Chapter 7
It’s official, the grounds of the manor are unescapable.
Mildred and the rest of the staff have already warned me of this, but I had to try. Unfortunately, my many attempts to get over the fence or through the front gate were completely useless and mostly just made me angry.
And after four silent dinners with his majesty, I’m seriously considering knocking Alistair unconscious just to see if it temporarily confuses the curse and lets me escape.
I’ve been at the manor for four days, and he hasn’t said one word to me since the first night. Apparently, I’m not attractive enough to speak to. This I can safely assume after the number of times he’s cringed at the sight of me. I wish I could say that the feeling is mutual, but we both know that he’s beautiful. Not that I’ll ever tell.
“So, is this how the next three months are going to go?” I ask, liberally slathering butter onto a piece of bread. The one thing I can’t complain about since coming here is the food. Or the linens. I would go to battle and die a hero’s death for my bed.
Alistair smirks but doesn’t speak and I hate the game I know he’s playing. He has a book open in front of him, tipped back against an empty glass, feigning deafness. But he loves to see me squirm, wants to hear me beg for his attention.
I’m a mouse and he’s the cat.
“Fine. I’ll talk for the both of us then,” I say, careful not to let my annoyance show, instead humming as I eat a bite of steak. If Alistair knows that he’s annoyed me, he’ll feel he’s won. And I will not lose to him. “I’ve temporarily given up my attempts to escape the grounds. Clearly everything I’ve been told about the curse is true. So instead, I’m going to start scouring the manor to see what I can find out about you and this curse.”
I watch him to see if any part of my words strikes a chord of discomfort, but he doesn’t so much as flinch.
“Keep your snooping away from my room and the library,” is his only response.
“I’m curious, do I appear as some kind of horrifying banshee to you?”
“What?” he glances at me, his brows furrowed. I mentally curse his parents for the handsome features they bestowed on him. He doesn’t deserve them.
“You look at me like I’m a bloodstain on a white shirt. So I’m curious, do I look like the villain in a bedtime story or something?”
There’s a scrutinizing look in his eye and I realize that he has no idea what I’m talking about. Has no one told him that the curse makes him see women incorrectly? Or does he just not care?
“If you must know, you have a large nose—too large for your face,” he says nonchalantly, green eyes picking me apart with a lazy sort of attention. “Your eyes are small, your eyebrows too bushy. There’s a harsh, rough texture to your hair, and your smile is more of a sneer. Hey, don’t glare at me. You asked.”
“So they haven’t told you that the curse makes you see women as ugly, no matter what they truly look like?” I ask, but by the confused, thoughtful look on his face, I realize that I’m wrong. “They have,” I scoff, disgusted. “You were just too arrogant to take them seriously. How pathetic.”
His expression hardens and I see for the first time the man who was cursed. I don’t know what he did to draw the ire of a Poet, but I can imagine that it had something to with this anger I see pouring out of him.
“Pathetic?” he sneers, shutting his book. “No, pathetic is waltzing into my manor looking like something someone pulled up from the dirt. Pathetic is stalking the grounds, making useless escape attempts when you’ve been told not to bother. Pathetic is hounding me for my attention when I find you uninteresting and unattractive. If I’m pathetic, then we’re a matched set, because sweetheart, you’re as pathetic as they come.”
Then he snatches up his book and leaves the room without a backward glance. I sit there for a while, waiting for my heart to stop racing and the red to recede from my vision.
I’ve been taunted before; I know what cruelty is. But there’s something about Alistair and the cavalier way he delivers it.
Maybe it’s because I suspect he has nothing to gain from my hurt. He doesn’t want to control me or own me. He just doesn’t have any use for things that don’t give him a better view or a nicer seat at the table.
He”ll regret that. They always do.
Greed is all the same, whether it’s a greed for women, prestige, money or vanity. I’ve heard it all before. And every time, it’s the greed that kills them. It makes them arrogant and glib, revealing their own weaknesses to me without even realizing it.
‘Keep your snooping away from my room and the library.” Idiot. He may as well have painted me a map to his most sensitive places. I expected more.
I sit in the dining room for a few more minutes, finishing my meal and giving Alistair time to get to wherever he spends his evenings. Once I’m done, I don’t go to the kitchen like I have the last few nights.
The staff are always so hopeful when they see me, but the moment they hear of my silent dinner with Alistair, they deflate. I don’t know what they expect me to do with him, but I don’t feel like disappointing them tonight.
I do, however, feel like teaching Alistair a lesson.
A smile pulls at my lips as I stride into the library. I haven’t seen it yet as I’ve mostly been exploring outside to find a means of escape. But now that I’ve deemed escape futile, it’s time to get familiar with the inside of the manor.
Starting with Alistair’s personal space.
It wasn’t hard to figure out which rooms mean the most to him given that Alistair proclaimed the east wing of the manor as his. Yet another mistake on his part. Never reveal your heart to your enemy or that’s where they will strike first.
I find it slightly strange that a man like Alistair places so much emotional attachment on a library, but I don’t take the time to question it. Whether he finds books to be a distraction, a mark of prestige or something else, I don’t care. The point is that it’s important to him, and that’s all I need to know.
The room is large and filled to the brim with books. I note that the windows are covered in here just as they are in most other places in the manor. One day I’ll get the staff to tell me why.
There’s a table to my right, filled with books and notes, a quill and ink sitting beside a stack of parchment. A meow draws my attention and I find a large orange cat curled up on a half pulled-out chair, blinking at me with wide green eyes.
“Don’t mind me,” I assure it, “I’m just here to cause your master a bit of trouble. But surely he annoys you too, so you won’t mind, will you?”
I crouch down, lifting my hand a few inches from the cat’s face. It watches me for a moment and then sniffs my fingers before pushing its little nose at my hand. I tentatively brush the soft hair on its snout, and the cat lets out a little purr. I smile. It only took seven years, but I’ve finally made a friend that I can trust.
“You’ll never lie to me, will you?” I tease, standing to survey the options. Most of the books on the tables have to do with history or geography. “Alright, I think Alistair could use a little bit of resistance in his life, don’t you?”
The cat meows and I hand it a handkerchief from the table that it batts at like a toy.
I’m not a particularly vindictive person, but I do get a bit of morbid happiness from teaching someone cruel a lesson. So, it’s with glee that I rearrange Alistair’s books, swapping them for romances and children’s stories. Then I snap the charcoal on the table into bits too small to use and pour his ink into bottles that have openings too small to dip a quill in.
It doesn’t erase the things I’ve endured at cruelty’s selfish hands, but it does bring me a small sense of control. I couldn’t rebel so obviously with Paul or the duke. But I don’t fear Alistair.
He’s selfish and arrogant and I’m certain that he sees everything and everyone as an opportunity, but I don’t believe for a second that he would hurt me without genuine cause. At least I can count on that much while I’m here.
Knowing that his reaction won’t be dangerous, though likely dramatic, I gleefully disrupt his library. And it feels so good.