The Beast’s Heart

by Leife Shallcross

  Indeed, it was not until the light turned thick and coppery and we had to strain to see where our shafts flew, that she reluctantly allowed me to lay aside the bow.

  ‘Have you not had enough of this?’ I asked her. ‘Are your hands not sore?’

  ‘Perhaps,’ she admitted. ‘I shall probably find my fingers stiff tomorrow morning.’ She held out her gloved hands to me and I took them, rubbing her fingers to dispel any lingering aches.

  She sighed happily. ‘Thank you, Beast,’ she said. ‘That was a lovely way to spend an afternoon. You have entirely done away with my ill temper. I could not want for a more ideal companion.’ She smiled up at me and I flushed warm with pleasure.

  We walked together back through the twilight gardens to the house. Once inside the hall we stopped and I helped her off with her coat.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘shall I see you at dinner?’

  ‘Of course,’ I said.

  I walked her to the staircase, my heart beating fast. Such a lovely afternoon. After such a morning. She had sought my company all day. She had leaned on me, she had put her hands in mine. She had told me how much she enjoyed my company. A bout of nervousness possessed me. Would she, perhaps, be minded to accept my proposal tonight?

  No.

  I dressed with care. The meal was delicious. Isabeau was more beautiful than ever. But the moment her name crossed my lips after she had pushed her plate away, she seemed to freeze and her eyes fluttered closed.

  ‘Will you marry me?’ I asked, my voice turning to lead.

  There was a long moment of silence.

  Isabeau, her eyes still closed, opened her lips.

  For the briefest moment I thought perhaps they formed the sound that began the word I most wanted to hear in all the world.

  But then her eyes opened again and filled with tears.

  ‘No, Beast,’ she choked, ‘I cannot.’

  I was growing used to the devastation by now. The next words I would have uttered would have smoothed over the new crack between us, would have been a tactful request for her to join me in a hand of piquet or some such. But as I drew breath to invite her, she rose from her chair.

  ‘Excuse me,’ she said quickly. And before I could say a thing she had rushed from the room.

  Chapter XXXII

  We plunged once more into frustrating awkwardness. Isabeau met me in the music room and played for me the next day, but she did not ask me to accompany her on her walk. She appeared in the library at our appointed meeting time, but became once more absorbed in her drawing and did not talk much to me. Dinner was downright painful. We chatted about the weather and the next book we might choose for our afternoon reading, but I began to resign myself to another lonely evening.

  For dessert that evening we had been offered a selection of little flavoured crèmes. They sat in pretty pastel-coloured rows on a long silver tray and wobbled gently as we moved them. But, even though she chose three, Isabeau did not eat them. Rather, she merely toyed with her spoon.

  ‘Isabeau,’ I began, but before I could even draw breath to utter my question she held up her hand.

  ‘Why must you keep asking me to—’ Her voice was angry and her eyes refused to meet mine. ‘It’s not fair. You always give me everything I ask for. Yet, the one thing you’ve ever asked of me – the only thing you ever ask – I just cannot give you.’

  She dropped her spoon into her plate, pushed back her chair and fled.

  ‘Isabeau!’ I called, but she had gone. I ran out into the hall after her, calling her name, but she left so quickly I did not even see a flicker of her skirt. She was running towards her rooms, so I did the only thing I could think of and followed her.

  I arrived at her firmly closed bedroom door to the muffled sounds of weeping and paused for a moment. Her anger shook me. Why did I persist in asking her, when I was almost certain her answer would never change? Because I don’t know what else to do, I thought despairingly. I cannot invite her to dances, or bring her oranges or plants for her garden, or drive her home in the dark. And what did she mean by saying I did not allow her to return my favours? Eventually I gathered the courage to knock on her door. Immediately the weeping ceased.

  ‘Isabeau,’ I called through the door, ‘you are wrong. This is not the only thing I have ever asked. How could you forget? You agreed to give up a year of your life to spend here with me. How can I find any way to repay that gift after so many years of solitude here? The debt I owe to you far outweighs any obligation you should ever feel towards me. You may reject me as many times as you like and never tip those scales one whit.’

  All I received in response was silence and eventually, utterly dejected, I made my way to my study with the intention of drinking a glass of wine and contemplating the ruination of yet another dinner.

  And that is exactly what I did there, for perhaps half an hour, at which time there came a knock on my door and Isabeau appeared there, standing quietly, half in shadow, half in candlelight. She looked so like she had the first night I met her, my heart lurched.

  ‘May I come in?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course,’ I said, quickly rising from my chair. She pushed the door open a little further and slipped in through the gap, almost as though she was trying to avoid being observed entering my study.

  ‘Won’t you sit down?’ I asked, casting about for some way of setting her at ease. ‘A glass of wine?’

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, accepting the glass that materialised upon the instant. To my surprise she turned and sat herself, not on the chair opposite mine, but on a low footstool closer to the fire. For a moment I stood there, unable to move, entranced at the charming picture she made, with her beautiful skirts all crumpled around her, holding her glass of ruby wine. Then she looked up and I collected myself, replacing the decanter on the side table and seating myself back in my chair. She was very close and my heart beat quickly at her nearness. I could not take my eyes off her. Then she looked up at me and gave me a small, sad smile.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Please forgive me.’

  ‘Please,’ I said, ‘you never need to apologise.’

  She gave me another sad smile. We sat in silence for a few moments, she gazing down at her glass and I gazing down at her. Eventually she looked back up at me again.

  ‘I know it is highly unorthodox and out of all keeping with our usual routine,’ she said, ‘but would you mind very much if I asked you to read to me?’

  ‘Of course not,’ I replied, feeling a fluttering hope. ‘Is there anything in particular you would like me to read?’

  Isabeau shook her head. ‘Anything,’ she said, ‘just so I might rest my mind.’

  I put my glass down so that I might go and peruse my shelves and saw a faded leather volume had appeared beside the decanter. When I picked it up I found it was a volume of poetry. The first poem was about the beauties of spring and seemed pretty enough, so I began to read. As I read the first line, Isabeau closed her eyes. After I had been reading for a few minutes, she put her glass down on the hearth and shifted so she was leaning against the arm of my chair. Her honey-blond hair now rested only an inch below my left paw.

  I had read five or six poems and was several lines into the next before I realised the subject matter had changed from the beauties of nature to the beauties of the poet’s beloved. I stopped in confusion, half expecting Isabeau to react with embarrassment. But to my surprise she did not stir, even to ask why I had stopped. I leaned forward and saw she had fallen asleep. I wondered what I should do – wake her and send her to bed, or perhaps engage the invisible servants to carry her away as she slumbered? But her face held such an expression of contentment I was reluctant to disturb her at all. I hesitated a moment more. Should I keep reading? Taking the trouble to find another book might end in disturbing her. But this poem … The words on the page were so close to my feelings for her. When else would I get such an opportunity to express them? She was asleep; if she heard me, it would only be in her d
reams. I took a breath and went on.

  I continued reading for perhaps an hour. Every now and then Isabeau sighed in her sleep, but otherwise she seemed perfectly at ease. Then, as I began to draw to the end of the slim volume, Isabeau shifted on her stool and her head slid to the side, coming to rest upon my knee. I caught my breath, but she did not wake. Her cheek was warm through the cloth of my breeches. One curl of her honey hair lay over of the arm of my chair, caught upon the velvet. I could not help myself, I reached out and touched the silken strands.

  Several things happened in quick succession.

  As I stroked the lock of hair, I saw a tear slide out from beneath Isabeau’s lashes and come to rest on her cheek. At almost the same moment I heard a sound like glass breaking. At this, Isabeau startled awake, sitting up straight with a gasp and turning to stare at me. I snatched my hand away.

  ‘Beast,’ she said wildly, as though she had found herself somewhere unexpected.

  I sat frozen, the book of love poetry in one hand and the other held guiltily in the air. ‘I …’ I said stupidly, stricken.

  But rather than call me to account for touching her hair, Isabeau rubbed her hands over her eyes and said, ‘I must have fallen asleep.’ The tone of her voice made me think something had confused her. She looked up at me and suddenly her eyes filled with tears and she looked quickly away.

  ‘I must have been dreaming,’ she mumbled. She was breathing quickly. She stood up hastily and nervously began to smooth her skirts. I, too, rose.

  ‘I must be tired, Beast,’ she said, not meeting my eyes, ‘I think I must go to bed. Thank you for reading to me.’ She held out her hand and I took it, and she gave me a brief curtsey. ‘It was lovely. Goodnight.’

  And she left so quickly I did not have time to utter another word. I was left standing by the fire clutching the book of poetry, staring after her for the second time that evening.

  Now I was confused. Was her discomfort caused by the realisation I was reading her love poetry? Or my touching her hair? But there had been no censure in her voice when she left. Only … I stopped and thought about it. Disappointment? Grief? I frowned in puzzlement, trying to account for how I could have inspired those emotions.

  Of course …

  Grimly I imagined her dreaming of a handsome, whole man reading her those poems. In that case I could well understand a sense of disappointment upon waking. My good humour evaporating, I threw the book of poetry onto my desk and stalked out of my study to bed.

  Chapter XXXIII

  After that strange interlude in my study, the next morning I wondered if Isabeau would be distant again. To add to my sense of despondency, when I looked out of my bedroom window upon rising, I saw patches of frost riming the grass and fallen leaves. Time was marching on and it was so easy to be swallowed by despair each time I realised how far I was from winning her heart.

  But she surprised me. She came to the music room and played. She kept glancing at me as she played and while she smiled at me each time she caught my eye, I could not shake the feeling her mind was occupied with serious thoughts. Still, she gave me no cause to think she wished me elsewhere.

  When she finished, she did not get up immediately, but sat looking down and fiddling with something I could not see.

  ‘Beast,’ she said eventually, ‘I feel I owe you an explanation for last night. I rushed out so rudely at dinner, and then ran away again from you in your study.’

  ‘Isabeau,’ I started, thinking guiltily of the touch of her hair under my paws.

  ‘Beast,’ she said quickly, ‘it’s my dreams. I have such vivid dreams. Sometimes I cannot tell if I am awake or dreaming. I think I was still half asleep when I left your study.’ She stopped abruptly. She looked down and took another breath.

  ‘I do hate being at outs with you,’ she said, her cheeks growing pink.

  ‘I hope we are never at outs,’ I said, finally having found something worth saying.

  ‘Now you are just being gallant,’ said Isabeau, with something a little more like her usual spirit. ‘If you want to be really gallant, Beast, what you should do is change the subject to spare me any further awkwardness.’

  She fixed me with a very bright look.

  ‘Perhaps you could ask me if I want to walk out this morning, or if I’ve had another letter from Marie.’

  ‘Which would you prefer me to ask?’ I queried.

  ‘Both,’ she said promptly. ‘No, wait. Perhaps if you ask me to go for a walk with you, then I can respond that I’ve had a letter and ask if you’d like me to read it to you?’

  ‘Very much so,’ I answered, delighted.

  Isabeau shook her head. ‘You’re getting ahead of yourself,’ she chastised me. ‘You haven’t asked me to go for a walk, yet.’

  We stopped in the entrance hall to don cloaks, given the frost I had seen earlier, then walked out, arm in arm. Isabeau drew out the letter she had in her pocket and read it to me as we strolled around the large pond filling the hedged garden beneath her window. As could be expected, it contained a large amount of discussion of the coming wedding. Dufour had sought the de la Noues’ agreement to a wedding date at the beginning of winter. The reason, Marie explained, was because, as a farmer, autumn was one of his busiest times, especially if he was also to get his household in order to receive a new mistress. While in winter, he had told her, he was not so busy and indeed he rarely travelled to the village; if the snows were very deep, it would be impossible.

  ‘We are both agreed it is simply unthinkable that either of us could last out the winter without seeing each other so regularly as we are accustomed to,’ Marie wrote. Isabeau paused here and for a moment I thought she was going to make a comment of her own. But she did not. ‘I know that is soon,’ she continued reading. ‘Claude says there is far too much to do and is in a state of anxiety lest none of it be done. But, I confess, it seems to me Father Time is dragging his feet in a most unreasonable manner. I cannot wait for the autumn to be over.’

  Despite the jubilance of Marie’s words on the paper, Isabeau’s tone was flat and we walked in silence for a few minutes.

  ‘It is a dreary enough season, this year!’ she burst out. ‘But winter is worse. Why hurry it?’

  We were silent for a little longer. As Isabeau’s words so clearly echoed my own sentiment, I wasn’t able to immediately think of anything useful to add.

  ‘What else does it say?’ I prompted her eventually. She lifted the letter again, but did not read it out loud.

  ‘Oh,’ she said after a few minutes.

  ‘What is it?’ I asked.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ said Isabeau, sounding worried. ‘Marie says here Papa was not able to visit the Vicomte this week on account of a cough that kept him in his bed.’

  ‘Is he very ill?’ I asked.

  ‘She does not say,’ said Isabeau, scanning the lines of writing. ‘She says when the Vicomte heard of Papa’s indisposition he sent over his own physician, which was very kind.’ She flipped the page over and stared at the words.

  ‘Poor Papa,’ she murmured. ‘His chest was never very strong.’ She looked up at me with a strange intensity in her eyes.

  ‘He told us of the desperate state he was in when he chanced upon your gates,’ she said. ‘I haven’t told you, Beast. But I think that’s why I thought I would be safe if I came here.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I asked uncertainly, my insides squirming to find myself discussing that shameful bargain.

  ‘Several times in recent years Papa has had to take to his bed from an inflammation of the lungs,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘It was foolhardy in the extreme for him to take the route through the forest last winter. It is nothing short of a miracle he never sickened from it. I thought perhaps you had fed him some magical potion to keep him well.

  ‘I thought if you had been kind enough to heal him,’ she continued, ‘perhaps you could not be quite the monster Papa described.’

  ‘I see,’ I said.


  ‘You’re not a monster at all,’ said Isabeau, a little severely.

  ‘Ah,’ I said, thinking, But you still won’t marry me.

  I was growing increasingly desperate. By my reckoning, there was a little less than three months to go until I must open my gates and send Isabeau home. I had no doubt of her friendship. I was certain of her sincere regard for me and even that she would be sad to leave me when she went. Indeed, while to begin with I had thought the coming of autumn had made her think more of her home and her family, it was soon apparent that leaving was not actually a prospect she relished. I certainly never raised the subject of her return home, but neither did she. If she were indeed eager to be off back to her family, surely she would have talked of it a little. Perhaps she did not simply to spare my feelings. But, after hearing her decry her sister’s yearning for winter to come, I became certain she was as reluctant for the season to advance as was I.

  This puzzled me. I could not help but feel a glow of happiness that she looked upon the end of her year with me with so little enthusiasm. But, even so, all this was very, very far from returning my love and consenting to be my wife.

  I was at a loss as to what else I could do. We spent so much of the day together, I could not very well sue for more of her time. It would have been entirely understandable if she had in fact grown weary of my company.

  Each night that I made my proposal, she heard me and gave me her answer in the negative. She did not even look away from me now, she had grown so used to it. She would watch me with her large eyes dark with sorrow, her hands folded in her lap and her face pale. Then she would reply calmly. And then we would leave the room together and go to the library – or sometimes to my study now – and read or play some parlour game.

  I had not shown her the mirror. In fact, I had barely looked into it myself for some weeks now. The last time I had done so, I had seen something that only served to impress upon me even more strongly my failure to inspire Isabeau’s deepest affections.