Beastly Beauty

Thirty-Four

“Do stop pacing, child. How are we to arrange your hair? Or dress you for supper?”

Arabella waved Espidra’s words away.

“What nerve he has,” she said, stalking back and forth. “Barging in here … making his ridiculous demands …” She stopped dead in the middle of the floor. “Build a bridge … a bridge?”

“With what?” Lady Rega snorted. “Your bare hands?”

Lady Iglut, standing in the doorway of Arabella’s dressing room, held up a silk gown. “Mistress,” she began in her gurgling, lugubrious voice. “Percival has set your table. Valmont has decanted your wine. Phillipe’s food is growing cold. The fire is burning down. The candles, too. Florian waits by your chair. Soon the flowers will wilt.”

“Yes, Lady Iglut, I’m coming, I’m coming,” said Arabella, a flush of contrition coloring her cheeks. She hadn’t meant to keep her servants waiting.

Still simmering, still muttering, she walked into her dressing room. A tall mirror stood in one corner. The glass seemed to sense the tumult inside her and respond to it. Colors swirled inside it, beckoning to her. Images took shape.

Arabella recoiled as she saw the silver glass coming to life. A destructive impulse fired inside her. She wanted to pick up a vase, a figurine, a doorstop, anything, and smash the silver glass to pieces, but it was pointless. She could not break the mirrors. How many times had she tried?

Though she did not want to, Arabella stood in place, as she had a thousand times before, watching the story—her story—unfold, foolishly hoping for a better ending. The glass showed her a sparkling scene—a formal ballroom, all gilt and crystal, where roses spilled out of vases and candlelight flickered over powdered and rouged faces.

A girl came into focus. She was wearing a blue gown. Jewels dangled from her earlobes and neck. Her hair was styled high on her head; not a tendril was out of place. Everything about her was contained—her body, her gestures, her voice. She moved about the ballroom with a porcelain set to her face, a brittleness to her bearing. She looked like the spun-sugar decorations set atop fancy cakes, as if she would crack into pieces at a touch.

The duke, her father, had visited her in her chambers before the ball, with a warning. “I expect nothing less than perfect behavior tonight, Arabella. I have a list of suitors for you as long as my arm: a Sardinian duke, a German viscount, an Austrian baron, a Romanian prince … But if you do not control yourself, I’ll be lucky to marry you off to a ratcatcher.”

The ball’s purpose was to find her a husband, but she did not want one. She wanted stone and mortar. Joists and rafters. She wanted to raise walls, build towers, send spires up to pierce the sky. But she’d realized it was an impossible dream; her parents would never allow it, and she was tired of fighting them, tired of disappointing them, so instead, she chatted and danced and smiled.

Young men introduced themselves. An earl squired her around the cathedral-sized room, regaling her with stories of his hobby—stamp collecting. A baron danced with her and talked about his spaniels the whole time. After listening for a full hour to a duke with a passion for fishing lecture her on the differences between the common bream and the silver bream, Arabella declared she was overheated and excused herself to get a glass of punch. She found it challenging to get a word in—about gardens or concerts or horses or flan, as her aunt had advised—but her companions didn’t seem to mind. The less she spoke, the more they could.

As she arrived at the refreshments table, she spotted her father, his back to her, deep in conversation with the Italian ambassador.

“I wish your lord were here,” she heard him say. “I would value his counsel in a political matter concerning my duchy.”

“Perhaps I can be of assistance, Your Grace?” the ambassador offered.

The men moved closer to each other. Arabella, intrigued, leaned in, the better to listen to their conversation, but the men created a wall of their bodies, shutting her out. She could still hear them, though.

“My people grow restive. There have been incidents of rebellion,” her father said. “My tax collectors have been beaten. Gallows smashed. Grain stores looted.”

“Because you tax your people harshly to build a giant golden clock, Papa,” Arabella said. To herself. Or so she thought.

“What a load of rot,” drawled a male voice.

Arabella turned. A young nobleman stood nearby, holding a cream puff between his thumb and forefinger. He was tall, like Arabella, and coldly handsome, with light brown hair tied back with a ribbon, bored blue eyes, and an indolent smile.

“Do you know the advice I would give?” he asked, through a mouthful of pastry. “Round up the ringleaders, hang them, and leave their bodies for the vultures.”

Arabella winced at his cruel words. “Do you always proffer unsolicited advice, sir?” she asked.

The man snorted laughter. “Do you always eavesdrop on other people’s conversations?”

He finished his sweet, then frowned at some cream stuck to his thumb. He looked around; his eyes fell on Florian, who was carrying a heavy silver tray of sugared fruit to the table. “You, boy … come here!” he barked.

“My lord?” Florian said as he approached, huffing under the weight of the tray.

The man wiped his hand on Florian’s sleeve. “On your way. Shoo,” he said, waving the boy off.

Arabella stared at him, speechless, then anger surged in her, washing away her shock. She opened her mouth, ready to tell this arrogant oaf exactly what she thought of his atrocious behavior. But before she could, the young man gave her a curt bow and said, “I’m forgetting my manners. Allow me to introduce myself … Constantine, prince of Romania.”

At that very instant, just as the prince was bowing, Arabella’s father walked past them, still deep in conversation with the ambassador. He glanced at her, and her feelings must’ve been on her face, for his eyes suddenly darkened. She saw the warning in them, and it brought her up short.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Your Highness,” she said, pushing her emotion down. “My name is—”

“Arabella. Yes, I know. You’re too softhearted, Arabella. There’s only one thing to do with rebellious peasants—end them.”

Talk about gardens, a panicked, shrill voice inside Arabella warned. Talk about kittens. Talk about flan.

But she didn’t listen to it.

“My father’s people do not need ropes around their necks; they need food on their tables,” she countered. “Two years of rainy summers have led to poor harvests. There’s no wheat to make their bread, no hay to feed their animals.”

Constantine laughed. “My darling girl, you do not understand power. Allow me to explain it to you: Give the peasants too much and you will teach them to want things they should not. That is how revolutions are started.”

“People only rebel when they have nothing,” Arabella retorted. “Have you ever seen a king start a revolution?”

“I suppose you have devised a way to deal with an unruly populace?” Constantine asked.

“I believe I have, yes.”

Arabella expected him to laugh at her again, or walk away. Instead, he said, “Tell me, do.”

Ball guests, intrigued by the sight of the duke’s young daughter lecturing a prince, drew near.

“My solution is to give our people the tools they need to better themselves,” said Arabella, with conviction.

“And those are?”

“Schools and hospitals. Good roads. Proper plumbing.”

“Plumbing?”Constantine wrinkled his nose.

“An unappealing topic, yes,” said Arabella earnestly, “but an important one, as science tells us that clean drinking water and well-maintained sewers reduce outbreaks of disease.”

Carried away by her vision, Arabella did not hear the arch comments from women, whispered behind silk fans. She did not notice the men frown with distaste. Thrilled to have an audience for her ideas, she mistook Constantine’s interest for enthusiasm.

“These ideas are ambitious, I know,” she continued, the words tumbling off her tongue. “I would start with the village closest to our castle and use it as a proving ground.”

“And what would you call this model city of yours?” Constantine asked. “Have you a name for it? Utopia, perhaps?”

The crowd laughed raucously. Too late, Arabella saw what the man had done. He’d asked her questions, he’d drawn her out; he’d coaxed her to share the dream that lived in her heart—not because he thought it had merit but to ridicule it.

Shame and embarrassment seared her, yet she persisted. “No, not Utopia,” she said. “Paradisium.”

Constantine arched an eyebrow. “And what would make it a paradise, my lady? The fact that you would live there?”

Another wave of laughter engulfed Arabella. She leveled her chin at him and said, “No, my lord. The fact that you would not.”

Hushed gasps rose from the courtiers. Snorts and snickers followed.

Constantine gave Arabella an acid smile. Then he said, “I was under the impression that the duke’s daughter was a young lady of marriageable age. I was mistaken. She is young, but she is no lady.” And then he was gone.

Arabella stood by herself for a moment, mortified by all the eyes on her. It had happened again. Though she’d tried so hard to control it, her emotion had burst out of her, flailing and howling like some vile jack-in-the-box. Remorse gripped her. Word would get back to her parents; she’d let them down yet again. She desperately wished she could behave as they wanted her to, but she didn’t know how. It was impossible not to feel her feelings. It was like willing her heart not to pump or her lungs not to draw air.

“Arabella, there you are! I’ve been looking all over for you!”

Arabella turned and saw her mother making her way toward her, cheeks flushed. Her heart sank. She braced herself for the tongue-lashing that was about to come her way.

But the duchess was smiling.

For once she looks happy to see me, Arabella thought. I wonder why?

She didn’t have to wait long to find out.

“I’ve found you a husband!” the duchess said excitedly. “I was talking with an old, dear friend. Her family lived close to mine in Paris before she married, and she married very well, and it happens that she has a son, just a few years older than you are, and we think the two of you would make a perfect match!”

Arabella was tired. Her head hurt. She didn’t want a husband now any more than she had when the ball had begun, but it was so rare that she made her mother happy, so rare that the duchess looked at her with anything like approval, that she smiled brightly and did her best to look eager as she asked, “Who is it, Mother?”

The duchess gripped Arabella’s arm and in a breathless voice said, “His Royal Highness, Prince Constantine!”

The real Arabella stepped back from the mirror now. She squeezed her eyes shut. When she opened them again, the images in the silver glass had faded. She stood perfectly still for a moment, nails digging into her palms, trying not to remember her story’s next chapter.

She had asked for forgiveness a thousand times. But it did not matter. She would never forgive herself.