21. Dimitri
Chapter 21
Dimitri
R osalie ran down the stairs, and Dimitri’s tense muscles finally relaxed. He’d guessed she was staying out of sight on purpose and carefully hadn’t mentioned her to the guards. But he’d still been anxious to check on her and to see with his own eyes that nothing had happened to her in his absence.
The day had been a victory, but Jace and at least one of his men had escaped. And they didn’t know how many other men he had out in the woods still.
Dimitri smiled up at Rosalie, giddy with relief. “You should have seen the guards' faces when they saw the men in the library.”
She smiled in acknowledgment of his comment, but she was clearly distracted, skipping straight over a greeting to blurt out, “You won’t believe what I just found out.”
His brow wrinkled. “What do you mean? Did something happen while I was gone?”
“No, not exactly. It’s just that I found out what’s actually been going on in this castle the whole time!” She shook her head. “Do you remember the serving girl at the Mortar and Pestle?”
He blinked at the abrupt change of subject, trying to remember back to his day at the inn. It already seemed distant.
“Oh!” he said, finally realizing what she must mean. “The one with the invisible limbs?”
She nodded, her smile turning smug. “Turns out I was right, and the Legacy hasn’t been practicing its cooking.”
His eyes slowly narrowed, and he gave her a sideways look. “Why do I have a creeping feeling of great foreboding?”
“Because you’re a very canny man,” she said, trying to suppress a rueful grin. “It turns out we’ve had a collection of dedicated servants the entire time we’ve been here. They’ve just been invisible.”
“Invisible servants?” His eyes widened. “Actual real people like the girl in the inn? But…who?”
She winced. “Brace yourself. It’s Daphne and my brothers.”
“Your brothers!” He paled. “Your brothers have been creeping around the manor watching us this whole time?”
“To be fair to them, I don’t think much creeping was needed, given they're invisible.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” he demanded.
“It didn’t make me feel better if that’s any comfort.”
She explained everything Daphne had told her about why they’d done it and how they’d made it work. When she finished, he glanced toward the library.
“It sounds like we got lucky with those chairs. The Legacy wasn’t helping us as much as we thought.”
“No.” She grimaced. “But it was helping us. So I suppose that’s a good sign, at least.”
“So it was one of them who shone the light in my eyes in the garden that time?” he suddenly demanded.
“Oh!” Rosalie’s eyes widened. “I didn’t even think of that one. Now I’m going to be second guessing everything that’s happened. And I haven’t even told you about the many pouches of coins buried in the garden.”
“The what?” He rubbed his temples. “Do I even want to know?”
“That one?” She winced. “Probably not, to be honest.” She looked around. “I haven’t actually seen my brothers yet.”
His eyebrows rose. “Seen them?”
She laughed. “You know what I mean. Sensed their presence? Talked to them? Felt the wind of their passing?”
He broke into helpless laughter at the last one. She watched him with a bemused expression.
“Sorry,” he said when the last of his chuckles subsided. “It’s been an intense day.”
“I understand,” she said softly.
Something passed over her face as she said it, and he wanted to ask if there was more to her comment. But he couldn’t help glancing around the entryway before speaking. Were they really alone? How was he going to speak freely—let alone get changed or bathe!—if there might be invisible people lurking everywhere?
“Ralph!” Rosalie suddenly shouted, making him jump. “Vernon! Oscar! If any of you are there, you had better say something right now or else you’ll never have a peaceful night’s sleep again when I get home! I’ll make sure your blankets never cover your feet, your shirts are always slightly damp, and every one of your socks has a hole. On a different toe. Some on two toes.”
“Does that make it worse?” Dimitri whispered.
She nodded solemnly. “It means you can’t ever get used to the feel of it.”
He laughed. “I’m starting to appreciate not having an older sister.”
A throat clearing from the edge of the room made them both swing around.
Rosalie’s eyes narrowed. “Who is it?”
“Vernon.”
“And Oscar,” a second voice added quickly.
Quiet footsteps sounded, and then a third voice said, “What’s this? Are we telling them now?”
“And there’s Ralph.” Rosalie sighed.
“Apparently Daphne told her everything,” Vernon said in complaining tones. “And now she’s making all sorts of dire threats.”
“Short blankets. Holes in the socks,” Oscar said woefully.
“Whatever for?” Ralph protested. “What did we do other than slave to make their food and light their fires?”
There was the sound of a whack, followed by an irritated cry. Dimitri had no idea who had whacked who, however.
“No more sneaking around!” Rosalie said sternly. “The Legacy might make you invisible, but that doesn’t mean we want you lurking around unbeknownst to us. From now on, you announce yourself whenever you get near either of us. And let us know when you leave too.”
She glared in the direction of the voices. “And don’t you dare say you’re leaving and then hang around and eavesdrop.”
“To what?” Vernon asked disgustedly. “Do you think we want to listen to our sister flirting all day?”
“I was not!” Rosalie flushed bright scarlet.
“You can’t blame us,” Oscar said. “We’re your brothers . Of course we don’t want to hear it.”
“But don’t think we’re going to leave you two completely alone,” Vernon said heatedly. “Did you really think we’d send you off to live with a strange man on your own?”
“Dimitri isn’t strange,” Rosalie protested.
“He’s a stranger to us,” Ralph said. “Or, he was. I think we all know more about him than we want to now.”
Dimitri drew back, his hands rising instinctively to cover his chest. Just how much had they seen?
“Relax.” Vernon snorted. “We’re in and out to tend your fire and deliver your breakfast tray as fast as humanly possible. And Daphne always did your room, beloved sister.”
“Don’t think you can flatter me into forgetting about this,” Rosalie said darkly. “How did you even know I was coming here?”
“You must have thought we were babies if you thought you could send Daphne to us with the debt money, and we’d just accept it without question,” Vernon protested.
“So you forced her to tell you the truth?” Rosalie frowned. “I hope you weren’t unkind.”
“Force her?” said Ralph. “Hardly. We already knew all about it by then. She told us as soon as she got back from picking the rose.”
Rosalie’s mouth fell open. “All those times I had to chase you away from her that night? You were all plotting together? Talk about betrayal!”
“Yes, yes,” Oscar said. “We know how touched you are to have four people who take such care of you.”
“Touched?” The fire in Rosalie’s eyes leaped into full flame, and Dimitri seized her arm to keep her from finding and whacking her brothers.
All three of the triplets laughed, however.
“Don’t worry,” Vernon said. “She’ll hold it in. Just. She always does.”
“You must have more patience than I realized,” Dimitri said to Rosalie, making her laugh.
“Every time I think I’m going to erupt at them, one of them does something sweet.” She sighed. “Even this was sweet in its own way.”
“Oh good, so everything is all sorted?” Daphne asked from the top of the stairs.
“Once again your nap was perfectly timed, I see,” Rosalie muttered.
“Now that they know we’re here, does that mean they’ll do their own cooking?” Vernon asked hopefully.
“Unfortunately, no,” Daphne said. “They’ve been capable of cooking the whole time, but we all need to keep to our roles.”
“We are capable of cooking,” Rosalie said quickly. “So you can all go home now. We don’t need servants to make this little play work.”
“You want us to leave when the manor was just invaded by an army?” Vernon cried. “I saved you, remember!”
“So that was you three with the coal and the knives.” Dimitri was reluctantly impressed. “It was quick thinking.”
“Thank you,” Vernon said smugly. “But we certainly won’t be leaving.”
Rosalie wilted, but Daphne spoke again.
“That’s right. We’re as much a part of this as you two. But we can’t risk upsetting the play by stepping out of our assigned roles. If we stop acting as servants, we might turn visible, and that could mess up the whole thing. Your family will be left with a chest of gold, but what about poor Dimitri? Do you want him to be stuck as a Beast forever because the Legacy dropped him halfway through?”
“I wouldn’t mind so much,” Vernon muttered rebelliously. “Personally I think he looks better now than he did before.”
“Like sister, like brother,” Daphne murmured, making Dimitri look at Rosalie.
She didn’t appear to have heard her friend—or she was pretending she hadn’t. What had Daphne meant? Did she really think Rosalie preferred the way he looked now? Surely that was impossible. Although she had certainly been softer and warmer to him after his change than she had been before.
He frowned. Did that mean that when—hopefully, not if—he went back to his true form, she would go back to being constantly irritated by him? It was a disheartening thought, but he refused to believe it. Thinking that way was unfair to Rosalie and the connection they had forged over the last few days. She actually knew him now, and she wouldn’t see him differently just because of his appearance. He hoped.
That night he made the rounds of every external door and window in the castle twice before he could sleep. And he made the same circuit as soon as he woke in the morning, checking that nothing had been disturbed. The morning and evening circuits became his ritual, and he confiscated the housekeeper’s set of master keys, refusing to let the triplets touch them.
Once Rosalie explained that Ralph’s distracted oversight had given Jace and his men access, they didn’t even protest. Much.
But that was the only relief any of them got from the boys’ complaints. Dimitri’s concern over the possibility of their silent presence was soon replaced with a desperate desire for them to return to being quiet, unseen shadows. Now that they weren’t trying to hide their presence, they accompanied all their actions with an endless stream of commentary.
“I have now entered the room,” Vernon said at the evening meal one week after Jace’s attack. “I am gliding quietly and gracefully across the room like a true servant. No one would even notice my presence, but I wish you to be aware that all private, personal, and nauseating conversation should now cease.”
The plate that had been floating through the air lowered onto the table in front of Dimitri.
“I am now serving the great and glorious master of the manor, known to his relations and close friends as the Beast.”
“Some feel this is a rather pompous appellation, given he strikes fear in no one’s heart,” Oscar said. “However, everyone is too polite to mention that fact.”
Vernon cleared his throat reprovingly, and Oscar’s plate paused in midair. “I offer my most abject apologies. It is, I, Oscar, and I too have entered the room. I glide even more effectively than the most revered servant, Vernon. Some have been known to faint at the wonder of my silent gliding.”
“If only it was silent,” Dimitri muttered, poking listlessly at his food.
“Are you three ever going to stop that?” Rosalie asked as Oscar finally put her plate in front of her.
“Whatever do you mean?” Vernon asked in mock surprise. “We are only doing as instructed by our venerable masters. We wouldn’t wish to do anything in a sneaky manner.”
“Oh really?” Rosalie glared in their general directions. “So you’re going to stick to the claim that the frog in my bed yesterday morning got there entirely by its own efforts.”
“Perhaps it was a love gift,” Oscar suggested innocently.
When Dimitri growled quietly, he quickly added, “From the Legacy. To its beloved Beast and merchant’s daughter.”
“At least Mother will be pleased to discover your improved cooking skills,” Rosalie said sweetly. “Does she think you’re working for a chef? If not, I’ll be sure to let her know that you were given kitchen duties and are now experts. I’m sure her delight will be so great that she’ll put you on meal duty for the next year.”
“We scurry quickly from the room like the lowly servants that we are,” Vernon said in a monotone, his voice growing gradually quieter as they both presumably sped from the room.
“I’m sorry about them.” Rosalie sighed, but it turned into a hum when she took her first bite of the food. “But I’m honestly impressed Daphne’s whipped them into shape so quickly with the cooking.”
“She’s a force to be reckoned with,” Dimitri agreed. “When she wants to be. Which isn’t often.”
Rosalie laughed. “I see you’ve gotten to know her quickly. You’re a good judge of character.”
“Even if I want to pitch all three of your brothers into the closest river?”
“An understandable instinct,” Rosalie said sympathetically. “But I’m afraid they can all swim.”
“I was hoping it would carry them away.” Dimitri took a bite and paused. “Or maybe not. This is better than anything I can make. Or my mother either, to be honest.”
Rosalie gazed around the room. “I suppose she never learned to cook growing up in this manor. I wonder how many people worked here when she was a child.”
“A great many,” Dimitri said. “I’ve been looking through the records my grandfather left behind. He paid generously and had a long payroll. Whole families lived and worked here. It was as much their home as my family’s.” His voice dropped. “I wonder what happened to them.”
“Maybe your grandfather took them with him?” Rosalie suggested. “Surely my parents would have mentioned it if his departure left whole families homeless and without work.”
Dimitri sighed. “I hope so. But if not, I need to find them and make restitution.”
Rosalie smiled. “You will. Once all this mess is sorted out, you’ll be free to do even more of that. Perhaps some of them will even wish to return.”
“I glide into the room with far more grace than your two previous servers,” Ralph’s voice announced. “If you could see me, you would weep at the beauty of my movements.”
Rosalie groaned. “Not you, too.”
“You’d weep buckets of joy,” he said firmly.
“Get back to the kitchen,” Daphne commanded from the doorway.
“Yes, ma’am!” he cried and departed in silence, his tray of rolls deposited between Dimitri and Rosalie.
Dimitri took one eagerly, but Rosalie stared toward Daphne.
“Ma’am? How did you manage that?”
“I’ve decided that I’m the housekeeper,” she said tranquilly. “And any junior servants who fail to show the proper respect risk being turned off without a character.”
Rosalie laughed. “You mean you’re shamelessly exploiting the fact that all three boys think they’re in love with you.”
“I have to make some use of it,” Daphne said serenely. “Who knows when they’ll grow up enough to develop an interest in girls their own age.”
She left the room to laughter from both Dimitri and Rosalie.
Two days later, Rosalie wandered through the conservatory with Dimitri, examining the plants.
“Do you think if you brought a pot from another kingdom—one that was already filled with dirt from that kingdom—that it would grow something other than roses?” she asked.
“Surely someone’s tried that before,” Dimitri said, distracted. He kept imagining his mother running through the conservatory as a girl. “If it worked, wouldn’t you have heard about it?”
Rosalie sighed. “I suppose so.”
“The most humble and respectful of your servants walks subtly into the room,” Vernon boomed out, making Rosalie start so badly that she pulled several leaves off one of the potted trees. “This silent and considerate servant delicately places the tray of your midday meal upon this table.”
Rosalie snorted. “You’ve never done anything delicately in your life.”
“Since I am but a humble servant employed in this manor, I don’t know what you mean,” he said in dignified tones.
“That is an excellent point!” Dimitri exclaimed.
“It is?” Vernon and Rosalie asked in unison.
“You are currently employed by this manor, and as the master of this manor, I am offering triple pay to any servant who can complete his duties with a reasonable level of calm communication.”
“Triple pay, you say?” Vernon asked in a normal voice. “In that case, please be informed that I’m leaving the conservatory to return to the kitchen. In thirty minutes, Ralph will be here to pick up your tray.”
Several branches rustled as he brushed past them on his way out of the conservatory.
Rosalie blinked after him. “Why didn’t one of us think of that a week and a half ago? Daphne made them fill a bath for me last night. It took them half an hour, and they didn’t stop talking the entire time.”
“At least you knew you were truly alone when you finally got in,” Dimitri said.
“It was cold by then.”
Dimitri laughed. “Sorry, I’m not laughing at you. I’m honestly impressed at their creativity. Maybe they’ll end up as florid novelists.”
“Don’t say that! We’d be expected to read every one of their books.”
“That would be taking family loyalty much too far. Surely the first few pages of each one would do?” He grinned at her, but Rosalie fell silent, her expression clouding, and he realized what he’d said.
He’d spoken casually of them as family because that was how he already thought of them. But once they finished play acting for the Legacy, he would have no official role in her life.
She and her brothers and Daphne would all move back to their actual homes, and he would be alone in the empty manor. It had been unpleasant before, but it was unimaginable now. He didn’t want their ruse to end.
But perhaps she would consider returning. Perhaps she would be interested in helping him build a future for both himself and the manor.
She had started to walk away from him, distracted by some plants further down the conservatory, and his hand reached for her. His mouth opened to ask the question burning inside him.
But his eyes caught on his strange-looking hand, and he snapped his mouth closed again. He was still trapped inside an inhuman body, with no guarantee he would ever return to his true form. He couldn’t ask Rosalie about a future together while his situation was still so uncertain. It wouldn’t be fair to her.
And he especially couldn’t do it while they were still acting for the Legacy. His impatience had nearly ruined everything.
He had lost himself in the false life they were living and forgotten all the reasons it needed to end. Not only did he need his true form back before he could speak his heart, but all of their safety might depend on it.
He had managed to slip away twice for updates from the local captain of the guard. The guards had questioned Jace’s men, but the captives had failed to provide any useful information. Jace had already moved his camp, and so far he had eluded all attempts to discover his location.
Dimitri appreciated the guards’ efforts, but he also suspected they hadn’t been as thorough and diligent as he would have been in their place. He itched to search for Jace himself, but while they were enacting their piece of theater for the Legacy, he couldn’t be gone from the manor for long periods.
And as long as Jace remained free, Dimitri didn’t believe he would give up on the wealth hidden in the manor. He would remain interested in Dimitri and Rosalie, and that meant Rosalie wasn’t safe.
They needed to end the false bubble they were living in and return to the world. Then he could find his grandfather and restore the manor properly—not by fixing the building but by filling it with people again. The person he most wanted there might not return, but some company would be better than none. And before all that, he would fund a guard force of his own—one he could use to hunt Jace until he was finally found.
Rosalie had to return to her family, and he had to regain his true shape.
Rosalie called out in delight from the other end of the conservatory, beckoning him over to see a peach rose.
“It’s the first one I’ve seen at the manor that isn’t red or gold.” She grinned up at him.
He smiled back, bending over to look more closely.
Rosalie had to leave, and he had to wait to find out if she would ever return. But she didn’t have to leave yet. A few more days wouldn’t hurt.