Bryony and Roses (13 page)

(A week ago, the notion of touching the Beast voluntarily would have made her tremble, but there was something deeply unthreatening about him when he was reading. He had to fold himself into the chair for one thing. For another, he was desperately near-sighted and had to hold the book a few inches past the end of his muzzle when reading. Apparently House could not provide adequate reading glasses.)
 

He looked at her toe. She waved it threateningly. “You’re not listening. This is a great line.”
 

“You’re
poking
me,” he said mildly.

“You’re lucky I don’t come over and hit you with a footstool. What can you possibly be reading that has you so engrossed?”

“A treatise on the subject of aetherometrics.”

She scowled. “You made that up.” She threatened him with the toe.
 

“No, but I admit it’s rather dry compared to yours.” He eyed the toe warily. “Are you going to poke me again? Should I read some of mine to you?”

 
“Is it as funny as mine?”

“Not even remotely, I fear.”
 

Bryony drew her bare foot back to her own chair. “You don’t have any treatises on horticulture, do you?”

He considered. “I’ve got a few on crop rotation. I shall have to fetch them down for you.”
 

“Are they are dry as aeth—either—your book?”

“You might not think so. I would be happy to get them out, if it saves me another savage poking.”
 

Bryony made a rude noise, then giggled. The Beast smiled down into his book.
 

No, it was not an unpleasant way to spend an evening.
 

There was someone in the room with her when she woke up.

She wasn’t sure how she knew, or why it woke her at all, but she came straight up out of sleep without any confusion.
 

Someone was there.

She lay frozen under the sheets, her fingers fisted in the pillowcase, listening furiously.

There!
 

A stealthy footstep, then another. Someone was walking across the room.
 

What shall I do if he opens the bed-curtains?
 

Her knife lay on the nightstand. She had been wearing it faithfully, although she had no hope of actually drawing it from under one of those ridiculous dinner dresses, and House was apparently treating it like some essential undergarment, because it never vanished the knife away.
 

Unfortunately the nightstand was at least two armlengths away, owing to the improbable size of the bed, and she’d have to lunge across the pillows, hope that she didn’t get tangled in bedding, grab the knife, and then…something.
Wave it in a war-like manner and hope for the best.

I won’t move. Maybe he’ll go away. If he opens the curtains, I’ll go for the knife. I’ll scream for the Beast and go for the knife.
 

The footsteps passed around the foot of the bed, moving toward the window.
 

It did not occur to her that it might have been the Beast moving about her room. The Beast’s feet were utterly silent. He could have been in and out any number of times and she would never have heard it.

Unspoken even in her thoughts was a growing belief that the Beast would not have been sneaking around her room in the first place.

The intruder scrabbled at the desk by the wall. There was a frustrated sound to it. Paper tore.
 

Not here
, she thought.
I’m not here. I’m a little mouse. A baby bunny. A very quiet thing that hides very quietly and isn’t here at all.
 

The scrape of the window opening sounded like a crack of thunder. She jumped, and hoped that he hadn’t been watching her.

He can’t see me. I can’t see him. These stupid pink bed-curtains may be saving my life. Does he know I’m here? Does he think I’m asleep?

Wind sighed through the room from the open window, and then—nothing.

Long hours passed without another sound, but Bryony didn’t sleep again until dawn light had broken through the window.
 

The Beast was waiting by the garden. Bryony strode up to him, scowling.

“There was someone in my room last night,” she said.

He stared at her as if she had said that she had decided on roasted barn owl for lunch.
 

“Impossible,” he said finally. “Are you sure you didn’t dream it?”

“I’m sure,” she said. “Look, everybody gets nightmares, sure. This wasn’t one. I heard someone walking in my room. And they did this.” She held up the pad from her writing desk.

The list of questions on it was still legible, but barely. Gouges had been torn in the paper and the bottle of ink had been upset on the desk, staining half the page.
 

“The pen’s been snapped in half,” she said. “House cleaned up the ink bottle, but it left the rest. I don’t know if it can’t, or if it wanted me to see this.”

“It might not have known it was supposed to,” said the Beast absently. He was reading the questions, she realized, and flushed. “The house can’t read very well. It can make books, but the insides are just a few words repeated over and over. It can read very simple phrases, so far as I can tell, but nothing complex. It probably knew that the ink bottle wasn’t supposed to be overturned, but it couldn’t have recreated the writing.”
 

He paused, then added, “I am not always certain how much the house understands.”
 

“It understands clothes,” said Bryony dryly. “At least, for a value of ‘understand’.”
 

The Beast half-smiled at that, but a frown slowly formed over his face, dragging his lips back from his tusks. “I truly do not know what to tell you.” He handed the list back to her. Their eyes met as he handed the page over, fiery yellow to murky green, and he nodded, almost imperceptibly.
 

There was a great deal more to his eyes than the golden predator’s gaze she’d seen at first. There were depths there. Humanity. Heat.
 

Bryony suddenly found it hard to breathe, and took refuge in outrage.
 

“You said there wasn’t a key to the lock!”

“No, I said that I didn’t
have
a key to the lock,” he said. “That doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist, or couldn’t be made.” He considered. “If
I
wanted to get into your room, I would simply tear the door off the hinges, but I imagine that you would have mentioned that.”
 

“You could knock,” she said acidly.

“Well. There’s that.” He clasped his hands behind his back and began to wander across the grass. “There are, as I see it, three possibilities.”

She fell into step beside him, too annoyed to care that her breath caught when she stood too near the Beast. The scent of cloves and fur mixed with sun-warmed grass.

“The first possibility is that you dreamed it,” said the Beast.

“I didn’t. And anyway, what about the damage to my papers?”

“You may have done it yourself, either for some obscure reason of your own or while sleepwalking.”

Bryony gritted her teeth. “Thanks.”

“It is only one possibility. The second, of course, is that I am lying to you and I did indeed break into your room and upset your inkwell myself.”

Even angry—and fine, admit it,
scared
—Bryony had to admit that the Beast was being fair. She huffed a laugh. “All right. I’ll admit that I don’t think you did it any more than I did. I wouldn’t have heard you. You’re too damn quiet.”
 

“Ah,” said the Beast, raising a clawed finger, “but perhaps I
meant
you to hear me.”
 

“For some obscure reason of your own?”

“Precisely. You have only my word for anything here, after all. For all you know, I am trying to frighten you or drive you mad.”

“For all I know, I froze to death in the woods and I’m dead and this is Hell,” said Bryony testily. “Are you the Devil, by any chance?”

The Beast laughed. It didn’t have a great deal of humor in it, but it was definitely a laugh, even if there was a bit of a boar’s grunt to it. “I’m not, so far as I know.”

“You have to tell me if you are. I’m pretty sure that’s a rule.”

“Do I? Very well. I don’t believe I’m the Devil. I can’t imagine that he would allow himself to be so inconvenienced by his form as I am by mine.”

“Well then, I’ll take your word for it.” Bryony ran a hand through her hair, aware that it was probably sticking up like a hedgehog. “What’s the third possibility?”

“That you are not mad or dreaming, and there was indeed someone in your room.”

“All right.” Bryony squared her shoulders. “Is there anyone else in the house?”

The Beast shook his head.

“Could someone be there without you knowing? You said that travelers find the house sometimes, when in need. Could someone have gotten in that way?”

The Beast opened his mouth, then closed it again, looking thoughtful. “I had not considered that. I suppose it is possible. I am generally somewhat—aware—of others in the house or on the grounds, but I would not say that it is impossible.”

“Could someone get in by magic?” asked Bryony.

“With sufficient magic, one could get in anywhere, I imagine,” said the Beast. “But I would expect to notice that, as well.” He, too, ran his hands through his mane, until great tufts stuck up. Bryony had an exasperated urge to smooth them back down. Her sister Holly tended to shove her hair under a hat when working, and when she took the hat off, it went wildly in all directions. It always made Bryony’s fingers itch.
 

She tucked her hands firmly under her arms. “Could someone who was here before simply not have left?”

The Beast considered. “It—has been—a long time.” She thought he might be about to say something else, but he shook his head and repeated “A long time. No. I do not believe so.”
 

A queer heaviness settled in Bryony’s stomach.

I’m not the first.

She looked over at her garden, at the stalks waving bravely in the morning light, at the fuzzy sage leaves and the grey-green spikes of lavender.
What changes did that other person make? Those other people? Are there signs of the Beast’s other victims scattered through the house?
 

Did one of them plant the rosebushes? Make the dresses? Design that godawful pink bedroom?
 

Will some future victim find my garden in a hundred years and think that it’s just more of House’s magic?

She gulped.

When she looked at the Beast again, he was watching her with his deep golden eyes.
 

“It is hard to know what to say,” he said. His eyes bored into hers.

That’s a message. He’s trying to tell me something, like he did before, at the gate.
 

It occurred to Bryony suddenly that she did not
want
the Beast to have victims. Not merely because she did not want to be one (although that went without saying), but because—God have mercy—she
liked
the Beast. He was sharp-tongued and sardonic and occasionally abrupt, and if he had been human, she would have liked him very much indeed.

She bit her lip.

It’s just that he turned sod for you. You like anybody who’ll do garden chores, admit it.
 

Well. Maybe a little.
 

“The poetry you have been writing is interesting,” said the Beast out loud, gazing somewhere into the middle distance.
 

“Poetry?” said Bryony blankly. She looked down at the crumpled paper in her hands, with the list of questions scribbled on it.
 

“Poetry,” said the Beast firmly. “I think you have some potential. It still needs work, of course, but I would be interested to see any future efforts.”

She did not need his warning glance to get the message. “Oh. Yes. You’re very kind.” She scowled down at the page. “I’ll keep working on it. If anything else occurs to me, I’ll let you know.”

She was in the library that night, bending over a book on crop rotation, which was just as dry as promised, although there was some very interesting stuff about peas, when the Beast came up behind her and said “Bryony—” and Bryony yelped and threw the book over her head at him.
 

He caught it and peered down at her, bemused. She had lunged partway out of the chair, caught her shoe in her skirt, and was afraid that if she went any farther, she’d tear the petticoats right out of her dress.

Bryony swallowed. “Sorry. I’m still a little jumpy.”

“I would never have guessed.” He leaned down and offered her his arm. She hooked her elbow around it, and managed to extract her feet from her skirts without falling down.
 

“Look,” she said, when she was finally back in the chair, “do you think you could—I don’t know—make some
noise
when you walk? Just a little? You’re so big and you walk so quietly.”

“Oh,” said the Beast, looking abashed. “Um. I could try. It’s my feet. There’s hairs between the pads, they muffle everything…” He sat down on a footstool, picked up a bare foot and wiggled his toes at her.
 

Bryony had not previously considered the Beast’s feet very closely. She grabbed his ankle. He made a resigned noise but didn’t protest.
 

 
They had a large central pad, like a wolf or a tiger, and four toes with black pads. Between each toe was, indeed, thick brown fur.

 
“Four toes?”

“There’s a dewclaw in back,” said the Beast, almost apologetically.

 
“Hmmm,” said Bryony, attempting to part the fur with her fingers. “I see the problem.” She ran her thumb over the paw-pad, which had heavy, creased hide like a dog’s. The claws on his feet were black, blunt, and curved. The dewclaw came around like a sickle.

“Do you have to trim this one?”