Rosalind - Beauty and the Beast meets Dracula retelling

30-The Art of Dying

Rosalind knew she was not alone. Another person resided in the room close to hers, a flesh and blood person, and she wanted to know who he was.

The previous night's events found her standing before her mirror, looking at herself as though she was looking at a stranger. "Who are you?" She narrowed her eyes. She had known no other lady who dared linger on the threshold of another person's private moment. Not any friend. Not any relation. Neither Clairie nor any other maid which had passed through the Hershel home had ever spoken of the sounds that came with any private affair. But Rosalind knew.

The mirror rippled before her as it pulled her into a recollection of barely a year ago. A violent snowstorm had ripped the roof clear off one of the stables of the Hershel home, terrorizing the two mares inside to the point where the one suffered such a shock, Julian had to put her out of her mistery.

The next day, four handymen were brought in to help with the repairs, the carpenter, Mihai Moldovan and his three sons.

The moment Rosalind saw the youngest son, Stefan, she knew he was brought to her by the storm. While his kin were fair and blond, resembling a flock of albino crows, Stefan's skin was golden, his eyes were black like tar and his hair was red as flames.

As the older Moldovan men fixed the destruction caused by the heavy winds and snowfall, Rosalind would sneak off with Stefan and steal precious moments.

She recalled their boots crunching against the snow as they ran, hand in hand, towards a cluster of wild apple and oak trees. The apple trees bore fruit once every two years; small, hard apples in an unpleasant faded red.

Rosalind led Stefan to a crooked oak tree whose trunk bowed down to earth and created a seat for them to sit. The pair knew that their time together was limited. When the ceiling of the stable was fixed they would return to their own corners of Transylvania, her as the lady of Hershel Place whose hand would one day belong to a wealthy man, and he as the carpenter's son who was worthy of no more than love from a tavern wench.

When Rosalind's hand slid into the waistband of Stefan's trousers, he had made the same sounds as the one's she heard the night before; soft, pleading cries which turned into loud, needing moans of delight.

She thought of the way his breath felt against her skin when he parted her lacy collar to kiss the spot where shoulder meets neck. She remembered the way his breath hitched as he came on her hand, soft and warm.

Rosalind blinked away the memory and turned away from the mirror. Her thoughts swiftly returning to the man in the room not too far from hers. "What you did was calls for confession," she scolded herself, "but the wolf said God cannot be found in this home. So, if God is absent here, do sins inside these stone walls counts?"

She thought of what Agnes had told her the night she asked if the lord lived alone. "The lord has no other guest."

"Dear sweet maid," Rosalind said to herself, "perhaps he is not a guest but a permanent resident then. A little detail you purposely omitted?" She picked up a pillow and hugged it close, her mind spun with possibilities. A brother? A cousin? A son? Would he be as grotesque as Lord Caspian?

"Another monster to roam the halls." The pillow fell onto the floor when Rosalind let go. She stepped over it and walked to the wardrobe. Pulling the doors open she looked right at the blue dress. "I will ask Agnes again and see what sort of lies she tells me this time."

When Agnes arrived to assist Rosalind with her gown, she found the young woman sitting by the fireplace, reading one of the books from the library. The crimson cover was stamped in gold, though Agnes had not been schooled as women like Rosalind were, she knew how to read and write well enough. When Rosalind brought the book to her chest, Agnes clearly saw the title. The Art of Dying. The maid recognized the book as one which surely must belong to Lord Caspian as Lady Calla would have never read anything baring a horrid title as such. Any book Agnes had ever seen Calla read had a blue cover, never red.