Beauty and the Werewolf (18 page)

Her box glowed. She snatched it open.

She went through three more handkerchiefs, crying, as she read it. Certain things stood out more than others.

There was, of course, more, much more. There was a great deal of reassurance that she had not done anything wrong. A wry reminder that things would be entirely different if she had disobeyed him, but she had had his express permission to visit Granny whenever she wished, and that she had made her way home after darkness had fallen several times that
he
knew of. That she did not need forgiveness, since she had done nothing wrong.

It was everything she had hoped to hear, and had feared she never would—

It was everything she
needed
to hear.

And finally, the admonition that he wanted to hear what her day was like, every day, no matter how trivial it seemed, and that he would tell her the same.

And then a final postscript, after the salutation
Your loving father.

She didn't know whether to laugh or to cry.

So she did both.

Sapphire had insisted that she have a long hot bath before she went to sleep. The Elemental even snatched away her nightgown
and pushed her toward the bathing room. When she woke in the morning, she realized why. Her legs
hurt.

Of course they hurt,
she scolded herself.
You've never spent that long in a saddle before. An hour or two at most, nothing like that entire afternoon, and in the cold, as well!

She really didn't want to move, but she knew that the only way to get her legs to stop hurting as much was to get up and start stretching. In fact, it hurt so much that she suddenly realized that her wounded foot had healed much, much faster than she had expected it would and had not been bothering her for days.

Was that a good sign, or a bad one?

She forced herself out of bed, now full of the urgent need to get to her mirror and try to speak with the Godmother. Sapphire was right there with some of the liniment that she had made yesterday, and it helped tremendously, enough so that she could lean down, and despite Sapphire trying to prevent her from doing so, she undid the bandages on the bitten foot and examined it critically.

To her intense relief, the bite marks were still there. Healing, but not unnaturally fast. So why didn't it hurt?

Except—the moment she took the bandages off, it started to.

What on earth—

She examined the bandages closely, swatting away Sapphire's invisible hands as she tried to reclaim them. Were there marks on them?

She narrowed her eyes and let them unfocus a little, because the marks were so faint otherwise that if she stared too hard they all but disappeared. There
were
marks on them. And they looked like letters and figures, the same sort of things that were written within the circles on the floor of Sebastian's workroom.

“Are these bandages magic?” she demanded of Sapphire, allowing her to reclaim them at last.

Sapphire didn't answer until she had gotten the foot rewrapped—and the pain vanished again. Only then did she pick up the slate to reply.
“Yes,”
she wrote.
“Duk.”

“And they were supposed to keep my foot from hurting?” Well, at least now she wouldn't have to bother the Godmother.

“Yes.”

She sighed, and wished she could ask him for more, to wrap her legs in…but no. He had already told her that magic was difficult and expensive in that way. She wondered just what the bandages had cost him in effort.

“Well, all I can say is that I am grateful to him. And I am glad I made this liniment smell as pleasant as I did.” With a suppressed groan, she got out of bed and this time allowed Sapphire to help her dress.

She was feeling more herself at the end of a productive morning in the stillroom, with several things on Sebastian's list completed, and more of the remedies most households needed restocked. She was still moving a little stiffly, though, as she went down to dinner, and found the Duke and Eric both there. Eric was, as she was coming to expect, almost finished with his meal. He didn't seem to eat, so much as inhale, and she didn't think she had ever seen one man put away as much food into so lean a frame in her life.

Sebastian looked alarmed at her stiffness, but Eric took it in and chuckled. “Riding astride would have been easier,” he said. “You put twice the strain on yourself with that unnatural position.”

“Oh, I know,” she replied with a grimace. “Every muscle told me about it this morning, and I actually
did
have a hot soak before I went to bed.”

Sebastian looked blankly at the two of them for a moment, then blinked and looked relieved. “Oh, you're saddle sore! I'm sorry—”

“It will work out. But, Eric, I would really rather
not
accompany you on an all-afternoon trek again until I've worked my way up to it.” She gave him a glare. “And you knew very well I was going to be hurting, didn't you?”

“I didn't even know you were going to make it past the gates,” he replied. “When you did, I didn't know if you would make it as far as the game trail. Then when you did, well, I had work to do. A little soreness won't kill you.”

“I am greatly tempted to throw something at you,” she said, crossly, but sat down instead and applied herself to her dinner.

“In that case, I'll get back to work in case you change your mind and hurl a plate at me.” He smirked at her, then got up and left the table and the room. “I
should
have hurled a plate at him,” she grumbled. After a moment, Sebastian chuckled.

“Eric has his moments,” he offered.

“Well,
I
haven't seen any,” she retorted. “How on earth did he ever get away with behaving like that when there were people here?”

“He didn't,” Sebastian replied. “Or rather, he didn't behave like that. At least I never saw him do so. Did your box work?”

That put her back in her good mood. “Oh, yes,” she replied, and beamed at him. “It's hard to describe—it makes
such
a difference, just being able to let father know, well, everything, and hearing back from him again.”

Sebastian looked wistful, and a little melancholy. “I wish I had someone who would—” he began, then broke off whatever he was going to say. “Well, never mind. The important thing is that now both of you are easier in your minds. Did you have anything planned for this afternoon?”

The question took her completely by surprise. “Well, I was going to continue to work in the stillroom, but it is nothing I couldn't put off. Why?”

“I could use your help with some magic,” he said, hesitantly. “Something I am going to do to try and figure out about our mutual problem. If you don't mind, that is.”

If I don't mind?
The chance to see some magic, firsthand? More than that, something that might actually
help
them both?

“Try to stop me,” she replied. Firmly.

“THIS ISN'T GOING TO BE VERY EXCITING,” SEBASTIAN
warned, as they climbed the stairs to his workroom. “Most magic isn't, really. I hope you aren't expecting all sorts of lights and colors and sparkly things.”

“I'd like it better if you would stop telling me what it isn't and tell me what it is,” she said, but softened the rebuke with a smile. Unfortunately, he was ahead of her on the stairs and didn't see it.

Bother.

“Well, what I'm going to do is find out if my bite set up an affinity between us,” he said, sounding uncomfortable. “If it did, then we need to be more worried about you changing. If it didn't, we can be less worried.”

“And what's an affinity?” she asked as they entered the room.

“It's—it's being related in some way. Like blood relatives. Here, sit down, would you?” He gestured to a chair, and she obediently took a seat. He went to a workbench and came back with a needle and a little swatch of linen. She eyed both dubiously.

“Are you going to stick me with that?” she asked pointedly.

“Well, erm, yes,” he said. “I need blood. If you've gotten infected, the thing that makes the change will be in your blood.”

“You are not going to stick me with that,” she said firmly.

His face was a welter of confusion. “But you said—”

“
I
am going to stick me with that.” She plucked the needle out of his nerveless fingers. “You'd be trying so hard not to hurt me that you would never get any blood at all.” Steeling herself, she jabbed the end of her pinky finger good and hard, then squeezed up a little bead of blood and sopped it up with the square of linen. He took both needle and linen from her with visible relief.

“I still need your help,” he said, sounding much more at ease now that the part that clearly made him feel acutely uncomfortable was over. “I need an extra pair of hands.”

For the next hour or so, she followed his directions as they simultaneously sprinkled various liquids and powders over the two bits of bloodstained cloth while he chanted under his breath. Finally, he decreed the preliminary work done.

“Just what was that all about?” she asked.

“Well, we already
have
some affinity, and I just wanted to narrow it all down to whether or not we both have been contaminated by what makes the change. We live in the same place right now, we share meals, we breathe the same air… With something like this, you have to be careful to exclude anything that might be a kind of contaminant. You have to be very specific.” He picked up the squares of cloth in two sets of tongs, obviously to avoid undoing all the work they had just done, and placed them in the middle of the inscribed circle on the floor.

Then he took four little pieces of brass from a drawer and set them into the circles—only then did she realize that they had not been complete until he did that.

“Well,” he said. “Now we see.”

He said something aloud that she
almost
understood. And when he did, the two pieces of linen fluttered and moved closer together. Their edges just touched—and then they stopped moving.

She waited, but nothing more happened. “Is that all?” she asked, finally.

He let out his breath in a sigh. “Well…curses.”

She felt a chill. “Does that mean that I
am
infected?” Her heart seemed to stop, then it definitely began racing, while her mind just froze.

“No, it means that either the spell didn't work, or I forgot to eliminate something, or—or there is something here that I don't know about,” he replied, visibly put out. “It means it's inconclusive. If you definitely had been infected, and your blood was now the same as mine in that regard, the two pieces of linen would have become one—they'd have fused. They moved together, which means that we have
something
in common, but I don't know what it is. Maybe you are infected, but you aren't so far gone that the spell actually worked the way it was supposed to. Maybe it's something else. Maybe we are both passionate about the same something—it could be anything from being so fond of macaroons that you crave them even at the mention of them to both of us having the identical ideals.
I don't know.
And there is no way to tell. Or it just could be that I'm not as good at this as I thought I was, which is pretty likely.”

The fear drained away, mostly, but was replaced by irritation. “I thought that magic obeyed rules—”

“Well, it
does,
but I can't always tell what's going to interfere!” he snarled back, losing his temper. “Obviously something is, but I don't know what! And I corrected for everything I could think of, but it's not as if I know everything there is to know about you! For all
I
know, we could be related somehow! I'd get the same sort of result if I did this test with Eric—”

That was when something inside her snapped.

She had been attacked, kidnapped, forced to live with the creature who had attacked her in the first place, kept from communicating with her family and her family had been kept from knowing what had actually become of her. And this was all at the orders of people who seemed to think that because they had rank and titles, they knew what was best for everyone. She had been patient. She had been hideously lonely. She was still afraid, all the time; she was just very good at keeping it under control. She was never told what, if anything, anyone was actually
doing
about her problem. She was supposed to take their word for it that they actually
were
doing something and not just giving her empty promises. She was basically being treated as if she was a child in the nursery, and the only reason, so far as
she
could tell, was because she was a commoner and a female.

So she turned on Sebastian and let loose with all the anger and hurt and frustration and emotions she'd been repressing for weeks. It was almost worse now that people were actually telling her things, because she had just enough information to be really terrified.

And when she finally ran out of things to say, and he still hadn't responded, she turned on her heel and stormed out. She had not exhausted her anger, she had only vented it. How could she feel relief? Nothing had changed. Nothing would change. She was still a prisoner here, and she still had no idea if she was infected or not!

She'd had her hopes raised, then dashed. She could even have distracted herself with her work in the stillroom and not gotten herself all worked up like this.

Wasted. The entire afternoon wasted, because he couldn't do his job right!

She wasn't paying any attention to where she was going; she just stormed through the murder-corridors and a succession of rooms
without even looking at them, until she finally ran out of anger and Manor at about the same time.

She found herself in a large room, mostly unfurnished, with one wall of windows and one of mirrors. It had a wooden floor with a satin finish; not so highly polished that it was slippery, but with a warm glow to it. There were a few chairs ranged along the wall on the mirror side. Reflexively, she went to the windows and looked out. There was another of the courtyards; not hers, but that was all that she could say for sure.

What on earth was this room? It wasn't in use; the chairs were all shrouded in sheets. What did anyone use a room this size for?

Dancing?

That was as reasonable a thought as any. Only the very wealthy could afford to build a room
just
for dancing and other gatherings.

The proportions were a little odd, however. She'd only seen two ballrooms before, and they had been square. This one was longer than it was wide.

Well, perhaps it wasn't used
just
for dancing. Not that it mattered now, since, even if Sebastian was inclined to dance, he wasn't going to be holding any parties…

Though I really don't know why he couldn't,
she thought with renewed irritation.
He only has to be careful three days out of every month. How difficult is that? An idiot could make sure all the guests are gone in plenty of time.

Of course, there was the small matter of the invisible servants.

Good heavens, the man is a sorcerer! He's
expected
to have bizarre servants! People would be disappointed if he didn't! They'd probably come to his affairs just to gawk!
To the attraction of a title, add the exotic appeal of being a magician? Her stepmother and the twins would be over the moon, and so would most of the people they knew. The
few who would not be—well, how would that matter to Sebastian? His position in society was assured by virtue of birth.

Being a sorcerer alone would be excuse enough to keep people away on the full moon! All he would have to do would be to mumble some nonsense about dangerous spells, and end with “and anytime I don't explode something or turn a bystander into a toad I take it as a good sign,” and no one would come within miles of Redbuck Manor on the full moon! He could probably even arrange for something to explode rather messily during daylight hours, if there happened to be a potential witness about, just to lend verisimilitude.

Why couldn't he think of these things for himself? There was no earthly reason why he had to live out here like a hermit!

Well, unless he really wanted to. There was that possibility… He might just be using his condition as an excuse.

Well, fine, then! Let him! Let him stay out here with no one but Eric for company.
And the moment she knew she was not going to break out in hair and claws, she was going home and she was
not
going to feel sorry for him and she was
not
going to look back!

She didn't even realize she was pacing up and down the room until Sapphire stood right in front of her and she would have had to run the Spirit Elemental over to continue. She stopped where she was, reined in her temper and reminded herself that Sapphire and the other Spirit Elementals had been nothing but kind to her. “Hello, Sapphire. Was there something you needed me to know?”

Sapphire had her slate with her and she scratched something on it now that she had Bella's attention.
“Musik?”

“What?” Bella blurted in confusion. “Are you asking me if I want to hear music? Why now?”

“U r in Musik rum”
came the prompt reply.

“This is—was—a music room?” Now the shape of it made sense, if you thought of it as a sort of theater with no seats and no stage.

“And dancing. And praktus fighting.”
At Bella's blank look, Sapphire added,
“Swords.”

Hmm.
Maybe wealthy people
didn't
actually have whole rooms just for dancing. It did make sense that if you needed a place to practice sword fighting indoors, particularly with the lighter rapiers that were coming into use, you would want something very like a room made for dancing to do it in. And that wall of mirrors would, of course, reflect light coming in from the windows so there were no confusing shadows.

But Sapphire was waiting very patiently for her reply, and Verte
had
said that some of the invisibles were musicians. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “I would very much like to listen to some—”

She didn't get a chance to finish the sentence; one of the chairs was divested of its cover and was practically thrust underneath her so she had to sit down or fall down. Several more chairs were arranged in a little group in front of her, and before she could take that in, a harp, a flute, a bodhran drum and two fiddles came sailing into the room and perched above each of the chairs. It was, perhaps, one of the strangest things she had seen since she arrived here.

Then the invisible musicians began to play.

She hadn't been sure what to expect when Verte had said the Spirits were musicians. She wasn't sure what kind of music that they would play, and to be honest, she wasn't sure whether or not they would actually be any good. She had a good ear for music and she knew it, and she was afraid that they might be terrible. After all, just because you were a magical being it didn't follow that you were any good at the sorts of things that humans did. For that matter, just because you were a human being, it didn't follow that you were any good at being a musician!

But they were good. Not
brilliant,
but quite good. Just as good as any of the musicians at the Wool Guild ball.

They played a mix of the sorts of pieces that she would have expected to listen to at a concert, and dance music. And eventually, as her toes began tapping her evil mood got charmed right out of her.

“It's too bad we can't dance,” she said to Sapphire, wistfully.

The musicians paused. She got the feeling that they were talking among each other, even if she couldn't hear it.

Sapphire began writing again.
“Wait,”
she said.

Just as she was beginning to get impatient, a parade of…laundry…came wafting in.

That was her initial confused impression, anyway. Eight shirts and sleeved tunics, seven skirts or petticoats and bodices. As they lined up, she suddenly realized what this was—these were her dance partners, enough for two “sets” of four dancers!

She picked a floating tunic as her partner at random, and the musicians struck up a Running Set, as if they somehow knew this was her very favorite sort of dance.

She quickly got used to grasping invisible hands at the ends of sleeves; she wished she could see the faces—if they had any—of her fellow dancers, in order to know whether or not they were enjoying themselves, but they did seem to be. They were certainly enthusiastic.

And tireless! As the light coming in the windows began to darken, she finally called a halt to the fun. She was actually starting to get a stitch in her side, and was a little winded. But the sore muscles she'd had when she'd awakened were quite worked out now!