Bryony and Roses by T. Kingfisher

If there was a voice, assuming it hadn’t been some fragment of a dream, it didn’t appear to be malicious. She sat down at the table and took a bite.  
    Knowing that the bacon was not, in the strictest sense, real did not make it taste any less delicious.  
    It can’t just be an illusion. I was full after dinner last night, and the Beast doesn’t seem to have starved to death. I wonder how long he’s been living here, eating the food?  
    She wondered if it was one of those questions that the house didn’t seem to like.
    Is it the house that doesn’t like them? That does that strange listening thing when I ask?
    Another thing to watch for. Bryony’s questions were starting to pile up.  
    “House, may I have paper and pen?”
    Something rustled. When she turned, an armoire in the corner had folded out to reveal a rosewood writing desk. An extravagantly curled quill pen stood beside several sheets of writing paper.  
    The feather was pink. So was the paper.  
    Bryony sighed. I should probably have expected that.  
    She sat down and dipped the pen in the ink.  

    How long has the Beast been here?
    Why doesn’t he leave?
    Has he always been a Beast?  
    Where does the magic of the house come from?  
    What does he want with me?  
    What was that voice?  

    She brushed the feather against her cheek and thought for a minute, then added a final question:

    How do I get out of here without the house bringing me back?

    “Of course,” she said aloud, “for all I know, he was lying about that, and I could walk out the front door at any time.”  
    She didn’t think he’d been lying.
    “Oh well,” she said, blowing on the ink to dry it, “I suppose I’ll figure it all out eventually. Now, to see about the garden…”

    The grass cut easily and there was some lovely topsoil under the sod, but Bryony was still soaked with sweat by the time she came in for lunch. She took a hot bath in a pink enameled tub with dragon feet. The bubbles were pale pink and smelled of freesia.  
    She added another question to her mental inventory— What is going on with all of these flowers? There were the rose candlesticks and the dahlia rug and all the little blossoms embroidered into her clothes, the enormous rosebushes in the courtyard, growing into the bark of the birch tree—
    Which is pretty strange, when you think about it.  
    She liked flowers. She just liked them outside, where they belonged.
    Although I should probably do something about those roses and the birch tree. That can’t be healthy.  
    It was a good soak. The bathtub was long enough to stretch out in. She hadn’t had a really hot bath since they left the capital. At home, in the cottage, she and her sisters usually filled an old wooden tub in front of the fireplace, and the water was never warm enough.
    She leaned her head back. “I could get used to this, House. This is lovely. Thank you.”
    She took a long nap again that afternoon and woke to find a blue dress laid out on the bed. It was the color of a late evening sky. It would have been magnificent on Iris.  
    “It’s a pity you didn’t get my sister,” she told the house, trying to manage the little puffed sleeves.   “She’d be much more interested in playing dress-up. No, still not wearing the tiara. No, nor the gloves either. I will wear earrings if you can make them smaller than a dinner plate—ah, yes. Perfect.”  
    She checked her appearance in the mirror. The clothing was extremely flattering, but short of a veil, there wasn’t much it could do about her face. She grinned ruefully at herself.  
    “On the other hand, Iris would probably not have stopped weeping yet, and I imagine that would strain even a magic house’s patience.”  
    She went down to dinner.
    The Beast met her at the foot of the stairs again and escorted her to the hallway in silence.  
    He poured her a glass of wine without speaking. She stabbed at the food on her plate with a fork, and finally took refuge