by E. D. Walker
“—haven’t seen her about in ages.” Voices echoed from the stairwell ahead, two of the men-at-arms talking, it sounded like. Beatrice and her ladies fell back, waiting for the men to emerge so they would not have to pass each other on the narrow stairs. The guards were still a few steps down, but the stone of the stairway carried their voices and projected them louder than the men had probably intended.
“—a body fit to make a man weep, the most beautiful lady—”
Beatrice hid a small laugh behind her hand and cast her eyes over her ladies-in-waiting, wondering whom the guards might be talking of. Probably not Sybille, poor thing. Her chest was still flat as one of the page boys’. Perhaps they spoke of Petronilla; she was a lovely girl with cool sable-brown skin, pretty enough to turn anyone’s head surely.
“Ay, she’s fine to look at,” the first guard continued, “even since the babe was born, but she’s no lady.”
Beatrice froze, and now all her ladies were looking at her. She herself was the only noblewoman to give birth recently in the castle.
“What do you mean?” the other guard asked, both their voices growing louder with their approach.
“Why, the baroness is a slut, man. She might have been born an earl’s daughter, but King Thomas kept her as his mistress for years. Then she was passed from man to man at that court of his.”
Beatrice’s face heated, and her blood pounded in her ears.
“Our baron must have been mad to marry the girl.”
“That hair. Those eyes. That bosom…”
“Beauty hiding a black heart. I heard she tried to poison the queen.”
That’s a lie. Certainly Beatrice had wished Queen Aliénor dead, but she’d never done anything about it.
The other man snickered. “I heard she took two men to bed with her at once.”
That…was not entirely incorrect. Mostly she’d watched the two men enjoy themselves with each other. If it came to an accusation, the men would be in greater trouble than she. Castration at best, burning at worst. Although the lax morality of the king’s court back then had meant that charges were never brought against anyone. Here, though, in this backwoods country town, such arrangements and affairs were—almost—unheard of.
“I heard she bedded other women.”
That was true, although only one woman, and she’d hoped her female lover would have been more discreet about it. Cases against noblewomen were rarely prosecuted, and never in Beatrice’s lifetime, but that didn’t mean her past couldn’t be used against her somehow. Beatrice cast her eyes heavenward.
“Well, her whole family has bad blood. Her brother tried to kill the king’s nephew.”
“Yes, can’t expect much from the sister of a traitor.”
“She’s brought a curse down upon us. No doubt. That’s probably why all the trouble in the village started—”
Beatrice turned on one heel before the guards could emerge at the top of the stairs. If she saw their smug faces she’d probably have them killed, which would hardly improve her reputation. She stomped all the way across the parapet to the other staircase. The veil covering her hair blew off her shoulders to billow out behind her. Sweat beaded on her upper lip. Winded and dizzy, she descended into the dimness of the stairway.
Petronilla fluttered after her. “My lady, wait. You’ll trip.”
Beatrice sucked in a deep breath and waited, her hands clenched at her sides until her eyes adjusted. The moment they did, she set off again down the stairs, all her ladies in a tizzy behind her. Petronilla caught up and paced her on the stairway, tentatively reaching out a hand. “My lady?”
“I’m fine.” The gossip was true, of course, all of it. Well, except the bit about poisoning the queen. But Beatrice had been naïve enough to think her marriage could wipe the stains on her character away, remake her into a respectable baroness, wife, and mother.
She shoved the door to her chambers open, and a small bell-like laugh exploded, wiping all her unhappy thoughts away. Her baby son smiled at her, cooing and gurgling, trying to push up on his arms, staring at her with wide blue eyes from his blanket on the floor. No one had loved her so simply, so unconditionally, since her own father had died. Her baby, her precious Little Stephen, was all that mattered—securing his future, his safety. Beatrice smiled at him but turned away almost at once.
Because of the things she’d done, whispers might follow her son forever. Bad blood. Whoreson. No matter what she did going forward, it seemed impossible she would ever live down the wanton impropriety of her youth. She didn’t mind suffering the social consequences of her misadventures, but it appalled her that her innocent baby might have to.
She was safe enough now, her husband and his connections a bulwark against any legal reprisals that might arise. But if Stephen should die before their son was of age…the rumors, the spiteful gossip could be used against Beatrice, could be used to take everything away from herself and her son. After all, how could an unnatural whore like her possibly raise a decent child, possibly run a profitable estate? They could take the estate. Maybe take her son away to be raised by more respectable strangers.
Beatrice hugged her arms tight against her chest, feeling chilled despite the sunlight pouring through her window.
Her ladies finally made their way into the room, chattering among themselves before settling down either to play with the baby or to sew him more clothes. In only a few months it seemed the whole world had pivoted to revolve around her black-haired darling.
She shook her head and settled in at her desk, digging through her correspondence. Nothing to be done now. Immediate financial ruin loomed as the more pressing concern anyway. Stephen was alive and well, and no social harm could come to her or her son while her husband lived. She felt stronger today, after all, so she should take advantage of it to work. Perhaps work would take her mind off spiteful gossip as well. She sent one of her ladies to fetch the steward, and he arrived in her chambers almost at once.
The steward bowed. “Baroness?”
“What was it you tried to talk to my husband about this morning? The issue with the village midwife? Is Mad Mary causing trouble?”
The steward’s lips pinched, and he made a small negative gesture with his hands. “It is nothing to concern yourself with, my lady. Mad Mary is probably overreacting.”
Beatrice knew the midwife. She was eccentric, but not prone to hysterics. “But I am concerning myself. If it is such a small matter it hardly merits the attention of my husband or yourself. You work so hard, I know. Perhaps I can take some of the burden up.” She flashed her teeth at him and he blinked, momentarily dazzled. Her beauty was still good for some things. “You’ll bring Mad Mary to me so she can tell me the matter herself?”
“Of…of course, my lady.” He made another small bow, then hurried away.
Beatrice idly twirled the quill in her hand, wondering what the village’s peculiar midwife had gotten herself into this time. Beatrice forced her attention onto her correspondence while she waited for the midwife to arrive. Bills, bills, bills. Does my husband ever do anything but spend money?
A while later, a soft knock sounded at her door.
“Enter,” she called.
Pages were a common enough sight in the women’s quarters, but this one was uncommonly nervous about his errand, shifting on his feet and twisting his chapped red hands round each other. “My lady, Mad Mary is here for her audience.”
Beatrice started to speak, then hesitated and studied the boy. The castle pages were practically professional gossips. Useful gossip could be as good as coin to a smart lad who knew how to trade with it. “Do you know what the midwife wishes to speak to me about? Is there any rumor bubbling up from the village?”
“I’ve heard tell…that is…she—she says the Fair Ones have come out of their hill.”
Her ladies gasped.
Beatrice raised an eyebrow, but the boy just swallowed and continued, two red splotches standing out strong on his cheeks, “Mad
Mary was at the castle gates this morning. I saw her myself. She was screaming that the fairies tried to take a baby last night.”
“Don’t say that word, fool.” One of the nursemaids snapped out the baby blanket she'd been folding and glared at the poor page. “Or you’ll draw their attention here.”
“We call them the Good Neighbors or the Fair Folk, lad,” Petronilla said, more gently than the nursemaid had.
Country ways. Beatrice had grown up at court, among the nobility, in the bustle of the king’s capitol. She’d never had such close contact with the fey folk and other uncanny occurrences that came with living so close to the woods and wild lands. The closest she’d come had been the king’s pet werewolf, and no one had known he was more than a simple wolf at the time.
Beatrice didn’t know if she even believed the tales in the village of Fair Folk, and yet she had still hung an iron horseshoe above the entrance to her rooms where she and the baby slept. “‘You said they tried to take a baby?”
“Yes, Baroness.”
“What happened?”
“Mad Mary stopped them.” He shrugged. “That’s what she does.”
***
Mad Mary was a weathered old crone, hunchbacked, with a long hank of iron-gray hair. Her face was a mass of wrinkles with a color like sun-baked clay. Her eyes were so deep-set Beatrice could not even see them.
Beatrice restrained an urge to trace the smooth lines of her own face, to check for wrinkles on herself. She’d already grown so much plumper after the birth of her son. Wrinkles were probably the next step. Her own complacency about her looks, which had felt so freeing that morning, had dissipated now like the fog of sunrise. Beatrice’s beauty was her only personal asset, the only thing she could control, and it was the only thing that had saved her from the life of a poor outcast once upon a time. The Baron of Réméré had not married a penniless orphan like Beatrice because she had a dazzling personality.
Yet for all that Beatrice feared the tarnish of time’s touch, she would not trade her son for anything. Not to have the first blossom of her youth back, nor all the gold in the kingdom. But she would preserve her beauty for him, use it to serve him. She’d traded her looks and love for favors once upon a time. She could do it again for her son if she had to. I’ll have Petronilla prepare a rinse of lemon juice for me tonight.
Once inside Beatrice’s rooms, Mad Mary seemed in no rush to discharge her errand. She went straight for the baby and lifted Beatrice’s son onto her hip, making him laugh. His innocence kindled some inner light within Mad Mary and made the wrinkled crone more palatable to look upon. Well, no surprise that a midwife should have a way with babies. Mary had delivered the boy herself only a few months ago, after all.
“Tell me about the problems in the village?” Beatrice asked.
Mad Mary glanced sharply over. “You mean our troubles with the Fair Folk.”
“Yes.”
“Your husband didn’t care to listen to me this morning. It’s been a long time, in fact, since any of the castle folk troubled themselves about our problems in the village.”
True enough. Stephen had let his lands and his people slip to the brink of ruin, but Beatrice meant to mend all that. To see her son’s legacy secured if nothing else. “Tell me about the baby. Please?”
The midwife clucked her tongue and set the baby on the floor to roll on a blanket. “Ah, we’ve always had changeling troubles, my lady. But it used to be the pretty girls that they wanted. And sometimes pretty boys. Once a year or so, some sweet young thing would disappear into a fairy hill or into the woods. Or a new wife would take sudden sick, and we’d discover it was a changeling all the time, and we’d burn it out.”
“‘Burn it out’?”
“Hot poker down the throat. Or tie them to a stake and set them alight.”
Beatrice must have made a face, because Mad Mary sniffed and settled her skirts about her knees. The midwife held her hands out, palms up, in a what would you gesture. “’Tis the only way.”
Country ways. “When did they start taking babies?”
Mad Mary stiffened, jutting her chin out. “They haven’t. Not yet. I’ve seen to that.”
“I heard you helped save a baby from them.”
“Yes, and another baby just today. He was a few months old, but this morning I caught the damn beasties trying to make a switch, trying to replace the real baby with one of their own sickly ones.”
Beatrice shuddered and bent to lift her boy into her arms. He burbled happily at her and stared fascinated at her necklace, tangling his pudgy baby fingers among the pearls. Ice threaded through her heart, like the lake freezing over in winter. To go to your baby’s bed and find a false child, a changeling, in his place. To lose him, to never hold him or hear him again… “The fairi—the Fair Folk tried to substitute one of their own?”
“Yes. That’s probably how this whole mess started. One of their own pups was born sickly, and now they want to switch him out for a healthy one of ourn.”
“How many young children are there in the village, and how many pregnant women?”
“Too many.”
Buy The Changeling Child now
Also by E.D. Walker
Fantasy Romance/Fairy Tale Retellings:
The Fairy Tales of Lyond Series
Enchanting the King
The Apprentice Sorceress
The Beauty’s Beast
The Changeling Child
Other SF/F Work:
Heir to the Underworld
Zandro: A SFR Novella (coming soon!)
The Weaver, An Anthology of Short Stories
Contemporary Romance:
(Writing as Beth Matthews)
Love’s Last Call
******
Thanks for reading The Beauty’s Beast. I hope you enjoyed it.
Reviews are one of the best things you can do to support your favorite authors. I appreciate all reviews whether positive or negative. If you would like to leave a review for this book CLICK HERE.
You’ve just read the third book in The Fairy Tales of Lyond Series. The other books in the series are Enchanting the King, The Apprentice Sorceress, and The Changeling Child.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Many thanks to:
Valerie, my first and best reader, the Queen of the Comma and Paperdoll Maker Extraordinaire.
Mom, even though she likes him better as a wolf.
Biag, who helped to make the final confrontation more than just “Insert fight scene.”
Phoenix Sullivan, who helped me get my blurb in shipshape.
Simone Sadie for yet another gorgeous piece of art, and Najla Qamber for the beautiful cover design.
Eleanor, Henry, and Marie, whose histories and personalities I have mangled for my own nefarious ends.
Once again, many, many thanks to Chris Juzwiak, for the inspiration, for his encouragement, for teaching me French swear words, and for being one of the best teachers I’ve ever had.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
E.D. Walker, a native of Los Angeles, is the author of The Fairy Tales of Lyond Series that begins with Enchanting the King. As a child, she grew up knowing all the words to the songs in Disney’s fairy tale retellings. (Sleeping Beauty was always her favorite.) Lo and behold, she eventually grew up to write fairy tale retellings of her own.
By day, E.D. helps corral engineers for NASA (without doing any of the tech stuff herself, of course). By night, she loves to write her clever heroes and heroines bantering their way to true love. E.D. is a total geek, a movie buff, and a mediocre swing dancer. E.D., her husband, and their son live in sunny Southern California with one of the neediest housecats on the planet.
For more information about E.D., please visit her website, “Like” E.D. on Facebook, and follow her on Twitter, Bookbub, and Goodreads. Make sure you also join E.D.’s newsletter to be the first to hear about her newest projects.
She’s always thrilled to hear from her readers. Email her directly at e.d.wa
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