Chapter Four Dinner of Questions - Fifteen Nights with the Beast for the Ruby Rose

The third rose steadied Grover more gently than the others had done. Its effect did not come like a sudden reprieve, but as a quiet easing of what had tormented him. His coughing lessened. The terrible strain in his chest softened. He remained weak, and the fever had not wholly abandoned him, but there was enough improvement in him by late afternoon that the room no longer felt like a place in which death stood waiting openly at the bedside.

That should have brought Isla comfort. Instead it made leaving harder.

Hope had become dangerous. It tempted. It persuaded. It whispered that one evening might be forgiven, that one absence might not matter, that a little returning strength could be trusted to endure until morning. She had already learned the cruelty of such thinking. So when the light at the window began to fail and the hour of her return approached, she did not allow herself to hesitate.

Grover watched her quietly as she fastened her cloak. He had argued less this time. That frightened her in ways argument did not. Resistance had at least contained strength. Resignation held something far sadder.

“You are going,” he said.

“Yes.”

His hand, resting upon the coverlet, moved faintly, and she went at once to take it. He studied her face with a gaze grown too discerning in illness, as though pain had stripped away every polite blindness and left him able to read what she would rather have hidden.

“You are afraid.”

“Yes.”

“And still you go.”

“Yes.”

He let out a soft breath. “Then I have raised either the bravest daughter in England or the most stubborn.”

A faint smile touched her mouth. “Perhaps both.”

“Perhaps,” he said. Then his face altered, the shadow of humour falling away. “Come back to me.”

“I will.”

“No,” he said, tightening his fingers slightly around hers. “Do not say it because I need to hear it. Say it because it is true.”

She held his gaze. “It is true.”

That seemed to ease him a little. He released her at last, though not before pressing her hand once to his lips in a gesture so full of love and helpless gratitude that Isla had to turn away quickly before tears could undo her composure.

Her sisters were in the hall again, as though they had taken to arranging themselves near her departures the way villagers gather near a road to watch some procession they would not willingly join. Lavinia stood nearest the fire, elegant and cool in a gown too fine for the hour. Beatrice had a book in hand but was not reading. Cecily’s attention moved nervously from Isla’s face to the front door and back again.

“You mean to return tonight as well,” Lavinia said.

“Yes.”

“I still say it is madness.”

Isla reached for her gloves. “That may be.”

“And yet you go,” Beatrice observed.

“Yes.”

Cecily frowned. “I cannot imagine what sort of hold that place has over you.”

“It has no hold over me.”

Lavinia lifted a brow. “No?”

“No,” Isla said, looking at her directly. “Only over what happens to Father if I do not go.”

That silenced them, though not comfortably. The truth had a way of doing that in the house now. None of them offered to stop her, nor to accompany her, nor to say anything that might have sounded like real sisterly concern. They simply watched, offended perhaps by the role necessity had forced Isla into and by their own exclusion from it.

She left them there and stepped out into evening.

The road to Blackwood Ridge no longer felt entirely alien. It remained lonely, and strange, and increasingly ominous as dusk thickened through the trees, but she knew its turns now. She knew where the hedgerows opened to the lower fields and where the track narrowed and began to rise. She knew the smell of damp earth under the ridge trees, the way mist gathered low among the roots, the way silence deepened there until it seemed to absorb all ordinary thought. More unsettling than that familiarity was the fact that part of her had begun to expect it. The path was becoming routine. That seemed dangerous in its own right.

When she reached the clearing, the manor stood before her in gathering dusk like some sovereign thing the woods had elected not to challenge. The pale stone walls held the last of the light along their edges. High windows shone faintly from within, though none revealed anything of the life inside. The garden wall and iron gate stood dark against the richer shadow of the yews. The white birds watched from the branches and stone balustrades, but they made no sound when she approached.

The gate released for her at once.

That silence unsettled her more than ever. She was no longer merely tolerated here. The house had accepted her presence into its order.

The garden lay between day and night, the ruby roses glowing darkly in the fading light as though colour itself had become richer after sunset. Their scent thickened the air. Water whispered in the fountain. The gravel paths gleamed pale underfoot. Isla crossed them steadily, aware at every step that she was not unwelcome. The doors of the manor opened before she reached them.

Inside, candlelight held dominion. The hall seemed both grander and more intimate each time she entered it, as though the house allowed itself to be understood by degrees. The air smelled of wax, old wood, roses, and hidden fires. Somewhere above, in some distant wing or gallery, she heard the faint drift of piano notes—slow, uncertain, unfinished—before silence swallowed them again.

The maids came for her as before. They were still silent, still efficient, still impossible to read. Isla followed them willingly through corridors that had begun to arrange themselves in her memory: the long gallery of portraits, the bend towards the southern chambers, the alcove holding an urn full of crimson blooms, the stair with the carved newel post worn smooth by years of hands no longer present. She noticed more now than she had before. A portrait she had missed on her first passage. A chandelier dark above the central landing. The strange way the house seemed never wholly empty, even when no one stood in sight.

Her chamber had been prepared once more. The bath steamed. A fresh gown waited—again crimson, but softer in cut than the previous evening, the sleeves longer, the bodice less severe. The servants dressed her with the same grave care, brushed out her hair, fastened the buttons and ribbons, set everything in order. She submitted quietly. There was no point in resisting what was clearly part of the structure imposed upon her. Bath, gown, hair, dinner. Eleven to bed. Six to rise. Eight for breakfast. Ten for the rose. The pattern of the house was beginning to tighten around her.

At nine precisely she stepped into the corridor.

He was waiting.

The beast stood in shadow beside a tall window, one hand resting lightly behind his back, the other at his side. He had a way of being still that made motion seem impertinent around him. Tonight he wore black again, though the coat was cut differently from the one before, closer through the shoulders, silver buttons catching a little of the candlelight. His dark hair fell freely to his shoulders. The fur at his jaw and throat softened nothing; it only deepened the sense that he had once belonged fully to one world and been forcibly claimed by another. When he looked at her, the amber of his eyes seemed brighter than the lamps.

“You are on time,” he said.

“Yes.”

He looked at her a moment longer than necessary. “Good.”

That one word, delivered in his low rough voice, carried more weight than praise would have done. She lowered her eyes instinctively. Fear still rose in her whenever he stood too near, whenever his gaze fixed too fully upon her, whenever the magnitude of his presence filled a corridor or doorway and made escape feel absurd. But fear was no longer the only thing she felt. Curiosity had begun working at it, quietly and persistently, and that frightened her in a different way.

“Come,” he said.

She followed him to dinner.

The hall had been laid more simply than the previous night, though still with impossible abundance by any ordinary standard. A long arrangement of candles burned at the centre of the table. There was roast pheasant, dark bread, winter vegetables in butter, cheese, late pears, preserved cherries, and wine as deep in colour as old garnets. He sat at the head of the table and indicated her place with the slightest movement of his hand. She sat at once. It was easier not to make him repeat himself.

For a while they ate in silence. Not the awkward silence of strangers forced together, nor the strained silence of mutual hostility, but something denser than that—something aware of itself. Isla kept her gaze mostly lowered, spoke only when required, and listened to the tiny sounds of the room: silver against china, the faint hiss of candles, the occasional shift of fire in the hearth. She was still afraid of him. She reminded herself of that whenever the atmosphere threatened to become too still, too intimate, too like something else.

It was he who broke the silence.

“Tell me about your sisters.”

The question startled her enough that she looked up before she could stop herself.

He noticed. He always noticed. “I asked plainly.”

“Yes,” she said. “You did.”

He cut into his food with precise, almost elegant motions. “Then answer plainly.”

She hesitated. She did not know what he wanted with such knowledge, nor how far honesty here might be used against her later.

“You need not search for politeness,” he said. “I have no affection for delicate lies.”

That left her with little choice.

“The eldest is Lavinia,” she said. “She is very beautiful and has known it too long. She dislikes discomfort in all its forms and believes most of life’s indignities ought to exempt her.”

One corner of his mouth moved faintly. “A common enough disease.”

The remark came so dryly that, against all reason, she nearly smiled. She lowered her eyes at once and went on.

“Beatrice is clever. She notices more than she says and says more than she ought. If she had been born a man, she would have enjoyed power far too much.”

“And being born a woman prevents that?”

The question was asked so coldly that she could not tell whether it was irony or scorn.

“Not entirely,” she said carefully. “Only openly.”

This time he did smile, though only for a breath, and the sight of it unsettled her more than any frown. It transformed nothing of his face into gentleness, but it revealed the memory of some old wit that had survived even this ruin.

“And the third?”

“Cecily,” Isla said. “She is vain, though not cruel by intention. Merely by self-absorption.”

“Which often amounts to the same thing.”

“Yes.”

He reached for his glass. “And which of them loves your father best?”

Isla did not answer at once.

The question had been asked as if it were simple, but it was not simple at all. Love had many disguises. Some of them were ugly. Some of them were insufficient. Some were so wrapped in fear, vanity, and convenience that they nearly ceased to resemble love at all.

At length she said, “None of them as he deserves.”

He watched her over the rim of his glass.

“And you?”

The question entered her like a pin.

“I did not say I deserved him either.”

“That was not what I asked.”

She looked down at her hands in her lap. “I love him.”

“As a daughter ought?”

She thought of the nights beside his bed, the blood on linen, the road over Blackwood Ridge, the locked garden gate, the bargain that now governed all her days. “More than is sensible.”

“Good,” he said.

She looked up despite herself.

He set down his glass. “People speak too warmly of sense. It has preserved more cowardice than courage ever ruined.”

She did not know what history sat behind such words, nor whom they were meant to condemn, but they carried the weight of old bitterness. That bitterness had been in him from the beginning. It was in the way he spoke of promises, of carelessness, of villages, of trust. Tonight it seemed nearer the surface.

“And your father?” he said after a moment. “What sort of man is he?”

“Kind.”

“That is what daughters say when they cannot bear honesty.”

The reply surprised her into answering without caution. “Then he is stubborn, proud when he ought not to be, too ready to forgive, too poor a disciplinarian, and altogether too inclined to love badly behaved women.”

For the first time that evening the beast gave a short unmistakable laugh.

The sound startled her.

It was not warm. It was not soft. But it was real, and because it was real it made everything in the room seem to change shape around it for an instant.

“Better,” he said. “Now he sounds like a man and not a saint.”

“He is not a saint.”

“Good. Saints are insufferable company.”

She did smile then, briefly and despite herself. The moment it happened, she regretted it and lowered her eyes at once, but the beast had seen.

“You do have a face that moves,” he observed.

Heat rose to her cheeks. “I beg your pardon.”

“No,” he said. “Do not disappear into apologies. They are tedious.”

She had no idea how one was meant to behave with a creature who looked like darkness made flesh and yet spoke of tedium at dinner like a disillusioned nobleman.

The thought escaped her before she could stop it.

“You speak,” she said softly, “as though this is an ordinary household.”

Silence followed.

It lengthened enough that she felt at once she had overstepped.

Then he said, “It was.”

The answer fell between them with more force than a refusal would have carried.

Was.

Not is.

She lifted her eyes slowly. “And now?”

He looked at her with an expression too guarded to read. “Now it is a house with rules.”

She knew better than to press him. Yet the curiosity he had warned against was already taking root. It had begun in the gallery of portraits, sharpened with his table manners, deepened in the dryness of his humour and the command in his bearing. He was no simple beast. He had not been born to snarling solitude in a cursed wood. He had belonged once to silk, silver, ceremony, servants, and refinement. Even now, ruin had not wholly stripped him of princely habits.

He seemed to know the direction of her thoughts.

“You are looking at me too carefully again.”

Her breath caught. “I did not mean—”

“You did.”

She grew very still.

“What do you see?” he asked.

It was not an invitation. It was a test.

She thought first of saying nothing. Then she remembered his hatred of lies.

“You are not what I expected.”

“That is not an answer.”

She forced herself on. “You are... frightening.”

“I am aware.”

“But not in the ways I was told to imagine.”

His gaze sharpened. “What ways were those?”

“A savage thing in a ruined place. Mindless. Brutal.”

“And I disappoint you?”

The dryness in that question was edged now, though not entirely with humour.

“No,” she said quickly. “I did not mean—”

“I know what you meant.”

She could not look away now. “You speak like a man who remembers being obeyed long before he had to demand it.”

The moment the words left her, the room went still.

He did not move. Even the candlelight seemed to quiet itself.

Then, very slowly, he said, “That was not a timid answer.”

She wished at once she had remained silent.

“I am sorry.”

“I told you apologies weary me.”

She clasped her hands tighter beneath the table to keep them from trembling. “Then I do not know what to say.”

“Say nothing.”

She obeyed at once.

He watched her for several seconds more, and she had the strange sense that something had nearly opened in him and then shut again—something old, dangerous, and private. When he resumed eating, the precision of his movements had sharpened. She realised with a chill that she had not merely touched curiosity. She had touched temper.

It was not the wild temper she had once imagined a beast might possess. It was colder than that. More controlled. More threatening for being so.

After a time he said, without looking at her, “You asked what sort of man your father is.”

She waited.

“You did not ask what sort of daughter you are.”

She did not know whether the question was a trap. “No.”

“Why?”

The answer came before caution could intervene. “Because I know.”

“And what do you know?”

She looked down at the untouched fruit on her plate. “That I love him more than is wise.”

“No,” he said quietly. “That much is obvious. What else?”

She hesitated.

“That I am not patient enough to bear uselessness.”

His eyes lifted to her face. “No.”

That one word unsettled her more than contradiction should have.

“Then what?”

He leaned back in his chair. “You are obedient where obedience serves love. You are disobedient where it serves fear. That makes you troublesome.”

The answer was so strange, so exact, that for a moment she could only stare.

“And yet,” he went on, “you came back.”

“Yes.”

“Though you are still frightened.”

“Yes.”

“Good.”

Again that word.

This time she could not stop herself. “You said that before.”

“And I mean it.”

“Why?”

He looked at her directly. “Because only fools cease being afraid too early. Fear keeps boundaries where affection might destroy them.”

Affection.

The word seemed absurd in that room, between them, under those circumstances. Yet he had chosen it.

Isla lowered her eyes again. “I have no danger of affection.”

Something flickered at the edge of his mouth. “See that you do not.”

The bell rang then for eleven, and the sound broke whatever had been gathering in the air. The beast rose. She did the same.

At the edge of the table, he said, “You may go.”

She turned to obey, but his voice stopped her a second time.

“Isla.”

She looked back.

“When you return tomorrow, do not stop in the portrait gallery.”

The words landed with quiet force.

She felt heat rise to her face once more. “I only looked.”

“Yes. And I have eyes.”

He said it without anger, but she heard the command beneath it all the same.

“I understand.”

“Do you?”

“Yes.”

For a moment he seemed about to say something else. Instead he only inclined his head towards the door. “Go.”

She left.

The corridors seemed quieter that night, though not kinder. A maid guided her to her chamber, bowed, and withdrew. Isla changed, extinguished two candles, and lay down, but sleep came reluctantly. Dinner replayed itself in her mind with unnatural clarity: his questions about Lavinia, Beatrice, Cecily; the dry wit with which he received her answers; the sharpness when she had looked too closely; the unmistakable princely habits in his gestures. Loneliness had shown itself in him too, though never openly. It was there in the way he occupied the great table almost as if it belonged to memory more than to appetite. It was there in his wakefulness. In the portraits. In the house itself, which seemed arranged around absence as much as order.

Morning came pale and slow. The routine repeated itself: six to rise, washing, dressing, hair made neat, breakfast at eight. He was already there when she entered, and though he said little beyond the necessary, she felt his gaze settle on her once or twice with a kind of measured watchfulness that had not been present before. At ten, a servant brought the ruby rose on its tray.

She took it carefully.

“Day two is complete,” he said.

“Yes.”

“You will return before sunset.”

“I will.”

This time she did not lower her eyes at once. She looked at him properly for a moment—at the terrible amber gaze, the dark fur shadowing the face that might once have belonged wholly to a prince, the self-command under which anger and loneliness alike seemed trained to kneel. Fear remained. So did curiosity.

Then she turned and left the manor with the ruby rose in her hands and the memory of his questions following her all the way back to Briar Hollow.