Beast and Beatrice

Chapter five - Beatrice

  Beatrice shifted over onto her side and tried to snuggle further into her pillow, clinging to the fringes of a lovely half-remembered dream. A warm feeling of being coddled and comforted. Something that had been missing in her life for far too long. She was aware of a musky male scent. Warm silky skin covering hard muscle wrapped around her. She recognized it all as merely a dream, but she felt so happily safe and secure. She struggled to hold onto the feeling for just a little longer.

  As the vague dream continued to slip away into misty memory, she groaned with frustration. It had been so many years since she'd been held in loving arms. Not since her parents passed away and she'd come to live with her older brother and his family.
She had never felt welcome here. Michael tried his best but his attempts at brotherly affection were awkward at best. The seventeen years in age difference between them both meant he was little more than a stranger to her. Someone you knew was family but one you saw only on rare occasions. And his wife had never made any secret of the fact that she never wanted her. A shy, awkward, pretty little girl just entering her teen years who might be competition for her husband's affection.

  Beatrice was there on sufferance and she was reminded of it every day. Sissy treated her more as another servant, someone she could order around and yet didn't have to pay. More like free labour than family. And after Michael succumbed to fever last fall, things had gotten worse.

  Their dwindling finances made life a struggle. The income from the investments her father and then brother had made through the years, barely paid the bills. In order to economize, Sissy had been forced to dismiss all the servants, but she refused to stoop to performing menial tasks herself. Why should she when she had an able young orphan to do the work? Beatrice had been forced to take on many household chores. Not that she could complain. After all, someone had to ensure food was cooked and the place was kept clean and habitable. At least she could be thankful she had a roof over her head and food in her belly. And her young nephew and two nieces were a joy.

  Reluctantly, with a soft sigh, she rolled to her back and allowed the dream to evaporate. She knew the children would soon be scampering about and the last thing she needed was for them to wake their mother. She heard a creak and then a quiet thunk as, somewhere, a door closed. The crisp bite of cool air passed over her blankets and a small grin ticked to her lips.

  That would be Martine, the youngest and most inquisitive of all three. The child was always asking questions, constantly needing to know everything. She was also the most reckless and prone to getting into trouble. Knowing she couldn't put off the day any longer, her eyes fluttered open.

  Her smile died and she gasped in shock.

  Instead of the faded wallpaper of her tiny bedroom, she found herself staring into a massive stone hearth. She could have stood in the middle of it and her head would not reach the stone mantle. A small fire snapped and crackled, happily lapping away at the logs in the grate. A large kettle steamed on a shelf inside the fireplace and a baking crock sat just to the side of the hearth. Over the open flames a large soup pot hung from a hook and the heavenly aromas wafting past her nose had her tummy rumbling with hunger. She licked dry lips as she suddenly realized she was starving, and that soup smelled so deliciously tempting.

  But wait. If there was food bubbling over a blazing fire, then that must mean that someone was nearby to tend to it. And hadn't she just been dreaming about a large bear or was it a man? Beatrice cautiously lifted her head to look around, but didn't see anyone. She was alone in the cavernous room. With bare stone walls and a barrel-vaulted ceiling that disappeared into the darkness overhead, the place seemed almost cave-like. It was dark, lit only by the fire in the grate, what little daylight filtered in through the two narrow windows high above in the opposite wall and a single lantern hung on a bracket on the far wall.