Free Beauty: an Everland Ever After Tale by Caroline Lee Page A

was a miracle he was still alive, still breathing and able to make music. But from the moment he’d woken from the morphine enough to know where he was—who he’d been—he’d known that he was a beast. He couldn’t do that to Jane; better that she remember him as he was. He’d become someone else, instead.
    And not a day had gone by, in those ten years, that he hadn’t thought of her, wondered how she remembered him. If he’d been a stronger man, a braver man, he might’ve visited her again, or at least hired Pinkertons to check on her. But he’d stood by the decision he’d made all those years ago in that hospital—he’d had nothing but time back then, while he waited to heal—to leave her be. To let her live. Without the beast he’d become.
    Wishing he had a brandy, Vincenzo fumbled for the drawer in the little table beside him, and ignored Rajah’s irritated mewl. He pulled out the velvet-wrapped bundle and peeled away the material. Inside was his most prized possession, although he doubted even Gordy knew about it. The small silver frame he’d bought after his first performance in London held a photograph of his wife.
    He ran his fingers over the glass, remembering what she looked like, and knowing that the memory had to be enough. All those years ago, not five minutes before the explosion that killed so many and melted his face, he’d been looking at this photograph. It was fitting, somehow, that right before condemning himself to a lifetime of darkness, he’d been staring at her beauty. His beautiful, beautiful wife… who was lost to him, now.
    If he could cry, he would right now. As it was, he could feel the pressure building behind his temples, and knew that he had to put Jane aside. Had to wish her well. He gently placed the frame on the table beside him, his fingers lingering reverently over her face one last time.
    Jane was part of his past. But he’d found a place where maybe, maybe , he could make a future. Despite his best efforts at hiding himself away, he had a student—a talented student. And he had lively conversation and thrice-weekly book readings with a spirited and multi-faceted neighbor. Friend? A friend who put too much stock in appearances, and who valued perfection and propriety.
    A friend whose hidden self was passionate and curious. A friend whom he very much wanted to get to know better, but knew it would be a bad idea. In her eyes—her perfect, working eyes—he was a monster, without worth. It would’ve been better for him to have stuck to his plan of staying a recluse, to not tease himself with something he couldn’t have.
    But he was lost now. Lost to the temptation of her smooth voice and delightful laughter and lovely bookstore. He brushed a hand over his face and knew that he’d do anything to stay in her life.
     
     

     
     
    Arabella paced in the garden. Although she’d invited Vincenzo to visit her garden several weeks before, he hadn’t taken her up on the offer. Tonight, though, she’d sent Eddie to his lesson with a note for Gordon, asking him to come to the house through the back. She found herself unable to sit still, and wondered if it was excitement that made her palms itch and her feet long to take wider strides. She felt like a caged cat, trapped in her garden, waiting for something she couldn’t name.
    This was her place. For all of his love of botany, Milton didn’t care to get his hands dirty; said that it was beneath him. He was happy to fiddle with his seeds in his workshop, or pour over recent publications, but it was Arabella who’d knelt in the dirt and felt the richness of life as it bloomed every spring. She’d planted what he’d said to plant, where he said to plant it, but the garden was still hers. And before his death, she hadn’t discussed her love of growing things with anyone else, because he declared it improper.
    But this garden was as much her place as the bookstore. Here, behind this wooden fence, she could wear her