He was still agitated. “Who else guessed? How many?”
She rolled her eyes. “I don’t know. Since you withdrew from Court, you’ve probably ceased to be interesting. I don’t exactly run out and buy broadside sheets every time a boy comes by crying one. I never heard my mother or the twins chattering about you, so you aren’t common gossip. Granny told me, but she never leaves her cottage.”
“Granny? That would be the old witch in the cottage in my forest?” He suddenly looked interested. “The nice old woman with the really cozy little cottage, who makes the honey-oatcakes, I mean.”
“Yes, probably. Granny is the only witch I know of in your forest, with or without a cozy cottage.” Something occurred to her, and she began feeling a little more charitable toward the absent Eric. “This is why Eric is such a—” she coughed “—overly vigilant Gamekeeper, isn’t it? If he makes himself disagreeable enough, it will discourage people from being in the woods at all, which would mean there would be less chance—”
“Of an accident. Like yours. Yes.” He dropped his gaze again. “Eric wasn’t a Gamekeeper, originally. There was some confusion when Father died so suddenly about who should be my Guardian, and Eric just stepped in. He did well enough, and this Dukedom really is small enough that the King saw no need to replace him, and in truth, no one really wanted all the work. You really can’t blame them. It’s just the town house, Redbuck, the forest and a few mines. Mostly tin. The income is enough to keep up the town house and Redbuck, but it’s nothing fabulous. My heir is my second cousin, and he’s already got a larger Dukedom, so it isn’t as if he needs this one.”
Privately, Bella thought it was “fabulous” enough, and certainly Genevieve would have been in ecstasy merely to be in the presence of a Duke. But she supposed that by the standards of the others in the Court, Duke Sebastian was small pickings indeed. She had heard stories from Genevieve and the twins—usually when she was involuntarily caught in the middle of gossip sessions with callers—about Dukedoms with vast acreage, hundreds and thousands of sheep and cattle, incredible palaces that dazzled with their opulence. A forest, a few mines, a town house and a fortified Manor didn’t seem to measure up to that.
“I remember Granny very well,” Sebastian was saying, as she shook herself out of her thoughts, and decided to help herself to a slice of pie. “I used to ride out on my pony with the hunts, and Father would leave me with her, because that was generally where my pony’s legs got tired. Is it still the same Granny?”
“I suppose so. She’s been the same Granny for as long as I have known about her.” And Granny might be very useful in this situation. “While you are contacting the Godmother about this mess you’ve gotten me into, you might as well contact Granny, as well,” she continued, thinking that she might as well order him about while he was feeling guilty enough to listen to and go along with her. Who knew when he would recover and she’d be the one being ordered about? “It is my right, both as a victim of an injury at your—teeth—and as a woman, to have a second opinion at any time.” She actually allowed a mere hint of a smile to pass across her lips.
“I—” he said, looking up, uncertainly.
“Are you, or are you not, a wizard?” she demanded. “Send something. One of these invisible servants of yours, a talking bird, a note you turn into a butterfly. If it’s very difficult, well, what else have you got to spend your time on? Whatever you were doing before this, one way or another, your primary responsibility now is to make reparations to me.” She had to wonder how this particular werewolf managed to bite anyone. “You are the one responsible for my being in this predicament. Instead of just sitting there and waiting to see if anything happens, you should be finding things out, because I have no intention of staying here a moment longer than I have to.”
She absolutely refused to consider that she might have to stay there forever. However nebulous her plans for the future had been, they had not included living in isolation away from her father and music, dancing, plays and all the things that made life rich. Those plans definitely had not included turning into a hairy monster three nights out of the month.
“While you are contacting the Godmother, I would like to see my quarters,” she continued, pushing away from the table and standing up. “Since you’ve warned me about these invisible servants of yours, I suppose one of them can show me the way.”
He was staring at her with a most peculiar expression on his face.
“What?” she demanded.
“I was really expecting a lot more crying and screaming,” he said, finally.
“Would crying and screaming have made any difference?” she retorted. “Of course not. So why waste time on them?”
His expression turned to bemused approval. “You’re very different,” he ventured.
That made her pause for a moment. She thought about it, and compared herself to the silly little girls of the minor nobility that she had met via the twins. Of course, that was hardly fair; a relatively serious person was not likely to inhabit the same sorts of social circles that the twins did. But if most of the young women that Sebastian had met were like those frivolous little fluff-heads, well—she must be surprising him every time she opened her mouth.
“I imagine I am,” she said dryly, and left it at that.
He clapped his hands once, and it was her turn to stare, as one of the branched candlesticks on the table lifted up and floated toward her. “Just follow the candles,” he said, a faint look of satisfaction on his face at her surprise. “I hope you like your rooms. When I received word of your coming, I did my best to arrange things so that you would be comfortable.” He paused. “Nevertheless, now that I have met you, I know that all that I am, and all that I have, could not match what you are worth.”
Well…
There really was no way to respond to that entirely gallant statement without seeming skeptical, ungrateful or just unpleasant. So she just nodded what she hoped was a properly shaped acknowledgment, and followed the floating candles.
The entire Manor seemed to have been constructed around the model of murder-corridors connecting lovely rooms. It did make her a little curious, since Redbuck was so far away from anything—what had it been built to defend against? Or had the original Duke simply been ultracautious?
She got brief glimpses of a small ballroom, what might have been an audience chamber, a parlor and an enormous library—where the spines of most of the books seemed to be made of tin—she was resolved to come back to before the floating candles led her to a corridor that had a dead end with three doors: one on the left hand, one at the dead end and one on the right. The door to the left swung open and the candles proceeded inside. She followed.
The candles paused for a moment, then set down on a table beside the door. A moment later, heavy curtains she had not seen in the gloom whisked aside, and sunlight streamed into a very satisfactory parlor, charming and well-appointed even by Genevieve’s exacting standards. She didn’t have any time to admire it, however, for a rose—and how had he managed a rose in the middle of winter?—levitated out of a vase near the window, and with a little wave that seemed to signal that she should follow, it floated over to a door to the left and opened it.
She limped in through this door to another darkened room—the darkness was quickly remedied as more curtains parted, revealing quite the most wonderful bedroom she had ever seen.
She was getting used to the fact that there were tapestries on virtually every wall here, and when she thought about it, the fact made sense. These were stone walls and would otherwise be very cold, especially in winter. But whoever had chosen the tapestries for this room had created an especially welcome environment, for they all showed a flowering wood, the sort of woodlands she wanted to run into and lose herself. Once again, what must have been a stone floor had been overlaid with wood except at the hearth, and as if that was not enough, there were carpets at the side of the bed, so the occupant would never find herself stepping barefoot onto
a cold floor.
There was not a great deal of furniture in this room; instead of wardrobes and chests to hold her clothing as she had at home, there was a closet where, through the open door, she could see familiar clothing already hung up. There was a dressing table and mirror and chair, and the bed.
But such a bed!
You could bed down an entire family in that bed and they wouldn’t crowd each other, she thought, marveling. A massive canopy was supported by four fat, carved pillars covered with vines and flowers. The headboard was not just a headboard; it supported two lamps on brackets, suspended at exactly the right height for reading in bed. There was a built-in bookcase, proving that the carpenter had put them there for that purpose. Bed curtains of embroidered velvet had been pulled back to show the matching counterpane, and when she stepped forward and tentatively patted it, she could tell that the counterpane covered a down comforter and a feather bed of unmatched height and softness. She was tempted to lie down on it right that moment.
But the rose was moving onward, and she followed it into the final room— A bathroom.
She had heard of bathrooms, but she had never seen one. Most households could not afford to dedicate a room just for bathing. All her life, she had taken her baths in a tin tub brought in, set before the fireplace and filled with hot water. This room had a tub three or four times that size, like an enormous porcelain basin on clawed lion feet, with stacks of soft towels and bottles full of jewel-colored liquids and powders on shelves around it. One look at it made her long for a leisurely hot soak.
Later. She went back into the bedroom, and to the middle of the three long, narrow windows, and looked out.
Instead of overlooking the woods, she found herself looking down into a snow-covered courtyard garden, surrounded on all four sides by Manor walls. Here, for the first time, she saw signs of neglect; the rosebushes and trees had not been trimmed back in some time. Obviously Sebastian cared nothing for the garden, so his servants had done nothing with it.
More importantly for her purposes, there would be no escaping this way.
Still, as captivity went, this was going to be very comfortable.
She turned away from the window and to the closet. Now she discovered why there had been more trunks than she could account for. There was her clothing, all right—and a lot of unfamiliar clothing of the sort that would make the twins squeal with glee. Somehow she doubted that this was Sebastian’s idea; more than likely it was the King’s.
Trying to distract me with dresses, hmm? She was torn between amusement and irritation; she decided to let amusement win. I suppose that just goes to show that Kings are only men. Well, just wait until he gets the list of my real demands. She was not going to go into exile quietly.
Now she turned her attention to the floating rose.
“I assume you are waiting for my orders?” she said.
The rose bobbed up and down.
“Very well, then,” she said, and thought for a moment. “Do you have something like arms?”
Again the rose bobbed up and down.
“Then my first order is that every one of you that comes into these rooms is to wear something like an armband, so that I know you are here and where you are.” Of course, any of these magical servants that wanted to gawk at her could just disobey and not do anything of the sort, but Sebastian had said they were not terribly bright, so perhaps that would not occur to them.
The rose hung in the air for a moment, then it floated toward the closet. A moment later it emerged, but there was a scarf neatly wrapped about something invisible and knotted off. It was a bit unnerving, but no worse than a floating flower.
“Good,” she said, nodding. “Now, can one of you tend to my ankle?”
The rose bobbed, and the scarf and rose floated off into the next room. Only the scarf returned, and it paused, expectantly.
She went over to the chair and sat down, sticking out her aching foot.
The laces on her boot were undone swiftly and surely; she watched in utter fascination. It did not look as if they were undoing themselves; there was something tugging on them, and the cord acted as a cord should, without any floating business. So two hands were involved, even if she couldn’t see them.
The same hands grasped the boot and pulled it off, making her hiss a little in pain. There was no hesitation on the part of her attendant, however; the boot needed to come off, and she had not told the invisible servant to stop, therefore the boot would come off.
Off came the stocking, and then the bandages that Doctor Jonaton had so carefully applied last night got deftly unwrapped.
The armband floated into the bathroom and returned. With the armband was a pile of things on a towel, including a steaming basin.
She sighed as her ankle was bathed in hot water, given a new application of a soothing salve that smelled like roses and rebandaged. It felt much better. The invisible hands unlaced and pulled off her other boot, as well, though they left the stocking.
She considered her options. At the moment, there were not many—and she was horribly, horribly tired. It had been a long and stress-filled morning.
“I think I would like to take a little rest,” she told the armband, which floated obediently over to the bed. The coverlet, comforter, blankets and sheet were turned back, and the armband waited.
She yawned, and sat on the edge of the bed, which was just as soft as it looked. “I’ll just lie down for a little,” she told the armband. “Wake me if something important happens.”
Then she settled into the soft feather bed, put her head on the downy pillow and knew nothing until she felt a hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake.
5
THE CURTAINS HAD BEEN PULLED CLOSED WHILE SHE slept; now the unseen servant whisked them aside. She saw to her relief that it was still daylight. Good; she’d be able to get an account of whatever progress had been made from Sebastian before he turned into a brute beast again.
She threw back the covers and gingerly set her feet down on the rug—or started to. Before she could move very far, the armband intercepted her, and the invisible hands grasped her good foot, sliding it into a warmed sheepskin slipper. The hands did the same to her injured foot, then let her go.
It was a very, very strange sensation, to say the least.
She discovered as soon as she put weight on it that the injured foot was uncomfortable to walk on, but much improved. Encouraged, she began exploring, even if she was limping. She’d never let an injury stop her from doing something she wanted to do before.
There wasn’t a great deal to look at in either the bedroom or the bathroom. While she liked the clothing well enough—to her relief it proved to be not as…fluffy…as the twins would have liked—it wasn’t the sort of thing that she would ordinarily picture herself wearing. Too expensive, for one thing, and not in practical colors for another; although since while she was here, she supposed that she wouldn’t be in and out of places where she would get dirty. But if she had any say in this, she wasn’t going to be around long enough to need any of it. The bathroom was still amazing in itself, and she was looking forward to having a long and leisurely hot soak tonight, but once she finished sniffing all of the bottles and jars to discover what scents were in them, she was done with that room for now. Although this was the room that also contained the water closet, so that was a relief to find.
And I am going to sweep everything before me and lock the door before I use it, too.
But the sitting room—now, that was another story altogether. She had barely glimpsed it on the way through to the bedroom, earlier. Now the armband circled the room, and oil lamps lit up with a soft glow in its wake as it turned up the flames.
The bedroom was a place for sleeping—or at least lying abed. This was a room made for doing things in. It had a good desk and comfortable writing chair, a pair of exceptionally comfortable chairs on either side of the fireplace that would be perfect for reading, as each one had a lamp placed on a table bes
ide it. The external wall was literally covered in bookcases—with more of those tin-bound books in them. Someone had thoughtfully supplied a sewing work-basket beside a chair at one of the windows. There was another pair of chairs at a second window with a chessboard between them, and an intricately carved set of ivory chess pieces on it.
Although the carpet in this room was a little worn, it was also huge; it covered most of the floor, making the room that much warmer. The expertly built fire in the fireplace kept the entire room comfortable, with no drafts.
“Well, this is pleasant enough,” she said aloud. “However…I would much rather be at home. So, take me to your master. I wish to discover what he has or has not accomplished so far.”
The armband hesitated.
She glared at it.
Now it could not be possible for a band of cloth to signify chagrin, but somehow she got that impression from it. It moved toward the door, and she followed, closely.
The unseen servant led her as far as the library, and then their path diverged. This was a much less welcoming part of the Manor; she passed many closed doors, plain and heavily built, before they descended a stair into a chilly cellar. More closed doors, though one was ajar, giving her a glimpse into a wine cellar, until finally, the servant brought her to a very forbidding part of the establishment indeed. And there she found her host, minutely examining a door that was at least half a foot thick, reinforced with iron straps, with a formidable lock.
“What on earth are you doing, Duke Sebastian?” she asked, more than a little irritated that he was down here mucking about with a lock when he should have been doing something about her predicament.
He jumped and yelped. She was immediately sorry.
“Oh, I do apologize, I had no idea that you didn’t know I was here,” she said. “I had come looking for you to determine if you knew anything more than you did when we last spoke.”
Beauty and the Werewolf Page 6
