But it was nothing of the sort. His second proposal was made before an audience of his two manservants, and though I tried to tell myself it was an oversight and not an attempt to add pressure, I could only think of the way he’d kissed me in front of Astra.
This proposal was more abrupt, more forceful, and when I turned him down, his anger increased as well. He demanded my reasons but was satisfied with none of them.
“I want to marry you,” he insisted. “I love you. I thought you loved me.”
“I do,” I assured him, even as whatever feelings I did have wavered.
He fired accusations and arguments at me so quickly, I could not find my feet, until I grew confused of what I felt and wanted. He might have bullied me into accepting had he not been suddenly called away by the baron.
I slipped out of the estate without a word, even though he’d told me to wait for him.
After that, I began to avoid him.
After that, I began to fear.
Chapter
7
The next morning, I took Honey for a ride, and I led her right up to the fence again, staring through the bars to the forest beyond. The trouble with hiding in a prison was that it had holes. It was too easy for the outside air to come in; the cell was full of the stink of it. And it didn’t provide any safety, only the feeling of being trapped.
I couldn’t return to the cottage, but perhaps I could go farther. Perhaps I could climb aboard a ship and sail to the farthest corner of the world, where there was only undiscovered wilderness, where I could breathe deep the wet wilds and be so lost in fresh green there was no thought of old red.
But if I could get there, something could follow. I thought of my father’s ships, lost in storms and taken by pirates. I thought of men much stronger than I, who had gone with solid hearts to salty graves, and I knew that, no matter where I tried to go, there would never be an escape to satisfy me. The escape I wanted was safety, a corner somewhere to tuck myself away in warmth and peace.
But there was no safety anywhere in the world.
I turned Honey’s head from the gate, and we galloped through the field until the wind stung my eyes and left tracks of tears down my neck.
After lunch, my legs carried me to the library out of habit, but I paused at the threshold.
I looked at my armchair, at the muted rug and the fire already happily crackling. One hesitant step forward, but the heat from the fire was in the air, and it was heavy enough to choke. I pulled in on myself, hand to my stomach as I tried to breathe, but all I could feel was the heat.
I retreated to my room and curled on the window seat. The tray that brought me afternoon tea also brought a bowl of chilled water and a white cloth draped on the side. Thoughtful.
If an enchanted object is thoughtful,my instructor would have said,is it the object itself possessing thought, or is it the compassion of he who owns the enchantment?
“Quiet,” I mumbled, pressing the soaked cloth to my neck and closing my eyes. Icy droplets chased each other down my collar, raised goosebumps across my skin. It calmed the roar, but my mind would never fully be silent, no matter how I begged it.
Instead, it wondered why I had been so unfortunate as to be born the youngest. Astra was seven years my senior, Callista five. Had I been in either of their places, perhaps I might have met someone before Stephan. Perhaps I might have walked a different path.
Yet my mind would not even allow me to content myself in daydreams, reminding me neither Astra nor Callista had found such fortune, and suppose I had married a man, but one who multiplied Stephan’s brutality. Were such a thing possible, I surely would have walked into it with naïve eagerness. The path I’d taken to arrive here only confirmed that.
I wasted the day in paralyzing hypotheticals until, in the evening, a sheet of parchment slid beneath my door, floating across the carpet like a boat on waves until the tide brought it to rest beneath my bench.
My cloth had lost its chill, and my left leg had gone numb beneath me. It needled painfully as I uncurled. I lifted the parchment into my lap and saw the same thick, shaky lines that had first directed me to my room, only now they weren’t employed in art. They were employed in letter writing.
My name is Beast
His letters were hopelessly crooked, collapsing in on one another like new fawns all struggling to walk. Still, he’d taken my first message and my second and structured a new sentence all his own. He understood the heart of it.
For all Stephan’s intelligence, he’d detested writing.
“I’ll hire a scribe,” he said, “or I’ll speak in person. My time is too valuable to be wasted on parchment.”
It was the patience required that he detested. Stephan was a man of quick mind, quick tongue, quick results.
Beast was not. He was not even the type to rush the gathering of two words.
