Beastly Beauty

Forty-Five

There was a gasp, a shout, a splash, and then, “Oh, you bloody little bastard! You rotten monster! Damn it! Damn it all straight to hell!”

Beau shot Arabella a look. “That’s a bit imprecise. Think about it. Say what you mean. That’s what somebody once told me.”

“Condemn this godforsaken botch most forcefully to the sulfurous depths of the underworld and stuff it straight up the devil’s backside!”

“Much better,” Beau said, biting back a smile.

What had just happened wasn’t funny, but Arabella was. When she was angry, he’d discovered, she swore like a fishwife.

She was staring into the moat now, her hands on her hips, her gaze on the pieces of hewn timber floating on the water’s surface. “We can’t keep losing them,” she said. “We don’t have an infinite supply.”

It was nearly four o’clock. Since early morning, she and Beau, joined by Florian and Henri, had been trying to sink a wooden pole into the moat’s mud in order to fashion the initial pair of pilings for their bridge. On the first attempt, they didn’t drive the pole deep enough, and it toppled over. On the second attempt, they hit a rock and the pole popped up like a cork before falling into the water. On the last attempt, they’d succeeded in getting one piling anchored, but the second had slipped and crashed into the first one with such force that both toppled over, nearly taking Henri and Florian with them.

“We’re losing the light,” Beau said, looking up at the sky. A few snowflakes drifted down. “It’s getting colder and we’re getting tired. Maybe we should stop for the day.”

Though Beau was worried about wearing Arabella out, the idea of ending the day with nothing to show for it but four poles floating in the moat was deeply dispiriting to him. Every day without progress was another day that Matteo didn’t get the help he needed.

Arabella, however, was not worn out in the least. “I’m not ready to call it quits,” she said. “We need to know that this will work. If it doesn’t, I’ll have to come up with a new plan. Tonight.”

“Or tomorrow.”

“Or tonight,” Arabella said forcefully.

Beau cocked an eyebrow. “Why, Your Grace, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you wanted to get rid of me.”

“Time’s wasting. You said you need to get over the mountains before snow closes the pass, didn’t you?” Her words were terse and clipped, and Beau heard the anxiousness behind them. Was it on his behalf? Or her own? He didn’t have long to wonder about it, though. Arabella walked away briskly, motioning for him to follow.

She’s so different, he thought, watching her move through the gatehouse to the courtyard where Henri was working on more poles. Her headscarf had slipped off long ago. She’d hastily scraped her hair together in a ponytail and had tied it with a piece of twine. Her skirt was streaked with dirt. She’d ripped a hole in her jacket.

But the change in her was more than a change of wardrobe. She not only looked different; she was different. Beau’s eyes lingered on her, seeking out what, exactly, had altered. It was her face, he decided. So often closed and inscrutable, it was now as open as the sky. When she was stymied by a problem, frustration darkened it like clouds crowding out the blue. But after the problem was solved and the path forward revealed, the satisfaction Beau saw there felt like the sun emerging.

Beau was still watching her as she leaned down by Henri and Florian, who’d just finished sharpening a pole. And then it hit him: This is Arabella happy. For some reason he could not explain, and was not sure he wanted to, her happiness touched him.

“People have done this without pile drivers. We can, too,” she said to the boys, watching as they picked up the heavy pole, carried it through the gatehouse, and lowered the sharp end into the water.

“Angle it to the left a little … That’s it … Now hold it in place,” she instructed, then she turned around. “Beau? Are you ready?”

Beau snapped out of his reverie and picked up a sledgehammer. After making sure that Arabella was out of the way, he swung it high and brought it down on the piling with all his might. It was hard. He had to aim well and at an angle, and then drive the hammer home with every ounce of his strength. Over and over he swung, hitting the top of the piling squarely, driving it deeper into the mud. The impact sent shock waves up his arms, and though it was cold, sweat poured down his body. Finally, when the top of the pole was about two feet above the gatehouse’s threshold, Arabella signaled for him to stop.

He did so gladly, panting as he stepped back, resting the sledgehammer on the gatehouse’s floor. The muscles in his arms were trembling; his back ached. Snowflakes, coming down harder now, lodged in his hair and eyelashes.

Arabella grasped the piling with both hands. She pushed against it. It didn’t move. Then she tried to pull it toward her; it still didn’t budge.

“Yes!” she crowed. “It’s solid!” She glanced at the sky; dusk was starting to fall. “Let’s get the second one in and tie it to the first. Then we can start tomorrow’s work with one pair in place.”

Just as before, Florian and Henri sharpened one end of a long wooden pole, then held it steady while Beau hammered it. The second piling was sunk quicker than the first. Arabella tested it again, and it held.

“Hurray!” she cheered. “We did it! I knew we could! We’ll just lash the two poles together, and then we’re done for the day.”

She ran back into the gatehouse and emerged a few seconds later, running, with a coil of rope.

What happened next might not have happened if the sun hadn’t been setting, and the snow hadn’t been picking up, and the temperature hadn’t been dropping.

Arabella’s foot hit a patch of snow-dusted ice. She skidded, dropped the rope, and pitched forward.

There was a scream, a fluttering of skirts, and she was gone.