CHAPTER 2: In which Belle consoles her father, and the Prince begins a painting.

He'd been human for about twenty-four hours, and the Prince really had almost no idea of what he looked like. In the gray morning light, he stood in front of the mirror posing, flexing, contorting — trying to learn how his body actually appeared. Belle watched him from the bed, admittedly not devoid of curiosity herself.

He was about six and a half feet tall. He had a warm complexion; a slender but strong build with very muscular arms and shoulders; not much body hair; V-shaped torso; thick lips; large eyebrows; Grecian nose; cowlick at his hairline. His navel was what would be termed an "innie." His teeth were mostly straight. His chin was prominent. His fingernails tended toward a round, flattened shape. His second toe was just infinitesimally longer than the first. His limbs were lithe and flexible. He could perceive a few imperfections in his looks, but as far as his physical failings, compared to the past ten years he was ready to forgive almost anything.

Belle was laying on her stomach, her hair hanging down. She was covered with a sheet — the rest of the bedclothes had all been knocked to the floor in the course of the night. As she watched her unexpectedly handsome spouse, a realization crossed her mind. There was no scar or scab anywhere on him, even though he had certainly been injured in the fight with Gaston on the prior day. "Weren't you hurt yesterday?" she asked.

The Prince's face depicted a moment of what might be either alarm or mere surprise. Fast as he could, he transformed it to a smile. "I healed when the spell was undone," he said. "You remember."

She thought she remembered him needing some medical attention after the fact, but, she didn't find herself dwelling on it. Obviously, whatever else happened hadn't been major.

With his attention back upon the beautiful, sheet-clad Belle, the Prince lost interest in the mirror. He placed himself at her side and embraced her, shivering from the sensation as he did so. No longer burdened with a thick coat of fur, it was a new ability for him to feel anything against his skin. He quite liked the feel of Belle against his skin.

Belle swiftly leaned in to kiss him. Automatically, without intending to, he pulled back.

Catching himself, he was embarrassed. "Sorry," he said. "The horns stuck out six inches in front of my face…" he explained, discomfited. "I'm used to that. I'd have probably put your eyes out before…"

Belle smiled and stroked his hair, trying to run the posited scene through her head. "You know, there were a couple of times when I wondered about what would happen if we'd tried…"

The Prince laughed in shock. "Really, Belle!"

"Didn't you?"

He seemed to cringe at the idea, though a slight upward twist of his mouth betrayed the answer. "I — uh, well — I couldn't imagine it going well," he replied, blushing. But the heart of the question stuck with him. He was amazed. "You would have, really, when I was a beast…?"

"If you'd married me as a beast," answered Belle cheerily.

He flopped onto his back as his eyes went wide: wow.

Belle cuddled up to him. "I didn't think there was another option! Why did you never tell me that you were…" She couldn't seem to find the right word.

"…Human?" he asked, finishing for her. He thought for a moment. "I suppose it just never came up. I never intended to conceal it." His recollection of those old thoughts, those old conversations, the old situation — it was bringing back the darkness, he could feel it. He hurried to stimulate a new pleasure before it could claim him again. Naughty and feisty, he seized Belle round her back and pinned her, grinning, faintly even growling like his old self. A smiling pair of hazel eyes gazed back at him.

A knock at the door startled them just at the point when it was still possible they could be stopped.

The couple exchanged a startled glance. Without any words, the Prince took up the task, rising from the mattress and closing the magenta bedcurtains around Belle to conceal her. He then searched the room for enough clothing to be able to decently answer the door in. His shirt was on the floor. He couldn't figure out how his breeches ended up on the chandelier but it must have made sense in the heat of things.

When at last he answered, the disrupter was revealed to be Cogsworth. The uptight English steward looked ragged, like he'd had no sleep and had instead been running marathons all night. And he hardly had the figure of a Pheidippides. What he did have was a black eye from a fist-fight on the previous evening — it's well known that it is never a real wedding till a fight breaks out.

Cogsworth, for his part, blinked in acknowledgement yet disbelief of this vibrant young man who had so suddenly taken the place of his master. "Good morning, sir. I am so, so sorry to have to trouble you this early," said the steward with a forced cheer. "I know that you and your bride must be very, uh… er…" He had to fight not to make an obscene pun.

"Well?" asked the master, amiably but visibly anxious to get back to what he'd been doing.

"There is a bit of an issue, which, under normal circumstances, would not be beyond my ability to handle. However, as we are not under a normal circumstance… we have a problem. A lot of the staff wish to resign from their positions. Quite a lot, all at once, as soon as possible. Practically all of them."

The Prince made a noise of surprise. "So? What's to be done?"

Cogsworth was always a nervous person, but he seemed especially frazzled at this moment. "Those of us who are staying will have to take up some additional tasks, until I can hire on more help. This might not be such a problem, of course, had the household been running in any sort of normal condition for the past ten years, instead of a mobocracy of furniture!" There was a touch of madness coming through in his tone. He was at the breaking point. "I thought it was best to inform you right away," he said, holding himself together, "because you might find that, all of a sudden, there are a lot fewer of us to help you."

The Prince had always lived in a large household. Did he have reason to worry about this new event? Was there something obvious he wouldn't be able to do without help? He tried to think, though his thoughts were cloudy, still halfway dreaming of Belle just a few feet behind him. Nothing obvious was occurring to him. "Very well, Cogsworth. Thanks for telling me. Glad for the heads up. Keep up the good work," he said mechanically, then rather abruptly disappeared behind the door and slammed it in the steward's face.

Cogsworth contemplated knocking again, for he had intended to convey some more information; but he could already hear the shaking and swaying of the bed inside and, with a wince, he decided he had better leave the master and mistress alone.

Some hours later, the newlyweds recognized their rudeness. They emerged from the bedroom and went together to find Maurice, who had been given a room in the castle after the unexpected wedding and its impromptu celebrations. They found him alone and occupying himself by tinkering with an old mantelpiece clock — the very one that had formerly been possessing the body of Cogsworth.

Maurice had managed to smile through the wedding festivities. He got on swimmingly with the castle's servants, and his happiness at his daughter's happiness was genuine. Still, the whole situation had been beyond stressful for the old man. For days he had been scared to death by the thought of Belle in the hands of the vicious monster who dwelled in this castle; the nine-foot shadow who slunk around the floor and extinguished flames just by entering a room. While there was certainly relief to discover that Belle had really been safe and sound and happy afterall, it was quite a disturbing thought to him that she had married that thing, and after such a brief courtship (if it could even be called that). Its transformation into a handsome young fellow softened the anxiety somewhat, but not enough. Adding to his consternation today was his observation of a dead body being fished from the moat; and it was someone he knew. Were it not for the sweetness of the servants and Belle's own adoring assurances, Maurice would have fled the castle screaming already.

The Prince stood by, striving to smile like a pleasant young man, as Belle invited her father to breakfast with them. Maurice accepted for her sake.

The place was a bit disordered after the celebrations of the prior day. The palace should have been bustling with servants going about the usual operations; but the mass exodus of the staff had left the place oddly empty, without even sentient furniture going about its business. The Prince was a little disturbed by the change; thankfully, his delight in having been recently made a human and a husband caused the abrupt alteration to seem more bearable.

Mrs. Potts had stayed on, for the time being. She greeted the new-made family in the dining room. Belle cheerfully introduced Maurice to her; though Mrs. Potts recalled that they had in fact met already.

"You were sitting in the master's chair in the drawing room," she said. "I was a teapot then. Can you believe it? How things change!"

"I can believe it," said Maurice. He cast another worried glance upon his son-in-law, who stood there, being tall and handsome like it was nobody's business.

A simple breakfast of tea, sugar, bread and fruit preserves was waiting to be claimed. Mrs. Potts had stood sentinel over it, so it wouldn't be devoured by someone else — for ten years, the master (and, more recently, his captive-guest) had been the only people in the place that needed to eat. Suddenly, the night before, over a hundred hungry mouths had been created with the breaking of the curse. The pantries were cleaned out. Cogsworth was frantically trying to arrange someone to go to the village for more supplies.

The Prince was much more interested in his new bride than in his father-in-law, but he decided he should try to make a fresh effort at friendship with the old man. Fortunately he had spent his recent days being trained through the equivalent of a charm school, so he had some idea how to go about it. He sat up very straight, smiled a lot, paid attention to anything Maurice had to say and tried to encourage him to say more. It didn't seem to be working.

After breakfast, Belle took the Prince aside. Smiling sweetly, it was plain upon her face she was distressed by something.

"Beast," she said, addressing her lover by the accustomed name, "my father seems unhappy. It has to have been hard for him, these last few days. Would it be alright if I spent some time with him alone? Please?"

"Of course. Why would I object?" said the Prince placidly. Truthfully he was already feeling separation anxiety and she wasn't even gone yet. But he would suffer for her!

Belle and her father went off together into the garden to talk. Alone, the Prince went to the window and happily began to watch them from inside; but soon Belle and Maurice became aware of his presence, and moved the meeting to a less visible part of the garden. Disappointed, the Prince stepped back. He used his sleeve to wipe his mashed faceprint from the window-glass.

With nothing else to do, he sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. The piece of paper crinkled against his hand.

Taking it out and looking at it, he could see in his minds eye the real image that it represented. In his youth, before the transformation, the Prince had been a veritable prodigy in art — and if he wasn't going to get to be a Prince thanks to that French Revolution business, he had to find something to do with himself. He had lost interest in art in the midst of beasthood and its accompanying trauma and illness; moreover he had lost the ability when his monstrous paws were unable to hold the tools needed for fine art. Now, capability restored, he wondered if he still had the knack for it.

"Mrs. Potts?" he called.

Mrs. Potts answered. He asked her if he still had any painting supplies in the house.

Mrs. Potts recalled that there were no more oil paints, but that they did have some watercolors tucked away. She showed him where they were, along with paint brushes and other such supplies.

"It's so exciting, isn't it?" she cried. "We all have hands again! Fingers and all!" Ten years she had been a teapot with no hands — touching things had suddenly become an exhilarating sensation. Cheerfully she pulled boxes down from a shelf, caressing them as lovingly as if they were pet chinchillas.

The Prince took his art supplies to an out of the way table, removed his coat, seated himself, and began wetting the long parched watercolors. Using his inkblots as a guide, he attempted to recreate the image that he really wanted. In about thirty minutes he had a finished watercolor. It was a disappointment to him in its appearance; however, the trouble was not with his own skill, but that watercolor was the wrong medium — the colors were weak and poorly blended, and the smallness of the paper did injustice to the immenseness of what he was seeing in his head. Nevertheless, he'd proven that he still could paint.

He began pondering how he could compel others to see what he was seeing…

…

Belle and Maurice walked in the garden of the castle. It was that transitional time of year; the plants weren't thriving, yet showed more life than their full-winter variants. Some heavy snow had recently come down to damage any premature bloom.

Father and daughter talked about pleasant and trivial things. The elephant in the room, or rather garden, was the Prince. Maurice really was endeavoring to get along with the man, but just wasn't seeing what Belle saw in him.

"I suppose I should be heading back to the village soon," said Maurice.

"Papa, no!" Belle exclaimed. "They were trying to have you sent to the madhouse! How can you think of going back there?"

He smiled reassuringly. "Well, I've been 'crazy old Maurice' ever since your mother died, Belle. I'm used to it. Besides," he added, a note of disturbance in his voice, "I saw them, fishing what was left of Gaston out of the moat today. I don't think he will be anymore trouble. Ah — what a way to go!"

Belle put a hand to her mouth in disbelief. In all her elation for the Prince's miraculous escape from death and the joys of her new marriage, she hadn't realized someone had actually been killed in the prior night's events. Gaston was dead! While she didn't like him, she had known him; and she found herself feeling sorry for him.

Maurice could see the upset this revelation had caused Belle. He remembered there was a time when he thought Belle and Gaston might make a good couple — indeed, everyone in the village had thought they could be a fantastic pair, like they could be such a vibrant young husband and wife. How wrong he had been! Yet this thought sparked a ray of hope in his breast, for if he had been wrong in his favorable feelings about Gaston, perhaps he was also wrong in his sinking feelings that the Prince was a bad match for her.

He smiled consolingly and put his arm on Belle's back. "The Prince will make you very happy, I'm sure," he said. "You don't need me around here all the time, blowing up the castle with my inventions, sitting in on your conversations…"

"Oh, papa! It's not like that — "

He motioned for her to pipe down. "It's fine, it's perfectly fine. The village is only a few hours walk from here. We'll still visit each other plenty! Don't you worry. Philippe's still a sturdy horse, I can ride him up here, no problem at all."

The reality was hitting Belle that she would never be coming back to her old home in the village, to her father's little cottage — or at least, it would never be her home again. There was a pang of regret for what she had lost; but the tears that stung at her eyes were ultimately those of joy. She had a new life in this delightful castle to look forward to, with her wonderful new husband.

When Belle and Maurice came inside, they found the Prince in the kitchen, talking to Cogsworth. The steward was writing up a shopping list of things to acquire in town.

"…The largest you can find," said the Prince, gesturing something very large with his arms. "And lots of it. I'll need several bolts. In fact — just buy them out, anything they have available."

Cogsworth inked in the order onto the list. He was having a frazzling day already, and this list was adding befuddlement to the pile. "And the paints?"

The Prince answered rapidly. "Orpiment. Naples yellow. Burnt umber. Bone black. Mummy black — it must be mummy black, no other. Again, as much as you can get. Buy them out. And lead white, probably… ten pounds will suffice." The Prince, plainly deep in concentration on his project, looked up and across the room as if he were gazing upon a mural. Peering at his imaginary canvas, he caught sight of Belle and Maurice. His concentration broke, and he smiled at his bride.

Belle smiled back, but her eyes betrayed her amazement at this new action. "I hope we're not interrupting?" she said with a giggle in her voice.

Maurice knew enough of art and science to recognize what kind of items the Prince listed. "Are you making a painting?" he asked, surprised.

The Prince seemed a little embarrassed. "Yes. It… well… I used to paint. Most of the paintings in this castle are my own. I thought I should get back into it, now that I can."

"You must be planning to stock a museum, with that much paint!" said Maurice.

"It's one large painting," he replied, a note of pride in his voice for his fantastic idea.

"A painting of what?" asked Belle, curious.

The Prince hesitated to answer. "It's difficult to describe… it will make sense once it's painted, I hope." He was drifting off into the dreams of his artwork and suddenly had to pull himself back into reality. "It's not important right now. It won't be ready for a while."

Cogsworth shakily spoke up. "Er — madam? Mistress? Milady?" He wasn't sure what to call Belle all of a sudden. "Is there anything you would like us to purchase in town? Food? Supplies? A new set of bedsheets?"

Belle had nothing to add, but Maurice had a thought: "If someone is heading for the village, we could ride out together. Safety in numbers!"

This was determined to be a splendid idea. Maurice said his goodbyes to his daughter and his terrifying new son-in-law, and hastened to prepare for his journey in company of the horse-groom who was acting as errand-boy.

As Belle and the Prince returned upstairs, the new bride marveled at this discovery that her Beast was also an artist. "I never knew that you painted!" she remarked.

"It's something I used to do, when I was young. I made paintings," he said, hooking his arm around her waist. "And if you'd like to come back to the bedroom I can show you some of them!"

"Do you really have paintings there, or are you just trying to get me back to the bedroom?" she asked, in a skeptical tone, though smiling.

"Both!" the Prince answered eagerly. He swept her off her feet and hauled the laughing little beauty to the bedroom.

…

Belle seemed to learn something new about her husband every day — a more multifaceted character than she had ever expected to find in the Beast. They were so happy together! With most of the servants gone, the castle did seem overwhelming at times, but it also afforded the couple so much privacy and so much excuse to get to know one another. She really felt like she had found her heaven. She was no longer the town oddball being gawked at and gossiped about as she walked along gawking and commenting right back — there was no town to be concerned about at all now. And her handsome young husband was utterly devoted to her — even to find himself out of her earshot distressed him. On those rare occasions when she needed a break from him notwithstanding, there was an enormous library in the castle with more books than she could read in a lifetime. Belle found she could visit with the remaining servants when she needed a different sort of conversation than the carefree lover's talk she found with the Prince, whom she still always knew as her Beast. Time flew as she settled into her new life — a strange, happy existence which was different than what she had imagined for herself, but nothing she would complain about. Her Beast, though literally a different person than she had originally met, appeared happy. The castle was no longer enchanted, but it was rapidly becoming her home, filled with her clothing, her books, her toiletries. She could even go into the once-forbidden West Wing whenever she liked, not that there was much to see now that her husband had moved into the East Wing with her.

"Too many bad memories in the West Wing," he had muttered on their wedding night as they had rushed to select a bedroom, due to all the servants screaming at them to "get a room" as if the ballroom wasn't a room.

One of the few things they regretted in the new situation was the loss of certain friends from the household. Lumiere and Babette had quit the day following the transformation, as had Omphale and most others. Even the dog had quit — it felt that it had better growth potential in the company of one of the scullery girls, who was moving to Saint-Lô. Yet, along with Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts was still employed, and by extension her son Chip as well as his "brothers and sisters" — an honorific denomination, for only Chip was the biological child of Mrs. Potts. The others were young servants, having originally been adopted as playmates for the boy Prince. Under the curse, the Prince had aged to adulthood whilst they had not, rendering their purpose unnecessary. Still, it was nice to have them around to keep some life in the castle, which otherwise was left with fewer than ten staff members and a feeling of being very desolate indeed.

The other major thing Belle needed to adjust to was sleeping alongside a man who was a poor sleeper. Though one would expect him to be exhausted after his energetic days, he never liked to go to sleep and would instead rise from bed to sketch, or to read, or to sit and stare at the fireplace. If sleep did overtake him, he was restless, and tended to wake from it startled, as if from a nightmare.

And then, the day came when a group of hired workmen came into the castle carrying 80-foot long wooden beams.

Belle had been reading La Fontaine's fables when she saw them. She lost interest in The Miller, Son and the Ass and instead went to investigate what this was about.

The beams were being carefully maneuvered to the room known as the Great Hall, which had the highest ceilings in the castle. In that room, most of the furniture had been cleared. The Prince, dressed in a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, his hair tied back, was directing the movers.

"Lay them in a square," he commanded. He oversaw the action as the pieces were carefully arranged upon the floors. The workers then went back out to haul in further pieces. As they passed by the attractive Belle, several smiled and made eyes at her.

The Prince observed this. He bristled. "That's Madame Capet!" he snapped at them, in a tone that warned they must stay away from her.

The workmen hurried to continue the task they were assigned. Belle was almost more alarmed by the realization that her name was now "Madame Capet" than she was by the jealousy Monsieur Capet had just shown. Still — what was his problem? Did he really think she'd leave him for the workmen?

When Belle came into the Hall to see what was going on, her husband softened up like warm butter, and naturally slathered himself all over her. Taking her by the hand, he proudly showed her his project.

Belle was astonished. Something about it disquieted her, and she couldn't figure out exactly why. "It's enormous!" she exclaimed, realizing the canvas was barely going to even fit in the room.

"Exactly," said the Prince. "We have to get the supports laid out, to be glued and nailed together. Once that's done, I'll stretch the canvas. Then I have to lay down the ground, which should take a week or so. And when that's dry, I can start painting. And that's the important part!"

Belle felt like she was back home with her father as he plotted some crazy new invention.

…