Chapter 16
After making her father a cup of healing tea, Bella lit a candlestick and headed into her corner of the house for bedtime.
She pulled the privacy curtain closed along the overhead string and sat at her desk.
She noticed her coin pouch had been moved a bit, and it looked a lot less full than when she had left the house to care for Nocturne, but Bella had told her father she had coins for him to use.
It irked her he had taken so much without asking, but she had offered, so Bella elected to drop the matter.
After a long moment of staring into the dancing candleflame, Bella dipped her quill into the inkpot and pulled out a precious sheet of paper to use.
She tapped the feather against her ticklish lips, trying to recall Riven’s curse.
After mulling it over and recalling it rhymed by threes and not twos, she thought she had it down and wrote:
Lakes and ponds I govern
On hills and dales and fields
Verily I sentence you
Ever after to suffer and mourn
Seek you sums and yields
Killer of beasts kind and true
In this filth hereby be adorned
Save and prevent until healed
Sentenced until then are you
“Such an odd curse,” she muttered. It was singsong, not angry like Bella would expect from an avenging enchantress. It did not bespeak vengeance or retribution or even punishment. In fact, Riven had had to summarize what the curse actually meant after reciting it to her.
She stared at the paper, recalling Riven’s words. She knew she had captured the curse correctly, but the whole thing felt... off. She stared until her eyes crossed, then blew out the candle as the word LOVE flitted across her vision.
“Wait!” She fumbled in the dark for her flint, struck the stones until the wick caught flame again, then scrutinized the curse.
Nothing.
She looked away, wondering if the curse could only be seen peripherally.
Nothing.
She dragged her finger down the left-hand column.
There it was. “LOVE’S KISS,” she breathed.
Just reading it made her heart race. Bella knew she had strong feelings for Riven and had truly enjoyed their brief time together.
He had generously given her a bounty in coin, plus his horse, and gifted her the safest way possible to return home.
He had protected her from the ostler, despised men who mistreated women, and even watched over her last night on the shore. He was kind and noble and even humble.
It didn’t even matter that he was a prince. Bella knew she loved him for who he was.
She loved him.
Because he saw her for who she was, not just for how she looked.
She loved him.
And tomorrow, she was going to return to him and tell him as much.
Smiling, she blew out the candle again and crawled into her cold bed, kicking her feet in anticipation of telling him.
Bella loved Riven, and she fervently hoped it would be enough to break his curse. If she were the luckiest woman on the planet, he would return her love and maybe even marry her, if they could find a way in which his parents would allow it.
If not, at least she could say she did her level best to help him break his curse.
Because she loved him.
And she could not wait to let him know.
––––––––
COCKCROW WOKE HER, and Bella struggled to rouse herself. Excitement had kept her up until just an hour or so ago, so Bella knew she would need a strong cup of tea to start her day.
She tugged on her warmer layers of skirts, then her kirtles, then a wool shawl before opening her curtain. “Papa?”
No answer, but his bed was made, and his mug and plate were in the tub to be washed.
How had Bella slept through her father’s breakfast?
She unwrapped the cheese on the table and broke off a wedge, then did the same with the round of bread beside it as she swung the teapot over the hot coals and stoked the fire.
Halfway through her meal, someone knocked. Bella set down her tea and pulled open the door.
And suppressed her moan. “Hello, Jean.”
“Jean-Pierre,” he corrected, though Bella had intentionally misnamed him. “Bella, précieuse, so beautiful you look. Except, did you not comb your hair this morning?”
She fought the urge to run her fingers through her mop. “I was not expecting company at cockcrow. Is there something you need?”
“Oui. Did your father not tell you?”
“He is not here right now. Perhaps you should come back later?” She moved to close the door, but Jean stuck his boot into the opening.
“May I come in?” he asked as he shoved his way through. “Such a quaint home. Très modeste, is it not?”
A burn of embarrassment had her stiffening her spine. “Papa never made it to the fair to sell his inventions this year. We have had to make do.”
“Is that so?” he asked, his eyes glittering like he knew a secret.
Bella fought the urge to take a step back. “What is it you want?”
“Wait a moment, and you shall see.”
Alarm bells went off in her head. She didn’t like this. “I do not feel it proper that you are in my home without my father present. Please leave.”
He didn’t. In fact, his lips twisted in what he might have thought was a smile, but to Bella, it looked sinister. “Oui, we cannot have neighbors thinking the worst of us, can we?”
“Leave now.”
“Not without you,” he said and snatched her in his arms, trying to force a kiss upon her lips.
Bella squealed and stomped on his toes, but her stockinged feet had no effect on his boots. “Leave me alone!”
“No, Bella. We are to be married.”
“No!” she screamed, and ‘twas then her father flung open the door.
“What is this?” he demanded, though to Bella, he did not seem shocked to find Jean-Pierre in their home.
“I have come to pay a bride price for Bella,” Jean said, and he reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of coins.
Coins that Bella recognized.
She knew instantly what her father had been up to. “How could you?” she hissed. “Those coins were mine. I earned them.”
“You gave them to me, and I handed them out as I saw fit,” her sire said, as if the matter were settled.
“See?” Jean beamed. “Now everyone is happy.”
“I’m certainly not,” Bella retorted.
“You have been a spinster too long to understand what happiness is,” Jean said, like he was a master at relationships.
“No, I’ve been a spinster because I know that being so is what brings me happiness.”
Jean sent her father a look of sheer exasperation, to which her father waved him down.
“Let me take care of this.”
“Father, you cannot be serious.”
“Jean-Pierre wants to marry you, and he is willing to pay a bride price for you.”
“How convenient,” Bella fired back. “Tell me, Jean, which of those coins is a crown, and which is a shilling? Which is a furthow, and which a windling?” She made up the last two, but Jean would not know.
A moment of panic crossed his visage before he smoothed it over. “Worry not your pretty head over such matters. I shall handle the sums.”
“How can you handle that which you have never beheld? How many shillings in a crown? Please, do inform me with your superior knowledge.”
Jean turned back to her father. “I cannot. She is insufferable.”
Bella laughed, but it held a bite to it. “Funny how only intelligent women are thus named. Could it be insecurity on your part, I wonder?”
“Bella!” her father barked, then turned to Jean. “Please. You can be wed in an hour.”
“Over my dead body.” Bella glared at both men, and they glared at her.
After a tense moment, she addressed her father.
“I have a literal prince watching over me, and you think a bride price from a cooper’s son paid with coins I earned will win me over?
Jean’s own father finds him unfit as a tonnelier and wishes him off to the military. ”
“Brave men join the military,” Jean said, his tone defensive.
To that, Bella crossed her arms and cocked out a hip. “You know what? You should absolutely join the military. The death rate is fantastic these days.”
“Bella!”
She’d never seen her father so angry. Bella almost feared he’d strike her, which he’d never once done.
She settled her expression as her mind whirled, still delivering knife-like glares to Jean.
“If you insist, Papa, as long as you are fine wasting your only daughter on a commoner instead of a prince.”
“There is no prince,” Jean scoffed, but the doubt widened his eyes.
“Where do you think the coins came from?” she asked. “Only a well-traveled prince could have collected coins from so many countries to give as a prize.”
At his continued unease, Bella added, “His name is Prince Riven Helmworthy of Aigues-Mortes. His father is insufferable, his mother angry. Clearly, they were another arranged marriage, as they despise each other.” She ensnared both males with her anger in this sentence.
Before her father could rebuke her, Bella said, “As you both are clearly incapable of seeing good sense and intend to do with me what you will, I shall need Mother’s gown. And privacy to change.”
She watched them exchange glances, then slowly nod to each other.
Her father sent Jean away with instructions to meet in the village square.
Bella watched her father open the large chest in his corner of the room and remove a pale blue gown from the paper that contained it.
With reverence, he crossed the room with the item draped across both forearms. Bella wanted to snatch it, but knowing her mother happily wore the item forestalled her angry moves.
She lifted it gently and placed it on the bed.
“Your mother and I were happily married,” her father said. “I wish to see the same for you.”
“Then you should have found a better candidate. But if marriage is what you wish of me, marriage is what you shall have. I make no promise of happiness, for none of the women in town have aught good to say about Jean’s demeanor.
Bottom of the barrel for Bella, it appears.
I hope the coins serve you well.” She whipped the curtain closed between them, effectively silencing any rebuttal.
She waited, unmoving, for a long moment.
Finally, her father moved away from the drapes.
Bella flung off her peasant garb, donned the precious gown, then stuffed her feet into her heavy boots.
Her father tinkered with something on the table, the sounds of instruments getting lifted and dropped a familiar and soothing backdrop.
As carefully as possible, Bella pulled out her chair from the desk and stuffed her coin pouch into her pocket by the sugar cube.
Before she escaped, she opened one drawer on her desk and collected her treasured letter from the king, tucking that into her pouch for safekeeping.
It had been her mother’s sole prize possession, and she had given it to Bella just hours before death had claimed her.
Bella patted it carefully into place, then climbed onto her desk and eased open the window.
Bella swung her legs through and dropped outside, already sprinting toward the stable.
Neighbors saw her and frowned at the spectacle, but Bella paid them no heed.
She hauled open the stable door, eased up to Nocturne, and gave him the last sugar cube.
As quickly as possible, Bella knocked off his blanket, bridled and saddled him, and had just backed him into the aisle when her papa appeared in the doorway.
“I thought you would pull something like this when you gave in too quickly.”
She stared at her father for a moment. “I love Prince Riven, Papa. I’m off to tell him so.” She swung into the saddle as her father lunged for her, but one kick of her heels and Nocturne slipped past him in a blur.
“You are the best of horses,” Bella said, patting his neck as the world smeared by. “Can you find your way home at this speed?”
Nocturne whickered underneath her and lowered his head, picking up the pace.
The river undulated beside them for an hour, the ever-long journey through Europe reduced to a fraction again.
She recognized some of the landscapes she had passed yesterday and gave a tiny tug on the reins to slow Nocturne, but he shook his mane and grabbed the bit, taking away her control.
Part of her panicked, but she knew horses raced homeward, so she reasoned they must be close.
Nocturne eventually slowed on his own accord, and within a few steps, Riven’s pond came into view.
She gasped in joy at the wondrous creation floating in the center.
“Riven!” She slid off the saddle and ran to the pond. “Riven! I am here.” She stood and gaped at the structure he had clearly built with his wee hands. “This is magnificent.”
A wum at her feet had her looking down into the shallow water. “Riven!”
“I... you... you look marvelous.”
She touched her hair, still tumbled from sleep, and glanced down at her dress. The ties were undone, the hem too short, her dirty boots visible. “Thank you. It was my mother’s.”
“It looks to be a fine gown.”
“It was Mother’s wedding gown.”
His eyes snapped to hers.
“I was getting sold off to Jean. I was supposed to be married—” she glanced at the sun “—three hours ago. But I detest him. He is a horrible, vain, unkind person.” She licked her lips and took a deep breath.
“I love you, Riven. I would rather be here, suffering with a frog prince, than married to a human I detest.”
Riven said nothing, just stared at her.
“Well? Are you not going to reply? I just told you I love you.”
Riven wummed and lowered himself in the water. “You should return home, Bella. There is nothing for you here.”