Belle: A Retelling of “Beauty and the Beast” By Cameron Dokey (6 page)

not without compassion. It was as if she was weighing how much more to say, how much more I could take.

“But I do think Maman has a point, Belle. The way things are now – it’s just not

right. I would think you’d feel that more than anyone. Don’t you want to find someone who will see you for who you really are?”

“There’s not very much chance of that,” I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice. “Not with you and Celeste around.”

April winced, and I instantly wished I could call the words back. It wasn’t her

fault she was so much more Beautiful than I was.

“I think,” she said, calmly and succinctly, without a hint of upset in her voice,

“that you are wrong. And I think outsiders are not eh only ones who fail to see you clearly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

April stood up. “Now who’s being dumb as a pailful of worms?” she asked. She

walked to the door. “I saw the dress Maman picked out for you,” she added. “It’s every bit as lovely as mine or Celeste’s.”

And with that, she left me alone to my thoughts.

CHAPTER SEVEN

The day of the garden party arrived clear and bright.
Naturally
, I thought, somewhat sourly, as I stood in the bedroom, gazing at myself in all my new finery, trying to convince my stomach to calm down. It seemed that even the weather wished to impress the de la Montaignes.

I, of course, had prayed for rain all week long.

The episode at the breakfast table had not been mentioned again. Not even Papa

brought it up, though I felt sure Maman had told him of it. By tacit agreement, neither my sisters nor I had mentioned Paul de la Montaigne. Instead, we pretended it was a week like any other, and not one ending with an event of utmost importance.

I caught a glimpse of movement in the mirror and realized I was passing my

folding knife from hand to hand in an effort to clam myself. Deliberately, I set it on my nightstand and instead picked up a nosegay of flowers I was supposed to carry. Then I gazed back at my reflection.

April had been right, I had to admit. The dress Maman had chosen for me was

lovely – every bit as lovely as those she’d chosen for Celeste, for April, and for herself. it was a pale color just edging into pink, like a spring rosebud caught in a late frost. The bodice was stitched with row upon row of tiny seed pearls and the full skirt seemed to go on for miles. I even had matching satin slippers, tied with pink ribbons. There would be no buckles to pinch my feet this time. Thin ropes of seed pearls were threaded through my hair, which fell in great rippling waves to my waist. A circlet of tiny pink rosebuds framed my forehead.

If I hadn’t known for certain it was me, I never would have recognized myself.

I stared at the girl in the mirror, her long hair shining like mahogany in the

afternoon sun. eyes as dark as chestnut gazed right back.

Who are you
? I wondered.
Are you Belle? Are you Beauty enough to stand beside
your sisters without being afraid? To stand beside them proudly, sure of who you are
both inside and out
?

I had absolutely no idea, but I knew this much: The time had come to find out.

The de la Montaignes’ house was set upon a hill, its gardens cascading down the hillside in a series of graceful terraces, all of which overlooked the ocean. As much as I did not want to be impressed, even I had to admit I had never seen anything like it. Tables covered in white linens all but groaned under the weight of food and flowers. Women and girls in their finery looked like more beautiful blossoms.

My nerve held through our arrival, as Monsieur and Madame de la Montaigne

received their guests, one by one.

“So this is the famous Belle,” Henri de la Montaigne said, as he took my hand and bowed low over it.

I had expected the richest man in town to be tall and imposing, sort of like Grand-père Alphonse. But my father’s banker was round and pale. He looked like he rarely set foot out of doors. His hands were soft, making me self-conscious of the calluses on mine.

I felt my courage teeter, then slowly slide down the hillside toward the sea.

What did he mean, “the famous Belle”?

“You must make sure my son catches a glimpse of you,” Monsieur de la

Montaigne went on.

“Of course, Monsieur, if that is what you wish,” I said, remembering my manners,

though I had no intention of doing any such thing. It was Celeste that Paul de la Montaigne ought to look at, not me.

“Excellent, excellent,” Henri de la Montaigne proclaimed. And then, much to my

relief, he released my hand and turned his attention to the next guest in line.

My mother kept a sharp eye on me as we began to circulate, but soon she was

engaged in conversation. The terrace became filled with so many people, it was easy to render myself invisible and fade into the crowd. You can call me coward if you want to. I came close to doing so myself.

But the simple truth was that, once I didn’t have to worry about the inevitable

comparison when standing beside my sisters, I actually began to enjoy myself. The garden was gorgeous: lush green lawns and flowers overflowing carefully tended beds, all set against the jewel of the sea below. Slowly, I made my way from one garden terrace to the next, admiring the views, sampling various delicacies, until, at last, I came to the lowest level, the one by the water.

The garden here was all roses.
How Maman would love this
, I thought. She loved flowers of all sorts, but roses most of all. Her own rose garden was her pride and joy, the only place in our entire house and grounds she cared for all herself. across the front of the terrace, as if framing images of the sea, stood a series of arbors with roses clambering joyfully up the sides and over the top. Each had a bench on either side. I headed for the one on the far right, certain it would be the most private.

It wasn’t until I’d almost reached the bench that I realized it was occupied.

Celeste was sitting there, a young man at her side. Though it had been many years since I had seen Paul de la Montaigne, I was certain it could be no other. He had his father’s shape. I could not see his face, as his back was toward me, but I was sure that I would find it pale and round.

How on earth can Celeste even contemplate marrying him
? I wondered as I

stopped short.
Even if he is the most eligible bachelor in town
. I had no wish to disturb them, and I was certain that an interruption was the last thing Celeste wanted.

Fortunately, they had not seen me. They were too wrapped up in each other.

“I’m so pleased to get you alone,” Paul de la Montaigne said, leaning toward

Celeste. I eased myself backward, holding my breath. “There’s a question I’ve been dying to ask you ever since you arrived.”

I stopped in spite of myself.
He’s really going to do
it
, I thought.
Paul is going to
ask Celeste to marry him.
I was going to have a brother-in-law who was as dumb as a pailful of earthworms.

“Yes, Paul?” Celeste asked expectantly.

“Is it true what they say about your sister?”

I froze in place, my eyes fixed on Celeste’s face. Never had she looked more

Beautiful, and never had I had more cause to admire her, for she never flinched. Not so much as a flicker of an eyelash revealed that Paul’s question was not the one for which she’d hoped.

“I have two sisters. Which one?”

Paul de la Montaigne laughed, and I learned how quickly it is possible to hate. For the laugh cut like a dagger, sharp on both edges.
You are wrong, Papa
, I thought.
Paul de
la Montaigne isn’t dumb at all
. He was smart in a way that my father would never understand. Smart in the ways of giving pain.

“Why, Belle, of course,” he answered. “After all, you must know what they say.”

For a fraction of a second, Celeste’s gaze shifted so that her eyes looked back

straight into mine. “Well, yes, of course I do,” she said, her eyes back on Paul de la Montaigne once more. “But I would so love to hear
you
say it.”

Paul de la Montaigne smiled. “Why, that she is the living embodiment of her

name! that’s the reason she never goes out in public, because she’s so Beautiful, too Beautiful for all but a few privileged pairs of eyes to gaze upon.”

Suddenly, I felt cold all over, not just in my limbs but in my very soul.

“And naturally, you’re hoping yours will be one of those pairs,” my sister said

evenly.

“Well, of course,” Paul de la Montaigne responded. He reached out and captured

Celeste’s hands. “So tell me: Is it true?”

My heart began to pound in hard and painful strokes.

Turn around and see for yourself
was all Celeste needed to say.

She never so much as glanced in my direction. Instead, she gave a laugh like a

chime of bright silver bells. “Surely you don’t expect me to answer a question like that,”

she said playfully. As if chastising a naughty child, she reached out to swat Paul de la Montaigne on one arm. “You don’t give away your family’s secrets, do you?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why should you expect me to give away mine?”

Celeste got to her feet, carefully gathering her silk skirts before Paul de la

Montaigne could reply. As if awakened from a dream, I started, clutched my own skirts in my hand, and darted around the arbor, out of sight.

“And now, if you’ll excuse me,” I heard Celeste go on, “I really must rejoin my

family. Belle is here somewhere, of course. But I wonder if you’ll be able to recognize her. Beauty is not always what you expect, you know.”

With her head held high, my sister walked out of the rose garden. I waited until a frowning Paul de la Montaigne had departed as well before leaving my hiding place. Any pleasure I’d felt that day had been completely spoiled.

Never before had I been used by another to inflict pain on somebody I loved.

More than anything in the world, I wished I had been brave enough to confront Paul de la Montaigne myself. But I was not.

And it would be a very long time, I thought, before I banished the image of

Celeste turning her own Beauty into a mask to hide her wounded heart.

CHAPTER EIGHT

The events of the de la Montaigne garden party marked a change in our household,

though I don’t think any of us realized how great a change at the time. The unhappiness, the sense of good intentions gone awry, came home with us and took up permanent

residence. It became one of us.

My mother did not make me go out again. Paul de la Montaigne’s name was no

longer mentioned in our house. When I tried to express my appreciation to Celeste for what she’d done, she simply turned and walked away. But whether this was because she was angry with me, or found the subject too painful to revisit, I could not tell.

Even the weather seemed out of sorts. That summer was the hottest any of us

could remember – fierce, blazing weather, so blistering some days that not so much as a breath of air seemed to be stirring. We could not sit outdoors at all, not even in the shade of the large oak tree in the yard.

Overnight, storm clouds would appear, sliding silently across the sky, though the wind that blew them never seemed to touch the ground. The clouds would hunker down for days, thick and black, as if determined to choke out the sky. On those days, the air would become so thick with moisture that breathing became an effort. But it refused to rain. Instead, we’d wake up one morning to find the storm clouds had gone and the scorching sun was back.

And so that long, strange summer turned into a tense and troubled autumn.

The signs that something serious was going on were small at first. Papa went to

his shipping office at the waterfront each morning and returned each evening with a furrowed brow. But slowly, as autumn changed to winter, the frown became a permanent addition to my father’s face, and he no longer went to his workshop after the regular day’s work was done.

Instead, Papa and Grand-père Alphonse spent their evenings together, poring over

sea charts. At night, as my sisters and I lay in bed, we could hear our parents’ voices melding together – Papa’s calm and steady; Maman’s rising sharply, then abruptly falling silent. It didn’t take a fortune-teller or a genius to read these signs.

Something was terribly wrong.

Papa’s ships weren’t returning as expected. It was as if the weather that had so

affected us was affecting all the globe. Usually, most of my father’s fleet of merchant vessels was safe in port by now. For soon it would be winter, the time to make repairs and plan for the new year. But without ships. Without even knowledge of their

whereabouts, Papa could make no plans for the future. Even worse, unable to sell the missing ships’ cargoes, my father could generate no income.

If it had been only a few ships that did not return, we might gave managed.

Shipping is a risky business even in the best of times. And my father is a careful man, always cautious not to overextend himself. But this was different – not a portion of that on which our livelihood depended, but all of it. A disaster so large, it was impossible to plan for.

If Papa had been a different sort of man, a greedy man, all might still have gone well with us. But he was not. My father felt keenly his responsibility to the families of the men who sailed for him, families who often struggled to make ends meet despite the decent wages paid to them by LeGrand, Delaurier and Company. Had not my father been a poor man, a poor sailor’s son? He would not let the families of his men struggle while his own family lived in luxury. For the truth was, they stood to lose far more than we did: fathers, husbands, sons.

First, Maman began to sell her jewelry. I gladly added the buckles that had so