either. She kept up a strange fast-march in too precise a straight line that neither got her away from everything fast enough nor let her appear to be unaffected by it.
Behind her, on the lawn by the side of the house, was a wedding party.
Her wedding party.
It was beautiful; she had to admit that.
There was a very tasteful canopy woven with sweet-smelling flowers. Paper bells and pink ribbons festooned a high arch. Tables were draped with shining white cloths and pink bunting, and spread with an array of savory delicacies. Silver buckets held bottles of chilled champagne; perfect little beads of moisture covered their gleaming sides like pearls. Like a painting.
There was a band, which was actually kind of terrible but enthusiastic.
There was an absolutely amazing-looking cake—the only thing Belle was really sad to leave behind. It had three tiers and its white and pink fondant perfectly matched everything else. Crowning the top was a tiny wedding couple, which she would have tossed aside, unexamined, in her haste to get to the cake underneath. Monsieur Boulanger might have been irksome in person but his skills as a baker were definitely in top form that day.
There was also a disappointed would-be groom sitting splay-legged in the pig wallow.
She hadn’t meant to push him that hard. But having done so, she wasn’t precisely displeased with the results.
The noise behind her was terrific: the squeaking of the blond triplets; the squonkings of the tuba and accordion, which now had no purpose; the not-quite sotto voce assurances of LeFou to Gaston; the apologetic titterings of the priest.
The priest.
For some reason his presence upset Belle the most.
She could almost dismiss the ridiculous band, the cake, the table, and everything else as all the accoutrements of a love-smitten madman—but a priest meant Gaston was deadly serious. He had every intention of “’til-death-do-they-part” marrying her.
“Amor does not vincit omnia, you ignorant man,” Belle muttered, “…when the woman doesn’t amat you back!”
She took a quick, undignified step aside to hide behind a scrub oak, then peeped out from behind it. Her heart sank. Besides the main characters in the wedding party, it looked like all the rest of town had shown up to bear witness to Gaston’s triumphant day. There was the silversmith, Monsieur LeClerc; Monsieur Hebert, the wigmaker and haberdasher; Madame Baudette, the couturier…the butcher, the baker, the candlestick-maker—everyone was there.
Everyone except for Monsieur Lévi.
His absence was extremely notable. He knew the kind of boy she would eventually marry, if she married.
And it certainly wasn’t Gaston.
Absent, also, was her father, of course, who was on his way to the fair. And her mother—but Belle hadn’t seen her since she was a baby, so that part wasn’t really so surprising.
Drifts of conversation came to her as the breeze shifted.
“Terrible, but is it really surprising? That girl isn’t right in the head….”
“Turning down Gaston? The most handsome, eligible bachelor in town?”
“Stupid hussy. I’d give my right pinky to wear his ring.”
“Who does she think she is?”
“Does she think she can do better?”
“Maybe she’ll try Dupuis’s son instead—you know, the simple one who counts pebbles all day. More to her taste.”
Belle balled up her fists and threw herself against the tree trunk in rage. None of them thought she was good enough for Gaston, the town’s favorite son…the most handsome boy, with the bluest eyes and best physique, the best shot with a gun…
No one ever asked if he was good enough for her.
That was just the way the townspeople were.
On the one hand, they did nothing—had done nothing—but gossip endlessly about Belle and her father. How odd they were. How odd she was. Always reading. No friends. No suitors.
How Maurice rarely came to the pub for a drink. How he didn’t have a respectable trade. How his wife had disappeared.
How, some whispered, he consorted with the devil down in his basement.
Her father had finally put an end to that rumor by inviting a select few to come by and inspect his house for evidence of demonic shenanigans. They had been carefully chosen: Monsieur LeClerc, who knew a bit about technology and metal, and Madame Bussard, the town gossip, sure to spread the news of what she had seen. What they saw were the half-built contraptions and engines of someone they immediately assumed was a madman. Later, Belle wasn’t sure if she preferred the fear the villagers exhibited before this experiment, or the pity and ridicule after.
But on the other hand, there was Gaston, who, despite Belle’s strangeness, came after