The Beast's Bride (3 page)

"Oh?" Pippa tossed the spindle into the wool basket and followed Belle to the door. "How do you know it's him?"

She gave Pippa a funny look. "Who else would be riding a horse to Papa's house this late at night?"

Ask a silly question
, she said to herself, but nodded as if this were all totally normal. "Right. I forgot."

After a few minutes of waiting at the door, a man entered, and Pippa held her breath, waiting to see his face. Would this guy look like her father from her world? Considering he’d died ten years ago, she’d love to see him again.

But the man was tall and skinny, and he had a bald head and a long ponytail. Definitely not her father. He hugged Belle close, and then extended an arm to Pippa. She moved into his embrace, since it would have been weird otherwise, and noticed he smelled like…alcohol.

Belle's dad was a drunk? Ugh. Pippa pushed away, keeping a fake smile on her face as she kept up the charade. "It's good to see you again, Father."

"We're so glad you're home!" Belle chirped happily. "Did you bring me presents?"

He pulled a small package out of his pocket and handed it to Belle, who giggled happily and began to unwrap it. "A necklace! It's so lovely!" She twirled, admiring her prize.

Pippa waited, wondering if a present was coming her way, but Belle's father only moved toward the fire and sniffed the vegetable soup. "Dinner?"

Gee. Nothing for the ugly stepdaughter? Figures.

Belle bustled past to get a wooden bowl, the necklace now around her lovely neck. "Tell us about all your adventures, Father!"

1He shook his head and sat heavily on Belle's small stool near the fire. Tears glimmered in his eyes. "I'm afraid I have something awful to tell you."

Here we go
, Pippa thought.
Let's get this party started
.

Belle's eyes widened until they looked like marbles in her face. "What's wrong?"

"My girls…have you heard the story of the beast that lives in a cursed castle in the woods?"

"Those are stories," Pippa said in a crisp voice, getting into the spirit of things. "Everyone knows that's not real."
And the Oscar goes to…

"Oh, Papa. Have you been drinking again?" Belle gave him a patient, understanding look.

Pippa thought it was pretty obvious that he'd been drinking. All one had to do was smell him.

But she said nothing.

"The beast is real," the older man said with a shudder, and he launched into his tale. Pippa listened, mentally comparing notes with the fairy tale she was familiar with. He told them that he'd been caught in a terrible storm and forced to seek shelter in an old, tumbling castle. He'd gone there and had eaten a dinner prepared for him by 'spooky' servants and had looked for gifts for his daughters, he said, with a sad look in Belle's direction. Pippa suspected it was more like he'd been caught raiding the liquor cabinet.

And that's when the beast had exacted a terrible promise. He must send one of his daughters to be the bride of the beast.

Belle clutched at her necklace, gasping theatrically. "Oh no. One of us must marry this cruel monster?"

"Gee, that's just terrible," Pippa said, wincing at how unsympathetic her voice sounded. She was glad the lettuce was in the cooking pot, or else it probably would have bitten her again. She cleared her throat and tried for a more convincing tone. "Whatever shall we do?"

"One of you must marry him," the old drunk said, turning to give Pippa a meaningful stare.

"He did not specify which daughter. One of you must volunteer."

And again, he gave Pippa a direct look.

Oh,
please
. First no presents, and now she was supposed to martyr herself for this wino?

Pippa snorted and examined her fingernails, avoiding his gaze.

"I guess I can go," Belle said, after a long, awkward moment.

"No, Belle! You mustn't! You're so beautiful." Her father sounded truly anguished.

"But I'm so pretty, Father. I'm sure he'd want me."

1
Unless he wanted a meaningful conversation
, Pippa thought, then was ashamed when Belle gave her an anguished look.

"I'll do it to keep my sister safe." Belle blinked sad, beautiful eyes at him. "You know I'll do anything for family."

The sentiment made Pippa feel bad. Belle was kind of a ditz, but she was nice. And she loved her sister to pieces. The dad? The dad she could do without.

"Oh, Belle. No." The old man shook his head. "The beast said it didn't matter which daughter," he protested. "I'm sure that—"

"She said she'd go," Pippa cut in, feeling a bit insulted. Jeez! She wasn't as busty as Belle but she wasn't exactly chopped liver, was she?

Belle caressed her father's lean, sunken cheek. "It's for the best, Father. I will go and marry this beast."

"But the woods! You can't go alone! You get lost going to town, Belle. How will you ever find your way to the beast's lair?"

This was Pippa's cue. "I'll go with you, Belle. So you don't have to go alone."

Belle turned and gave Pippa an incredibly grateful look, her brilliant eyes shining. "You will, sister?"

"I will."

The old man gave her a hateful look. "It seems I will lose both of my daughters to this beast."

"I'm sure you'll drink away your sorrows," Pippa said in her sweetest voice. She looked over at Belle. "Should we pack so we can go in the morning?"

The poor girl burst into tears. "If we must."

Pippa gave her an awkward pat on the shoulders. For a moment, she felt bad for poor Belle.

Belle was truly, genuinely upset at having to leave home and marry a beast. Of course, the beast was actually an enchanted prince, and she had to marry him or else Pippa would be doomed to haunt a parking garage in floral granny panties.

All her sympathy dried up at that moment. "I'll go pack a bag!"

1

"I see something up ahead," Belle said, her voice quavering. "Do you suppose it's the beast's castle?"

Pippa pulled the hood back on her cloak and wiped the drizzling rain off of her face. She squinted into the storm, wondering how on earth Belle saw anything in this mess. All around her were wet trees and thick forest. And mud. She couldn't forget the mud, since it was coating her hems up to her knees.

So far? Pippa wasn't a big fan of forests.

The horse danced below them and Pippa clung to Belle, wincing at her sore bottom. Okay, she wasn't a fan of horses, either. Since she didn't know how to ride (and Belle seemed to think Pippa'd merely forgotten and teased her about it) she was clinging to her sister on the back of a very tall, very bitey horse. And her ass was killing her.

But she scanned the trees ahead, because hope sprang eternal. "I don't see anything, Belle."

"Over there." Her sister pointed off into the distance and Pippa dutifully looked.

There
was
something up ahead, she realized as the horse started down the muddy path once more. It looked like a vine-covered bridge of some kind. As they approached, Pippa's stomach churned a little. It looked really, really old and rickety. Crumbling, waist high stone walls lined the cobbled bridge, but there were holes in the path and weeds poking out through the rocks.

Below, a storm-swollen river rushed and churned.

She clung a little harder to Belle's narrow waist and squeezed her eyes shut. "Um, are we sure this is the safest path to travel?"

"It's the only path, sister," Belle pointed out.

She hated that Belle was right. Pippa kept her eyes closed and pulled her hood tight over her head again. "Tell me when we're across."

Every second while the horse's hooves clattered on the cobblestones seemed to last a lifetime.

Occasionally, the entire thing felt like it was weaving beneath them, and Pippa's stomach lurched in time. Every instinct screamed to get off the horse and run for the hills, but she was pretty sure that the fairy tale didn't end with Belle and her reasonably attractive stepsister drowning in a river. So she stayed put.

1"We're across," Belle called out in a singsong. "You can look now."

Pippa squeezed an eye open and pulled her hood back again. Sure enough, they'd made it across and the horse continued plodding down the path. The thick woods fell away to reveal a wide, rusty gate, barely hanging on its hinges. It was closed.

Past the gate, down an equally crumbling path, loomed a forbidding, crumbling castle. The cracked, twisted path led off into the fog. Crenellated walls rose out of the mist like a behemoth, perched atop a rather foreboding cliff. Pippa was pretty sure that she saw a turret of some kind.

Super. It looked ultra-creepy, and she felt a shiver travel up her arms, even though she knew the actual story behind the curse.

A beast in an enchanted castle. At least Pippa wasn't going to have to marry him. She slid off the side of the horse and looked up at Belle. Her sister had gone white in the face, though she still managed to look lovely despite being bedraggled and wet.

"I'm not sure I can do this, Pippy," she whispered. "I'm not very brave."

"Pippa," she corrected, heading for the gate and trying to look all business. "And you don't have to be brave. I'm right here with you. I can be the brave one if you don't feel like it."

"I don't," Belle admitted, and slid off of the horse as well, thumping to the ground next to Pippa. "Are you sure we can't go back?"

As if he knew his part in the fairy tale, the horse neighed and reared. The two women backed away, avoiding the flailing hooves of the suddenly wild beast. A moment later, the wild-eyed horse turned and galloped into the forest, leaving them stranded at the gates. So much for returning back to town.

If Pippa had been a betting kind of woman, she'd have guessed that Muffin would have had something to do with that. "No turning back now," she said cheerfully, and pushed at the rusty iron gate.

It swung open with a low, gutteral creak that sounded like the moan of a dying creature. "Not helping," Pippa called out to the foggy forest. "Not helping at all."

Belle dashed forward and grasped Pippa's arm, clinging to it. "I'm scared. Papa said it was a terrible beast."

Pippa began to walk up the crumbling path, heading toward the castle. "Papa likes his drinky-drink a bit too much for his own good. It can't be as bad as all that. Maybe this guy's only slightly beastly." She wasn't entirely sure about this whole 'beast curse' thing. After all, beast-men didn't 1exist where she came from. Maybe it was just a dude with a scar or something. Maybe a dude with bad manners. Something logical and non-enchanted and Belle's dad was a drunk who liked to scare the shit out of his daughters.

Belle quivered at her side and said nothing, hiding behind Pippa as she walked.

"Look at the bright side," she felt the need to point out. "He's got real estate. That means something, right? It could just be a fixer-upper."

"I don't know what that means," Belle told her in a hushed voice.

Of course not. "Don't you want to be the mistress of a castle?"

"Not this castle," Belle said stubbornly as they went up the walk. "How could Papa do this to us?"

Pippa had to admit that 'Papa' wasn't high on the list of people she liked at the moment. "He's a douche," she agreed. "But it's starting to rain harder, so let's pick up the pace, all right?"

She moved Belle's clinging hands from her arm to her hand, and they raced up the rest of the path. A stone gate loomed at the top of the path, with a rusty portcullis drawn up, and they passed underneath it into an overgrown, cobbled courtyard. On the far side of the courtyard sat the keep itself; a heavy, wooden double door remained shut at the top of a stairway of large, shallow steps. Pippa glanced up in the air, studying the castle through the raindrops spattering in her eyes.

No lights were on. There were definitely turrets, though. She wondered how this place would look in the daylight. Still scary, or just interesting and overgrown?

"Come on," she told Belle and headed up the stairs. "Let's go meet your bridegroom."

They approached the door. As they moved forward, the rain began to pound heavily once more, herding them toward shelter. Pippa and Belle shrugged their cloaks closer, and Pippa took the lead as Belle seemed content to cower behind her. She stepped up to the door, examined it, and then rapped on the front. After all, she knew someone was home, didn't she? Thinking back to the Disney movie, she wondered if the servants in this one would be teapots and candlesticks or if they were under some other sort of enchantment.

The door opened, and both she and Belle took a step backward, gasping.

The man that answered the door had the face of a boar—curving tusks stuck out from his mouth, and his nose was a furry snout. Small, piggish eyes stared down at them.

Belle clung to Pippa's arm. "He
is
a beast!"

2Well, yes, that was part of the fairy tale. Except she hadn't quite thought the man would be so very…gross-looking. Even his snout seemed a little slimy. Pippa was taken aback at the sight of him. She was supposed to make Belle fall in love with this? Talk about an impossible task. "It's just bad lighting," she told Belle, though they both knew that was a lie.

"I can't marry him," Belle said, her voice rising a hysterical note. "I can't!"

Small, piggish eyes stared at the two women, waiting for something.

"Um, hello," Pippa said, smiling brightly despite Belle's clutching fingers. "Are you the master of this castle?"

The boar-headed man shook his head. He bowed and extended an arm—a very human arm,

she noticed—indicating that they should enter.

Whew. "He's not the one you're here to marry," she told Belle. "I think he's a servant."

The boar nodded and waved a hand, indicating that they should enter.

"I want to go home," Belle said, a hint of whine in her voice.

"We can't," Pippa told her grimly. "That's not how this works. Come on. I want to get out of the rain."

She took a step forward, even though she was rather unnerved at the sight of the boar-headed man. He was downright creepy, especially the way his small eyes watched them. He wore a long, dark tunic of some kind, too, belted at the waist. It looked like medieval clothing of some sort.