Bryony and Roses (18 page)

She thrust her knife at it, still screaming, and felt the hilt torn from her hands.
 

The shape grunted. “Light!” roared a voice.

And there was light. Candles sprang into flame on every wall.
 

Bryony’s throat closed, stopping her in mid-scream.
 

The Beast stood over her. Far up on his shoulder, looking very small, the hilt of her knife protruded from his flesh.
 

Bryony gulped. She wanted to burst into tears but crying seemed rather unhelpful, so she didn’t.
 

The Beast held her eyes for a moment, then reached up and wrenched the knife out. She cringed.
 

“If you are going to stab me,” said the Beast, “I would suggest a much bigger knife. This one is…cute.”

“My sister gave it to me,” said Bryony weakly, because she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
 

“House can doubtless provide you with a larger selection. I would actually suggest a pitchfork instead, given your existing skill with them.”
 
He cleaned the knife off on his sleeve and handed it to her. The fur around the wound was growing dark and matted. Bryony stared at it in fascinated horror.
 

“You were in front of my door,” she said stupidly.

“Yes,” he said. “I have been sleeping there since you said there was an intruder.”

“That’s it!” she said, seizing on this. “He’s back! That’s why I—I thought you must be—I was going to yell for you—”

The Beast’s eyes lit dangerously, and he pushed her to one side. “Here? Now?”
 

“A few minutes ago,” she said, as he pulled the door open the rest of the way. “I waited until I heard him go.”

“By your leave,” said the Beast, and stepped into her room without waiting for an answer. Bryony followed in his wake.

He prowled the length of the room, his nostrils flaring. Bryony retreated to the doorway.
 

“The room smells like you,” he said finally. “If there is someone else here, I cannot smell it. Only you, and roses.”

“That’s probably the soap,” said Bryony, sighing. “Or the pomanders.” She wondered what she smelled like.
 

Probably sweat and chicken manure.
“I keep asking the house for lavender or something, but it seems stuck on roses.”
 

 
“Roses are very important to it,” said the Beast.
 

“And to you,” said Bryony, remembering the Beast’s fury over his stolen rose.

“Mm. It is different, but this is not the time to discuss it.”
 

“Would you smell it? If there were someone here?” asked Bryony timidly.
 

The Beast frowned, bringing his tusks into sharp relief. “My sense of smell is less strong than a hound’s, and my own blood is muddling my nose. Perhaps not. I cannot swear that there was no one here.”

Bryony sat down on the edge of a chest and ran her fingers over an inlaid spray of leaves. “But he couldn’t have come past you, could he?”

The Beast shook his head. “There is no chance.”

“But I heard him unlock the window,” she said. “If he came in through the window, he would have had to lock it again while he was wandering around—and why would he break in it all?”

“Has anything been taken?” asked the Beast.

Bryony huffed a laugh. “How could I tell? The house keeps the place stuffed with knick-knacks and it changes them out practically by the hour.” She looked over at the desk. She had not written any more questions down, and the blank stationary was undisturbed.
 

The Beast frowned. “It would be very strange to have a burglar here.”
 

“Very strange.” She ran a hand through her hair, suddenly aware that she was only wearing a thin nightgown and there was a man—or a general approximation of one—in her bedroom. She found the rose-pink robe and pulled it on. The Beast looked politely away.

“You can say that I’m having a nightmare again,” she said bitterly. “Or that I’m doing this just to torment you.”
 

The Beast considered.
 
“I do not believe that,” he said finally. “You were genuinely frightened.”

She looked up, startled. “I might just be a very good actor.”

He shook his head. “You smelled frightened. I do not know that one can fake that. And you were screaming.”

“Was I? I suppose I was. But that could mean anything,” said Bryony. She didn’t know why she was playing her own devil’s advocate. Perhaps she merely wanted to hear him say that he trusted her.
 

The Beast shook his head. “Don’t you remember? When you threw the door open, you were screaming for me.”

Their eyes met for entirely too long, and Bryony had to look away. “Come on,” she said, too abruptly, “I stabbed you, so the least I can do is clean it up.”

“It’s nothing,” said the Beast.
 

“I stabbed you. With a knife.”

“Not very well,” he said, almost apologetically. “I fear that it is very shallow.”
 

“Nevertheless, I am going to feel horribly guilty about it unless you let me at least put a bandage on it,” she said.
 

“Oh, well, in that case…” He looked around for somewhere to sit, eyed the bed for a moment, then settled for dropping to his haunches on the carpet.
 

This put them at about eye-level. “House, some bandages and hot water, please.” Bryony studied the Beast’s shoulder, and tried to remember what Holly had done the time that Fumblefoot got a string of catbriar wrapped around his hock. “And some small scissors.”

The Beast looked faintly alarmed.
 

“Don’t worry, I never stab anyone twice in the same hour. I don’t want them to think I’m unoriginal.”

“I confess, I am more afraid you will clip me bald.”

“Vain Beast.” She found the tray by the basin, which House had provided with hot water and, of its own volition, a bottle of sharp-smelling astringent. “Can I put this on the wound?”

“If you must,” said the Beast.
 

She soaked a cloth in hot water and wiped at the wound. The Beast gazed over her head with a long-suffering expression.
 

It took her several minutes with the scissors to trim the hair away from the gash, and the Beast was right, it really was quite shallow. Bryony eyed her handiwork gloomily.
 

“It’s not that I want you to be hurt,” she said, “and I’m glad I mostly missed, but still, it doesn’t fill me with confidence if I have to stab someone who deserves it.”

“I’m sure you’ll do better next time,” said the Beast encouragingly. “Practice makes perfect.”
 

“Ha ha.” She glared at his shoulder. “You’ve got some hair stuck in the wound. It’s going to get nasty if I don’t clean it out.”

“Do what you have to do.”

She had to lean across his arm to get at the shoulder. His fur was short and soft, but there was no give to the muscle at all, a skin of velvet over stone. Bryony snorted.

“Hmmm?”

“You feel like somebody put flocking on a rock.”

He laughed at that. She could feel the rumbling against her skin and through the soles of her feet. It was a queer, shivery sensation, not entirely unpleasant, and it made her thoughts go a bit sideways, so she slapped his shoulder the way she would Fumblefoot’s. “Quit twitching!”

“Quit making me laugh.”
 

“Hmph!”
 

His skin shivered like a horse’s when she put the astringent on, but he didn’t say anything. Bryony was conscious of a sudden desire to rub her thumb over his fur and feel it against her fingers, and crushed it ruthlessly.
 

She decided against the bandage. It would probably tear out more of the Beast’s fur than it would protect the wound. He stood up and bowed to her, very formally.

She fiddled with the washcloth in her hands. “Are you, um, going to keep sleeping in front of my door?”

“I will not, if it makes you uncomfortable.”

“Um.” She thought about that—about knowing that things were out there in the dark, and about knowing that one of those things would be close at hand if he heard her scream. “No. I don’t mind. But if you’re going to sleep there, then at least let me get you a pillow.”

He laughed again, quietly, as she pulled several of the pillows off the bed. “I would hate to take your pillows.”

“I have plenty. Dozens. House must have denuded an entire race of geese to stuff them all.” She pushed the pillows into his hands. They looked much smaller when he was carrying them, so she stacked a few more on top. “Do you need blankets, too?”

“No, I beg of you. Fur is very warm.”
 

“Oh. Okay.”
 

At the doorway he paused and looked back, with his arms full of pillows.
 

“Thank you, Bryony.”

“Thank
you,
Beast.

“How could you?” asked the green-eyed man, stalking away from her down the hallway. Bryony hurried to catch up with him. “I have asked you to help me, over and over—” His voice shook with emotion.
 

“You have?” Bryony could only remember the one time. “Err. Why are you so angry?”

“You have to help me,” said the green-eyed man. “I need your help, and instead you turn to him, my greatest enemy—”

“Who? Slow down!” Bryony caught at his sleeve and felt that familiar jolt go through her. “Who are you talking about? The Beast? Is the Beast your enemy?”

“Why won’t you help me?” he demanded, shaking her hand off and stalking through a doorway.
 

“I
want
to help you,” she said. “But I don’t know what you want me to do!”

He stopped in front of a window. The lines of his back were eloquent of anger, but as Bryony watched, he slumped.

“No. You don’t, do you?”

She joined him at the window. She could not see anything through it except leaves pressed against the glass—a thicket of rose stems.
 

He turned to her and took her hand. His thumb moved over the back, a tiny caress that made her shiver so hard she thought her teeth would chatter.
 

“Look at you,” he murmured, half-scornfully. “Poor thing. So desperate to be touched that you find yourself half-longing for a Beast.”
 

Bryony felt herself flushing furiously. She hadn’t, not really, not
seriously.
It didn’t mean anything.
 

“I should have realized,” he said, while she floundered. “Poor thing.”

She didn’t much like being called ‘poor thing,’ but then he turned her hand over and stroked his fingers up her wrist. The sensation was so intense that she thought she might drown.

If he touches me again, if he kisses me, I think I’ll drop dead.
 

“You’ll help me, won’t you?”

“I—” She couldn’t think. A place inside her ached. Whether it was her heart or someplace a bit more venal was open to debate.

He took her face in his hands. His fingertips were hard against the hinge of her jaw, almost painful. Her skin felt feverishly sensitive. He stroked his thumb across her cheekbone and she parted her lips and panted like an animal.
 

She felt desperately ashamed, and moreso when he smiled.
 

“I knew you would,” he said, and bent down and kissed her.

She woke in sheets drenched with sweat and tangled tightly around her feet, shaking uncontrollably.
 

“Whoa,” she said out loud. “Whoa.” Her body ached with unfilled desire. There wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it, either. Not with the house watching. There were limits. And not with the Beast right outside the door, either, just a few feet away…

She shoved that thought firmly aside.
 

This is perfectly normal. Perfectly, totally normal. You’re just healthy and human and been living like a nun for months. That’s all this is.

You’d think if that was all it was, one of these damn dreams could actually go all the way to the end.

“Ungh,” she muttered, getting out of bed. The pounding in her head was turning rapidly from lust into a splitting headache. “Whoa. God’s teeth.” She stumbled to the basin and splashed tepid water on her face.
 

In the mirror, her lips looks swollen.

“Biting them in my sleep,” she muttered. “That’s all it is.” She winced. “House, can you find me some headache powders?”

Hot tea and cold water revived her. Her headache subsided and was replaced with an unfocused frustration. She pulled on her clothes and stomped for the door.
 

“House, have a pile of mulch and a pitchfork waiting for me. A big pile.”

The Beast had left, apparently earlier in the morning, leaving a neat stack of pillows by the door. When she reached the garden and found a pile of mulch taller than her head, her temper subsided somewhat.
 

The garden helped a little. She wasn’t sure how long she had been here—a few weeks? A month? The plants had grown furiously. Tall spikes of sage were already hinting at purple flowers to come, and the lamb’s ears had unfurled new leaves. The oregano had grown so enthusiastically over its section of the herb wheel that she had to tear up a few of the more aggressive bits, before it ate the basil and began eyeing the lemon verbena. The clockwork bee crawled up the stem of a pole bean, stopping at every creamy flower.
 

And, irony of ironies, the rutabagas were still flourishing. If they kept this up, she’d have enough to stock a root cellar. Assuming the house had such a thing, or could create one to humor her.
 

“Maybe I’ll dig a root cellar,” she said. “That might be a good project to start next. It’d keep me busy, anyway.”
 

And when winter hits, what will I do? Take up meddling with clockwork, like the Beast? Try to find another hobby that the house can’t do for me?