Beast_(2)

“I desire, therefore I exist.”

-Angela Carter, “The Infernal Desire Machines of Doctor Hoffman.”

***

It was agreed: Leona would stay with the Beast for 12 days, and then decide whether or not to marry him.

Rupin and Leona’s father brokered the deal during Rupin’s Christmas banquet, at his castle in the countryside. Rupin seemed quite taken with her father, asking him all sorts of questions about his trading with the Indies, and even inviting them to stay overnight after all the other guests had gone.

Only later did Leona learn it was not her father who so fascinated Rupin, but herself.

The agreement was only that she would stay with him and then hear his marriage proposal. She was under no obligation to say yes, or do anything else except keep him company for the holiday.

“Time enough for us to get to know one another,” Rupin told her, kissing her hand like the perfect gentleman. That had been the second day of Christmas, after the banquet, and those were the first words he spoke directly to her.

From that moment on she hated him, and it was then she nicknamed him “Beast.”

Judging from the gifts he offered, he must be nearing the point of desperation for a wife. Leona wondered why he’d never married anyone else in all these years, but her father showed a remarkable lack of curiosity about it.

“You could do much worse for a husband,” he told her as he climbed into the carriage that morning. He’d fixed a single winter rose from Rupin’s garden in his buttonhole, still red and vibrant despite the snow on the ground. “And if you for some asinine reason decide to tell him no then there’s no harm done.”

Leona had no intention of accepting any proposals, of course. Rupin was charming, she admitted. He was also handsome, and scholarly, well-spoken, well-dressed and well-groomed, with a pleasant voice and a habit of always saying just the right thing.

His conversations were enlightening, and he made it clear that he prized her opinions. Plus he was fantastically rich, and from a prestigious family. There was even an air of mystique about him, with his unidentifiable dark complexion and accent, and the oddly superstitious way that the townsfolk (particularly the women) regarded him.

She, a merchant’s daughter of no particular lineage and no particular beauty, who had lived in the region for only three months, could never have dreamed of attracting such a suitor normally.

Nevertheless, she hated him.

Generally they saw little of each other, which was a relief. He attended to “business” most of the day, though what that consisted of in the darkened rooms of the drafty old castle she had no idea. Only at dinner and the hours immediately after did she have to tolerate Rupin’s presence.

Though she vowed never to say a word to him, he always somehow wheedled her into a conversation. He was witty and incisive and sometimes close to brilliant, which of course was incredibly annoying.

She was consistently rude and unpleasant in return, but he never seemed bothered. He was mild and amiable company at all times, never becoming angry no matter how hard she tried.

After dinner they would retire to the library. Rupin had an abominable fondness for fairy tales and he would usually read a selection to her. He seemed fluent in virtually every language known, and translated exotic volumes with ease. That evening, the fourth day of Christmas, he was in the midst of “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight,” a particularly atrocious article, in Leona’s eyes.

She waited until the part when the Green Knight challenged Gawain to a contest (even though Gawain knew the knight was immortal and could never be killed) and then spoke up.

“And did he accept?” she broke in. Rupin’s eyes flicked up from the book.

“Yes,” he said.

Leona snorted. “Idiot. It would have been smarter of him not to show.”

“But that would have been a mark against his honor.”

Rupin sat in an overstuffed chair with his legs crossed, one slippered foot dangling. Leona, who could never bear sitting still in Rupin’s presence, paced the room, occasionally stabbing the fire with a poker. There was a lion skin rug in front of the hearth that she took particular joy in trampling.

“I’ll take a live man over an honorable corpse any day,” she said. “At the end of the day it’s the dishonorable man who walks away.”

“Maybe,” Rupin said. “But, if you’ll hear the rest—”

“I will not,” said Leona. “I’ve already taken what lesson from it I care to. Let my husband, whoever he may be, be a dishonorable man. I don’t care if he lies and cheats and whores every night of the week if the alternative is him lying in a ditch with his head cut off because he daren’t impugn his honor to stop it.”

She thought she detected a rare mark of dismay on Rupin’s face, and this pleased her.

“Now my lord, I’m afraid your story has given me a terrible headache. I must retire.”

“Of course. Nothing is more important than your wellbeing.”

Rupin set the book aside. “But if at any point tonight you find your strength returning, do consider going for a walk with me in the garden?”

This was the offer he made every night after the conclusion of the evening’s tale. The first time Leona was startled; they were in the midst of a never-ending snowstorm and Rupin meant to go out walking in it, in the middle of the night?

She hadn’t the first idea what he intended if she ever agreed, but naturally she never had, so it remained a mystery. He kissed her hand again.

“Until tomorrow night. You remain, as always, the highlight of my day,” he said. Then he left.

“Beast,” Leona said to the closed door. Then she went to the windows. This spot afforded a good view of the garden where Rupin took his otherworldly constitutional.

Snow piled high outside. It had snowed every night since she came here. Frost tinted the petals of the roses in the garden. Yes, the roses blossomed even in the winter, and never wilted in the cold, and were fresh and red all the year around.

Rupin’s roses were quite famous for that, though he claimed not to understand their special qualities, saying that they’d always grown here, long before he lived in the castle.

There were many strange things about the castle: For example, Rupin seemed to have no servants or staff, but the rooms were always clean and tidy, and food appeared for supper every night without fail.

Again, Rupin credited this to the castle’s nature and claimed no understanding of how it all worked. Leona wasn’t sure if she believed him.

Now she watched him as he wandered back and forth through the maze of rose hedges, until eventually he disappeared from sight. She didn’t bother snuffing the lamps in the library or dousing the fire when she left; it would take care of itself, like it always did. She went to bed.

Lying in bed that night, she declined to count sheep in favor of counting the ways she’d be revenged on her father when this confinement was over. Each little torment made her smile. With that smirk on her face she drifted off to sleep…

And woke hours later with a start. The room had become hotter than hell. She threw off the covers and ran to the window, throwing it open, heedless of the snow blowing in. She stripped off her night clothes and gasped as the icy air stung her naked, sweat-drenched body.

It should have helped, but it didn’t. The heat was not a principle of the room but of something inside of her. She pushed her knees together, feeling self-conscious despite there being no one around. Her hands crept down her body, gliding over the curve of her thighs and—

She saw something. Across the way, in a tower room she believed was Rupin’s, a light shone on the balcony. Was something moving out there?

Yes: The balcony door was open, and a shape was silhouetted against it. It was not a human shape. She leaned out, unmindful of her nudity. Rupin’s window (if it was Rupin’s window) opened fully and the thing, whatever it was, climbed out.

It was some kind of animal, as big as a horse but as lithe and graceful as a cat. It paced the length of the balcony on all fours, its tail twitching, perhaps waiting for something. And then, in one bound, it leapt the balcony railing and was gone.

Leona was so shocked she ran out onto her own balcony and looked down. She expected to see the broken body of some animal lying there, but instead the creature appeared to have landed on its feet. Visible only in the dim light reflected off the snow, it took off as quick as you please, running for the garden and vanishing behind the rose hedges.

Leona waited for several minutes more, but it didn’t reappear. After a while, the light went off in Rupin’s window.

She fastened the doors. Her feet ached from exposure to the snow. Somehow, a blaze had kindled in her fireplace. Wrapping herself in a robe, she sat and pondered the flames.

What had the half-glimpsed creature been? Did Rupin have some kind of exotic pet? Was he planning an absurd holiday surprise for her, the enormous feline part of some circus show?

No: One look had been enough for her to know that it was no tame animal. It had been sniffing the air as it paced. It was a hunter. It was out after something right now.

And what, she wondered, was its prey?

***

Christmas passed one aggravating day at a time. Rupin’s treatment of her became even more lavish, the food at dinner even more decadent, and the gifts he gave all the more extravagant. Her dislike for him throbbed like an infection.

She felt she might have left the castle altogether in spite of their agreement (Rupin was so callow she doubted he would seek reprisal against her father even if she welched), but the few times she gave serious consideration to it the mystery of the giant animal made her disregard the idea.

Though she’d seen it only once more, again leaving via the balcony window across the way, she was certain that it stalked the grounds every night, and now that she knew what to look for she found signs of its coming and going every morning.

The resident creature was an object of intense curiosity for her. She wanted to know what it was, and the idea of leaving the castle without plumbing the mystery further was unacceptable.

Naturally her first idea was to ask Rupin, but something made her stop.