Beauty and Her Beastly Love (Passion-Filled Fairy Tales Book 2) Read Online Free

Probably. But she dreaded being handed over to this beast. He would not be a man like in her books. He wouldn’t be able to hold and caress her and treat her kindly.
    And if he felt she stole something from him, would he murder her? The way he’d threatened to murder her father? She didn’t know, and that scared her. Part of her felt she should hate her father for what he had done to her, for promising her to this thing. Only, the truth was, she would have to be married to someone. That was the way of the world, the way of things. She had even been looking forward to it. But now, fear replaced that yearning. Fear that he would be as beastly with her as he had been with her father. Fear that he would be a brute who took her at will, rather than caressed and held her. Fear that he would become violent and angry.
    Even though she was afraid, she had to go. Her fate had been sealed, so she went about preparations to leave. She taught her father to cook a few of the dishes he enjoyed. She’d always cooked for him, and she worried he’d have trouble getting along without her.
    If only her father had told her his financial problems sooner, perhaps they could have looked for a different solution, something that would not have involved promising her to a suitor who was a beast.
    Beauty packed her meager belongings into a large trunk. It had been her mother’s, the one her mother had brought from her family home to her marital home.
    Celine had come from a respectable family and had been expected to marry someone of the same station, but she fell in love with Pierre and ran off with him. They had lived more modestly than Celine had been used to, but she had been happy, as far as Beauty knew. It seems, her mother’s station had been supporting them since her brothers died. Pierre had sold Celine’s jewelry. As a child, Celine’s father had lavished expensive baubles on his daughter, and the grownup Celine had brought them all when she ran off with Pierre. Even then, Celine had known, they’d come in handy. There was no jewelry left now, no remnants of the house that Celine had hailed from, no treasures that Beauty could have received from her mother and passed on to her own daughter.
    Beauty cringed at the thought. Now, she would have no daughters. At least she didn’t think it would be possible to have a child with such a creature. And if it were possible, would the children look like little mutts? She really felt like crying this time. What had her father done to her?
    What if she just refused to go? Just then, she heard the whinnying of a horse outside. It was loud and strange, a feral whinny unlike anything she’d ever heard before.
    She ran to the door and slung it open. There in front of the house was a carriage, pulled by a horse but with no driver. She walked up to the carriage and looked inside. In shadow, she saw a figure, a hulking figure under a cape. “Get in,” it said. The voice was a growl, low and stern, and Beauty’s heart sank. Was this to be her life? What if she didn’t get in?
    “Get in,” the voice said again.
    “But I want to say goodbye to my father. He went into town to pay M. Dumas. He’ll be back shortly.”
    “Get in,” the beast said again.
    Beauty looked back at the house. She’d left the door open. “My things,” she said. “I need to get my trunk.”
    “You need nothing. Get in. Now.”
    His voice was clear and commanding, and something about it made her feel she must obey it. She nodded and climbed into the carriage. She sat down on the bench opposite the beast, looked out the carriage window and watched her house disappear behind her. She turned back to him, to ask him what next, and gasped. He was gone. She reached her hand over to the other side and felt the empty seat. There was nothing there. She looked on the floor, wondering if he could have hidden. But there was no place to hide. She decided to flee the carriage, and tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t move. It