Free Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher

of my pots in the courtyard,” she mused. “The roses are very nice and all, but it could use some lavender and some phlox. Something to mess it up a little.”  
    The Beast had said that she could make her garden wherever she liked. Much of it needed to go directly into the ground, but surely she could keep a few in pots. Perhaps House could sacrifice a few urns to the cause.
    She looked around the room. There was nothing that she needed to do right now.   She could go and find the Beast again, see what he had planned for her, or perhaps go and scout out the grounds for a place with good sun and decently drained soil…
    A movement caught her eye. One of the wardrobe doors swung silently open.
    Bryony took a step back— this is it, now the monster comes out and eats me —but there were only dresses.  
    Lots of dresses.
    Dresses with seed pearls and fur and tiny glittering gems and wispy skirts and very full skirts and puffed sleeves and slashed sleeves and leg-o-mutton sleeves and Bryony wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t have preferred the monster.
    “Oh dear,” she said.  
    When she looked away, there was a particularly excessive dress laid across the bed. It had dark green stripes and the frothiness of the petticoats rivaled that of the lace on the bed.  
    “Oh, House…” said Bryony, rubbing a hand over her face. “House, are you trying to say I’m underdressed?”
    When she took her hand away, a tiara set with tiny cut emeralds and a necklace as wide as a horse collar had joined the dress on the bed.
    “I’m going for a walk on the grounds, House,” she said.  
    The wardrobe door seemed to sag on its hinges and the candles flickered mournfully. Bryony closed her eyes.  
    I am making an enchanted house sad. God help me.
    The skirt had been spread out to show elaborate stitchery. There were now two emerald bracelets wider than Bryony’s thumb. Bryony sighed from the bottom of her toes.  
    And then, because there was something sadly hopeful about the dress, Bryony said, “When I come back, I promise, I’ll dress for dinner.”  
    The wardrobe doors clapped shut cheerfully, and the candles flared up in their sconces. Apparently this was acceptable to House.  
    There was an ewer of water on a low table by the wall. The basin was blessedly white but there was a pattern of pink stars around the rim. When Bryony poured out the water, it was warm. There were small white soaps and the towels were softer than any clothing that she had worn since leaving the city.
    She made a half-hearted effort to get the dirt out from under her nails. The dirt laughed at her.
    In the end, she settled for washing her face and hands, and then fled the over-pink room and the over-hopeful dress and went in search of the Beast.  

CHAPTER TEN

    She found herself unwilling to leave the rooms that she was familiar with. Who knew what House might get up to, in the far wings? Did it decorate and undecorate rooms to please itself? Were there storerooms holding dresses and buckets of mash and pink robes, in case they might be needed?  
    When Bryony had gone down the large staircase and opened the door to the little parlor in the front hall (which was neat as a pin and bore no trace of having briefly been a stable) and wandered through the courtyard without seeing any sign of the Beast, she gave up hope of finding him and went out to see her plants.
    What had been a very large burden for Fumblefoot made a pathetically small knot against the vast sweep of lawn. Bryony felt a brief rush of indignation for her plants. They were good plants! How dare that lawn make them seem so trivial?
    “I shan’t feel guilty about tearing you up at all,” she informed the lawn. “Even if I can’t get very much of you at first. Hmm. I wonder if House can make decent manure?”
    This led to a brief, searing mental image of the manor house lifting one massive wing and leaving a pile the size of a haystack behind it. Bryony giggled and