13. Charlotte
Charlotte lay in bed, filled with anticipation, despite an entire day spent in Henry’s company. And sure enough, within only a few minutes, her straining ears heard the sound of the door opening.
“Henry?” she called, the name slipping out before she could stop it. Despite her newfound knowledge, it was hard to shake the fear of such complete darkness.
“It’s me,” he said reassuringly. “I would never allow anyone else to come into this place and frighten you.”
She felt instantly at ease, remembering that the darkness itself was a sign of the control he exerted over the castle thanks to the bell. Real or not, this castle was his domain.
During the day, they had spoken of the books and the things they discovered in them, their attention on his enchantment—although he had refused to give her details of how he had come to be trapped in it.
But she felt instinctively that those weren’t topics for the night. Here, in their shared bed, they were just Henry and Lottie, beginning a marriage the wrong way round—getting to know each other after their vows instead of before.
Haltingly, she asked him about his childhood, and he spoke with warmth of loving parents and a younger sister. A pang of longing hit her at the way he talked about his sister. She had always dreamed of feeling that way about her sisters.
But she reminded herself that she had at least had Daisy, and when Henry returned her questions, she spoke of her old friend rather than her sisters by blood.
When their talking drifted slowly off, Charlotte lay there and listened to Henry’s breathing shift to become slow and rhythmic as sleep claimed him. She had shared a room with her sisters for years but lying here beside her husband felt entirely different. Even if they were separated by the expanse of the bed, she could still feel his electrifying presence.
Only the previous night, the distance between them had felt safe, but now she found herself wishing she could roll closer. She could hear his breathing, but she wanted to feel the warmth of his body as well, as he lay close enough to touch.
She forced down the foolish thought. It was enough that she wasn’t alone in this strange place. She would sleep, and in the morning, she would be reminded that far more than a stretch of empty blanket lay between them.
Eventually she slept, waking alone as she had the first morning. This time she hurried through her morning routine, however, eager to return to the library and Henry.
When she stepped into the corridor, he was waiting for her in his bear form.
“I wasn’t sure if you knew the way to the library yet,” he said in his deep voice, and she gave in to instinct and wrapped her arms around his broad neck, resting her cheek against his soft fur.
He stiffened for a moment before relaxing and pressing back against her, which she took as a bear’s version of returning the hug.
“Thank you,” she said, wishing she could find the words to express everything in her heart. From the first moment of their meeting he had shown more consideration for her than her own family.
When she let go and stepped back, she wondered if she should feel embarrassed by her display. She couldn’t muster the emotion, however. Somehow it was much easier to express affection to Henry in this form than in his true one.
They spent another companionable day in the library, although they found nothing of import. Charlotte knew she should feel impatient to free Henry, but it was hard to maintain a sense of impatience in the face of such contentment.
As on the previous day, Henry disappeared before the sun set, and she was able to watch him go without a qualm. Already the castle was becoming a warm and friendly place, and she struggled to remember why she had found it so unwelcoming at first.
Again he appeared quickly at night, and again they spoke of their lives and dreams, speaking as if there was no enchantment or mountain isolation. They might have been any two people getting to know one another.
He told her he had always dreamed of a big family, and although it made her cheeks furnace hot, Charlotte agreed. By silent agreement they kept the topic abstract—for all the intimacy of their nights together, the barrier of Henry’s enchantment still lay between them. But it still thrilled her to know they agreed although their motivations were different.
Henry wanted multiple children because of the love he had received from his parents and sister—he wanted more of the warmth that had saturated his childhood. Whereas Charlotte wanted the chance to make a different family from the one she had grown up in. She was determined she would never stand by and see one of her children excluded.
Days and nights passed in the same manner—so many days that Charlotte was vaguely conscious her wedding had been weeks ago and spring had reached the valleys in earnest. Spring had certainly bloomed inside Charlotte.
She hadn’t dreamed her strange marriage could bring such joy and contentment. From the beginning she had felt seen and known by Henry, but the nights of sharing their hearts in the darkness had deepened that sense into a surety. The only thing that marred Charlotte’s happiness was her growing desire to be rid of the barriers that still held them apart. The gulf in the middle of their vast bed had never felt so large.
Eventually there came a morning when Henry waited outside her door with a different air from usual.
“I’m sorry, Lottie,” he said without preamble, “but I can’t read with you today. I’m heading into the forest, and I fear I’ll be gone most of the day. Will you be all right on your own?”
Charlotte wanted to protest that she didn’t want to be alone. For a second she even considered asking if she could accompany him. But no matter how comfortable she had become with him as a person, her husband spent his days as a bear. There were parts of his life she couldn’t share.
“Of course I’ll be fine,” she said instead. “I don’t want to risk missing anything important in the books, though, so I’ll wait for you to return to resume the research.”
He thanked her, but he seemed distracted and eager to be gone. After his departure, Charlotte wandered listlessly, realizing her feet had taken her along her usual route. But when she arrived in the doorway of the library, she couldn’t bring herself to go in. The library was her haven within the castle—a place of comfort and enjoyment—but it felt empty without Henry.
“Stop this,” she said aloud to herself. “Since when have you become someone uncomfortable in your own company?”
Many of her most enjoyable days in the valley had been the ones when she slipped away and roamed the forest alone. She refused to become a person who couldn’t cope with being alone.
Turning her back on the library, she decided to go exploring. With the bell safely in her pocket, she knew she could always find a way back if she needed one. But it was past time she discovered the extent of her new home.
Everywhere she went, she found the same red carpet underfoot, and the corridors were lined with variations of the same tapestry and sprinklings of identical chairs.
“Beautiful and practical, but limited,” she muttered to herself after viewing the same tapestry for the fifth time. Apparently the bell’s power wasn’t as vast as it had seemed.
The carpet and decorations still achieved a positive effect, however. Even impersonal, repetitive decoration was better than a whole building full of nothing but stark, cold stone, so she was far from complaining.
“But why is it so large?” she mused as she looked into yet another empty room. “If Henry used the bell to create a home for himself after the enchantment, why did he ask for such an enormous one? Or had the castle sprung into being as part of the original enchantment? Did it mirror a real place, like when Henry had asked for a copy of the books that already existed in the royal libraries?”
The thought stilled her steps, and she gazed at the walls around her with new eyes. Was she roaming a copy of a real place that had once featured in Henry’s life? If so, what had brought him to a castle? Was it the castle of his home kingdom?
She had always heard that both Rangmere’s capital and its palace were austere places of gray stone. Never having visited them herself, she had no idea if she was now living in an enchanted version of Queen Ava’s castle.
She continued her exploration, but everything she saw had a new fascination. It became a game to guess at the original purpose of the rooms. Bare of furniture, many of them looked foreign, but she could make guesses from their shape and location.
Opening another door, she stepped into the first room that wasn’t empty. Stretching along the length of the room was a long dining table of heavy, dark wood. It stood alone except for a single elaborate chair at its head.
Charlotte stood transfixed, but it wasn’t because of the unusual presence of furniture or even from the mental image of Henry eating alone after sundown each evening, the long table stretching emptily before him. Her attention was caught by an enormous portrait hanging on the far wall, facing the head of the table.
The brunette woman was both young and beautiful, and she was dressed in a filmy gown of blue. Her face shone with a gentle strength that gave her an appealing quality that was hard to put into words. She evoked a protective instinct that was unfamiliar to Charlotte as the youngest in her family.
She wanted to shake off the feeling, to laugh at herself. After all, this woman looked several years older than Charlotte and from the quality of her dress, she didn’t need anything that a girl from the valleys could supply.
But the woman wasn’t so easily put aside. Her stomach churned as the image of Henry’s solitary meals soured in her mind. Before her arrival, the entire castle had been unadorned. Henry hadn’t added a single piece of furniture or decoration outside of the library—except for this table and this single painting.
How many nights had he sat here, gazing at the woman in the portrait? What sort of protective instincts had she roused in him?
Charlotte ran from the room, slamming the door behind her, her heart pounding. But the image of the painting had been burned into her mind. She might have closed the door, but she could still see it in front of her eyes.
Charlotte was playacting as a princess in this empty castle, but the woman in the painting clearly belonged in such a setting. The painter had captured a poise that Charlotte envied but also a light of kindness that only made her feel sick.
The woman in that painting was one it would be easy to love. She pressed her hand against her stomach, her nausea surging.
She knew something had compelled Henry to marry her. Even without knowing his secrets, he had hinted as much. There was something he needed from her, and it was more than mere companionship.
Had this enchantment separated Henry from the woman he loved? And then, even worse, had it forced him into marriage with someone else? Had he sat here, night after night, longing for his lost love and trying to strengthen himself to put her aside and marry another?
Before their marriage, Henry had been earnest in assuring her that it was a legal marriage only. And even after she discovered the truth of his enchantment, he had repeated those promises. She had assumed his words were for her sake, and they had been gratefully received. In the growing relationship between them, it had been easy to forget about their early intentions. She had even started gathering the courage to tell him she no longer needed such distance between them.
But now the words took on a different light. Was Henry’s determination to keep his distance not about Charlotte’s comfort but his own emotions?
She stumbled down the corridor, heading back to more familiar parts of the castle. But now everywhere she walked, she was followed by the specter of Henry’s life. The curious interest from earlier was gone, replaced with a burning in her chest as she imagined Henry walking identical halls with the woman by his side.
She stopped in the middle of a corridor, recognizing the sensation for what it was. Jealousy.
“He’s mine!” she growled at the empty air around her. “Henry is my husband, and I’m his wife.”
The words brought her little comfort, however. Henry had committed his life to her, but she admitted to herself that she wanted more. She loved him, and she wanted his love. She wanted a real marriage. But Henry had never promised her that. They had never so much as touched each other while he was in his human form.
Her queasiness grew as she realized what she had to do. If he had only married her because of the enchantment, then once it was broken, she would have no choice but to offer him an annulment. She couldn’t allow him to be tied to her for the rest of his life just because he had been trapped in an enchantment. She cared about him too much to do that to him.
She told herself she was overreacting and leaping to assumptions. But no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t shake the thoughts free.
All the time she had been exploring, she had been listening with one ear for Henry’s return. But now she dreaded the sounds of the bear’s arrival. She needed time to settle her emotions, to find a way to mask the sickness that swirled in her stomach.
She wandered slowly back to more familiar parts of the castle, running her hand along the small pieces of furniture that lined the way. The backs of the chairs somehow always remained dust free, although she never cleaned them, and the small side tables that paired with some of them remained equally spotless.
Still listless, unable to marshal her thoughts into a proper course, she slid out the small drawer in one of the tables. It would be empty, of course, but she couldn’t keep her restless fingers still.
Except it wasn’t empty. Charlotte froze, her heartbeat speeding up in contrast to the stillness of her limbs. Inside the drawer was a small oval frame protecting an unfamiliar painting. But while Charlotte had never seen that particular artwork, she instantly recognized the face and shoulders depicted. The woman from the full-length portrait in the dining room.
Slamming the drawer closed, Charlotte staggered backward, stopping only when she collided with the opposite wall. She wanted to scrub her mind clean and forget she had ever seen it lurking in there on the route between her room and the library—the route she had walked so many times with Henry and that he must have walked so often alone, coming to wait for her.
The full portrait had been painful enough, but it was a relic of a time before she came to the castle. Henry did not sit there alone at night anymore. But this was different. The side table had only appeared after she had requested it with the bell. And yet, secreted inside it was a remembrance of this woman.
Unable to help herself, Charlotte hurried down the corridor, making for the next side table. Was it really possible that of all the drawers in the castle, she had happened to open the one containing the picture?
As soon as she pulled open the next drawer, her nebulous fears crystallized. In this one, too, sat a small portrait showing a woman’s head and shoulders. She slammed that drawer closed as well and hurried to the next one and the next. In every drawer she opened, she found the mystery woman’s eyes smiling kindly up at her.
The sickness in her stomach surged, and she sank to the floor against the corridor wall, tears running down her face. Earlier that day she had recognized the castle must be a copy of a real place—it made no sense otherwise. But she had only thought of Henry at the center of it. She had been wrong, though. It was this strange woman who lived at the heart of the castle Charlotte thought of as home. Even now, she had to be out there somewhere in the castle’s original.
Part of her wanted to confront her husband immediately and demand the truth of the woman’s identity. But the rest of her shrank from the idea. Even in her head, she sounded shrill and ungrateful. He hadn’t demanded she reveal her own painful past—he had merely provided a safe space and waited until she opened up of her own volition. She owed it to him to offer him the same courtesy. His past was his own until he chose to share it, and despite what her feelings shouted, there was no betrayal to confront him over. The fact he might once have had feelings for another woman—in the past before he ever even met Charlotte—indicated no act of disloyalty to his marriage. And how could she accuse him of loving someone else now, when he spent night and day by her side, doing everything possible for her comfort?
She would have to ask him eventually. She couldn’t live not knowing. But she couldn’t do it while her emotions were so out of control. If she did, she would say something she would later regret. She would hurt Henry and that thought was the most unbearable.
Even as a bear, he was kind, his gentleness only broken by the strength of his protective instinct toward her. He treated her with respect, valuing her taste and opinions, and seeking out her company. And despite the direness of his situation, he laughed and joked with her, making it easy to spend time in his presence. Of course she was in love with him. She’d been a little in love with him ever since that first night when she’d discovered he was a man.
In these past nights, when they had lain side by side and shared their hearts, she had secretly longed for more. If he had broached the expanse of bed that lay between them and reached for her, she would have reached back.
But he had not done so.
Charlotte had assumed it was his promises holding him back. She had taken comfort and joy in the camaraderie and understanding growing between them, assuming it would gradually lead to more. But now she faced the reality that her husband might have no desire for a true marriage between them.
Time passed although she didn’t track it. Eventually the growling of her stomach roused her, and she managed to get herself back to her room, even forcing herself to eat as the sun began to set. But as the last of the daylight faded, there was no sign of a white bear, and for the first time, Charlotte faced the possibility of a night on her own.
The prospect pulled her emotions into line more effectively than anything else. She couldn’t endure this life without Henry. Just the thought of it was horrifying. But if she was going to continue to spend her days and nights at his side, she had to talk to him about her discovery. And to do that, she had to first master her new emotions.
She crawled into the sheets with steely determination, but she felt her control tremble as she blew out the candle and solid darkness descended. Every part of her was tense, listening for the sound of her door opening.
And, sure enough, it came as expected, only minutes after she had extinguished the candle.
“I’m sorry I’m so late back,” Henry’s now-familiar voice said into the dark.
Despite Charlotte’s resolutions, her eyes immediately overflowed, silent tears tracking down her cheeks. The mattress moved slightly as Henry climbed into his side of the bed.
He said something else, but Charlotte didn’t hear it over the beating of her heart. Her tears increased, betraying her into a small sob.
Henry instantly froze.
“Lottie?” He sounded worried. “Did something happen while I was gone? Are you hurt?” He shifted slightly toward her and then away again. “Curse this darkness!” he muttered with violent emotion.
More sobs escaped, Charlotte’s emotions flowing out of control.
“Lottie,” he said helplessly. “Talk to me! Please!”
She tried to form words, but the attempt only made her cry harder. Finally, with a muttered exclamation, as if driven past bearing, he closed the space between them.
Cautiously his hands reached out and, as she had predicted, her own reached back of their own volition. His fingers found hers, and he squeezed them, seeming to take courage that she wasn’t drawing back.
“Lottie,” he said again, sounding almost as pained as she felt.
Her heart expanded, the fresh sign of her husband’s care only making the pain worse. She sobbed more loudly.
With another exclamation, he closed the last of the distance between them, gathering her into his arms.
Shock stopped Charlotte’s tears, although a few sniffles still escaped. The feel of his strong arms around her was like nothing she had experienced before, enclosing her in an immediate sense of safety. But at the same time, it also made her senses thrill, sensation running through every part of her.
“Don’t cry, Lottie,” he whispered into her hair. “It hurts me to hear you cry. I’m sorry that I left you.”
She rested her head against his shoulder and tried to master the shudders that were all that was left of the sobs.
“Did something happen while I was gone?” he repeated. “Did you injure yourself?”
She shook her head against him, knowing it still wasn’t safe for her to speak of either her feelings or the woman in the portrait. Her tears might have stopped, but her heart still raged out of control.
“It’s just foolishness,” she finally managed to say. “Please ignore it.”
His arms tightened, and she was secretly glad he hadn’t ignored her tears. After the revelations of the day, she knew it was wrong of her, but she couldn’t help the way she thrilled at being held in his arms.
If she lay still, she could imagine for a moment that theirs was an ordinary marriage and Henry was truly hers.
“It’s all right, Lottie,” he murmured against her hair. “You’re safe here. I won’t let anything happen to you.”
She didn’t doubt his words. That was the character of her husband. He might be full of secrets, but they were not ones of his making, and he would never swerve from the promises he’d made. He had promised to take her into his family and protect her, and he would never stop doing that. If he was ever going to be free, she would have to give him his freedom.
But still she couldn’t bring herself to pull away from him. In that moment, there was no future, only the present. And in the present, she was his wife, she was in need of comfort, and she would accept the comfort he was offering. Perhaps tomorrow she would have gathered herself enough to speak to him safely.
Falling asleep within the circle of his arms was far easier than she could have imagined, and her sleep was deeper and more peaceful than she had anticipated after the upheavals of the day.
But, as always, when she woke, the bed was cold, and she was alone.