Beauty in the Beast Read Free Page A

He lived alone at the edge of the woods. Perhaps he was escaping some past. Ghosts? Guilt? Maybe both. Had he ever had a wife? Children? Where had he come from? Had he been raised in the woods or the city? How long since he’d talked to another person?
    I cocked my head. “Do you have a dog?” It seemed like the most innocuous question to ask. A vital smell of animal, more alive than the musk of the pelts, clung to the room.
    At the mention of “dog,” Beth’s eyes went wide, and her hand flew over her nose and mouth.
    Rolph shook his head. “No.”
    As if on cue, Beth sneezed. “I’m sorry,” she squeaked. “It’s just that I’m terribly sensitive to dogs. Sometimes my nose will start up if it even thinks one is around. My eyes are itchy, but maybe it’s just because of the furs.”
    “I had a dog,” admitted Rolph. “She died two months past.”
    Not such an innocuous question, after all.
    Brilliant, Tara. I searched for something to say—something comforting, or apologetic, or heartening—but he looked away and spoke first. “I have stew.”
    “Kind of you to offer,” said Miles. “It would help a great deal in warming us up.”
    Rolph took a short stack of bowls from a shelf. His hands trembled as he wiped dust from the topmost bowl with a cloth, and his lips thinned with obvious effort to still them. My eyes tracked their movement, wondering if it was anxiety that caused him to shake. I did not sense anger in the room, but a pungent tang that could have been unease, or fear, or grief. I accepted the bowl he handed me with a sympathetic smile, but he had already turned to ladle another.
    I settled on the floor next to Beth and spooned a bite of stew. The broth scalded my mouth, but I hardly cared. I relished the rich flavor of the venison and sweet nuttiness of turnips while following Rolph’s movements from beneath my lowered lashes.
    The trapper served himself last, pouring only one ladleful. His bowl rattled slightly against the table as he placed it down. Settling into his armchair, he gripped the armrests until his knuckles blanched, then took a breath and reached for a small glass vial near where he’d set the bowl. I heard a small clack as his quavering fingers knocked it over. His hand chased the rolling bottle across the table. Grasping it, he fumbled it open and released a stopperful of dark liquid into his stew.
    Laudanum, I guessed. But the sweet smell that reached my nose suggested something else. The tincture of valerian, perhaps. His muscles visibly relaxed as he devoured the laced stew, and when he set the bowl aside his hands were still again. He closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath.
    None of us spoke as we ate. The intent tapping of our spoons against our bowls said it all. Our last meal had been many snowy miles and chilling hours behind us.
    Though Rolph’s eyes were closed, I could feel his awareness of us, an almost tangible force that pulsed through the room along with the heat. I pulled my gaze away from his dark eyebrows and strong jaw to watch the flames lick and curl in the fireplace. Above the mantel hung a painting. Its blues and greens cooled the room. The brush strokes were broad, almost sketchy, but slowly the picture resolved itself into a crystalline drop of water hanging tenuously from the tip of a new spring leaf. The painting had no frame, but rested between two pairs of disembodied antlers, looking terribly delicate, bright and hopeful beside them. Staring at it, I almost wept for spring.
    I considered asking Rolph about the painting, but just my luck it would be a memento of an old lover, or a gift from deceased parents, or some similar object of sentiment. I watched the firelight flicker over his face. I sensed things deep and nameless underneath his skin, stories and thoughts held under pressure like steam in a boiler. I longed to peer inside.
    But how could I coax his story from him without prying?
    Perhaps by sharing my own.
    As if overhearing my