Bryony and Roses (15 page)

The Beast left her chair alone. Bryony flopped down in it. With the skirts, it really was easier with help, which annoyed her even more. She glared at her plate.

“Would you like some wine, or would you prefer to yell at me for a little longer?” asked the Beast pleasantly. “I could leave, if you prefer, but I generally hold that those who leave the room when you wish to yell at them are among the most despicable of beings.”

Bryony folded her arms. After a minute she said “Damn you for being reasonable.”

“Also despicable,” he agreed. “Shall I yell back?”

“What would you yell?”

“An excellent question.” He propped his muzzle up on his hand and wrinkled his nose at her, which made Bryony want to laugh. She squelched it, because she wasn’t done being annoyed yet. “I can hardly complain that you are a poor houseguest, as you are not here by choice, and you have in fact been quite mannerly about it.”

“Thanks,” she said dryly. “I do try.”
 

“Mmm. I suppose I could complain that you are not at all forthcoming about your past—”

“Mister Kettle, may I introduce you to Mister Pot?!”

“—well, yes. And since I cannot give you mine, I can hardly expect you to fall over yourself with every detail of your own history.”

“Cannot?” she asked, looking up. “Or
will
not?”

“Cannot,”
he said firmly, meeting her eyes, and went on meeting them while the candles winked out around them, one by one, and the silence fell thickly over the table.

His eyes were very gold. Even over the smell of food and the sharp tang of wine, she could smell cloves and, strangely, roses.
 

Cannot. He cannot tell me. This—this magic, whatever it is—is watching to make sure he tells me nothing of his past. He is courting the magic, I think, just by telling me that. He knew it would come, and he did it anyway.

What does it cost him, to try to hint these things to me?
 

Aware only of a desire to make that awful sense of listening go away, she stammered “I—I did not realize that you would want to know. I am not special. I am a gardener and the youngest of three sisters, and my parents are dead. You know all that.”

“Indeed,” he said. “And I remember the names of your sisters, and that benighted animal that you call a pony—Fumblefoot, wasn’t it? That is very little information. Where did you live, before you came to Lostfarthing?”

The candles were beginning to wink on again.
 

 
“I came from the capital,” said Bryony. The Beast hadn’t poured her any wine. She picked up the wine bottle and splashed some out herself. Her hands were shaking a little, which infuriated her.
 

She had just realized that the silence frightened her. The listening sound seemed to suck at her bones. If it went on long enough, surely it would strip the marrow from them and leave her picked clean on the dining room floor.

The Beast took the bottle away from her and poured out a measured glass.
 

“You might as well pour yourself one,” she said wearily. “Ask the house for a bowl or something.”

He stiffened. “It is—”

“Unsightly, I know. Beast, does it matter? You are what you are. I promise that I will not be horrified if you lap your wine instead of sipping it.” She rubbed a hand over her eyes. “Perhaps I should beg your pardon for sipping it. Who is to say which one of us is doing it correctly?”
 

The Beast was silent for a long moment. Then he turned and reached out a hand into the glittering mass of tableware, and drew out a glass.

It looked rather like a brandy snifter that had suffered some middle-age spread. The bowl was broad and shallow. The Beast poured nearly half the bottle of wine into it and then held it to his muzzle and dipped his tongue into it.

It was like watching a bear drink. His tusks were well back and while he made slightly more noise than a human might, he was not nearly as loud as a dog or Fumblefoot.

“You note that I have not screamed in horror,” said Bryony, when the Beast had set the glass down on the table. “Frankly, I think you’ve been exaggerating. I’ve seen much worse from people who didn’t have tusks in the way.”
 

The Beast gave her a hangdog look. She grinned and reached for her own wineglass.

Progress, of a sort. In a few more years, he might even agree to eat at the same table.
 

She suppressed a sigh at the thought of spending years here.
Surely not. I will get to the bottom of this foolishness and then go back to my sisters. It will not be years. I will not allow it to be years.
 

“Why did you leave the capital?” asked the Beast, gazing at her over the rim of his wineglass.

Bryony bit her lip. Having forced him to expose himself, apparently he was going to take payment in kind. Still, she’d started it.
 

And I can hardly complain that he isn’t telling me anything when I’m not telling him anything. Not that any of it matters now anyway, it’s all just a stupid and sordid tale.
 

“My father was a merchant,” she said. “Heh. No, I am not being entirely honest. My father was the wealthiest merchant in the city, and he made sure that everyone knew it.”
 

The Beast waited. Bryony grabbed a roll and began buttering it savagely.

“He was good at what he did, but after our mother died, he got reckless. He began gambling on investments that he shouldn’t have. Things with ships. I don’t know all the details.” She waved the butter knife at him.

The Beast smiled. “I was never a banker. I would not know either. Go on.”
 

“Right. Well, in addition to that, he started trying to marry us off. Iris had a lot of offers, but Father was always dead set against marrying anybody who wasn’t nobility.” She shrugged a shoulder. “He was a commoner, you see, and Mother was some kind of minor noble, a Viscountess once removed or something, and he wanted us to marry someone ‘appropriate to our station.’” She glared at the roll and set it down. The Beast refilled her wineglass.

“So there were a lot of very expensive balls and ball-gowns and tutors and whatnot. He might not have had to spend so much on Iris, since she’s the pretty one, but Holly and I are…well…” She made a gesture to take in her lack of height and wealth of nose. “Holly’s taller than I am, but she also turns pink if she’s the slightest bit out of breath, and the fashion at the capital is—was—for pale alabaster maidens, preferably with consumption. And there’s never been a fashion for big noses.”

“Your nose does not strike
me
as terribly big.”
 

“Are you kidding?” Bryony put a hand up to the offending feature. “And it’s crooked, too. I wanted to wear a full face veil everywhere and pretend to be a woman of mystery.”
 

“Compared to mine,” said the Beast, gazing down the length of his muzzle, “it is of very little consequence.”
 

Bryony giggled.
 

I should definitely eat more than a roll before I have any more wine…

“That doesn’t work for being short, though,” she said. “You’re, what, seven feet tall? I’m definitely short next to you.”

“My dear Bryony,” said the Beast, “
everyone
is short next to me.”
 

“All right, all right. Unfortunately, you weren’t one of the available dukes or barons or earls or whatever.”
 

Frankly, I might have thought differently if he were. At least you can have a conversation with the Beast.
 

“At any rate,” she said, helping herself to the food, “it didn’t go well. Nobody wanted to be saddled with us, and we brought Iris down with us. I don’t know if you know nobles, but having ‘a smell of the shop’ about you is about like being a cannibal, if not worse.”

“I am familiar with nobles,” said the Beast grimly.

Bryony waited a moment to see if the candles would go out again, but apparently the magic did not consider this a dangerous statement.
 

“So there Father was, mounting up huge bills trying to find a fortune-hunter with good enough blood to marry his regrettable daughters, and making riskier and riskier investments, and one day, bam!” She brought her hands together over her plate. “Everything fell down. Our creditors took all of it. I was fourteen.”

“Young to be trying to marry you off,” said the Beast.
 

Bryony shrugged. “I don’t think anybody expected me to actually be…err…
married
married. Father was hoping to find an impoverished Duke or someone willing to partner me off to an underage son in return for a very large dowry. I would have probably stayed in my father’s house until I was sixteen or seventeen.”
 
She gazed into her wineglass. “As it was, we loaded ourselves into a wagon—a borrowed wagon at that—and went off to Lostfarthing. There was a cottage there that none of our creditors wanted. My brother—I’ve got a brother, by the way, for all the good it does—took himself off to the army. He doesn’t know where to find us and we don’t know how to find him, and good riddance.”
 

That was an uncomfortably raw statement to leave hanging. She swallowed, and added, “And I learned how to garden.” She rubbed her thumb along the calluses left by the shovel.

“What about your father?” asked the Beast.

“Dead,” said Bryony shortly. “He got word that one of the ships had come back and there’d be some money on it, so nothing would stop him but he should go back to the city and get it. He still had visions of returning us to wealth and glory, you see, even though Holly and I wanted none of it. I suppose it would have been all right for Iris.”

The Beast put his muzzle in his hand. “And?”

“Mmm? Oh. Anyway, I suppose he did get some money out of it, because bandits killed him on the way home and took it all.” She scowled down at her plate.
 

“I am sorry,” said the Beast.

“Don’t be,” said Bryony. “He wasn’t a very nice man. We were not exactly happy, you understand, but afterwards, there was a kind of relief that we wouldn’t have to keep having the same fights over and over again.”
 

The Beast nodded. “I understand that very well. My father and I…” He was silent for a moment. “There are things I wish I could have said, now. But I am also glad that there are things that I did not need to keep saying.”

“I used to have long fights with him inside my head,” admitted Bryony. “I still do, sometimes. At first I felt bad about it, but Holly said that just because people are dead, they don’t become saints, and feeling guilty doesn’t make them any less dead.”

“I think I would like your sister.”

Bryony nodded. “You would. She’d like you, too. You’d get on like a house afire.”

The Beast snorted. “I suspect she would be more likely to have me drawn and quartered for making off with you.”

“Oh.” Bryony felt as if she’d slammed into a wall. For a moment, she had almost forgotten that the Beast, regardless of his sympathy, was holding her against her will. “Oh. Well. I suppose.”

“Will you marry me, Bryony?”

She lifted the wineglass. “How can I, Beast?” she said, but did not meet his eyes.
 

The next morning, he came down to the garden, holding a small wooden box in his hands.
 

“Here,” he said, holding it out. “I made you this. I’m not sure if it will work, but it’s worth a try.”

Bryony looked at the box, looked up at him, and said “Um…?”

“Open it,” he said, barely looking at her, as if he had done something shameful.

She cracked the lid.
 

Nestled on a black velvet sheet, like a piece of jewelry, was an exquisite bee made of brass and silver.

It was as large as Bryony’s thumb. There was a tiny key sticking out of its back.
 

“Wind it up,” said the Beast. “It should go for several hours, but it has to be wound.”

Hardly daring to breathe, Bryony wound the tiny key. It took half a minute or more, then it made a sharp
click!
and the bee lifted its wings.
 

She held the box out, her hand trembling a little, and the bee crawled to the edge. Its legs were fine copper wires, ending in miniature bottle brushes.
 

“To carry the pollen,” the Beast said. “It seemed best not to stray too far from the original design.”

The bee spread its wings, vibrated them, and launched itself into the air. Bryony waited, her stomach clenched—surely it must fall! Surely it was too heavy to fly!

It buzzed ponderously through the air, circled the garden, and landed on one of the peas. The bee’s golden head vanished into a pink flower, then it pulled back and climbed up the stalk to the next one.

“Flying takes a great deal of energy,” said the Beast. “It will walk and climb as much as it can. And it is not as fast as a normal bee, but it is tireless. If you wind it up in the morning—”

Bryony turned and threw her arms around the Beast’s neck.

He made a sound of surprise. “I—uh—Bryony—?”

“This is the best thing,” said Bryony into his shoulder. “This is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me.
Thank you
, Beast.”
 

After a moment, his arms came up around her, very cautiously, and they embraced together in the garden, listening to the buzzing of the clockwork bee.
 

As if her first dream had been a signal, Bryony’s nights became far more active than ever before.
 

It was two nights later that she dreamed of a man, with pale skin and dark red hair, who watched her from across the room. His eyes were as intense as the Beast’s, but green instead of gold, a color clearer and less muddied than Bryony’s own.
 

“Who are you?” she asked. “And where am I?”

“You are here,” said the green-eyed man, which wasn’t helpful at all. When she looked down, she seemed to be in the manor house still. The tiles underfoot looked familiar, and there was a pattern of roses stenciled on the wall. The room smelled of roses too, rich and deep.