A Beast's Tale: Act 1 (His Maid)

Chapter 85

Her mother died the following evening.

I was in the kitchen with Yves when I received the news. My younger brother had already shown every sign of ending the night with a stress-baking session, and hearing that made the possibility a certainty. I didn't stay for dessert. I took my meal back to my room and ate it alone, and then I spent the next few hours reading, as I'd intended before the messenger came. There was nothing more to do. I'd made arrangements with her mother's doctor, her church's priest, and an undertaker the previous week. She was under constant observation, and Gilbert had made her promise to move into his hideout after her mother passed, although that wouldn't happen tonight.

The doctor had prescribed sedatives for her. I didn't want to ponder the reason. I didn't want to picture her sobbing and hysterical, alone in that little shack. She wasn't alone. Her neighbors were there to comfort her.

Rain tapped against the glass. I'd drawn the curtains over the large window on the western wall, but the two smaller windows above the bookcases remained uncovered. The clouds had rolled in that morning and brought with them a gentle, steady spring shower. It had been an uneventful day prior to Ivetta's mother's death. That knowledge brought a more pleasant image to mind: her staying inside with her mother, talking to her, maybe reading to her, spending their last few hours together in peace.

I finished my book and went to bed. Her immediate circumstances were under control. I needed to focus on the many pieces I'd set into motion in my metaphorical game of political chess. It was fast approaching checkmate.

I awoke to the soft click of the door latch opening. At first, I thought it was a dream. I lay still, listening to light footsteps crossing the bare floor toward the window, and I felt the warmth of sunlight streaming into the room and onto the blanket. My muscles were lax, my body languorous and comfortable. The night had passed. It was morning, and for reasons I could not fathom, she was here. In my room. Pulling the curtains open with a rustle of fabric.

"Good morning, Prince Chevalier."

Her voice was flat and hoarse. I felt the bed shift as she sat on its edge, and the sensation jolted me into full wakefulness.

"What are you doing here?"

"I don't know."

I sat up and pushed the blankets back. She was staring out the window, green eyes unfocused in a red, puffy face, her hair hanging in a dull, tangled mess over a faded, wrinkled blue dress. The darkness under her lower eyelids told me she hadn't taken the sedatives. She'd been awake all night, crying, and now, although her facial expression gave the impression of dissociated numbness, the knuckles of her hands were whitening as she clenched the left in her skirt and the right around her left wrist. She was in pain. Intense emotional pain.

"I wasn't coming back," she said in a distant, detached voice. "I gave Prince Licht the letter to tell you that. Then Prince Gilbert took me to that house, and it was easier to say I'd go there than it was to argue with him. I thought I'd stay one day, maybe two, and then I'd leave. But when I left home this morning, I came here. I don't know why."

But I knew now, and I was pulling her into my arms before she finished speaking, hooking my left hand around the far side of her waist and pressing her head to my chest with my right hand. She didn't resist me. I rested my cheek on her head and brushed my fingers across her damp cheek on the way to her shoulder, and then I slid my hand down her arm, interlacing my fingers with hers and prying them free from her wrist. Her hand was trembling. She was trembling. I guided her hand to the left side of her waist and gave her a light squeeze, wrapped in the security of my embrace. Her breathing was becoming faster and harsher.

"I can't stop crying..."

There was a tremor in her voice, too. She took a deep, shaky breath, and then the dam broke. Sobs racked her body. She turned towards me and buried her face in my chest, clutching at my shirt as she cried with a force that seemed great enough to shatter her small frame. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do except hold her while she fell apart. It was agony for me. I knew it was worse for her. I'd watched the pressure on her mounting over the past month, and now that her mother was gone, she had no reason to feign strength any longer. She had no strength left.