by Sophie Starr
I turned back to pull another chair from the storage room when he walked to me and helped me with it. We didn't speak at first, just dragged furniture out and placed it strategically about the room, dusting and sweeping each piece.
He assembled several small round tables while I set out to clean the windows with a bucket of water and rags. I stood on a table and wiped as high as I could go.
“You are a very hard worker for a gentleman’s daughter, if you don't mind my observing you.”
I smiled and nodded. “My father was a gentleman until he gave up his fortune and living for the work he does now. He is an inventor. So there were moments in my childhood that we had excess of everything and then there were lean moments. Most of my younger years were spent being very wealthy and spoiled.”
He chuckled. “Doesn't sound so bad.”
“It wasn't.” I turned and sighed. “Until my mother grew ill. Then we were forced to stay in one place and my father grew very distant. He focused on his work but created nothing new.” I lowered myself carefully, sitting on the table and swinging my legs. “I think deep down he wanted to be able to save her. And when he couldn't he stopped being able to create anything at all.”
Lumier’s brow pinched. “I am very sorry. You are far too young to lose a mother.”
It was the exact reaction I had had at the moment she died. I had felt too young.
“However did you end up here?” He knelt and screwed a table leg on.
“My father took a commission in the neighboring town. But he isn’t well so it hasn't gone as successfully as he had hoped—as we both had hoped.”
His cheeks flushed as he winced and turned the leg forcefully until it was too tight to move. “But the washing machine works wonders. Mrs. Potts was just singing me its praises last night.”
“It is the first thing he has made in years that has worked.”
“Surely, he can sell it and build back his fortune? Then you can live here with us, with your father.”
“I could never live here.” I shook my head, wondering if those words were a lie. They didn't feel true at all. “He is not well and the town where we live is not a good place for him. I fear for him there.”
“The people are not nice?” he asked as he turned the table onto its feet and dragged it to another sitting area.
“No. They are standoffish and there is one man in particular—” I shuddered. “He is a very evil man. He would do anything to hurt my father and me. He has already hurt me.” I trailed off, recalling it all. I knew the scars of Gaston would live deep inside me forever.
Lumier looked affronted. “The master would never stand for that.”
That made me laugh. “The master doesn't care about me. Or my father.”
“That is where you are wrong.” He muttered it but I still heard it. Changing the subject quickly he stepped back and admired our work. “This is the room I once loved. The conservatory is my favorite room. The light in here radiates off the glass when the sun is setting and rising. The room is built at the end of the castle so it catches both events.”
I glanced about and grinned with him. The room sparkled. There were sitting areas set up like conversation pits with chairs, couches, and tables. It was comfortable and clean. The windows and floors seemed different without all the dirt and debris.
“We should do the library next.”
My ears perked up. “What?”
He nodded and looked about the room. “It’s a mess.”
“There’s a library?”
His gaze turned to me and his lip lifted a little. “You like libraries?”
I hopped off the table and hurried to him, grabbing his hand. “Lead the way.”
I don't know why I said it; I led the way with him shouting directions and laughing like a crazy person. When I burst through the doors of the grand room I gasped. It was huge, ten times the size of any library I had ever seen.
I lifted my hands to my lips, still gasping and shaking.
It was a mess but behind the mess was a glorious space. There were no words for it so I dropped to my knees and stared at the beauty.
Thousands of books—no, countless numbers of books filled dozens upon dozens of shelves. There were two floors with a glorious set of circular stairs joining them.
“Do you like it?”
My words and my breath were stuck in my throat as I managed a squeak for a response.
“I will see if the others want to help, if you want to start dusting the top floor and reorganizing the space.” He turned and left me there, at the altar at which I prayed.
After several moments I managed to stand and stagger into the room, baffled that this had been kept from me. How had I missed the smell of them—the hoards of books? The room was potent with it heavily coating the air.
I nearly tripped, drunk off the aphrodisiac.
The second floor was indeed a mess and indeed dusty. But I picked each book from the shelf and wiped it, dragging my fingers lovingly across the leather bindings and hard paper surfaces.
It brought tears to my eyes to see such old books. Each one contained an adventure I had not yet taken. Each one would bring me to a new place, a new world, and a new escape. And all of them sat there, just waiting for me to crack them open and fall in.
I knew I would smell the sea and taste the rum and feel the touch of each novel, so much so that I could hardly wait for it to be clean.
Mrs. Potts, Chip, and Cogsworth all joined Lumier and myself. But Babette did not.
I ignored their chatter and the games the boy played, mesmerized by the walls surrounding me.
When I was nearly finished upstairs, the room was dark and I was alone. I hadn’t noticed they had left me there.
Several candles had been lit and set on the table, lighting the room for me but that was it. No one else was there.
I cleaned the last shelf but paused when I saw the spine of a book. It had writing that I knew to be Sanskrit, but I didn't know how to read it. I pulled the huge book from the wooden shelf and laid it on the reading table I had cleaned. I grabbed a candle and set it next to the book, running my fingers over the front of the punched leather cover. It was beautiful.
I opened it, pulling back from the picture before me.
There was a drawing with what looked to be two men embracing. My brow knit as I flipped the page and discovered it was not two men but a man and a poorly drawn woman with almost no bust. She was bent forward and the man was shown thrusting into her from behind, the way Gaston had to the barmaid.
I swallowed hard, pretending I didn't feel the small fires lighting in my belly.
I turned the page, wide-eyed and mystified at the scene of the woman sitting atop the man. His penis was drawn so it showed it half inside her as she leaned forward a bit. I tilted my head to the side, cocking an eyebrow and wondering what sort of book this was.
“It’s Kama Sutra.”
I lifted my head, slamming the book shut and pressing my lips together.
Babette gave me a look from the stairs where she stood. “Why are you reading it?”
“I-I-I—” I stammered with no excuse.
“The master is not going to like this.” She glanced about the tidy library.
“Why?”
“You know nothing of him. This was his mother’s most treasured room. He will kill you for coming in here.” She laughed, shaking her head all the while smirking at me. She turned on her heel and left the room, sashaying down the stairs and out the door.
He would kill me for cleaning his mother’s most beloved room?
I lifted the heavy book and placed it as gently as I could back on the shelf.
I was halfway down the stairs when the door burst open again. He had no shadow this time, only a fierce look upon his face. “WHAT ARE YOU DOING IN HERE?”
“Nothing!” I flinched. “I was cleaning.”
He stormed to me, grabbing my arm and dragging me from the room. His movements blew out every candl
e in the library as he threw me from the room and slammed the door. He pointed accusingly. “YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO GO IN THERE!”
My jaw trembled and again I found myself terrified but saying everything I shouldn't, “YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO SCREAM AT ME! I WAS TRYING TO HELP YOU! YOU ASS!” I turned to flee but I was done with it all. I sighed and slumped a little and turned back to him. “I have done nothing but try to help you and be kind to you, and yet you still treat me like I am no better than a piece of garbage! Why don't you just put me out of my misery?” I pointed at the wall. “Or better yet, set me free! The fate out there will end me in a fortnight anyway! Let me go, and you will be spared the effort of squeezing out the little life that remains inside me!”
I hated him.
I turned and walked out, slowly. As I passed the stairs I couldn't help but notice Babette grinning in the shadows.
At least their cruelty had cured me of any sensual thoughts I had been having.
9
I realized my feet no longer hurt as I padded across the floor with my old house shoes in hand. I made no noise as I slipped out the side door of the house. I hoped Mrs. Potts wouldn't mind my borrowing, or rather stealing, her dress. I had no intention of coming back.
“Don't leave him.” She caught me as I crossed the yard to the birdbath to check on my father before departing.
I turned to see Mrs. Potts standing in the yard and smiled weakly. “I have to. I have to find my father and run away.”
“Ask him to have your father brought here. I think he would do anything for you.”
A bitter laugh I had never heard leave my lips before, fell from me. “He hates me, can’t you see that? He is so cruel to me, even when I try not to be around him. I have eaten very few meals with him and the only time he bothered to speak to me was to frighten me.”
“He is a complex young man.”
“I thought you couldn't talk about him.”
She slumped. “I can’t. But I can tell you he is far more than he seems. And I have never seen him be cruel to anyone the way he is you.”
“So I should count myself as lucky to be the one he chooses to be horrid to?”
She stepped closer, revealing a puffy set of eyes like she had been crying. “No. You need to show him there is far more to you, just as you need to see the rest of him.”
I stepped back, shaking my head. “I am leaving tonight.”
She looked completely defeated. “Please stay. Please give him one more chance.”
The look in her eyes and the cowardice in my heart won me over. I slumped and nodded. I couldn't leave the castle if I wanted to save my father. I was too terrified of the monster outside the castle—more terrified of him than the one in it. “One chance. The moment he shouts at me, I am gone.” I suspected it was a lie but I said it anyway, trying to sound braver than I was.
Her eyes brightened. “It won’t happen again.” She hurried to me, hugging me. She smelled like cookies. She always sort of smelled that way. It was pleasant, as was her motherly embrace.
I turned and carried my shoes back into the house. I stood there, lurking in the shadows for quite some time before I sauntered to the stairs. Instead of going to the right, I turned left.
My feet walked on against my better judgment, pushing me past the moonlit hallway with the paintings and into the wing of the house that was destroyed.
I paused and looked appraisingly at the destruction around me. Everything about the hall was a mess. Scrapes on the wall looked like claws had done them. I lifted my hand and ran my fingers in the marks. It gave me a shudder to see the degree of damage his claws could do.
My curiosity had me in its clutches as I pushed on, touching broken furnishings and smashed walls. Everything down here was damaged.
When I got to the door that half hung on its hinges, I took a breath and stepped inside.
The glow of the moonlight coming in the broken windows called to me, beckoned me with what felt like magic. I crept in silence to where the flower sat in the pot under the glass and stared, mystified and awed.
A man with a room filled with horrible deeds and the worst temper I had ever seen, had one single thing in his life not in ruin—a single rose. It was a curiosity that he was able to keep it alive.
I looked for a sign that it was different than any other rose I had ever seen, but there was nothing. It was a rose and nothing more.
The moonlight made it seem like it was more, but I could tell by the dirty and fragile state of the petals, it was a flower in a pot and the magic was in my head.
A noise in the hallway caught me off guard. I turned and hurried for the broken window, hiding in the large drapes that hung off the wall at a strange angle.
The noise was a voice, one I would know anywhere. “She deserves to be free of this, Lumier. I don't want to speak on it again.” The master spoke as kindly as I had ever heard him.
“But, Master, surely you see the difference in everything. Surely you see she is the one?”
“I don't want to talk on it!” His tone rose.
“But—”
“OUT!” he barked. I jumped, holding my breath. His temper was worse than seeing him as a beast. I very nearly preferred the monster to the man.
I peeked out through the side of the drapes to see Lumier leave, taking his light with him and leaving the master to stand in the darkness alone. He looked so sad, it hurt to see him that way. His eyes lowered to the rose and his hands gripped to the table it sat on. And there in the dark he whispered something I didn't expect as he trailed a finger along the glass over the rose, “Belle. Oh, Belle.”
My stomach tightened but I dared not even breathe differently.
“Master!” Babette interrupted his quiet.
He didn't turn and look at her, but just growled, “Leave me alone.”
“But I thought you wanted me to make you feel better.” Her voice was a soft purr.
“LEAVE ME!” he shouted at her the way he always did me.
But she wasn't like me. She didn't jump. She walked toward him, grabbing his arm and spinning him. She dropped to her knees, flashing the strange garters and stockings she wore, and pulling down the top of her dress to reveal the most spectacular breasts.
He glanced down on her, giving her a disgusted look, but he didn't fight when she undid his pants and dragged a massive cock from them. She leaned in, opening her mouth and sliding it all the way in, tilting her head at a strange angle so she could have all of it in her mouth.
I felt oddly upset that she was touching him when he had just whispered my name so delicately. First he looked to the rose, which I now wondered if he had named after me, and then he lifted his head to the gods as she sucked.
His eyes closed and his lips parted as Babette sucked hard, sliding her hand up and down the shaft. He moaned and breathed as though he were enjoying it. His lips uttered something that made my heart stop, “Belle.”
With his eyes closed and his cock in her mouth, he whispered my name.
She pulled back enough to speak but I could tell she was angry. “Let me make you forget about her.”
My jaw dropped and I wanted so badly to tell him not to forget about me. I didn't even know why I would want to say that. But I didn't get a chance. His hands landed on her shoulders, shoving her back a bit. “I said leave me alone.” He tucked himself back into his pants and tied them up as her face twisted into a sneer.
“She will never love you. You are a monster and she is a fool. I already love you. How do you know zee flower hasn't bloomed because of me and you?”
“LEAVE!”
She got up and stormed from the room, not even bothering to pull her dress back up.
He turned and looked at the window, his body vibrating. He looked at the rose as something came over him. A scream like I had never heard ripped from his lips as he backhanded the flower and jumped from the window.
It was my turn to scream as I turned and watched him land, no longer a man. His eyes li
fted to the window to see me there. I clung to the broken frame, meeting his lost gaze.
He snarled and turned, running into the garden like a crazed animal.
When I no longer saw him anymore, I hurried to the broken glass and destroyed plant. The rose was bent but not broken. I dropped to my knees, wincing as the glass and debris dug into my skin. But I didn't care, I had to save the flower I thought he had named after me.
I lifted the delicate plant into my hands, and fled from the room to the kitchen.
When I got there I grabbed a large bowl and carried it and the rose outside. Using my hands and not caring that an animal lurked about the grounds, I scooped soil from the untended gardens until I had enough for the rose. I planted it again, ensuring the roots were covered and settled. Then I patted down the dirt and grabbed a branch from an old dead tree and broke off a stick. I stuck the stick in the dirt and gently lifted the rose so the stick could support it. I carried it inside and got some twine from the shelf where Mrs. Potts kept the odds and ends. Ever so delicately I tied the rose to the stick, ensuring it would hold until the rose was strong again. I watered it with sugar water and sat, staring at the dark-red petals in the moonlight.
It was all so odd.
I laid my head next to it on the table and closed my eyes, promising myself only a small moment of rest, before I would carry the rose up to its original place again.
But I must have drifted off into a deep sleep.
For when I woke I was again in my bed, tucked in and peaceful. And again he slept at an odd angle in the armchair. His feet were still dirty and his hands healing from whatever he had been up to.
I sat up, smiling when I saw the rose on the bureau next to him. It looked pristine again.
His eyes opened the moment I stirred, but this time a small smile crested his lips for a heartbeat. He sat up, wincing as he moved. I didn't get up from the bed but I offered him a hand, offering him me.
I didn't know why I was doing it but it felt right.
He got up slowly, walking to the outstretched hand before him but stopped midway with a dubious look upon his face. I glanced at the dirt on him and grinned, deciding it might be best if I got up with him. I pulled the covers back and tiptoed to where he was standing awkwardly.
