The Rose Bride (16 page)

To become a husband again. And if the gods willed, a father.

He shook. The battle inside his heart was the true one, he realized. And it had just resumed.

Jean-Marc ordered the river to be dredged for his wife’s stepsister. Search parties traced the coach’s route from the castle to the
château
. Then he purified himself in the baths, receiving absolution from the priests of Zeus for the death of his enemy. Perfumed and oiled, he dressed in his robes of state and stole away to the mausoleum, where the effigy of Lucienne rested on her sarcophagus.

She doth teach the torches to burn bright
.

The king knelt and wrapped his hands around her cold marble fingers. He traced the stone rose between her palms. He didn’t understand the ways of her goddess. He had no idea what part he was to play in the journey of her Beloved or even if that was what he’d heard. It was unthinkable to him that his journey was not paramount—he was the king. Perhaps he himself was the Beloved of whom the voice had spoken. But he supposed that was what priests were for—to explain the ways of divine if they could. Jean-Marc was not a holy man. He was a warrior king.

Now he made as if to brush the tendrils of hair from her forehead, his rough fingertips sliding over
smooth stone. If he closed his eyes, he could hear the steady rhythm of her hairbrush as she ran it through the shimmering gold tendrils.

“I dare to love you again, only you,” he whispered to her. “It’s not another I take. It’s you.”

Perhaps the flickering torches created a trick of the light. But as Jean-Marc gazed at the beloved face, he was certain that her marble lips smiled.

He leaned forward and kissed them. His heart caught but this time the pain didn’t surprise him. He was becoming accustomed to the strange blend of joy and pain that deep emotion conjured.

Then he called for a feast to celebrate the victory. He knew it was required. He fully expected his wife and stepmother-in-law to stay in seclusion until Desirée was located. The priests were hard at prayer for her safe return and why could that not be so? Miracles were plentiful this day.

His courtiers rushed to make ready for the celebration, thrown into a mild panic as wives and servants pulled doublets and jerkins over bandages and slings. More than one lady tried in vain to chase the stench of smoke from her fine garments. Mud slopped everywhere and the kitchen staff slipped and slid as they slaughtered lambs and calves for the wedding feast.

Despite all the trouble, the castle blazed with joy. The Pretender was dead and the king was married.

Rose jerked awake when she heard the shouting. In the gray haze of daybreak, she lay sprawled on a
grassy embankment inches from the churning headwaters of the river. Dizzy, she lifted her head and saw a flotilla of rowboats on the churning river—at least a dozen, all painted a checkerboard design of black and gold. In each boat, a man in livery sat at the oars while two or three other men threw out weighted nets. A cannon boomed from an unseen location around the bend and it made her jump.

She scrambled to her feet. Something was in her mouth. She reached up a hand to inspect it——and realized that she had no hands.

With a gasp, she bent her head and stared at her body.

She had legs instead of arms—four long, slender animal legs. Hooves instead of feet and hands. She had been transformed into an animal and her entire body was covered with velvety brown fur.

Rose opened her mouth and let the object inside it drop to the sandy earth. It was the purple rosebud.

“You are loved,”
it whispered.

She raced to the river’s edge and looked down at her reflection. She was so astonished that she darted backward on her long, delicate legs. Then she came back and stared. She was a small brown doe.

She shook from head to hoof. Her heart pounded in her ears.
Am I Rose Marchand no longer?
Had she died and become a messenger of the goddess?

She lifted a hoof and inspected it. The pads on the bottom released a musky scent. Smells whirled
around her like leaves in the wind: wood moss, mushrooms, decaying plants, a badger, a spiderweb.

And the men.

Her hearing was as magnified as her sense of smell: One man was muttering about how unfair it was that he should have to dredge the river Vue while other servants feasted. A second fretted that his wife’s handsome cousin had taken her to the feast in his place.

Overwhelmed, Rose pranced in place, her tiny, sharp hooves stamping the ground. She heard herself bleating
whew-whew-whew
, the distress call to other deer.

And other deer broke through the underbrush—first a magnificent buck with a huge rack of antlers, then another, lesser buck, then three does. They raced to her and nosed her with their velvet muzzles. They surrounded her and made comforting ticking sounds.

On the ground, the little rose whispered,
“You are loved.”

Artemis, I thank you
, she thought. She still thought in French. She was still Rose. Was it so with all the other deer? She tried to speak, but her words came out in deer sounds that meant
I am afraid. I need the herd
.

So she thought the words,
Are you human as well?

The deer stared back at her without responding.

“Here’s something!” one of the men bellowed. “Heavy enough for a body!”

The deer turned and watched as he nodded to his
partner and together they pulled in their net. The rower bent backward to see what they had found.

A thick tree stump strained the dripping, diamond-patterned net. The oarsman laughed while the other men uttered curses in low-class, guttural French and threw the trunk back into the river with a splash.

They are searching for me, she realized. Did the others make it to the castle?

The deer gazed at her. Then they turned and began to walk into the forest. Carefully scooping the rosebud back into her mouth, she followed. Forest smells assailed her nostrils—mud and earth and dozens of tiny animals. Wolves had been through there and wild boar. And men. Hunters.

The forest darkened as the herd cantered into an old-growth stand of beeches and oaks. She raced through shadows so thick with animal smells they slid across her fur like hands. The others bleated at her and she ran with them until they blazed through a copse of trees back into golden sunlight. Her nostrils filled with the beloved scent of roses. The smell was as thick as a carpet. It drew her forward and she poked her head through a lacy patchwork of ferns.

About twenty feet in front of her, a lovely stone
château
perched on a hillock. It was covered with trailing roses. Daffodils sprouted along a walkway. The air was layered with perfume.

Charmed, she walked closer. The other deer accompanied her. The gate was open and she nosed her way through it. On the other side, the wall of the
chateau
revealed a rectangular leaded window. She walked toward it, trying to see inside.

Her own human face gazed back at her. For an instant, she thought it was her reflection, revealing to her that she had been changed back into a woman. But when she tilted her head, the likeness did not.

Then she saw the rest of the portrait—for obviously, that was what it was. She was wearing her black dress. A dozen purple roses filled her arms.

Then she smelled the scent of approaching humans. There were two whose scents she knew well—they stank of sulfur and hatred.

The herd bleated for her to run away into the forest with them. She stood her ground. The lead buck grunted at her in disapproval, a doe nudged her urgently, and then the animals raced off, melting into the darkness.

Figures moved into the room, and Rose’s blood ran cold as she watched through the window.

The first was her stepsister, Desirée. She was dressed in a white gown decorated with purple roses and a golden cloak. And Desirée
was
some kind of demon or perhaps a sorceress: For atop her own features, Rose’s face seemed to float like a mask. It was spectral, uncanny: There was her own face, worn by the young woman who hated her above all other things. Her starry midnight eyes blinked and beneath them, Desirée’s brown eyes blinked as well. She smiled with Rose’s lips, yet beneath ... were those little fangs?

Rose bleated softly and forced herself to silence.
She was terrified. She understood at once that the men in the boats had been dredging the river for her. And that Desirée and her mother had woven magic, or sought a god to do it, so that Desirée could masquerade as her. It must be that they thought to replace her, that they had found a means to a third fortune: to install Desirée as the subject of the portrait, for the pleasure of the king.

The second to enter the room was the golden-haired man, who embraced her tenderly, and she laid her head on his chest. What was this? Had he fallen in love with her as well?

Keeping to the shadows, Rose pranced as close as she dared.

“... Reginer, my dear brother,” Desirée said.

Rose blinked rapidly. She had heard that name. She knew her father had a son who had quarreled with him and left. This was he Was that what Monsieur Sabot had been about to tell her?

That is my half brother. I have family. I am not alone in this world. Artemis, I beg of you, change me back! Let him see Desirée for who she is!

Overcome, she began to pant and paw the earth. She caught herself and forced herself to stop. She was not a real deer. She was a human being.

She bleated in distress, heard herself, clamped her mouth shut. Her tail twitched. Her ears flattened.

“I wished that I had returned years ago,” Reginer said sorrowfully. “I would have spared you and your stepfamily from your terrible ordeal.”

“But we’re here now, together. And the ordeal was not too terrible, Reginer. My stepfamily has loved me so. Oh, if only we can find Desirée safe and sound ...”

“There, there,” he soothed her.

Then Ombrine glided into the room. She was dressed in a magnificent black gown chased with gold. A black veil covered her hair, accentuating her high-boned pallor; she looked more like a mourner than the mother of a bride. Her eyes were puffy with weeping, and she carried a black handkerchief embroidered with red letters: L M.

“We will find her,
madame,”
the man said.

“Merci,”
Ombrine murmured. “Oh, children. I would give anything for Laurent to see us all together. I ... I loved him so. If only Desirée can be found,” She fell to weeping.

“There, there, Mother,” Desirée sobbed, throwing her arms around Ombrine.

As they embraced, Ombrine turned to face the window. She opened her eyes and Rose saw that they were completely black.

They seemed to stare straight at Rose.

Terrified, Rose bleated softly. She smelled the herd close by. They were waiting for her in the dark forest.

When Ombrine turned her back, Rose darted away and joined them.

The king waited for seven days and seven nights before he began to woo his bride. He understood her
grief at the loss of her stepsister. He hadn’t called off the search. He would not give up until she was found.

On the eighth day, his lady had sent him a love note and bid him come to her tonight. He had answered that he would.

The kings attendants sprinkled rosewater and apple blossoms on the marriage bed and a virgin placed a corn doll beneath the pillow. Candles were lit and wine was set out.

His bride was in their private apartments with her new ladies-in-waiting, sharing a glass of wine as they brushed her long, golden hair and massaged her shoulders and feet.

Jean-Marc glided through the pleasure garden outside the royal suite. He carried his lute over his shoulder like a young, lovesick swain. The balcony glowed with dozens of candles set in purple paper lanterns. Pomegranate trees sagged with swollen, red fruit. Hummingbirds thronged around the feeder dripping with honey water.

He strummed his lute very softly. Let her think she was hearing things. Let one of her ladies cock her head and listen carefully. One by one, they would realize that the king was in the garden, wooing she who was already won. So it had been with Lucienne. Her ladies had swooned, declaring him the most handsome, romantic prince who have ever lived or loved. They’d teased him and flirted with him, while two of them went to fetch Lucienne, pulling her out
to the balcony by her hands, then fluttering away like a covey of doves.

He strummed just a little more loudly. His eyes shone. He was moved beyond himself. His heart was full of sighs and memories. He had come to anticipate the pain and welcome it. For so long, he had felt nothing. Now, sometimes, it was too much. But he welcomed the challenge of deep, strong emotion.

He sang. Of the moon and her eyes; of roses and her lips. He sang of paradise. He missed one note as his mind traveled to the mausoleum and he thought of Lucienne and their babe, lying alone on this night. His joy ebbed
un petit peu—just
a little—and pain rushed in to fill the void.