CHAPTER 21
BELLE gaped in disbelief at Agathe now calmly standing before her, as though this were commonplace practice for her to be standing within the enclosed walls of the Prince's West Wing.
"I…I don't…Agathe, I—I never…" she stammered, opening her mouth to speak, but all that came out was a little squeak of surprise as she clamped a hand over her mouth in shock.
Agathe picked up on Belle's growing confusion and chuckled, motioning for Belle to come forward with a wave of her arm.
"Please, do come in, I shan't harm you nor do I bite, pretty Belle, but you know that," she said, almost mocking as she turned her head this way and that, as though searching for something in particular. Or someone, Belle guessed, that someone, of course, is the very master of the castle.
Who, Belle could not help but notice, was notoriously absent. She furrowed her brows in shock as she looked at Agathe, wondering if her mind's eyes were playing a cruel trick on her.
For how could a beggar woman slip in unnoticed, into the Prince's private quarters?
None of this was making any sense.
"H—How?" she squeaked, not sure what else to say now. "I—I thought that the Prince's men, they—they took you, arrested you, so pray to tell me, how is it that you are now with me, Agathe? A—and why did you come? You shouldn't be here, my lady, if the master finds you!" Belle stammered, horrified at the thought of what the creature in his volatile temper would do, causing her to raise her eyebrows as she was wordlessly led out by Villeneuve's resident beggar woman towards the stone balcony's terrace.
Agathe did not speak but merely motioned for Belle to join her up on the cold stone bench on which she had now perched herself. Agathe shook her head no as she toyed with the ends of her headscarf.
"No, child. I must correct you in that regard, my dear," She clucked her tongue as though disappointed with Belle's assessment of what had happened. "The Prince's men were, in the skirmish our dear Gaston created in the effort to save your life, shall we say, distracted at the time and preoccupied with not losing their own limbs." She let out a sigh and looked away. "Shall we say, it gave me ample opportunity to make an escape?"
Belle stiffened and drew in a sharp breath that pained her lungs that had nothing to do with the frigid cold air as a dark shadow flitted across the older woman's face for a moment that, she was sure, yes, she was sure, made her monstrous.
"And, Agathe…? What happened? Why…why are you here?" Belle prodded gently, hoping she would continue explaining and provide her with an adequate enough answer as to why she was here, and more importantly, how she had managed to sneak onto the castle's grounds undetected.
It only then occurred to her as she was posing her follow-up question to the older woman, that Belle had gone with Gaston at the time and the two of them had not lingered to see what had become of Agathe.
She could not explain it, but she was hit just then with a wave of almost crippling guilt, as she shot the beggar woman a furtive, guilty look and silently tried to apologize with her eyes, the damaged nerve muscles in her cheek twitching and sending swells of pain throughout her facial muscles as she did so.
Belle winced in discomfort and sharply turned her head away, hoping she'd not noticed. But Agathe, ever the intuitive woman, did, as it happened. Agathe shifted in her seat, her expression changing only slightly as the beggar woman had the impudence to raise her eyebrows at the young mademoiselle, both in surprise and awe.
Well, of course, Maurice's beloved daughter would ask her that. What else had she been expecting Belle to ask her? She certainly could not tell the truth, at least not all of it. Events still had yet to unfold.
A half-truth, Agathe secretly decreed, would be best.
As if to emphasize the point she was about to make, the beggar woman allowed her gaze to wander back inside towards the interior of the West Wing, her gaze lingering upon an oil portrait, ruined, by the Beast-Prince's newly turned claws, no doubt, of himself. Behind which rested a passageway door.
Agathe pointed. "A passageway, pretty Belle, is how I came here," she sighed, sounding tired. "I never left. The passageway within, behind the portrait, is how I come and go unnoticed."
She shrugged her shoulders in what she hoped was a casual manner, though Agathe found it difficult not to chuckle a bit at the young woman's flabbergasted expression as Belle's inquisitive dark eyes followed her gaze and lingered on that of the ruined painting.
A light seemed to ignite in her eyes as she nodded, the beginning of comprehension in her expression.
Belle slowly nodded her head at all of the information, though her mind felt like it was reeling as she pieced together the bits of information Agathe was feeding her.
"Underground tunnels…" she whispered, suddenly itching to move the portrait off the wall and explore it.
Agathe nodded, but then scrunched her nose in disgust.
"Ah, crypts would be a more accurate term to describe it, but yes," she confessed, a wary smile flitting across her features as the edges of her mouth turned up as she looked at Belle, her catlike green eyes narrowed but twinkling. "Your new master, my lady, is…much changed, isn't he? The Prince?" she asked, and it did not escape Belle's attention how the beggar woman's voice carried a slight mocking lilt and a hint of disgust within.
Belle blinked in alarm at that as she slowly swiveled her gaze to look their resident beggar woman of Villeneuve in her eyes, alarmed to see such a look of hatred within her pale green irises.
"Ah…" Belle let her voice trail off as she struggled to collect her thoughts.
She could think of nothing else to say other than the honest truth.
"Yes," she admitted, nervously twisting the skirts of her gown, and then fidgeting with a loose lock of her dark hair. "But…" Belle paused as she shifted on her spot on the cold bench, turning at the waist slightly to better look Agathe in the eyes. "Though I don't understand how he came to be…changed," she said after a pause, not wishing to use the word cursed, "I believe that I might be able to help him, as I shan't be going home," she said, her voice teeming with anticipation and resolve.
Agathe's face fell in confusion.
"My dear. I do not understand," she began.
Before Belle had a chance to open her mouth to speak, much less react, Agathe's left hand shut out and she cupped Belle's chin in her hand with a surprisingly firm grip as she tilted Belle's face to the side to study Ser Laurent's grisly handiwork. She clucked her tongue in disapproval as her brows knitted together in a scowl.
"Look at what he has done to you, Belle, you cannot possibly wish to stay after that?" she sighed, fixing Belle with a rather pointed glower that sent a chill of fear and something else unidentifiable down her spine. "When Gaston returns…" She tried to make her case in the man's absence, though of course, she knew full well of the incident by the gate from the other day, Gaston seeing his friend so changed.
Agathe recognized the dark foreboding look in the man's eyes. She sensed the humiliated military captain was planning something, though what that was, only he was privy to such knowledge.
"He will come for you," she tried to reassure her.
But Belle could not bear to listen to a plea for which she had everything to do with and didn't allow Agathe to say the words.
"He won't be coming back. It was I who sent him away." She shook her head numbly, trying to send away the stricken and heartbroken look on Gaston Dupont's face away in her mind.
Agathe thought to ask why, though for a moment, the beggar was stricken as the deep roots of Belle's pain shown in her sad eyes. Agathe's heart very nearly cried out for the poor girl, and the question of, "Why?" died upon her tongue at that moment. She had seen for herself the extent of the Prince's cruelty. His new form and label of Beast was a fitting enough punishment.
Belle had hidden her sorrow and pain well enough, though Agathe was no fool. She knew the dutiful façade she showed the rest of the castle's servants, and, she supposed, to a lesser extent, the master. The look Belle gave off now hid a broken heart that was, with her ruined face, perhaps now beyond hope of repairing.
Agathe now feared just how correct she had been. She opened her mouth to speak, and then closed it again, as her eyes drifted and lingered upon Belle's scar that marred her cheek, flinching.
It was a shocking thing, the young woman's scar, to see upon first glance.
To see such a striking contrast of the pinkness of the jaggedness of the scar given to her by the guard's uneven hand against such pale bone-white skin. The single laceration was deep, stretching from the beginning of her nose, just below her right browbone, and traveled diagonally across her cheek, horrible, red, and jagged.
Permanent. Agathe visibly shirked at how deep the cut went, and she silently cursed herself for her lack of tact as the younger woman noticed it. A tiny sob could be heard, though Belle sent it away with a rough, painful swallow.
Belle's posture stiffened in response and ducked her head, allowing a dark curl of her hair to tumble in front of her face, swallowing down hard past a growing lump in her throat as it hallowed, feeling like it was cutting off air to her passageways.
Agathe marveled at her courage.
She had initially made her presence known to present to Belle an offer: to take her home.
That she did not have to stay. But she could see now, Maurice's daughter seemed to have no intentions of allowing anything to tear her away from her duties towards the Prince, or her promise. Nevertheless, Agathe would present her case, though she had a suspicion that she already knew of the young woman's answer.
"It sickens me, pretty Belle, to think of what he put you through," she hissed, almost spitting her words through gritted teeth as her gaze lingered a bit uncomfortably long on Belle's scar.
She did not tell Belle that, as she lingered on the property, hidden underneath the passageways, lurking through the hallways at the witching hour, silent as the phantasm she could turn herself to be when she was of a mind to, that she knew Belle was awakening in her nights, terrified by her own nightmares.
Belle's voice would not come to her as she fought against the onslaught of tears. She instead glanced down at her lap and studied her shaking fingers, an anguished frown settling over her features as she struggled to collect her thoughts, to think of something to say that would appease the woman's curiosity.
A nod of her head was all Belle could manage to answer her.
"I know it must be very painful for you, sweet child, being here." Agathe continued speaking, empathetic to Belle's suffering as she looked around the balcony with no small measure of disdain and contempt. "Especially with Monsieur Gaston…gone at the moment. But he will return, of that, I'm sure." Agathe paused and studied the young woman seriously.
"What about you?" Belle questioned, unable to keep the note of curiosity from seeping its way unbidden to the surface of her voice. "You live the streets of our village. Gaston is your familiar, my lady. Surely, you must have some knowledge of whatever it is Gaston hopes to accomplish?" she asked, coolly.
Much to her dismay and chagrin, Agathe regretfully shook her head.
"I'm afraid not, my dear. Only that man and perhaps his short little friend, LeFou, remains privy to such knowledge." Agathe shot Belle a somewhat apologetic look.
Belle felt her blood chill in her veins. Originally, she had wanted the Prince to suffer, perhaps even dead, for the cruelty he had inflicted upon not just her, but others throughout his reign as Prince of these lands as well. But now, considering what she knew of the man, that brief snippet into his past the strange magical book had allowed her a glimpse of, she wasn't so sure.
She was beginning to understand the man's father had controlled and manipulated the Prince throughout his entire life. It was difficult for Belle to imagine being raised in a family where such hatred and betrayal were normal in a household. She would have given almost anything to have her beloved mother returned to her, and to her papa. She had always been surrounded by love, even when it was just herself and Maurice.
But now, she understood that was different for the Barreau's.
Belle could scarcely imagine such a horrible upbringing, and suddenly, she was afraid. Afraid of what would become of the servants if she were to leave. Afraid that her master, uncouth and arrogant though he could be, would slip further into madness if left alone to the dark swirling tempest of his own cursed mind.
A thought ran through her mind, fully formed, but dangerous.
If she stayed, what then, would happen if she were to befriend him?
Or at the very least, attempt to be cordial with each other and hope that they would cease this behavior of not ripping the other's throat out and snarling every time they encountered one another. Belle firmly believed the Beast-Prince, whatever he was these days, was underneath his Changeling form, a man.
A man whose missing piece was affection. Affection, yes, and perhaps even…love. She startled a bit at that, wondering how in God's name she was meant to provide that for him, but at the very least, she wished to see his servants suffer no longer at his hands. Or claws, rather, if she was being completely honest with herself.
As his heath keep, she swore that as long as she remained under this castle's roof as his servant, he would not be exposed to the same malice and hostility in which his father had given him.
Perhaps…if she made more of an effort to be kind, there was a chance then, that the Prince could change, that his servants, Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, Chip, and the rest, could be saved.
She owed them that much, if nothing else, at a minimum.
Agathe read Belle's worried expression as her gaze studied her.
"Fear not." She tried to calm the younger woman's worries. "Rest assured, I know not what Gaston is planning, though I do not believe he would so readily abandon the woman he loves…" She almost let herself chuckle as she watched Belle stiffen. Agathe continued, intrigued to hear the girl's thoughts of the handsome soldier boy that paraded about the streets of the Villeneuve who made boastful claims Belle would be his. "You have brought about a welcome change in Monsieur Dupont, Belle, whether or not you realize it for yourself. You have allowed him to recognize and realize himself. You are bringing about his true nature. You could begin again anew."
Belle flinched, no longer able to stomach even Agathe's best attempts to bring her a small modicum of hope and comfort. She shook her head, numbly, tucking back a lock of hair back behind her ear and fixed Agathe with a pointed glower that for a moment, rendered the beggar woman mute in both awe and shock.
"He won't be coming back, Agathe," Belle reassured her. The young brunette raised her cheerless eyes to meet Agathe's hardened gaze, already certain of what she had declared. "I do not want him to come back," Belle reiterated, her tone clipped.
"Why?" Agathe's curiosity was piqued. "You yourself have seen firsthand that even with armed but a sword, no man can best him, he could easily take you away from this place," she promised, wondering what the girl's intentions were.
She thought she had Belle figured out, but she could see now, there were bits to Maurice's daughter that remained an enigma.
Belle shook her head slowly by way of response as her expression grew contemplative, remembering Gaston's stance and expert form as the steel of his sword cut down his opponents.
How he had slaughtered half of the Prince's guards…for her.
The thought alone sent a shudder down her spine, and she shivered, clenching her teeth, and squeezing her eyes shut, trying to send away the horrid visual images of that fateful night from her mind. How she wished that were all that was troubling her.
"Gaston I am well aware can fend for himself, my lady," Belle murmured flatly as she asserted her belief to the older woman. "That is not why I wish to stay," Belle began, sounding hesitant.
Agathe all but scoffed and this time, the older woman did roll her eyes at the direction Belle was taking her suggestion. "You cannot be, can you? You cannot possibly have me believe that you would willingly wish to stay with a man who did this to you?" she decried her notion as she gestured towards her cheek.
Agathe shook her head. "I do not understand, my child, help a simple beggar woman like me to understand," she questioned, growing utterly alarmed, truly, for the first time since these events had been set in motion, at the baffling direness of her expression, and the solemnity in which Belle looked at her.
Agathe dropped her hands from around Belle's arms and fixed the young mademoiselle with a scrutinizing, almost rueful stare.
"You couldn't be, can you?" she breathed, sounding awestruck.
"What?" Belle exclaimed sourly as her eyebrows crumpled, flinching as Agathe held her cheek with such a tender concern, her gaze lingering on the ruined side of her face with a look that was akin to empathy.
Belle thought that she could hardly stand it.
"You're beginning to care for him. For your master." Agathe was almost smiling at her, shooting her a knowing little look that suggested Agathe knew more than she was letting on to Belle that was beginning to make Maurice's daughter feel quite uncomfortable. Claustrophobic even, out here on the terrace now.
Belle felt what little color was left in her face drain at Agathe's matter-of-fact statement and since then fretted uncontrollably.
She did not know how to laugh or condemn Agathe's thoughts. Of course, she was not beginning to grow to care for her master. It was not affection, how could it be so early? Belle tried to tell herself, tormenting herself in the process. It was but a spur-of-a-moment feeling, brought on to her by the events that the book had chosen to show.
Cold. Apathetic. And temporary, until the Beast sent her home.
"Wh—what?" Belle mused, pretending to feign ignorance all the while steadily hoping to control the reddening of her face. "I'm not…how could I possibly grow to care for the Prince?" She spoke the words as though they were genuine, but the way she bolted to her feet and backed away several paces from Agathe, brushing her hands on the skirts of her gown, searching for an escape, suggested to Agathe she spoke a different story.
And it was then and there that Belle swore that Agathe's unnerving means of staring at her, which felt like her piercing stare was boring a hole straight through her eyes, those windows to her soul, wasn't tethered on the mood and Belle abhorred this.
"Then don't start to, my dear," Agathe spoke, shattering the thick and uncomfortable silence that was growing in the cold air.
"Wh-what?" Belle repeated, feeling certain she had misheard as she measured the beggar woman's words to her. She wasn't entirely sure she had heard Agathe right, or if it was the older woman who had actually spoken.
But who else could it be, her mind rationalized?
The calm and serious manner in which her statement was uttered had Belle probing Agathe for more.
"I beg of you, Belle," Agathe almost appealed to the Prince's hearth keep. "Do not let your faith in Monsieur Dupont quit you so soon. Despite what you think of him, he does care for you. I think, deep down, he always has, even if he's not the best at showcasing his true emotions. He hides behind his posturing like armor," Agathe reassured Belle.
"He claimed he loved me the last time, it was not enough to protect me from this," Belle choked in a voice trembling with emotion as she raised a shaking hand to her face and allowed the pads of her fingertips to just barely graze the surface of her scar, her tears beginning to fall despite her best efforts not to.
Agathe's silence ignited the fire welling within Belle's chest. Surely, it could not be the kindly young beggar woman of her village to have made such a cutting remark on her aspirations.
Her face reddened in both shock and anger as she shook her head.
"He put you up to this, somehow, didn't he, Agathe? Gaston, he—he sent you here to talk to me, was that it?" she questioned. "The master, Agathe, no one truly knows him," Belle heard herself speak in a voice laced with spice and offended. "The people, they've heard stories of the Prince, I know that. But none of you truly know the master, the things he's been through."
"And you do?" Agathe fired back without missing a single beat.
"I could," Belle confessed in a surprised tone, surprised to hear herself admit it. "This curse to be broken, he needs affection. Nobody else knows the nightmares he was forced to endure, the fear and struggle, the abuse that he suffered at the Duke—"
"My dear Belle, stop this—" Agathe started to say but was cut off when Belle angrily interjected and held up a dismissive hand.
Belle frowned and did not let her continue, violently shaking her head no.
"No, you stop it, Agathe! I do not want Gaston to return, I want nothing from that man, from now on, and forever! I gave him an order, he claims to be a 'good soldier,' then he'll follow it! You go away, you go back to the village and tell him this: stay away!"
Belle's voice escalated and her throat hallowed when Agathe reached out to embrace her. Even Belle was having a difficult time explaining away the sudden need to be so defensive and hurt on behalf of the master of the castle, considering it all.
"Oh, my dear sweet thing, I am sorry. I'm sorry…" Agathe shushed Belle soothingly, rocking her with her arms draped protectively over her like her own mother would have, God, bless her soul.
Belle was shaking her head incredulously, even she herself was nursing a bit of shock at her own temper tantrum just now.
Where in God's name had that little outburst come from?!
There was still the faintest whiff of hope that her new life with Prince Adam du Barreau of Paris would turn out alright, in the end, that the Prince would see the error of his ways and allow her to return home to her Papa, but something she could finally settle in, if not, and be content enough in knowing her wages allowed her father to live a comfortable if not relatively modest lifestyle.
She closed her eyes. I'm tired of false hopes and of running.
Agathe let out a haggard sigh as she finally broke them off and wiped at Belle's face with her sleeves, shaking her head. "My lady, if you truly believe this is the best life offered to you now, then you are sorely mistaken. Maurice, Belle, he needs you."
Belles' eyes were red-rimmed and cracked at the edges, her brows creased, the furrow between them deepening.
"What?"
Agathe turned her head away, causing a pit to form in Belle's stomach.
There was something her father's friend was keeping from her, a secret. Belle realized with a sickening sense of dread as Agathe turned her head back around to look at Belle intently.
"Listen to me carefully, child." Agathe shuffled towards the entryway of the West Wing, urging Belle to come closer, no doubt as the beggar woman was making a beeline for the portrait that hid the passageway that would take her through the tunnels. "Would you truly be a fool to believe I was sent here to see you with no reason?"
"Sent?" Belle whispered, utterly confused. "B-but I thought—"
"Yes, yes, I know what I said. That I've always been here. I am afraid I lied to you, Belle," Agathe interrupted before Belle could get a word in edgewise.
"W—why? Someone…someone put you up to this?" she asked.
Agathe nodded, confirming Belle's suspicions and this only caused the knot forming in her stomach to twist even further until Belle thought she might be horribly sick, but she fought against the urge as she shook her head vehemently to herself.
"Me coming here was no minor coincidence, child. I did promise your father that I would look after you, and this too was a great burden lifted off of D'Arque's shoulders, he's been after your father for far too long. I had to come—" Agathe began, but Belle once again cut the beggar off, preventing her from talking.
"D'Arque? The owner of the insane asylum?" Belle cut her off. "All along you had been kept with the likes of that evil man?" Belle asked, regarding Agathe in shock with hurt and betrayal.
Agathe offered a slight incline of her head, though she looked ashamed to be admitting this next part to Belle as the pair of women now stood affront the Prince's ruined portrait.
"Like it or not, pretty Belle, the man saved me, Belle. I owe him my life."
"He—he saved you a—and sent you here, for—for what?" Belle asked, confused.
The air around them seemed dense, rendering her feeling dizzy.
"For me to bring you home." Agathe sighed and eyed Belle guardedly, as though Belle were a wild tigress in a cage, ready to pounce. "My child, I know that it is most difficult for you to take all this in right now, but we are here to rescue you and bring you home to Maurice. A few of D'Arque's men await you at a definite place altogether, on the outskirts of the Wolves' Woods, awaiting your arrival in a black carriage, it was part of the arrangement D'Arque and I agreed upon," Agathe hastily replied.
"Please. Just stop..." A single tear escaped Belle's lid. "I—I don't think I have the comprehension for this right now, Agathe."
She took a step back, shaking her head and wishing to be alone. The sour fresh memories of enduring the monstrosity that was the Prince alone were beginning to flit through her tormented mind—one that she had promised her papa to survive and was surviving more or less alone.
Though with the three Heads of Household for company, she supposed that wasn't entirely true, was it? And when Belle had finally given up on hopes of rescue and honor, then here it came, crashing like a tidal wave, and now, Belle was even more shocked to discover, that she did not want it. She was going to keep her word to the Prince.
"Agathe, I am…terribly sorry that you have kept yourself prisoner here, that you have put yourself at great risk just to speak to me tonight," Belle hastily began, painfully wringing her fingers together in front of her middle, watching with awe as Agathe removed the ruined portrait off the wall with relative ease, her eyes widening in shock at the gaping hole in the wall that did in fact, look to lead down into a sloping tunnel. "But I will not go with you," she announced, making her final declaration to the beggar woman before Agathe could protest. "I have no interest in being rescued. I made the master of the castle a promise and I intend to see it through. I promised the Prince, Agathe, I would have you respect my choices," she stated empathetically. "I would have you take back to Monsieur D'Arque, and Gaston, for that matter, a message, if it pleases you, Agathe," she asked, turning a cool glare to her.
"Anything, Belle," Agathe acquiesced, barely hiding her triumphant smirk from Belle as it was, hopeful that she might of somehow be of help in building a connection between the damaged cursed Prince of these lands and Maurice's daughter.
Belle took in a moment's breath and steadied herself, desirous of giving off the appropriate emphasis to her meaning. She did not want Agathe to take in her words or misinterpret them at all.
Then her eyes turned steely, narrowing to daggers.
"You need to make Gaston understand, that if he reneges on his word to me again and dares to attempt to rescue me when I do not want it…" Belle's tone was frosty and left nothing for Agathe to misinterpret it. "Then he will wish that he had never met me," she swore, Belle's ruined face never changing from her mask of cold anger, as she turned and stormed out of the Prince's West Wing.
Agathe was left alone to stand in the midst of the secret passageway's entrance, watching Maurice's daughter go, wearing an odd little warped smile on her face as she chuckled.
"Belle, Belle, pretty Belle," she chuckled with a slight cackle as she turned on her heels and disappeared into the darkness of the passageway, to do as Belle requested and give the man the news. "You might survive your Prince yet," she whispered with a smile.
DARK eyes opened sleepily at the rapping on the windowsill the following morning. The cold breeze was unruly as Belle's hair. Belle let herself have a few more blinks to rid the edges of her eyes from the crust of sleep that accumulated there throughout the night before rethinking the events of last night with Agathe that had led her to her bed without changing into her night robe. The rims of her eyes were heavy and sore.
She'd more or less cried herself to sleep, screaming into her pillow to muffle the sounds of her frustration, but she was grateful for her dreamless sleep. Thankful of not seeing Mother looking down at her when she was but three, stroking her brow, before the fever took her, or Father kissing her on the forehead, showing off his latest trinket.
She missed them. Missed them so terribly but the thought of seeing Papa again hadn't filled her eyes with tears as she thought it would as perhaps, she had cried enough, her tears now spent.
Why? Was the thought that plagued her mind as she propped herself up on an elbow, fully roused from sleep, staring at the nothingness of the bleak cold stone chambers surrounding her.
So much time with her Papa she was losing, she thought in dismay, that thought alone nearly causing a fresh bout of tears to well up in her eyes, though even that gesture had been denied her.
Belle's gaze, as she dressed for the day and ran a hairbrush through her hair before securing it in place with a blue ribbon, was drawn towards the Beast's book on the table that was shoved along the opposite end of her chamber's wall. She stared at it, the beginnings of a tentative plan starting to form within her mind.
For reasons she could not explain, her legs began to move of their own accord once she was fully dressed for the day and her hands picked up the book the Beast had loaned her and held it close to her chest as she darted towards the door, wishing to find him and speak to him.
She thought she knew exactly how to reach the Prince, Belle thought excitedly, as she darted out the door and down the hall in search of the master of the castle, a fully-formed plan already formed in her mind as she called for him.