Seventeen
“I’d take some more coffee,” Beau said to Camille, sliding his empty cup across the table.
“Anything else His Lordship requires?” Camille asked, looking up from the batter she was stirring.
Beau smiled at her. “Another brioche? With strawberry jam?”
“Don’t you have work to do?”
“The shell game is work. Took me years of practice to get good at it.”
Camille nodded at the platter of pastries at the end of her worktable. “Help yourself. Coffeepot’s on the stove.”
Beau did, pleased. The request had been a small test—to see if he’d be permitted to leave Camille’s work area and move around the kitchen—and he’d passed it.
He slathered jam on his brioche now like a mason troweling mortar. “This is so good. What do you put in it?” he asked.
A flush of pleasure filled Camille’s cheeks at the compliment. “Rose water,” she replied. “Just a drop.”
She was warming to him. They all were. Because he’d delighted them with the shell game. Charmed them. Made them laugh. People would do anything for you if you made them laugh.
He was counting on that as he made his next request. “Can I have an onion, too?”
Camille gave him a quizzical look. “An onion?”
Beau laughed. “Who doesn’t like onions?”
“Chopped and sautéed in butter, yes. Whole and raw? For breakfast?” Camille shook her head but gestured at the basket.
Yes!Beau silently shouted. He finished his brioche and walked across the kitchen, nodding cheerily at Phillipe as he passed him. Then Henri. Then Claudette. His cheeks felt like they were going to crack from all the fake smiling. He’d made these people like him, but he didn’t like them. They were liars, every single one of them.
There was a beast, a brutal, murderous creature. Valmont knew about it; they all did. They must, yet no one spoke of it. Valmont had actually denied its existence right to Beau’s face. When Valmont had fetched him from his room earlier that morning, Beau had wanted to lash out at him, to tell him how close he’d come to being torn apart last night, but he couldn’t, not without revealing that he’d been out of his room. If Valmont knew that, he’d take away Beau’s lock-picking tools and find him more secure accommodations—like a dungeon cell.
After he’d made it back to his room last night—barely—Beau had lain awake in his bed, realizing that it would now be a thousand times harder to escape, understanding that it would take all his skill and all his cunning just to get from his room to the cellar door. Wasting time picking locks with bad tools would get him killed. He needed the master key.
Beau had reached the baskets now. He glanced around quickly, to make sure no one was watching him. Camille was at the bread oven pulling out loaves. Phillipe and Rémy were threading game birds onto spits. The maids were in the pantry. Valmont had been called away from the kitchen but could return at any second.
Beau bent down to the onion basket and thrust his hands down into it, feeling for the key.
But it wasn’t there.
He dug deeper, frantically pushing onions aside. His fingers scrabbled through the loose skins, seeking hard metal, but found nothing. A cold dread gripped him. What if he hadn’t buried the key far down enough and someone had spotted it? He tipped the basket toward him and was just beginning to sweat when he saw it—a bright glint of brass.
“What the devil are you doing?” a brusque voice barked from behind him.
“Damn it,” Beau whispered, his heart plummeting. He couldn’t allow himself to be thwarted again. He had to get that key. Grabbing an onion, he turned and straightened. “I’m eating my breakfast,” he said, giving Valmont a guileless smile.
The man was standing a few feet away, holding a heavy iron wrench. Florian and Henri were flanking him.
“Really. You’re really going to eat that?” Valmont said skeptically, placing one hand on his hip. “I didn’t see you eat the last one.”
“I ate it. It was my midnight snack,” Beau lied. He’d hidden it in a gutter outside his window.
He doesn’t believe me. He thinks I’m up to something. Which I am, Beau thought, trying to keep his cool. He had to convince Valmont otherwise. He had to find a way to linger here. “What else would I do with it?” he asked.
“Go on, then,” Valmont said, nodding at the onion.
“Go on what?” But Beau knew the answer.
“Eat it.”
Beau’s stomach knotted, but he gave a nonchalant shrug. “You’re the boss.”
He leaned back against the table, crossed one ankle over the other, and started to peel away the onion’s papery skin, hoping that Valmont would miraculously be called away again and he wouldn’t really have to eat the damn thing, but the man didn’t budge. He just stood in place, holding his wrench like a club. Florian and Henri, still at either side of him, were goggle-eyed.
Beau finished peeling the onion. He regarded it, turning it this way and that in his hand, then bit into it as if he were biting into a fresh-picked apple.
It almost killed him.
The sharp flesh puckered his tongue; the fumes made his eyes water. He took another bite, and another, chewing the raw mouthfuls and swallowing them, forcing his stomach not to heave them back up.
“Mmm, so good,” he said as he finished it, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Nice and juicy.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Valmont.
“Never seen that before,” Henri said.
“You boys don’t eat onions? You should,” Beau advised. “Onions make you handsome.”
Josette walked by at that very moment. She overheard Beau’s words. “Then you must’ve eaten a wagonload,” she said, tossing him a flirtatious smile.
Florian looked at Beau with envy. Henri looked at the onion basket with hope.
“Mind if I take another one?” Beau casually asked. “Dealing with the copious amount of manure around here makes me hungry.”
Valmont ignored the dig. He shook his head as if he couldn’t believe what he’d just seen. “Take as many as you want,” he said. “But the shoveling can wait. Get busy with the firewood first. These two usually do it”—he nodded at the kitchen boys—“but I need them this morning. Start with the great hall, then the ladies’ quarters, then the kitchen. The wood’s stored in an outbuilding next to the stables.” He walked off. Florian and Henri followed him.
Excitement surged in Beau’s veins. He’d gotten himself another crack at the basket. He bent over it again, plunged his hands into the onions, and worked them down to the bottom, where he’d glimpsed the flash of brass. His fingers quickly found the key and pushed it up his sleeve. As he straightened, he put his hand on his right knee and let the key slip out of his sleeve into his boot.
“Ah! Here’s a nice one,” he said, holding an onion up to admire, just in case anyone was still watching him. He dropped it into his jacket pocket, swiped a cinnamon stick from a bundle on the chef’s worktable, and headed outside to find the firewood.
As he walked across the empty courtyard past the sad, dead gardens, he cracked a piece of the cinnamon stick off with his teeth and chewed it, desperate to get the taste of onion out of his mouth. A sudden gust of wind shrieked down on him, making him duck his head. It was late November, and the weather was turning.
That’s the winter wolf howling. His fur is made of snow; his fangs are made of ice; his eyes are the gray of a stormy sky. Run when you hear him, boy. Lock the door and shutter the windows. He’s bringing his whole pack with him.
Raphael had told him that when he’d first found him. Lying in an alley, his blood staining the snow. Then he’d pulled the knife out of Beau’s chest, picked him up, and carried him home.
The wind dropped. It was muttering now. The skies were darkening. The temperature was dropping. Snow wasn’t far off; Beau could feel it. A few inches and he could still get over the mountains; a few feet and he’d be trapped in the castle for months.
Beau buttoned his jacket up around his neck and walked on. The horrible feeling of helplessness that had possessed him last night was gone; a grim determination had taken its place.
He had the key. All he had to do now was wait until nightfall. He intended to be up in the mountains by this time tomorrow.
The beast had tried to kill him twice.
He’d be damned if he gave it a third chance.