Beloved Beast

Chapter Three

          He could easily dismiss this senselessness and be done with it, but that would encourage the villagers to undermine his authority, and if he could not have their respect, well, he would take their contempt. But he needn't a sniveling woman to coddle and pamper, and if the third were anything like her sisters he would simply settle for the old man.

          And yet, he could not fathom as to why he had entertained the peasant to begin with. It would appear that neither of his daughters was eager to be carried off like a sack of grain, not that he expected a warm greeting. Mayhap he should oblige them and return to his desolate, chipped stone walls. But that thought only fueled his anger and he nearly chuckled aloud. That's what they wanted, the Rossetti Beast to reside in his blackened hell to never intrude upon their tranquility. Well be that as it may, he was indeed a spear of cruelty, and would wield it accordingly.

          A noise alerted him that the serf's wife had returned. He twisted around, fully expecting to find the third daughter resembling her fair-haired siblings, but was stunned to find that the woman presented to him was none other than the dark-haired nymph he had encountered at the edge of the forest, and in that moment, he felt the tug and pull of a gratifying grin.

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          Elle wanted to be brave in the presence of the ruthless Don Rossetti, but was daunted by the air of distinction and menace she felt radiating from his presence.

          "Your lordship – " she heard her father announce with a tremor, " – this is my youngest, Elle."

          Her heart skipped a solid beat at the scrape of his boots, and somewhere within her mind an alarming bell chimed with ominous recognition. Her mouth parted and a hitched, tremulous breath escaped her.

          "Tell me, Duncan, why you deemed it necessary to conceal your daughter from me?"

          Elle paled beneath that velvety, masculine pitch as panic slithered down her spine like icy, skeletal fingers. Nay. How could she have not known? She had been alone with the Rossetti Beast? He had been the one conversing so casually of kissing her? Her heart all but accelerated tenfold, pushing short, fleeting breaths from her lungs as her knees threatened to buckle out of fear.

          Her father cleared his throat nervously, "She is different, my lord. I did not think she could serve you well as oppose to my elder daughters."

          Elle winced as if struck. Her father had never openly addressed her blindness and though she imagined it was meant to thwart Rossetti; his insensitive remark essentially implied that she was useless – and it stung. She felt belittled and though matters of vanity had never concerned her before, a small voice at the back of her mind couldn't help but wonder if Rossetti found her becoming in the slightest. The village men had never pursued her, not like her sisters, they were the pretty ones. She was the village oddity; the plain one. What man, even one as frightening and fearsome as the Rossetti Beast, would find her comely?

          Yet, somehow she sensed her father's thoughtless comment had struck an angry chord in Rossetti. She felt a sudden shift in the air, a darkening tide of bristling anger that emanated from him like an imminent flaring of flames.

          "Mayhap I should relieve you of your burden then," he snarled ominously.

          Elle's heart sank until she felt it's deadening weight in her belly. She felt Rossetti's eyes on her and rather than unleash the tears stabbing at the back of her eyes, she pursued her mouth to still its trembling.

          "My lord, I beseech you, please do not take my daughter," her father pleaded, "I cannot bear to part with her."

          "You cannot bear to part with her?" Rossetti sneered. "But you readily insult her?"