Thank you both. Ombradellarosa, she will be delayed. Can't have a story if she isn't.
'Now that is strange,' remarked Brigitte one day as she was dusting our room.
I looked up from my book.
'It has not done that before.' She held in her fingers a single rose petal.
'Blanche will not go near it,' she rolled her eyes in exasperation. 'She claims it is possessed by spirits because it never fades or dies. But Blanche is a goose. Someone has to keep the place clean.'
My father, they told me, had fretted when I had gone. For days he had taken to lying on my bed, silent, brooding and forlorn. He had refused all food.
My sisters had watched, helpless and worried as he withdrew into misery. The only words he had spoken were to beg them not to discard the rose.
Instead he had placed it in a crystal vase that they could ill afford and there it had sat, never ageing, never changing.
I examined the rose. It was the same as from the Beast's garden and, as if further proof was necessary, a waft of its perfume, cloying and sweet yet with an underlying odour I could not place, filled the air.
This very rose had cost me dear.
