Page 21 of Beauty Reborn
I sat at my polished writing desk, and directly under his sentence, I rewrote the same letters as neatly and unembellished as I could, emphasizing the straight backs and smooth curves. Then I let it float back to him.
He took the hint and returned a second attempt. There was not much improvement, but I could see the effort. For the rest of the evening, we traded that sentence, passing the ball back and forth with gentle correction and patient obedience. He never rushed a reply, and his calm meticulousness calmed me in turn until the storm inside me gave way to the quiet rhythm of my heart and the echo of that repeated message:My name is Beast.
During one of our afternoons in the library, he’d asked the nature of my family.
“Where to begin,” I’d said, smiling ruefully. “With the eldest, I suppose, and in order. Rob is clumsy and in love. Astra is selfish but talented. Callista is mischievous, and her interests change with the wind. Then there’s the youngest of the family—she is whimsical and, overall, quite useless.” He might have contradicted me had I given him a chance, which I did not. “The family has, of course, two parents, as families do. Father is thoughtful and hardworking. Mother succumbed to a fever several years ago.”
At the description of my mother, he observed, “Hardly a trait.”
“You’re correct.” I had to wrestle my memory, to wring from it things I’d set aside either by intention or accident. “Mother was vain, as I’ve said. Questionable judgment, particularly in naming her children. An upstanding woman of society.” I remembered her in the sitting room, laughing with friends. I remembered the way Father’s face always softened when he said her name:Rose.
“She pitied the ugly and the poor, but unlike her friends, she did not do so with inaction. Our kitchen frequently extended meals to servants and strangers alike, and although it was beneath her to be a seamstress for work, she employed the skill for charity.”
My chest ached, and I finished quietly, “Astra fancies herself Mother’s image in every way, but she has only the beauty and vanity without the generosity.”
The beast gave his usual pause, as if revisiting each of my words before drawing his conclusions.
In the end, he surprised me by asking, “Do you take after your mother?”
“Not in any way. Did you not hear the generous description? Nor am I my thoughtful father’s child except in blood. I am an ugly, degenerate apple, unbeholden to any tree.”
“A beast,” he said simply.
Unexpectedly apt. And in the following silence, I felt companionship, until my restless soul could bear the stillness no longer and I returned to reading.
Now, several evenings later, I felt that companionship all over again.
My name is Beast.
The next day, I returned to the library with determination. I curled up in my chair, and I started reading. As soon as I did, somehow, I knew he was there. I closed the book and waited, scratching my hand to keep my attention focused so I wouldn’t fill the silence with mindless chatter.
“Why do you stay?” he finally asked.
“I thought about sailing,” I said. “But I have no sea legs.”
I tried to wait again, but my heart jittered with each moment, turning my breaths unsteady until finally I choked out, “Please don’t ask me again. If I’ll ... The question you asked the other day.”
“I’ll try not to,” he said quietly, which was a ridiculous response.
“I intend to die alone.” I tried for amusement but gripped my book too tightly, creaking the leather. “I won’t marry anyone. Ever. So there’s no point in asking.”
“Alright.”
He sounded neither defeated nor rebellious, and my uncertainty only increased the rate of my anxious heart.
“If you have any ideas about—about forcing me—”
“Never!”
My chair scraped forward under the force of his protest. It was the first time he’d ever cut me off, the first time he’d spoken without seeming to need any thought. Intellectually, it was comforting. But in the empty room before me, I saw Stephan at every corner.
“Well, you are a beast,” I said. “All men are. Reaching for roses that aren’t theirs.”
That was the reason I was here, the reason for all of it. Stolen roses.
After that, we didn’t speak, and I read in haunted silence.
Father told us it was a storm unlike anything he’d ever seen. He was still pale, trembling so much he couldn’t hold the cup Callista tried to press into his hands. In the early years of building his fortune, he’d been a seafarer, so he described it as a hurricane, but rather than the salt-sting of ocean water and the wild roll of waves beneath a ship, this was the roll of once-solid earth beneath his feet and the stinging lash of branches in the wind.
