Beastly Beauty

Twenty-Five

“Kid! Hey, kid, stop!” Beau shouted.

He started running after the girl, determined not to let her get away again. But she disappeared down the corridor, turned the corner, and was gone, all in the space of a breath.

Beau ran harder, desperate to keep up with her. As he rounded the corner, his heart leapt. She was just up ahead. He was about to shout again, but before he could, he heard pounding footsteps coming from the hallway behind him. They grew loud, faded, then grew loud again, and he knew that whoever was making them was running into each room, searching it.

The girl stopped at one door and pulled something out of her skirt pocket. It was the key. Beau could tell by the way her hands shook as she fumbled it into the lock that she heard the footsteps, too. The door opened just as he caught up to her. Wordlessly, she grabbed his arm and dragged him inside. Holding a finger to her lips, she quickly closed the door, relocked it, and dropped the key into her pocket. Then she took a step back. Listening. Watching. Waiting.

“Who are we—”

“Shh!”

Running from?Beau mouthed.

The girl didn’t reply. Her gaze was glued to the door. Beau debated snatching the key from her pocket, but she’d likely put up a fight, and he didn’t want whoever was out in the corridor to hear them. He didn’t want to be here, wasting precious time, when he could be in the cellar, maybe even halfway down the tunnel by now, but he had no choice.

As the girl stood by the door, waiting and listening, Beau looked around and saw that they had ducked into someone’s private chambers. He was standing in what appeared to be a sitting room, but it looked like it hadn’t been entered for years. A moth-eaten wool rug covered the floor. Silk draperies hung in the windows, their hems tattered, their silver embroidery fraying. The flowered wallpaper had yellowed. Strips of it had peeled away in places and now lay on the floor in sad, dusty curls. An archway led from the sitting room to another chamber.

Beau cast a glance at the child, worried she might open the door and make a run for it, but she was still standing motionless, her hands clenched.

Letting his curiosity get the better of him, Beau walked through the sitting room, noting a delicate slipper chair, its seat covered with a stack of books; a silk shawl draped over the back of a sofa. His eyes came to rest on the mantel. When he saw what was hanging above it, he stopped in his tracks.

The portrait’s frame, like everything else in the room, was covered in dust and darkened by time, but the face on the canvas was as fresh, and as striking, as the day it had been painted.

Beau stared at it, struck by the girl who stared back at him. She seemed familiar, but he didn’t know her. Twelve years old or so, she had a regal, self-possessed bearing, but her smile was lively and challenging. Her blond hair, gathered in a loose ponytail, hung over one shoulder. She wore a moss-green jacket with a high collar. Her gray eyes were large and expressive; a fiery intelligence burned in their depths.

With a sudden shock of recognition, Beau realized that he did know the girl.

“It’s her,” he said, pointing at the portrait. “Hey … hey, kid, that’s Arabella.”

The little girl turned around, tossed him a withering look, and said, “I stand humbled by your blazing powers of perceptiveness.”