Fiction: A Rose But Only Two
Aug. 23rd, 2011 12:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
clare_dragonflyTitle: A Rose But Only Two
Word count: 3969
Rating: soft R for heavily-implied het sex
Prompt:smw requested “something folklore-ish.”
Notes: I have been wanting to do this mash-up for ever and ever. And I finally figured out how. :D
Lanie waited until everyone else had fallen asleep before she got up again. She knew her father and sisters were all asleep because she had heard all of their doors open and shut, and her father always fell asleep as soon as he went to bed; she remembered trying to get a drink of water or another story as a child, and she would always have had to wake him up.
Then it had frustrated her, but she had only been a child, without a mother, and she had wanted her father’s attention to always be on her. She still loved him, but now she was glad for his prompt sleeping. As she quietly dressed and pinned her hair up, she listened carefully for other sounds, in case one of her sisters had awakened, but the house remained silent.
She crept downstairs and took the satchel that Cook had made up for her. The family had once had many servants, but now that they had lost so much Cook was the only one left, so she was sure of him sleeping, as well. She’d told him she was leaving in the morning, quite early, to look for a job, so he’d put together some food for her to take with. It wasn’t much, but hopefully it would be enough to get her to Ranhight Manor.
The streets were dark and quite empty. Lit only by starlight and the sliver of moon, she made her way quietly out, through the town gates that always stood open and into the woods. She breathed a sigh of relief once she was away from the town, not even having realized how anxious she’d been that someone would catch her. If her father had discovered what she was doing, she might not have had the courage to keep on.
The woods were old and dark, and frightened many (including her sisters), but not Lanie. She had always loved them, and that was why she was the one who must go to reclaim what had been her family’s for long generations, until Lord Breighnock had seized it to pay the debts Lanie’s father owed him, and informed him that the only way to get it back would be to send one of his daughters in marriage.
Of course, Lanie’s father had not wanted to send any of them. In fact, he had refused to tell them what had happened to Ranhight, where they had once spent every summer in green-and-gold glory. Lanie and her sisters had gotten the tale out of Cook, though. When they confronted her father, he did not try to deny it, but told them that he could not allow them to go: Lord Breighnock had a reputation as a cruel man, a sorcerer, and even a killer. Lanie’s sisters both would have been willing to risk that in order to marry a rich man, but their father told them the road had grown dangerous, and Lord Breighnock refused to come himself or even send a servant—the daughter must make her own way. Lanie’s sisters found that risk too great (he could not want them very badly if he would not even see them first), but Lanie was, despite herself, intrigued. She did not know what manner of man would hide himself away and inspire rumors of sorcery (for she did not believe in magic). And her father was so sad since they had become poor—he was growing thin, he worked all the time, and his eyes had bags underneath them. She had known there would be a way for her to help him, and now she had found it.
There was a place she knew from when she was a child, disobeying and running off the path. A cave, too small for bears and too high off the ground for snakes. In the dark it was harder to find than she’d expected, but she found it, and curled up there to sleep.
When the dawn woke her, she lay listening for several minutes, but there were no sounds from the town—if she could have heard them. Her absence might not have been noted yet. When it was, surely Cook would share what she had told him; they would not suspect until she had been gone all day.
The forest was still empty. Few came this way anymore, even during the day when people were less frightened. Not since Lord Breighnock had seized so many lands on the other side of the forest.
Lanie paused after half an hour to eat her breakfast, then after another few hours, when the sun was high in the sky, for her lunch. She was growing worried. Ranhight should be in sight by now; the forest should be thinning. She was stronger than she had been as a child and could walk for longer without tiring. How could the manor house be farther than she remembered?
She hadn’t been walking for another five minutes after her lunch when, after a gentle curve in the path, she came across an astonishing sight: both sides of the path were covered in roses. Red roses, pink roses, yellow roses, white roses, a riot of color, and such smells she was astonished she had not scented them from a mile away. An involuntary gasp of astonishment left her, and she walked eagerly to the roses, burying her face in one lush dark-red bloom. Yes, she remembered these roses, though they had not been growing quite so profusely when she was a child, nor so close to the road. But these were the roses of Ranhight, the pride and glory of the team of gardeners her family had once employed. This particular variety had been named after Lanie’s mother the year after she died. Lanie’s heart ached with the memory, but she could not help but pull one bloom and tuck it into her bodice, as well as a white rose from a nearby bush, one that had been Lanie’s favorite.
When she turned again from the roses, she received a shock that made her heart fly into her throat. In the path beside her stood a monster—seven feet tall, covered in shaggy hair, with great claws on his hands and feet and wicked horns curving from his forehead; but he wore a man’s trousers and cloak, and when he spoke his voice was a man’s, gentle if reproachful. “Lady, what right have you to pluck my roses?” He reached out with one great paw, and though she quailed away in fright, he only took the flowers from her bodice, the backs of his furred knuckles brushing gently against her chemise.
She did not respond, but felt a warm blush rise up to cover her whole body, and knew he could see it. His expression did not change, but he continued, “Why do you go to Ranhight without my command?”
That she could answer, at least, after drawing a deep breath, and feeling the blush subside not one whit. “Sir, I know not who you are, but Ranhight is my property, and I have been commanded there by its current lord. I do not ask your leave, whoever you may be.” She did not understand why she was reacting in such a way to this talking beast; it was not fear, but something more akin to desire.
He tossed the roses behind him. “Then neither shall I ask your leave.” Before she could complain of his treatment of the roses, he had clasped her wrists in his hands—roughly, but without scratching her in the slightest with those claws—and pressed his mouth to hers. His lips were surprisingly soft beneath the fur that fell over them; his body was powerful with muscle, and he had a spicy, smoky scent. When his lips released hers, she drew in a shuddering breath, but could not protest when he pressed her backwards into the roses.
—
That night, Lanie returned to her father, ashamed and frightened. She could not now seek out Lord Breighnock; she was no longer eligible to marry, and while she had never expected to be happy in marriage with a stranger, that dream seemed even farther away now that she had met the strange beast-man. No, she would do in earnest what she had claimed to do this morning, and seek a job mending or washing, some menial labor, to support her father. Let her sisters marry and remove their burdens from him; she would do what she could.
She was welcomed home, of course, though it was late and she was both hungry and tired when she reached it. No one suspected where she had gone, or what she had done, though her skirt was now stained with crushed grass. Her father scolded her for stooping so low as to seek work, but he looked lighter, all the same.
After several days of real searching, she did in fact find work; her hand was fine enough for a dressmaker to take her on as an assistant, doing alterations, mending, and the occasional small embroidery. She worked there for four months, but when the owner saw how differently Lanie’s bodice had begun to fit her, she was sent home, and she went, more shamed than she would even have imagined.
She feared telling her father—not for his anger, but for his disappointment—but that burden, at least, was lifted from her; when she returned earlier than expected, he looked over her with sharp eyes, and instantly noticed the difference that had been so gradually growing. “Daughter,” he said gently, “who is he? Fear not; we are not so far gone into poverty that I cannot force him to do his duty.”
Biting her lip, she looked away. There were men in town who might be willing to take the blame—Tom the blacksmith’s son had taken to hanging about by the dressmaker’s shop, and one or two young merchants had filled her head with pretty words. But despite their attentions, only one face, grotesque though it might have seemed, had stayed in her imagination, and there was only one man, if man he be, with whom she could spend her life and raise a child.
“He is not a man in town, but lives along the way to Ranhight Manor,” she told him. “I shall go to him. I must. Cook,” she called, striding into the kitchen and away from her father’s shocked countenance, “please make me up a picnic supper, for I have far to walk this evening.”
Cook did as she asked. Her family was not so cooperative. Her sisters were roused, and as she changed into traveling clothes and sturdier shoes, they plucked at her sleeves and begged her not to go in her state, to stay safe with them. They even claimed, touchingly, that they cared not for the scandal, so they had their sister with them. But Lanie shook her head and gave them the names of the merchants before she left; perhaps those men would make rich husbands for her sisters.
Her father walked with her to the town gates, though it strained his breathing, alternately begging and demanding that she stay. But nothing would persuade her. At least, she thought as she left him behind, she would be a burden to him no longer.
She did not, as it passed, stop to eat her picnic supper, though her legs weakened and her stomach clawed at itself. To stop would delay the sight she had longed for, and that hunger was greater than the physical. With every step, she sniffed the air for the scent of roses, though it was now autumn and they should not have bloomed. But her hopes were rewarded; she smelled them, and with another step she saw them, and with a third her face was buried in the red blooms that had been named for her mother.
Once she had smelled her fill, she looked up, heart hammering; she feared lest he should not be here, lest he had abandoned her or was not so easy to find as he had been that first day. But he was standing silent in the path as he had four months ago, his expression unreadable as usual. Trembling, she reached out one hand to him. He lifted one paw from beneath his cloak, and in it were the red and white roses she had plucked then, and he pressed them into her hand.
Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she flew to him, pressing her face into his warm, furred chest. His arms came about her, and he held her until she had wept herself dry.
“What is it, my love?” he whispered, gently stroking her back, when she finally looked up at him.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered back, almost afraid to state so baldly the fact that had brought her back here.
This time she could read his expression. His eyes widened and his mouth opened in shock. He seemed about to say something, but then he just crushed her to him again, and she felt him shake. She held him as tightly as she could.
When she could speak again, she asked, “Why do you live out here in the forest? Why do you say the roses are yours?”
He shook his head, his shaggy hair whipping back and forth. “I do not live in the forest. The roses are mine because they are on the grounds of Ranhight Manor.”
“Then—” she gasped, feeling her eyes widen with shock—and yet she somehow felt that this discovery had been inevitable, and some part of her was greatly relieved. “You are Lord Breighnock?”
“I am,” he said, and she saw his lips move in what must have been a smile. “Would you like to know how I came to be this way?”
“Very much,” she said.
“Then let us sit, off the path, and talk, and you must eat of the food I can smell in your satchel, for you have walked a fair distance, have you not?”
She agreed, and let him lead her into the roses, which seemed to draw back so that their thorns did not scratch her skin, until they reached a white bench with an arch of roses above it. She did not recognize it, but she was too relieved and hungry to care by this point, so she opened her supper and ate while her lover explained that he had angered the faerie queen—not knowing or believing that she could exist—and had been cursed to take this form. He had lived otherwise a normal life for the last several years, and his business sense allowed him to become wealthy, but his appearance frightened people, and thence had come the cruel rumors about him.
“They say you have been married several times, and your wives have all died mysteriously,” she said carefully, nibbling at a piece of cheese. She did not believe it, of course, but she wondered whence such a rumor could have come.
He shook his head. “None of it is true. I have, indeed, tried to make such bargains as I offered your father in the past, but even when a daughter was sent, she was always too frightened to even come near me. I have never married.”
She let her hand fall and rest on the slight curve of her belly. “Then you know who I am?”
“You must be one of Brennan Ross’s daughters, for who else would have come this way despite the dangers? But I do not even know your name.”
She could not help smiling. “My name is Elaine, though I have never been called anything other than Lanie.”
“Lanie.” He took her hand gently in his paw. “My name is Gregor.”
“Why have you been seeking a wife so long? I might have hoped it was me in particular you hoped my father would send.”
He squeezed her hand. “I knew nothing of his daughters—I could not be happier than I am having met you, of course. But such are the conditions of my curse. If I could find a woman to love and marry me as I am, it will be broken and I will return to my true form.”
Lanie’s heart seemed to contract at those words, but she spoke bravely and with all the love that was in her heart, “I came here four months ago with the intent to marry you, and my inclination is even stronger now than it was. I feared it would not be so simple—I feared you were some faerie creature.”
“No, not their creature, only under their power.” He let out a long, happy sigh. “My love, shall we set the wedding date for tomorrow? I have a priest living in the manor, and I am certain he will be happy to perform it on a moment’s notice.”
“I should be happy for it, but I do not think my father will be happy for the haste, though there may be good reason for it.”
“Ah.” He looked down at their clasped hands. “I must admit, my dearest Lanie, that I have not yet told you all.”
“What is it?” she whispered, suddenly frightened.
“If I have not married by this Halloween night, my life shall be forfeit. For the faerie folk pay a tithe to Hell once in seven years, and it has been seven, and I am one who is under their power but not one of them, so they shall not miss me.”
“Tomorrow is Halloween,” Lanie said. She felt a dizziness wash over her and clasped his paw more firmly. “I shall return to my father’s house, then, and share with him the news…”
“No,” said Gregor. “For it is grown dark and the faeries are abroad. We are not yet wed and as you carry my child, they may consider you, or the child, as their property. I will send a servant to your father’s house with the message.”
She could do nothing but agree, and rise when he did, and walk with him through the path the roses seemed to create for him, until they came upon the manor quite suddenly. Servants showed them in and brought them tea, and one took the message, and then Lanie was taken to a chamber to spend the night—indeed, the very chamber that had been her own when she had lived at Ranhight Manor. Gregor bowed her good night, and though she laughed at the propriety that put them in separate rooms before their wedding though she was already pregnant, she could not disagree with it.
—
Halloween day was chilly and brown, but the scent of the enchanted roses permeated the entire manor. Lanie rose to a breakfast brought by servants; when she had finished eating, another servant came in with a blue gown for the wedding, which she proceeded to drape over Lanie and make alterations to. The day passed as though in a dream, which Lanie supposed from time to time it must be in truth, for she was marrying the man she loved to save him from the faeries.
She feared that her family would not wish to come, but when she was told all was ready and went to the banquet hall to await her bridegroom, they were all there—her father, her sisters in their best gowns, and even Cook, beaming at her. She smiled back, hoping they could all see how happy she was this day.
The room had been strewn and garlanded with roses, all the colors of the garden in evidence, but the dark red and the white most prominent, as though the servants had been told they were Lanie’s favorite. She stood by the priest, an older gentleman with a bald head and a round face, and watched the doors at the other end for Gregor’s entrance.
Before he arrived, however, guests poured in, and very strange yet beautiful guests they were; she only had to lay eyes on the first pair to enter, a woman near as tall as Gregor and a man with a human appearance but great sweeping ram’s horns on his head, to know that they were the faeries. She heard her sister gasp and their father shush her quickly. The faeries seemed to pour in endlessly, but when they had stopped they filled only half the room, but then Gregor entered, and Lanie’s eyes stayed only on him.
The priest read the vows, and she repeated them, hardly hearing what she was saying—no pledge would be too great for her Gregor, and as he spoke them in return, she felt her heart would burst with joy. The priest declared them married, and Gregor bent to kiss her, but his lips had hardly brushed hers when he cried out and fell to the floor, curling up around herself.
She cried out as well and instantly fell to her knees beside him, wrapping her arms around him and feeling him twist in agony. Could his transformation come upon him so instantly? She looked up at the assembled faeries, not knowing what she could say or do, but that they would keep him from this pain. But they all stared at Gregor with expressionless faces, saying nothing.
Suddenly he began to shrink, and transformed into a snake. She did not understand what was happening, but clung to him as best she could, hoping that in this, at least, she could ease his pain. Were the faeries doing this so that she would reject him and they could take him for their tithe? She must not allow that to happen, though he turned again into a goose that snapped at her, and then into a clawed lion. Sure now that these changes were only meant to inspire fear in her, she held him all the more fiercely, until at last he turned into a man, naked and sweating.
“Oh, cover him!” she cried instantly, looking about wildly for a cloak or anything to hide her husband’s nakedness. For a moment no one moved, then Cook stood and flung her a blanket, one that must have been used for picnics. She wrapped it around Gregor’s body, almost shaking with fear—he seemed so small and white now, without his cloaking of fur, would she still love him? But she looked into his eyes, and he was the same beast he had known, only with a form that would not inspire fear in others. She kissed him desperately.
There was a rustle in the room, and they both looked up. The faeries were leaving, as silent as they had stayed, and no one else in the room moved until all of them were gone. Then Gregor, with Lanie’s help, stood, and bowed quite courteously to her family, though he was still holding the blanket around his body with one hand.
“Ranhight Manor is yours again, as promised,” he said, his voice still deep and rough but with a veneer of cultured civility. “I shall take my bride and my leave if you wish it.”
Her father only gaped, but one of her sisters spoke, “If we are to live here, we should like to have our sister with us, if you will allow it, sir.”
“Certainly, if my bride wishes it,” said Gregor, and he turned to Lanie, his face alight with such pleasure that she no longer missed the beast’s face with its unreadable expressions.
“So I have you, I care for nothing else, but it will be good to have my sisters about, when the child comes.”
“And so it shall be,” said Gregor.
And they lived happily ever after.
Word count: 3969
Rating: soft R for heavily-implied het sex
Prompt:
smw requested “something folklore-ish.”Notes: I have been wanting to do this mash-up for ever and ever. And I finally figured out how. :D
Lanie waited until everyone else had fallen asleep before she got up again. She knew her father and sisters were all asleep because she had heard all of their doors open and shut, and her father always fell asleep as soon as he went to bed; she remembered trying to get a drink of water or another story as a child, and she would always have had to wake him up.
Then it had frustrated her, but she had only been a child, without a mother, and she had wanted her father’s attention to always be on her. She still loved him, but now she was glad for his prompt sleeping. As she quietly dressed and pinned her hair up, she listened carefully for other sounds, in case one of her sisters had awakened, but the house remained silent.
She crept downstairs and took the satchel that Cook had made up for her. The family had once had many servants, but now that they had lost so much Cook was the only one left, so she was sure of him sleeping, as well. She’d told him she was leaving in the morning, quite early, to look for a job, so he’d put together some food for her to take with. It wasn’t much, but hopefully it would be enough to get her to Ranhight Manor.
The streets were dark and quite empty. Lit only by starlight and the sliver of moon, she made her way quietly out, through the town gates that always stood open and into the woods. She breathed a sigh of relief once she was away from the town, not even having realized how anxious she’d been that someone would catch her. If her father had discovered what she was doing, she might not have had the courage to keep on.
The woods were old and dark, and frightened many (including her sisters), but not Lanie. She had always loved them, and that was why she was the one who must go to reclaim what had been her family’s for long generations, until Lord Breighnock had seized it to pay the debts Lanie’s father owed him, and informed him that the only way to get it back would be to send one of his daughters in marriage.
Of course, Lanie’s father had not wanted to send any of them. In fact, he had refused to tell them what had happened to Ranhight, where they had once spent every summer in green-and-gold glory. Lanie and her sisters had gotten the tale out of Cook, though. When they confronted her father, he did not try to deny it, but told them that he could not allow them to go: Lord Breighnock had a reputation as a cruel man, a sorcerer, and even a killer. Lanie’s sisters both would have been willing to risk that in order to marry a rich man, but their father told them the road had grown dangerous, and Lord Breighnock refused to come himself or even send a servant—the daughter must make her own way. Lanie’s sisters found that risk too great (he could not want them very badly if he would not even see them first), but Lanie was, despite herself, intrigued. She did not know what manner of man would hide himself away and inspire rumors of sorcery (for she did not believe in magic). And her father was so sad since they had become poor—he was growing thin, he worked all the time, and his eyes had bags underneath them. She had known there would be a way for her to help him, and now she had found it.
There was a place she knew from when she was a child, disobeying and running off the path. A cave, too small for bears and too high off the ground for snakes. In the dark it was harder to find than she’d expected, but she found it, and curled up there to sleep.
When the dawn woke her, she lay listening for several minutes, but there were no sounds from the town—if she could have heard them. Her absence might not have been noted yet. When it was, surely Cook would share what she had told him; they would not suspect until she had been gone all day.
The forest was still empty. Few came this way anymore, even during the day when people were less frightened. Not since Lord Breighnock had seized so many lands on the other side of the forest.
Lanie paused after half an hour to eat her breakfast, then after another few hours, when the sun was high in the sky, for her lunch. She was growing worried. Ranhight should be in sight by now; the forest should be thinning. She was stronger than she had been as a child and could walk for longer without tiring. How could the manor house be farther than she remembered?
She hadn’t been walking for another five minutes after her lunch when, after a gentle curve in the path, she came across an astonishing sight: both sides of the path were covered in roses. Red roses, pink roses, yellow roses, white roses, a riot of color, and such smells she was astonished she had not scented them from a mile away. An involuntary gasp of astonishment left her, and she walked eagerly to the roses, burying her face in one lush dark-red bloom. Yes, she remembered these roses, though they had not been growing quite so profusely when she was a child, nor so close to the road. But these were the roses of Ranhight, the pride and glory of the team of gardeners her family had once employed. This particular variety had been named after Lanie’s mother the year after she died. Lanie’s heart ached with the memory, but she could not help but pull one bloom and tuck it into her bodice, as well as a white rose from a nearby bush, one that had been Lanie’s favorite.
When she turned again from the roses, she received a shock that made her heart fly into her throat. In the path beside her stood a monster—seven feet tall, covered in shaggy hair, with great claws on his hands and feet and wicked horns curving from his forehead; but he wore a man’s trousers and cloak, and when he spoke his voice was a man’s, gentle if reproachful. “Lady, what right have you to pluck my roses?” He reached out with one great paw, and though she quailed away in fright, he only took the flowers from her bodice, the backs of his furred knuckles brushing gently against her chemise.
She did not respond, but felt a warm blush rise up to cover her whole body, and knew he could see it. His expression did not change, but he continued, “Why do you go to Ranhight without my command?”
That she could answer, at least, after drawing a deep breath, and feeling the blush subside not one whit. “Sir, I know not who you are, but Ranhight is my property, and I have been commanded there by its current lord. I do not ask your leave, whoever you may be.” She did not understand why she was reacting in such a way to this talking beast; it was not fear, but something more akin to desire.
He tossed the roses behind him. “Then neither shall I ask your leave.” Before she could complain of his treatment of the roses, he had clasped her wrists in his hands—roughly, but without scratching her in the slightest with those claws—and pressed his mouth to hers. His lips were surprisingly soft beneath the fur that fell over them; his body was powerful with muscle, and he had a spicy, smoky scent. When his lips released hers, she drew in a shuddering breath, but could not protest when he pressed her backwards into the roses.
—
That night, Lanie returned to her father, ashamed and frightened. She could not now seek out Lord Breighnock; she was no longer eligible to marry, and while she had never expected to be happy in marriage with a stranger, that dream seemed even farther away now that she had met the strange beast-man. No, she would do in earnest what she had claimed to do this morning, and seek a job mending or washing, some menial labor, to support her father. Let her sisters marry and remove their burdens from him; she would do what she could.
She was welcomed home, of course, though it was late and she was both hungry and tired when she reached it. No one suspected where she had gone, or what she had done, though her skirt was now stained with crushed grass. Her father scolded her for stooping so low as to seek work, but he looked lighter, all the same.
After several days of real searching, she did in fact find work; her hand was fine enough for a dressmaker to take her on as an assistant, doing alterations, mending, and the occasional small embroidery. She worked there for four months, but when the owner saw how differently Lanie’s bodice had begun to fit her, she was sent home, and she went, more shamed than she would even have imagined.
She feared telling her father—not for his anger, but for his disappointment—but that burden, at least, was lifted from her; when she returned earlier than expected, he looked over her with sharp eyes, and instantly noticed the difference that had been so gradually growing. “Daughter,” he said gently, “who is he? Fear not; we are not so far gone into poverty that I cannot force him to do his duty.”
Biting her lip, she looked away. There were men in town who might be willing to take the blame—Tom the blacksmith’s son had taken to hanging about by the dressmaker’s shop, and one or two young merchants had filled her head with pretty words. But despite their attentions, only one face, grotesque though it might have seemed, had stayed in her imagination, and there was only one man, if man he be, with whom she could spend her life and raise a child.
“He is not a man in town, but lives along the way to Ranhight Manor,” she told him. “I shall go to him. I must. Cook,” she called, striding into the kitchen and away from her father’s shocked countenance, “please make me up a picnic supper, for I have far to walk this evening.”
Cook did as she asked. Her family was not so cooperative. Her sisters were roused, and as she changed into traveling clothes and sturdier shoes, they plucked at her sleeves and begged her not to go in her state, to stay safe with them. They even claimed, touchingly, that they cared not for the scandal, so they had their sister with them. But Lanie shook her head and gave them the names of the merchants before she left; perhaps those men would make rich husbands for her sisters.
Her father walked with her to the town gates, though it strained his breathing, alternately begging and demanding that she stay. But nothing would persuade her. At least, she thought as she left him behind, she would be a burden to him no longer.
She did not, as it passed, stop to eat her picnic supper, though her legs weakened and her stomach clawed at itself. To stop would delay the sight she had longed for, and that hunger was greater than the physical. With every step, she sniffed the air for the scent of roses, though it was now autumn and they should not have bloomed. But her hopes were rewarded; she smelled them, and with another step she saw them, and with a third her face was buried in the red blooms that had been named for her mother.
Once she had smelled her fill, she looked up, heart hammering; she feared lest he should not be here, lest he had abandoned her or was not so easy to find as he had been that first day. But he was standing silent in the path as he had four months ago, his expression unreadable as usual. Trembling, she reached out one hand to him. He lifted one paw from beneath his cloak, and in it were the red and white roses she had plucked then, and he pressed them into her hand.
Tears suddenly filled her eyes, and she flew to him, pressing her face into his warm, furred chest. His arms came about her, and he held her until she had wept herself dry.
“What is it, my love?” he whispered, gently stroking her back, when she finally looked up at him.
“I’m pregnant,” she whispered back, almost afraid to state so baldly the fact that had brought her back here.
This time she could read his expression. His eyes widened and his mouth opened in shock. He seemed about to say something, but then he just crushed her to him again, and she felt him shake. She held him as tightly as she could.
When she could speak again, she asked, “Why do you live out here in the forest? Why do you say the roses are yours?”
He shook his head, his shaggy hair whipping back and forth. “I do not live in the forest. The roses are mine because they are on the grounds of Ranhight Manor.”
“Then—” she gasped, feeling her eyes widen with shock—and yet she somehow felt that this discovery had been inevitable, and some part of her was greatly relieved. “You are Lord Breighnock?”
“I am,” he said, and she saw his lips move in what must have been a smile. “Would you like to know how I came to be this way?”
“Very much,” she said.
“Then let us sit, off the path, and talk, and you must eat of the food I can smell in your satchel, for you have walked a fair distance, have you not?”
She agreed, and let him lead her into the roses, which seemed to draw back so that their thorns did not scratch her skin, until they reached a white bench with an arch of roses above it. She did not recognize it, but she was too relieved and hungry to care by this point, so she opened her supper and ate while her lover explained that he had angered the faerie queen—not knowing or believing that she could exist—and had been cursed to take this form. He had lived otherwise a normal life for the last several years, and his business sense allowed him to become wealthy, but his appearance frightened people, and thence had come the cruel rumors about him.
“They say you have been married several times, and your wives have all died mysteriously,” she said carefully, nibbling at a piece of cheese. She did not believe it, of course, but she wondered whence such a rumor could have come.
He shook his head. “None of it is true. I have, indeed, tried to make such bargains as I offered your father in the past, but even when a daughter was sent, she was always too frightened to even come near me. I have never married.”
She let her hand fall and rest on the slight curve of her belly. “Then you know who I am?”
“You must be one of Brennan Ross’s daughters, for who else would have come this way despite the dangers? But I do not even know your name.”
She could not help smiling. “My name is Elaine, though I have never been called anything other than Lanie.”
“Lanie.” He took her hand gently in his paw. “My name is Gregor.”
“Why have you been seeking a wife so long? I might have hoped it was me in particular you hoped my father would send.”
He squeezed her hand. “I knew nothing of his daughters—I could not be happier than I am having met you, of course. But such are the conditions of my curse. If I could find a woman to love and marry me as I am, it will be broken and I will return to my true form.”
Lanie’s heart seemed to contract at those words, but she spoke bravely and with all the love that was in her heart, “I came here four months ago with the intent to marry you, and my inclination is even stronger now than it was. I feared it would not be so simple—I feared you were some faerie creature.”
“No, not their creature, only under their power.” He let out a long, happy sigh. “My love, shall we set the wedding date for tomorrow? I have a priest living in the manor, and I am certain he will be happy to perform it on a moment’s notice.”
“I should be happy for it, but I do not think my father will be happy for the haste, though there may be good reason for it.”
“Ah.” He looked down at their clasped hands. “I must admit, my dearest Lanie, that I have not yet told you all.”
“What is it?” she whispered, suddenly frightened.
“If I have not married by this Halloween night, my life shall be forfeit. For the faerie folk pay a tithe to Hell once in seven years, and it has been seven, and I am one who is under their power but not one of them, so they shall not miss me.”
“Tomorrow is Halloween,” Lanie said. She felt a dizziness wash over her and clasped his paw more firmly. “I shall return to my father’s house, then, and share with him the news…”
“No,” said Gregor. “For it is grown dark and the faeries are abroad. We are not yet wed and as you carry my child, they may consider you, or the child, as their property. I will send a servant to your father’s house with the message.”
She could do nothing but agree, and rise when he did, and walk with him through the path the roses seemed to create for him, until they came upon the manor quite suddenly. Servants showed them in and brought them tea, and one took the message, and then Lanie was taken to a chamber to spend the night—indeed, the very chamber that had been her own when she had lived at Ranhight Manor. Gregor bowed her good night, and though she laughed at the propriety that put them in separate rooms before their wedding though she was already pregnant, she could not disagree with it.
—
Halloween day was chilly and brown, but the scent of the enchanted roses permeated the entire manor. Lanie rose to a breakfast brought by servants; when she had finished eating, another servant came in with a blue gown for the wedding, which she proceeded to drape over Lanie and make alterations to. The day passed as though in a dream, which Lanie supposed from time to time it must be in truth, for she was marrying the man she loved to save him from the faeries.
She feared that her family would not wish to come, but when she was told all was ready and went to the banquet hall to await her bridegroom, they were all there—her father, her sisters in their best gowns, and even Cook, beaming at her. She smiled back, hoping they could all see how happy she was this day.
The room had been strewn and garlanded with roses, all the colors of the garden in evidence, but the dark red and the white most prominent, as though the servants had been told they were Lanie’s favorite. She stood by the priest, an older gentleman with a bald head and a round face, and watched the doors at the other end for Gregor’s entrance.
Before he arrived, however, guests poured in, and very strange yet beautiful guests they were; she only had to lay eyes on the first pair to enter, a woman near as tall as Gregor and a man with a human appearance but great sweeping ram’s horns on his head, to know that they were the faeries. She heard her sister gasp and their father shush her quickly. The faeries seemed to pour in endlessly, but when they had stopped they filled only half the room, but then Gregor entered, and Lanie’s eyes stayed only on him.
The priest read the vows, and she repeated them, hardly hearing what she was saying—no pledge would be too great for her Gregor, and as he spoke them in return, she felt her heart would burst with joy. The priest declared them married, and Gregor bent to kiss her, but his lips had hardly brushed hers when he cried out and fell to the floor, curling up around herself.
She cried out as well and instantly fell to her knees beside him, wrapping her arms around him and feeling him twist in agony. Could his transformation come upon him so instantly? She looked up at the assembled faeries, not knowing what she could say or do, but that they would keep him from this pain. But they all stared at Gregor with expressionless faces, saying nothing.
Suddenly he began to shrink, and transformed into a snake. She did not understand what was happening, but clung to him as best she could, hoping that in this, at least, she could ease his pain. Were the faeries doing this so that she would reject him and they could take him for their tithe? She must not allow that to happen, though he turned again into a goose that snapped at her, and then into a clawed lion. Sure now that these changes were only meant to inspire fear in her, she held him all the more fiercely, until at last he turned into a man, naked and sweating.
“Oh, cover him!” she cried instantly, looking about wildly for a cloak or anything to hide her husband’s nakedness. For a moment no one moved, then Cook stood and flung her a blanket, one that must have been used for picnics. She wrapped it around Gregor’s body, almost shaking with fear—he seemed so small and white now, without his cloaking of fur, would she still love him? But she looked into his eyes, and he was the same beast he had known, only with a form that would not inspire fear in others. She kissed him desperately.
There was a rustle in the room, and they both looked up. The faeries were leaving, as silent as they had stayed, and no one else in the room moved until all of them were gone. Then Gregor, with Lanie’s help, stood, and bowed quite courteously to her family, though he was still holding the blanket around his body with one hand.
“Ranhight Manor is yours again, as promised,” he said, his voice still deep and rough but with a veneer of cultured civility. “I shall take my bride and my leave if you wish it.”
Her father only gaped, but one of her sisters spoke, “If we are to live here, we should like to have our sister with us, if you will allow it, sir.”
“Certainly, if my bride wishes it,” said Gregor, and he turned to Lanie, his face alight with such pleasure that she no longer missed the beast’s face with its unreadable expressions.
“So I have you, I care for nothing else, but it will be good to have my sisters about, when the child comes.”
“And so it shall be,” said Gregor.
And they lived happily ever after.
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Date: 2012-02-13 03:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-02-13 03:43 am (UTC)Wow, Clare, this is AWESOME.
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Date: 2012-02-13 03:48 am (UTC)