stopped weeping yet, and I imagine that would strain even a magic house’s patience.”

  She went down to dinner.

  The Beast met her at the foot of the stairs again and escorted her to the hallway in silence.

  He poured her a glass of wine without speaking. She stabbed at the food on her plate with a fork, and finally took refuge in the most banal possible conversation.

  “Do you think it will rain?”

  He leaned back in his chair. “It’s hard to tell with spring weather,” he said. “It changes too quickly. It could rain all morning and be clear by dinner.”

  “True,” she said. Well, it’s a boring conversation, but better than nothing… “Sometimes in Lostfarthing, you get a light rain, and then the fog comes up from the ground so thick you can’t see your feet.”

  “I’ve seen that,” he agreed. “Here and—err—elsewhere.”

  She finished the last of her meal and pushed the plate away. “You said that there’s a library in the house. Could you show me where it is?”

  “I would be honored,” he said, but made no move to rise.

  Bryony raised an eyebrow.

  “Bryony, will you marry me?” asked the Beast.

  “Are we going to do this every night, then?” she asked.

  “It seems likely, yes.”

  She sighed. “No, Beast, I do not want to marry you. You’ve been a very considerate kidnapper, but I am not quite resigned to my fate yet.”

  “I should hardly expect you to be.” He stood up and pulled out her chair. She had a brief impression that he could have picked up the chair—with her in it—in one hand and tossed it over his shoulder. She rose as gracefully as she could and took his arm.

  The Beast’s library was as large as the dining hall and had a ceiling that vanished up into shadow. A ladder with wheels attached to it stood ready in case one needed the highest volumes. In the center, lit by oil lamps, stood a semi-circle of shorter bookcases arranged around two large wingback chairs.

  “Good heavens,” said Bryony. “You have hundreds of books!”

  “Thousands,” said the Beast. “There is another storeroom besides this one. I cataloged them once or twice, long ago. These are merely the ones I wish to have close to hand. The house cannot create new books—or rather it can, but the insides are gibberish—so I have read all of them, already.”

  Bryony turned slowly in a circle. Even at a book a day, there were weeks…months…years… Each bookcase seemed to represent decades.

  If he’s read them all—even if he’s a fast reader—that’s—dear lord…

  She now had at least a partial answer to one of her questions.

  The Beast had been here for at least a century.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  She took several volumes to bed with her. One was of poetry. She hadn’t read poetry in years. She hadn’t read anything in years, and was a little embarrassed at the sheer greed that the Beast’s library awoke in her.
/>   As for the notion that the Beast was a great deal older than she had suspected…Well, she didn’t quite know what to make of that. There was no grey in his fur. He did not seem particularly arthritic. Perhaps Beasts aged differently than humans.

  And will I grow old and die here, in this strange gilded cage, while he remains unchanging?

  There was an old, old story she remembered, about brother and sister turned into swans. They had lived for a thousand years as swans, and then a saint had prayed over them and changed them back. For one moment they had been human—and then a thousand years of age caught up with them, and they crumbled into dust.

  At that point, you have to question whether being a swan is really that bad…

  This line of thought was not terribly helpful.

  She tried to lose herself in the novel that she had selected. A young heroine in a strange, possibly haunted house, lots of ghosts and treacherous servants, exactly the sort of thing she had loved in the city.

  It did not work quite so well in the Beast’s manor. “At least you can leave,” she told the heroine. “And I’d give a lot for a human servant to talk to, even a treacherous one.” She sighed. A few pages later she added “The dear sweet children in distress are clearly the evil masterminds. Idiot.” A few pages after that she gave up entirely.

  Bryony pulled the bed-curtains closed. It was just about as bad as she expected. They were gauzy enough that she could still make out shapes in the room, as if through a dense pink fog.

  House extinguished the candles. She burrowed down into the pillows.

  As she fell down the dark well of sleep, a last thought came to her.

  What if I’m not the first?

  “Bryony….Bryony…Bryony…”

  The sound woke her. The horrible voice was back, saying her name, and furthermore it was right next to her ear.

  Her heart shuddered and leapt. She stared into the pink depths of the bed-curtains, her eyes wide.

  If I look over, what am I going to see? Is there going to be something there?