Chapter One
Isabeau Claudia Ledeux was your average French-Canadian girl. Except for her locket. It had been in her family for countless generations, and with it was passed a story. Everyone in Lennoxville knew the story. How could they not? It was the tale of Beauty and the Beast. According to the version Isabeau learned, though, the prince, still in beast form, gave Belle a locket, not a magic mirror, with which to see her father, and her name was not "Belle," but "Isabeau." Each week, the beast would send for a new portrait of Isabeau's father to put in the locket.
When a portrait came showing her father as thin and sick, Isabeau begged for the beast to let her return to him, and nurse him back to health. The beast, having fallen in love with Isabeau's sweet, kind, but still imperfect ways, granted her wish. The beast also sent her a portrait of himself for her locket each week she was gone.
In her village, Isabeau had been the most beautiful of all. Each eligible young man had asked her to marry him, and each one had been refused.
One man in particular kept returning to her door. He came the day Isabeau's father was better, and started the farce of "saving" him from the insane asylum. The caretaker of which claimed Isabeau's father for wild tales of a beast in a castle through the woods. Isabeau showed Jean-Claude, the persistent man, and the asylum caretaker the locket, and the portrait of the beast inside. Jean-Claude asked her how this beast could be proven by a painting. Isabeau could not respond. Jean-Claude also brought up the question of whether or not the so-called "beast" was a threat to the village.
Isabeau was horrified. She assured Jean-Claude that the east was kind, and gentle, and that she loved him, but Jean-Claude wouldn't listen. He proposed the villagers storm the castle to see what was really there, and kill the beast if it existed.
Unknown to the gathering peasants, and Isabeau, the spell on the beast had been broken. He was now a handsome prince with fair hair, a strong build, and kind eyes. Because of this, when Isabeau and her village arrived, Jean-Claude announced that Isabeau's father really was mad, and that the only way to save him from the asylum was for Isabeau to marry him.
The prince knew that Isabeau loved her father more than anything, and insisted she marry Jean-Claude to save him. Isabeau looked from her prince to her father. When the prince kept insisting that he could not live with the guilt of letting her father be locked up, Isabeau, in tears, agreed to marry Jean-Claude.
As they went to leave, the prince came up to Isabeau and her loathed fiancé and whispered in her ear, "We will be together in the end. No matter what."
Jean-Claude heard this, and as soon as Isabeau was his wife, moved with her and her father to the other side of France, determined to keep the lovers apart.
The prince, named Nicolas, married and had a son who was named Nicolas, after his father. Isabeau and Jean-Claude had a daughter who they named Isabeau. For generations there were Isabeaus and Nicolas born. It was said the two families were separated further, though. During one of the wars with England, Nicolas's descendants moved to England and became nobility there, while Isabeau's family stayed in France.
When North America was settled, Isabeau's descendants volunteered to settle what is now a small town in French-Canada. Nicolas's family was part of the invading force that created British-Canada. By this time, people had started pronouncing the "s" in Nicolas, turning it into its English counterpart.
With this history lesson over, we shall return to our Isabeau, and her locket. For a few generations now, Isabeau's family had lost faith in the story they passed within their bloodline. The only proof they had was the locket, with a portrait of prince Nicolas, and all the other portraits that had been in the case. Now, I say all, but some were lost, damaged, or destroyed by accident. Still, about one hundred remained. The one in the locket could not be removed. Several generations of Isabeaus had tried, and failed, to replace the image inside.
Our Isabeau was one of the ones to have tried to remove the portrait. She had always loved her family's story, and wondered whether there was anything written in the locket, or on the back of the picture. Finding it stuck fast, she decided she would wear the locket everyday until it came out.
Little did Isabeau know that the picture would come out sooner than she thought…