Belle: A Retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” By Cameron Dokey (10 page)

she’d stopped right where she was.

“Oh, yes, I do,” I taunted.

April skidded to a stop beside Celeste. “She says she does.”

“Guess there’s only one way to find out, isn’t there?” Celeste said.

“Guess so.”

“No. Wait. Stop!” I cried. But by then it was too late. My sisters had called my

bluff. Hands linked, Celeste and April dashed forward, leaped up, and landed full force in the mud puddle.

Water and mud flew in every direction, but mostly, of course, up and out. Within

seconds, our skirts were filthy and soaked. I bent down and scooped up two brimming handfuls of mud.

“You’re about to be very sorry you did that,” I said.

“Look out!” Celeste cried.

I let the mud fly. After that, it was pretty much a free-for-all. I have no idea how long my sisters and I stood in the puddle, shrieking and flinging mud and dirty water at one another. I do know it began to rain at some point. As if this were some previously determined signal, my sisters and I stopped all at once and lifted our filthy faces to the sky.

“If we stand out here long enough, do you think we’ll get clean?” April asked

after a few moments. She was breathing heavily, as we all were.

I wiped a hand across the front of my dress, leaving behind a trail of mud. “I

guess it’s not been long enough yet,” I remarked.

Celeste laughed first, and before we knew it the three of us were roaring with

helpless laughter.

“Well, I guess we all needed that,” April remarked. A moment of silence fell. We

stood together, our arms around one another.

“I guess we did,” Celeste acknowledged. She gazed down at her muddy skirts.

“How come we never did things like this before?”

“You’ve got to be joking,” I said. “Can you see us doing this in town? We’d never have been invited anywhere again.”

“You wouldn’t have cared about that,” Celeste answered. “You never went

anywhere anyhow.”

I heard April suck in a sudden breath. “No. Wait,” Celeste said quickly, before

anyone else could speak. “I didn’t mean it like that. Not sharp, the way it sounded.”

“It would be all right even if you did,” I answered somberly. “It’s true enough.” I looked down at my soaked and mud-spattered dress. “I’m not so invisible now, am I?”

“And we’re not so very fine and fashionable,” April said quietly. “We’ve only

been here a couple of months. How can being in the country have changed us all so much in so little time?”

“Maybe it hasn’t,” Celeste said. “Maybe this is who we were all along, and we

just couldn’t see it before. But there aren’t so many other eyes to look at us now, are there? Only our own.”

“So now the question is,” I said, “do we like what we see, or not?”

“What’s that?” April interrupted, her head cocked as if she were straining to hear some new sound.

That was the moment I realized I’d been hearing it too, without quite registering what
it
was.

“That’s a horse,” I said. “Someone’s coming.”

There was a moment of electric silence. Then, hands still clasped, my sisters and I dashed around to the front of the house. We were just in time to see a single horse leave the main road and start down the one that led to our front door. Its rider swayed in the saddle, clinging to it with both hands, as if this and sheer willpower were the only things keeping him from falling off the horse and into the mud.

“That’s not Grand-père Alphonse,” Celeste said.

“No,” I answered. “It’s not. I think maybe it’s –”

But by then, April was in motion. Picking up her skirts with both hands, she ran

flat out, like a small boy. She reached the horse just as its exhausted rider finally reached our yard. The horse stopped.

“I’m sorry,” I heard the horseman say. “I hate to repeat myself. But I’m afraid I’m going to pass out. Again.”

Then he pitched sideways in the saddle and slid to the ground just as he had once before, may years ago. April sat down in the mud and cradled his head in her lap.

“Go get Papa,” she said. “Go get help.”

And then she began to weep the kind of tears no one minds shedding. Tears of

joy.

Dominic Boudreaux was home.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“It was the worst possible combination of circumstances,” Dominic told us later that night.

We were sitting in the living room, a cheery fire in the gate. All of us had changed out of our filthy, wet clothes. Though in Dominic’s case, his only option was to borrow some of Papa’s. at my mother’s insistence, Dominic was now seated in her chair, the most comfortable in the room. April sat on a low stool beside him. In her hands, she held a mug of steaming broth, which she urged him to drink from time to time.

Any doubt as to their feelings for each other had been dispelled by the time

Dominic and my father staggered through the front door. April had left Dom only long enough for them both to get out of their wet and muddy garments. After that, she’d refused to leave his side.

“What happened?” she asked now.

“It’s more a matter of what didn’t,” Dominic answered, with a tired smile.

First, the
April
Dawn
had been blown off course. Then, she’d been becalmed.

Seemingly endless days had passed without a stir of air. Food and fresh water had begun to run low. The men had started to fear they would never get home.

“If I’d been sailing for any man but you, Monsieur Delaurier,” Dominic said

quietly, “been captain of any ship but one of yours, sooner or later I’d have come to a day when I feared for my life. For hungry men become desperate ones in the time it takes to blink, and desperate men commit desperate acts, things they would never consider

otherwise.”

He paused. April reached up and pressed the mug into his hands. Dominic took a

long, slow sip, as if savoring every drop. Papa was a smaller man than Dominic, but Dominic looked thin and frail in Papa’s borrowed clothes.

“But the men love you,” Dominic went on. “I don’t know how to say it any way

but that. They know you’re a man who honors his word, and sooner than dishonor you, I think they’d have starved. Not on word of mutiny did I hear, and, finally, the wind came back and we made sail for home.”

Dominic paused to take another sip of broth, then handed the mug back to April.

“When we finally made port, when we got back and the men learned what you’d

done – how you’d sold your own things to care for their families – it was everything I could do to keep them al; from coming here with me. There’s not one man who won’t be willing to set sail again, to look for those lost ships, that is – just as soon as we make repairs to the
April
Dawn
.”

“Oh, but surely –,” April began, then stopped. I could almost see her bite down on her tongue.

“Let’s have no more talk of setting sail tonight,” my father said into the quick

silence the followed April’s outburst. “There’ll be time enough for that. The men are all well, you say?”

“As well as can be expected, given what they’ve been through,” Dominic replied.

“Some will heal faster than others.”

“And I imagine good food will soon set most things to rights,” my father said.

“True enough, sir,” Dominic concurred. “That’s true enough.”

My father seemed to hesitate, almost as if he wanted to postpone the question we

all knew must come next.

“And the cargo?” he finally inquired.

“Safe and sound, every last bit of it,” Dominic answered, and I could hear the

fierce pride in his voice. “I brought it all home to you, sir. Every last man, every single chest of cargo. It just took a little longer than planned.”

All of a sudden, a smile lit Dominic’s drawn and tired face. “Not too bad for the lad who began life as a thief, wouldn’t you say?”

“I would,” my father replied. He reached out to grip Dom by the arm. “I would

indeed say so, and more. You’ve given back more then you ever tried to take.”

“I learned that from you, sir,” said Dominic Boudreaux.

My father gave Dominic’s arm a final squeeze and then released it, making no

attempt to hide the tears that filled his eyes.

“Monsieur LeGrand asked me to tell you you should come without delay, sir, if it

can be managed,” Dominic went on. “He’d have come himself, but there is much to do.”

“That there us,” my father said with a smile. “But you have done enough for now.

Stay here and rest, Dom. I’ll go tomorrow morning. That will put me in the city within two days’ time.”

Papa left shortly after breakfast the flowing morning, earlier than he might have when the roads were dry, but the rain continued and, even for a single man on horseback, the going would be muddy and slow. Celeste packed food and water in Papa’s saddlebags.

“I cannot promise,” my father said, as we all stood together in the kitchen, “but if there is money left over after paying off debts, I may be able to bring you something from town. Tell me what you’d like, girls, and I’ll do my best to manage it.”

“I don’t need anything, Papa,” April said at once. “Unless there is something that would help Dominic.”

As she spoke, the color rose in her cheeks, but she kept her eyes steady on my

father’s.

“I think food and rest will be enough for him,” Papa answered. He reached out

and brushed a thumb over April’s blazing cheeks. “And, of course, your company. I’ll expect the two of you to have settled things by the time I return.”

He gave April’s cheeks a sudden pinch, then shifted his attention. “What about

you, Celeste?”

“Could you bring some lavender plants, Papa?” my oldest sister asked. “Belle

says the cuttings from the rose bushed are almost ready to plant. But if we could have lavender as well…”

“You’re thinking of your mother,” my father said. For though roses were her

favorite flower, lavender had always been the fragrance she loved best.

Celeste nodded. “But what would you like for yourself?” my father asked.

Celeste cast her eyes around the kitchen, as if searching for inspiration. “Well, it would be nice to have one more cast-iron skillet,” she said. “A really big one.”

“A cast-iron skillet,” my father echoed.

“I know it would be heavy,” Celeste said quickly, as if she’d heard some

objection in my father’s voice, “but there’s Dominic to feed as well now, for as long as he stays, and a bigger pan would be useful, Papa.”

“You could always bring sugar, if a new pan is too difficult to carry,” I suggested.

Celeste nodded. “Or that, yes. That’s a good thought, Belle.”

My father put his hands on his hips. “Now, let me see if I have this straight,” he said. “My daughters, who not three months past were as fine a collection of fashionable young ladies as anyone could hope to meet, are asking for a pan it takes both arms to lift, and a tonic for a sweetheart? Not one piece of finery among you? Not one ribbon or bow?”

“Well, certainly no buckles,” I said, and earned a laugh from everyone present.

“I have no use for fancy ribbons in the kitchen,” Celeste said simply. “I’d always be worrying about the ends dragging in the batter or, even worse, catching fire as I work at the stove.”

“And they’re no good to me when I’m dusting or scrubbing a floor,” April chimed

in.

“I’ll take theirs, Papa,” I offered. “I can use it to make straight rows in the

vegetable garden.”

“Well,” my father said. “Well, then.” He stood facing us as we made a little half circle before him. For the second time in as many days, my father had tears in his eyes.

For my sisters and I were sending a message, and my father had heard it, clear as a bell. We would not ask for what we’d valued in our old lives. It would take more than one shipload of cargo to buy those lives back, and I, for one, was far from certain that I wanted mine.

In my old life, I had become invisible. In my new one I was…I wasn’t quite sure

what. But I knew this much: I wanted to find out, for I liked who I was in this new life better than who I’d been before.

But most remarkable was the fact that my sisters and I had each spoken

spontaneously. We weren’t putting on a brave face we’d discussed ahead of time. We had each spoken truly, from our hearts. We did not want the past. We wanted the future, whatever it might hold.

I don’t think I’d ever loved my sisters more than I did in that moment.

“If you’re sure,” my father said.

“We’re sure, Papa,” I replied. “Though if you chance to come upon the heartwood

Tree and one of the branches just happened to break off and fall on your head…”

My father tossed the saddlebags over one shoulder with a laugh. “I think it’s time that I was going. I’ll come back as soon as I can. Don’t let your mother worry,”

“We won’t, Papa,” April promised.

Together, our arms around one another, my sisters and I crowded into the kitchen

doorway, watching until the rain hid my father from view.

And then we began to wait once more.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

We waited four long weeks, until the days slid from April into May. At last, the weather turned fine: Glorious spring days filled our hearts with hope for the future.

And so, at last, my father came home.

He arrived at noon, just as Celeste was preparing to set our midday meal on the

table. We’d had a brief and unexpected burst of rain that morning, but it had quickly passed, leaving the day sparkling and warm.

Celeste was just taking a fresh-baked pie from the oven when she heard footsteps

at the kitchen door. Her cry brought us hurrying in from all parts of the house. Within moments, Papa was seated at the kitchen table, a mug of the tea he so loved close at hand, while Maman, Dominic, and we girls ranged around him.

“It’s all right,
mes
enfants
,” he kept saying over and over. “
I’m
all right.”