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what he wants—whatever it is—perhaps he will let me go. Perhaps I will find a way to escape.  
    I have brought this on myself. I knew that this was enchantment, and I went inside anyway. If this is the price I pay to keep it from touching my sisters, then so be it.
    “Please,” she said wearily, no longer able to focus on the big things, and so seeking refuge in the small ones, “are there any clean clothes to be had?”
    “You will have to ask the house,” said the Beast.

CHAPTER SIX

    The Beast left her alone for a few minutes with a basin of water and some soap. When she turned around, there were dresses laid across the sofa, great frothy concoctions of silk and lace and seed pearls, and Bryony began laughing, with a great deal of bitterness to be sure, but still, laughter. That had always been her great gift and her besetting sin, that even in the darkest and most somber times, she had the urge to laugh.  
    She had very nearly disgraced herself at her father’s funeral by laughing, but since laughter looks much like tears if you keep your face covered, she had managed to pull it off.
    The dresses, though…
    “Good lord, no,” she said. “Oh dear. I’m sorry. There is nothing there that I can wear. I would need ten maids to do up the buttons on that one, and I plan to ride a horse home. Find me a robe that I can wear until my pants dry, and that will do very well for me.”
    She was talking out loud to a house. It was a measure of how wearing the day had been that this no longer seemed unusual.  
    When she went to the hearth to spread her wet pants and undergarments before the fire, there was a robe hanging from the coatrack, next to her cloak. She took it down. It was dark pink and made of some plush fabric that would undoubtedly pick up every speck of lint and stray hair in the world. At the moment, however, it was gloriously soft and she rubbed her cheek on a sleeve unselfconsciously.
    “Thank you, House,” she said. “Err…if you could see that my clothes dry quickly…I’m not sure if you do that sort of thing…”
    There was no reply. Possibly that was for the best. If the house had started talking back, she might have started screaming, and she wasn’t sure that she’d be able to stop.  
    The door swung open, and the Beast came through again. He looked at her robe thoughtfully, but did not comment.
    He was carrying a small chest in his arms—or perhaps it was a large chest, but he made it look small. He set it down on the table (which was now devoid of either dishes or bacon) and motioned to her to open it.
    “This is for your sisters,” he said, as she flipped the latch open. “So that you need not worry that they will starve.”
    She opened the lid. Gold caught the firelight and woke highlights on the underside of the lid.
    It was full of gold royals, the most valuable coin in the kingdom, stamped with the king’s head and the royal coat of arms. The cottage Bryony shared with her sisters might be worth a half-royal, if the buyer was generous. The contents of the chest could buy all of Lostfarthing and half of Skypepper, and put a new coat of paint on the other half, at that.  
    “No!” said Bryony, stumbling back from the chest. “No—no, you can’t!”
    She clamped her arms around her midsection and thought that she might be ill.
    The Beast stared at her with honest bewilderment, and she realized that she sounded like a madwoman, that for once the Beast might be the one acting rationally.  
    “It’s too much,” she said, forcing the words out. “When you have money like this, people take it from you. Things happen. It’s not—I can’t—” She took a deep breath and looked down at the carpet. “If my sisters have this, someone will steal it. The townsfolk will look after them as they are, but if they have this—people aren’t good with money like this. It—it does things to people’s heads.”  
    She knew all too well what things money did. She fanned her