Beastly Beauty

Eighteen

“Good morning, Your Grace.”

Arabella, her elbows on the table, her chin resting on her hand, did not look up. She was focused on the game board in front of her. Her eyes roved over it like birds of prey.

And Beau’s eyes roved over her, lingering on the jewels she was wearing—the haircomb, the pearls in her ears, the gold necklace, bracelets, and rings. His old mistress’s ring would buy his way to Barcelona. He hadn’t thought any further than that, and then he’d found himself a prisoner in Arabella’s castle, but as he moved through the great hall, he realized that he would need more money once he actually got to the city. And just one of Arabella’s baubles would bring enough to keep himself and Matti fed and housed for years. He moved closer to her, flexing his thief’s fingers.

Beau tried again. “Um … good morning, Your Most Excellent Majestyness?”

Irritation flickered across Arabella’s features, telling him that she’d heard his greeting, but she still did not return it.

“Good morning, Your Highly Royal Excellentness? Your Most Gracious High-Up Ladyness? Your—”

“Stack the wood and be gone, boy.”

The voice was Lady Sadindi’s. Beau flashed a smile at her, and in return, he received a look sharp enough to etch glass. He hurried on his way, the muscles in his arms protesting under the weight of the firewood he was carrying.

The other court ladies were with Arabella in the great hall, just as they had been yesterday. “And they’re just as weird as they were yesterday,” Beau said to himself.

They didn’t like him, that much was clear. He glanced at Lady Rafe, who shrank from him, even though he was nowhere near her. Lady Rega, angrily fumbling with tangled embroidery thread, threw him a look that said her troubles were all his fault.

Lady Espidra, seated at a spinning wheel, watched him expressionlessly, her sunken eyes following his every step. Beau met them but quickly looked away. There was something in her gaze that unnerved him, something hidden and dangerous.

Beau reached the great room’s fireplace and leaned down to deposit the wood. As he did, the logs unbalanced themselves in their leather sling and tumbled to the stone floor, as noisy as a landslide. The ladies, startled, screeched at him like starlings.

“Clod!”

“Bungler!”

“Ninny!”

“Imbecile!”

Arabella, somehow still focused on her game, said nothing. Beau wondered how she could stand to have these women around her. It was clear that they relished the name-calling, the taunting and shaming, but strangely their bad behavior seemed to be almost protective of Arabella, as if they were wary of anyone else coming near her.

Beau hurriedly stacked the wood, then threw a few pieces on the fire. He’d had enough. He’d hoped to engage Arabella and relieve her of a ring or bracelet, but he’d rather lug firewood and shovel manure all day long than spend another minute in the presence of her court. He picked up the sling and headed back toward the kitchen, but as he passed by her again, he saw her reach for a chess piece, then frown and withdraw her hand.

Arabella didn’t see her opening, but Beau saw his.

“Good call. Had you actually moved your queen to f6, your opponent would likely have used the Bovordunkian Defense and snared you in the Trockenbunger-Tinklepot Trap,” he said.

“Can you please be quiet?” Arabella asked, her eyes still on the board. “Chess is hard work. It takes concentration, discipline, and silence.”

“Pffft,” Beau said. “So what?”

Arabella looked up at him, her focus shattered. “So what?” she repeated, ice in her voice. “You just ruined my game and that’s all you have to say … So what?”

Her eyes caught his and held them. They were the silvery gray of a January dawn, and they made him stop dead. They made him catch his breath. They made the whole damn world fall away.

What’s with you?Have you never seen a pretty face before?Shake it off, a voice inside him said.

Beau heeded it, playing toward his endgame. He dropped the sling, grabbed a dining chair, spun it around, and sat down at the table across from Arabella.

“I don’t recall inviting you to sit,” she said.

Beau ignored that. If he wanted to steal something from her, he had to get close to her. “Chess is a complete waste of time,” he said, leaning his forearms on the chair’s back. “Say you enter into an epic match. You play for eight hours straight. You don’t eat or drink. As the hours go by, you become exhausted. Wrecked. You hit the limit of your endurance. And then, after this huge, giant struggle, you win.” He pointed at her. “What do you have?”

“A victory,” Arabella replied. “Now, if you’d be so kind—”

But Beau cut her off. “No. Nothing. You have nothing. You won a game. A game. Like checkers. Or tiddlywinks. Who gives a rat’s flea-bitten ass? In all that time you just wasted, you could’ve picked a hundred pockets. Lifted scores of wallets. Nabbed a dozen watches. You could have made yourself a rich man. Or woman,” he added.

“I already am a rich woman.”

“Yes, you are,” Beau said. He leaned across the table, helped himself to a piece of bacon from a platter, and crunched it. “I guess that’s the difference between the rich and the poor. The poor work. The rich play games and call it work.”

Arabella crossed her arms over her chest. “What a pompous, self-righteous, utterly asinine statement,” she said. “Are you actually telling me that what you do is work? A thief is the ultimate freeloader.”

Beau blinked at her. Her response was not what he’d expected, and it knocked him off course for a moment. He wasn’t used to that, to a woman seeing through him, and he didn’t know what to do. He opened his mouth, hoping something clever would come out of it, hoping he could recover his swagger.

But Arabella didn’t give him the chance. “Show me,” she said.

“No, Your Grace! He’ll kill you!” yelped Lady Rafe.

“Have you lost your wits?” screeched Lady Hesma.

“Show me,” Arabella said again, paying them no attention.

Beau cocked his head, confused. “Show you what?”

“Show me what you call work. Picking pockets, picking locks … those sorts of things.” Arabella uncrossed her arms; she leaned forward. “You said the rich play games and the poor work. So come on, you insufferable, bloviating windbag, show me.”

Beau let out a low whistle. “Insufferable, bloviating windbag …” he echoed. “I’m half insulted, half impressed. I myself would have gone with nasty-ass little fu—”

“I’m sure you would have,” Arabella said. “Profanity is the refuge of the lazy.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

Arabella did not acknowledge his joke. “Profanity is dull and unimaginative,” she said. “Take a moment. Think. Then say what you actually mean. Were I to continue to describe you, muck-spoutingblockhead or shambolic, filching rook wouldalso hit the mark.”

Beau nodded thoughtfully. “I see what you’re saying. Were I to describe you, puffed-up tosspot or toffee-nosed biggity pomp would do the trick.”

“Biggity pomp?”Arabella echoed in scornful disbelief. “Biggity isn’t even a real—” She abruptly stopped talking, eyes darting to the doorway.

Her icy composure had cracked, just for an instant, and Beau had glimpsed a flash of heat underneath it. Discomposure was good; he could use it. His thief’s senses sharpened. A huge piece of luck had just fallen into his lap.

“Do you really want to learn how to pick pockets?” he asked, before she could call for Valmont to remove him.

The question hung in the air and Beau’s heart dropped. He was certain he’d lost her, but then she pulled her gaze from the door—reluctantly, as if fighting her better judgment—and returned it to him.

“Yes,” Arabella said.

The ladies whispered among themselves, scandalized. This is outrageous!Shameful!Disgraceful!

“Consider your position, Your Grace,” warned Lady Espidra. “He is nothing but a common criminal.”

Nothing but a common criminal …

For an instant, it wasn’t Espidra who was there speaking but the workhouse matron, hand raised, ready to slap him senseless. He shook off the memory. This was no time to become distracted.

Arabella’s eyes dropped back to the chessboard. He walked around the table to where she was sitting and held out his hand. She looked at it but did not take it.

“Believe it or not, I actually don’t have all day,” he said.

After a long moment, Arabella—hands resolutely at her sides—rose from her chair. Beau caught her scent. She smelled like a rich girl: vetiver, leather, linen, books.

“I’ve seen enough,” said Lady Hesma.

She left the room. The others followed her, casting baleful glances behind themselves, clucking their tongues, shaking their heads. Only Lady Espidra remained, sitting by her spinning wheel, as still as a spider.

Beau went to work. Don’t be greedy, he told himself. Greedy thieves get caught. All you need is one piece of jewelry. Just one.

“Um, actually … not here,” he said to Arabella, frowning in mock concentration. “I need space.” He took her arm and steered her toward the fireplace, but when they got there, he stepped around to her other side. “Nope. This is no good, either. How about there?” He pointed at the area between the far end of the table and the doorway. He took her other arm, guiding her past the mantel, ducking around a chair. “I—oh! Ow!” He stumbled; his free arm flailed. Arabella whirled around to catch him. She put a steadying hand on his chest, trying to keep him upright. He felt its warmth through his shirt.

“What’s wrong?” she asked, her forehead creasing with concern.

“Sorry,” he said, wincing. “I stubbed my toe.” He leaned into her, forcing her to take his weight. His hands were on her arm one second, her shoulder the next, her waist. He could feel her chest heave as she struggled to support him. “I think I broke it. It hurts like a son of a—no … hang on … wait a minute …” He scrunched up his face and pretended to think. “It hurts like Satan heated his favorite pitchfork in the sulfurous flames of Hades and drove it straight into my mortified muscles, my torn tendons, my suppurating, septic wound, my—”

“I think you’ve made your point,” Arabella said. She staggered a little, straining against his weight, then thrust her body forward again. Beau waited for a few seconds; when he felt her arms quiver, he righted himself.

Arabella let out a long, weary breath as he did. “Are you sure you’re all right?” she asked, straightening.

Beau nodded. “This way,” he said, continuing on, his arm entwined with hers. When they finally reached the center of the room, he released her.

“Well?” she said, looking at him expectantly.

Beau tilted his head. “Well, what?”

“Are you going to show me how you rob people or not?”

“Hold out your hands.”

Arabella hesitated. “Why? So you can take my rings? Will you give them back?”

“What rings?” Beau asked, a grin spreading across his face.

Arabella looked down at her hands and gasped. They were bare.

“What? Where did they … it can’t be … how did you …”

She raised her eyes to Beau. The ice inside them had melted. They were sparkling now with a giddy mixture of awe and joy. She looked like a child who’d just seen the most astonishing magic trick.

“Ha. Ha!” she said, shaking her head. “That’s impossible. It’s incredible. It’s amazing. You’re amazing. Ha.”

Beau felt a rush of pride. No one had ever called him amazing. Far from it. It was a strange feeling, foreign and new, and he wasn’t sure it suited him. Like the beautiful things he saw in fancy shopwindows, it seemed meant for someone else.

“Where are they?”

Beau took her hands and drew them together in a bowl shape. Then he dipped his hand into his jacket pocket. Out came a ring. He held it up before Arabella’s astonished eyes, then placed it in her hands. Three more rings materialized. Her necklace. Her pearl earrings.

It was necessary to make a show of returning her things, to drag it out. That way, it would feel like he’d returned everything.

Arabella stared at the growing pile of jewelry, dumbstruck. Then she looked up at Beau. “How did you do it?”

“By distracting you, misdirecting your attention. Leading you one way, then the other, bumping into you, pretending to trip.”

“Teach me,” she said eagerly, dumping her jewelry on the table.

“Do not do this,” Espidra said tersely. But neither Arabella nor Beau heard her.

“First tell me why you want to learn how to rob people,” Beau said. “You certainly don’t need the money.”

He was still engaging her. Distracting her. Keeping her attention fully on him. Making sure she didn’t suddenly decide to put her jewelry back on and notice that one piece was missing.

“I like to learn new things.”

“How about a language?”

She waved the idea away. “I speak seventeen.”

Beau shot her a skeptical look. “No one speaks seventeen languages. Two if you live in the borderlands. Four or five if you work for a king. But more than that? Only if you’re some kind of genius.”

Arabella looked away. “Yes. Well.” Then she raised her eyes to his again. “Teach me. This is your job now. Or would you rather stack firewood?”

Beau considered her offer, then he held up a finger. “First lesson … the things right in front of you are the hardest ones to see.”

Arabella tilted her head. “I don’t understand.”

Beau moved toward her. When he stopped, his face was only inches from hers. Glad I swiped that cinnamon stick, he thought.

“Here I am, standing close to you. A bit too close.”

“A bit,” Arabella said, clearly uncomfortable.

“You see my face, but what can’t you see? My fingers, hovering by your wrist. Why? Because you’re distracted by my extreme gorgeousness.”

Arabella snorted.

“You’re so taken by my soulful brown eyes, melting like chocolate in the sun, so warm that you could bathe in them …”

“If I bathed in chocolate.”

“And my strong, noble nose … my full mouth …”

“That never seems to close.”

“Where are my hands all this time, Arabella?”

“I—I don’t know.”

“Because you’re distracted.”

“I certainly am not.”

Beau stepped back and held his hands high. Three bracelets were threaded between his fingers.

“Wait … what?” Arabella cried, delightedly outraged.

“The other thing you have to learn is to make your hands clever and fast,” Beau said. He walked to the table, put the bracelets down, and picked up a ring. “See if you can take this from my pocket without me noticing. Don’t worry about being fast yet. Go slow. Use small, light movements.”

Arabella nodded, excited now. She waited for Beau to prepare himself and turn around, then she pounced on him. Her movements were so clumsy, she may as well have been trying to stuff a brick in his pocket. At first, she nearly pushed his britches down—he grabbed his waistband just in time—and then, as she tried to get her hand out again, she tugged them up too high.

“Ooof! Ow!” he gasped.

Arabella pulled her hand free. “Sorry,” she said, wincing.

“Remember: small, light movements,” Beau said, fixing his britches. “I’m not supposed to feel anything.”

He turned his back to her again. Arabella took a deep breath and slid her hand in his pocket once more. This time, his britches stayed up.

“That’s better.”

Encouraged, she grabbed a handful—but not of jewelry.

Beau yelped. “Ow! Hell! It’s the ring you want to make off with, not my left butt cheek!”

Arabella’s hands came to her mouth. “I’m so sorry!” she said, flustered. “I’m not … I—I never meant to—”

Beau held up his hand. “Apology accepted. I do have a great ass, but focus, Bells, focus.”

Arabella’s cheeks flushed bright pink. “My name isn’t Bells, and I—”

“Try again. Pretend I’m a rich man who’s had one too many. I’m strolling through the Palais-Royal in Paris. It’s midnight, the party’s just getting started. There’s music. Dancing. Acrobats are performing. I’m watching a beautiful aerialist high up on a trapeze. She’s a goddess. I can’t take my eyes off her. Here’s your big chance …”

He turned once more, then felt a slight pull at the back of his britches, like a fish tugging at a hook. A second later, Arabella was holding up the ring and crowing.

“Ha! Look! I did it! I did it!”

“Much better. But you used too many fingers. I felt them.” He took her hand in his and smoothed it flat. “Pointer and middle are all you need.” He folded her other fingers, and her thumb, flush against her palm. “Use them like a pair of tweezers,” he instructed. Then he reached around behind her and plucked the comb from her hair. “See? Easy!”

Her lush tresses tumbled around her shoulders.

“My hairdo!” she cried.

“It’s more of a hairdon’t now.”

“Give it back,” she said, swiping the comb from his fingers. She put it between her teeth, twisted her hair up, then fixed it in place. It looked like a squirrel’s nest. “What?” she said, reading Beau’s amused expression. She pushed a stray tendril out of her face.

“Maybe you should leave it down. It looks nice down.”

He plucked the comb from her hair again and put it in her hand. And then, because they were standing so close, but not talking anymore, and it was a little awkward, he smiled at her.

It was his seducer’s smile, shrugged on like an old sweater. He didn’t even think about it. He’d used it on every woman he’d ever known. It was a slow-burn grin, full-lipped and full of promises.

It was effective, devastating.

It was a mistake.

Arabella yanked her hand away. She stepped back, looking as if she’d tasted something bad, something bitter.

“Bells?” Beau said, somewhat uncertainly. “Ready for the next lesson? Picking locks? We’ll need—”

She cut him off. “My name is Arabella. And I’m finished, thank you.”

“But—”

She turned in a circle, frantic, her eyes scanning the room.

“I am here, child. I am always here.”

Arabella gave a soft cry of relief as she found Espidra. She did not appear pleased, though, to see her lady-in-waiting. The light went out of her eyes; her shoulders slumped.

“Tell Valmont I shall take my dinner in my chambers today,” Arabella said to her, then she left the room, hands knotted, heels pounding across the floorboards.

Espidra rushed after her. She caught up with her right before she disappeared through the doorway. “Foolish girl. I warned you,” Beau heard her say as she put a thin arm around Arabella’s shoulders. “Go to your chambers. I shall join you there with a nice pot of tea.”

Arabella nodded, and then she was gone. For a second time, Beau’s silver tongue failed him. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He felt like a champion marksman who’d picked up his rifle one day only to find he no longer had any idea how to hit a target.

“Arabella, hang on, I didn’t … I wasn’t—” he called after her, but it was too late.

Flirting with you, he was going to say. Toying with you. So I can get what I want from you.

He’d rattled Arabella and he didn’t know why. Which rattled him. She mystified him. Intrigued him. Why did she want to pick pockets? How had she learned to speak seventeen languages? He found himself remembering the excitement in her voice. The warmth of her touch. The light in her eyes. And missing them.

Drop it, he told himself. He’d had fun teaching Arabella. He’d enjoyed showing off, but he had a bigger goal in mind than a silly flirtation. And he’d gotten what he wanted—one of Arabella’s rings.

He’d kept it back as he’d piled the rest of her jewelry into her hands, and in her excitement, she hadn’t noticed its absence. He doubted she would; she had so many others. The band was simple, but the setting contained three sapphires. He and Matti would be warm and well fed this winter.

He was just about to leave the great hall when he heard the voices again, voices that were always inside his head, telling him he was nothing but a thief. And then he heard a new voice. Talking over them. Silencing them. Her voice.

That’s impossible. It’s incredible. It’s amazing. You’re amazing…

Beau glanced at the pile of jewelry still sitting atop the table, where Arabella had left it, and the strangest desire gripped him—the desire to return the stolen ring. The desire to be something more than a thief.

Cursing his own foolishness, he pulled the ring from his pocket, walked over to the table, and dropped it on top of the other jewels. As he did, a voice spoke.

“Monsieur Beauregard …”

Beau jumped. His eyes sought the speaker and soon located her. It was Espidra. She was standing in the shadows of the doorway. He’d had no idea she was still there.

“I believe I have something of yours.” She pulled a small, crinkled envelope from her bodice and held it out to him. “I found it earlier this morning. Under a rug in the entry hall. You must have dropped it in your eagerness to leave us.”

It was all Beau could do to not snatch the letter from her hand. “Thank you, Lady Espidra,” he said as he took it.

Espidra acknowledged his thanks with a dip of her head and left the room. As soon as she was gone, Beau ripped the envelope open. As he read the letter, dread drained the color from his face.

2 November 1785

Dear Beauregard,

I received your letter and write back in great haste.

Matteo’s illness has taken a turn for the worse. It is consumption. I am so sorry. We are doing what we can, but he needs a doctor and medicine, and we are a poor order and cannot afford them.

You must come for him immediately. Our abbey, already damp and cold, grows more so as winter approaches and makes his condition worse. With proper care, he might have a chance. Without it, he will not live to see Christmas.

Yours,

Sister Maria-Theresa