No Greater Pleasure (16 page)

 

 

 

Y
ou’ve been avoiding me.”

Quilla looked up from the book in her hand. The library at Glad Tidings was not well stocked, perhaps because Gabriel’s private collection of volumes was kept in his room and not upon the library shelves. Still, she’d found a few novels of interest, a collection of unused religious texts that made her shake her head, and an odd assortment of personal letters bound into covers made of glue-stiffened paper.

“I have done no such thing.” She turned back to the book, but Jericho Delessan was no more used to being ignored than his brother, for he leaned on the bookshelf next to her. She caught the faint scent of herb floating about him and looked again at his face, searching for signs that he’d been indulging. A hint of redness in his eyes was all that showed, but it was enough to prove her nose hadn’t been wrong. She couldn’t ignore him, so she sighed and moved away.

“You have. You never join us for dinner, nor for cards.”

Quilla gave him a rueful shake of her head. “Certainly you can see how such a thing is impossible, my lord Delessan.”

“Is it?”

“I’m not a guest in this house, and you well know it.”

Jericho followed her as she moved to sit in one of the comfortable chairs in front of the fireplace. “No, but you’re no chambermaid or kitchen drab, either. You’re something else, entirely, and I’m fascinated by it.”

She looked up at him. “Fascinated? How flattering.”

Her attention turned to the book in her hand, but though she turned its pages, her eyes scanning the text, she could not concentrate. At last, she looked up with an exasperated sigh, to find him staring at her.

“Staring is ill-mannered, my lord Delessan.”

“My other lord Delessan,” he put in with an unabashed, smug grin. “I can hear it in the pause you give it. You don’t say it, but ’tis there. ‘Other.’ ”

Quilla closed the book on her finger to keep the place. “You seem to believe you know much about me.”

“I’d like to know more. I’d like to know all about you. How you came here. Why you do what you do. All of it.”

“Am I to be interviewed?” She sat back in her chair and looked at him. “Shall you write an account of our conversation and send it to the newsletters?”

“No. My curiosity is for me, alone.”

“I came here by carriage. I do what I do because ’tis my purpose and my place to do it.” She opened the book again.

She had not satisfied him. Jericho made a disgusted noise. “Do I threaten you, Mistress Caden?”

She looked up again. “Of course you do not. Do you mean to?”

His grin, meant to soften her like butter before a fire, gleamed. “No. ’Tis unintentional, yet I know I do.”

“I just said you do not.”

“Well then, you’re lying.” Jericho crossed one leg over the other and linked his fingers around his knee. “Because the way you avoid me tells me I threaten you. I’d like to know why.”

“I do not—you don’t—” She cut off her protest, refusing to give him the satisfaction of the sort of reaction she suspected he expected.

He said nothing, just watched her with the same knowing smile on his handsome face. She bent back to her book, determined not to speak and not to flee, either. She read the same page over twice before admitting to herself she could not understand a word of it.

“You do not threaten me,” she said at last. “And I do not avoid you. We simply have no need for interaction.”

“We’re interacting now,” he pointed out.

“And I have not run away, so there. You see? I do not avoid you.”

“You probably should,” he said matter-of-factly. “Else my brother will surely chastise you for encouraging my company.”

“I am not!” She bit down again on the protest and glared at him. “My lord Delessan, I have been relieved of my duties for the day. By your brother, my patron, who does not require my company at the moment. He has given me permission to utilize this library as I see fit, and all I’ve done is take advantage of his generosity. I have done nothing for which any chastisement would be necessary.”

“Well, not yet, you haven’t.” Jericho wiggled his eyebrows and broadened his grin. “I’ve been told I’m quite the ruiner of reputations.”

She’d had enough. Quilla closed the heavy novel and lifted it. She stood, making certain her dress fell in smooth lines to her ankles, then crossed to him, and leaned in close.

“Are you?”

His gaze flickered, grew languid, along with his lazy smile. He reached to curl his fingers in the end of her braid. “I’m not proud of that, by any means.”

“No?” She leaned closer, letting him feel her breath on his face.

“Something tells me you’re the liar, now.”

He tilted his head, lips parting, tongue making a slow, sensual sweep across them. “My lady, you wound me.”

“I do, indeed,” she whispered. “And I am not your lady.”

She dropped the heavy book directly in his lap. Jericho’s breath shot out of him. His face went pale and he hunched forward as Quilla stepped neatly out of the way.

Then she turned and strode out of the room, at least giving him the courtesy of waiting until she’d closed the door behind her before she burst into laughter.

 

 

 

F
ull winter had fallen, and along with it, snow. Drifts of white blown by the wind swirled and heaped in the garden and against the house, so high on the eastern side it covered a few of the lowest windows. Bertram kept a path cleared from the kitchen to the stable, but the rest of the household was kept inside, fires lit and tempers short with the seclusion.

“What we need’s an entertainment,” Florentine grumbled as she pounded down a swelling bowl of dough and began to knead it. “Somewhat to keep us all from tearing out each other’s throats. ’Tis too long until the Feast of Sinder. Someone will go mad and take an ax to someone else before much longer.”

Quilla had sought the warmth of the kitchen and dubious comfort of Florentine’s company rather than face the silence and chill of her lonesome room. “I know the girls have been playing cards at night. A regular tournament, they’ve started, with the game Master Jericho taught them. The one he learned from Mistress Saradin.”

Florentine sniffed, meaty fists pounding the dough into submission before tearing it into three hunks and rolling each into long strands, which she began to braid. “Those simpletons need more to do than play cards.”

Quilla got up to stir the bowl of stew bubbling in the pot over the fire. “You’re the one who said we need an entertainment.”

Florentine finished braiding the hallah loaf and set it aside to rise again near the fire’s warmth. “Don’t you know what we finds entertainment, Handmaiden?”

“Firstly, tell me who you mean to encompass with your
we
, as I’m fair certain Allora Walles’s idea of entertainment is far different from your own.” Quilla smiled and leaned against the warmed bricks next to the bread oven.

“Ah, that moronic bitch is finding the same entertainment she always does, of that I’ve no doubt, only seems she’s set her sights a bit higher than a chaff-strewn stable.” Florentine, ceaseless, moved to the bowl of sand-covered potatoes and began to brush them off, being careful to catch every falling grain of sand in another bowl.

“Poor Bertram.”

“And poor Billy, and poor Pipp and poor Took,” said Florentine. “And don’t forget the stable lads Luke and Perrin. She’s had her way with them, I’m sure of it, and left them with naught but the memory to keep them warm at night. Though I’ve no doubts they’d not go running to sniff her skirts again should she lift ’em, the sluttish twat.”

Quilla bit her lip at Florentine’s blunt portrayal of Mistress Delessan’s lady’s maid. “Are you so certain she is that?”

Florentine grinned, and Quilla marveled how the woman’s smile turned her from gruff and mannish to almost but not quite pretty. “No, but ’tis wondrous fun to say, ain’t it?”

Quilla shook her finger. “Florentine, Allora might not be my favorite person in this household, but I can’t judge her bedtime habits.”

“No, I don’t suppose you would.” Florentine gave a sly grin. “Though I haven’t any issue with doing it. And besides, I don’t guess it matters much to you whose bed she’s warming?”

“You’re trying to draw my curiosity into the slop bucket.” Quilla ladled two bowls of savory stew and set one down in front of the cook. “And it won’t work.”

“Not even if I tell you I heard the distinctive sound of Allora Walles’s whiny little screams of ecstasy coming from our other lord Delessan’s rooms for three nights running?”

Quilla’s hands barely paused in setting down the bowls, and she kept her face studiedly neutral. “What the other lord Delessan does with his nights is not of my concern.”

“ ’Tis not what he does with his nights but with his prick that I should think would interest you.”

Quilla looked up. “Florentine, you know that’s not true. I am Gabriel’s Handmaiden. My concerns are for him alone.”

“And he’s not taking you into his bed, either,” retorted Florentine, “the daft git. So nobody would blame you for turning your gaze to one who would.”

That made Quilla’s mouth open in surprise. “I’ve told you again and again, I am not a whore. I’m not here to fuck him, Florentine! That’s not . . . it’s not my purpose and my place . . .”

Her hands were trembling, and she fisted them to keep them still, stunned and discomfited by her display of emotion.

“ ’Tis your place if ’twould bring him comfort, no?”

“He doesn’t ask for that.”

“I thought,” said Florentine, “you was supposed to just know. To give him what he needs before he knows he needs it. All that rot. Ain’t you just supposed to know? Or is it that you’re too afraid he’ll turn you down and you think you won’t be able to stand it?”

Quilla went to the case holding the flatware and slid open the spoon drawer, pulling out two and shoving them both into the bowls. “And I thought your job was to bake bread and roast fowl, not to dissect mine.”

“Oooh.” Florentine didn’t look at all put in her place. “If you’re going to insult me, Quilla Caden, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

Quilla put her hands on her hips. “Well, how about this, you nosy bitch? My purpose is not any of your concern. If my patron wishes me in his bed, to his bed I’ll go, and because ’tis my place to be there and no other reason.”

“Better, but I’m still not sufficiently wounded, emotionally. A few disparaging remarks about my appearance might do the trick. Or might not.”

A smile tilted Quilla’s lips against her will. “You have poor taste in dresses and the color green does not suit you.”

Florentine put her hand over her heart. “Oh, oh you wound me, you foul-tongued harpy!”

Quilla laughed. “I’m sorry.”

Florentine opened her eyes, rolling them. “Mistress, you’d need to say much worse than that to make me weep.”

“I know it. We can’t all have a talent for insult.”

“Nor can we all have a talent for complacency,” said Florentine, scooping a mouthful of stew. “But we create a nice balance, do we not?”

The friendly words surprised Quilla, who smiled. “I think so, yes.”

“A friend is someone who’ll tell you what you need to hear even when you don’t want to hear it, no?”

“Among other things, I think so. Yes.”

Florentine gestured toward Quilla with the spoon. “Then you’ll take this as coming from a friend, Quilla. That ornery son of a bastard up there needs more from you than tea and dusting. And if you wait for him to ask for it, you’ll be failing in your duty.”

“Why are you all at once so concerned about my duty?” Quilla asked, stung. “When I came here, you called me a whore because you assumed I’d be sharing his bed.”

“When you came here, I didn’t know you’d be good for him,” Florentine shot back.

“You think I’m good for him?”

“I think you could be better for him,” said Florentine, typically not blowing any sunshine when smoke would suffice. “He’s too stubborn to see it, but you should.”

“Are you suggesting I seduce him?” The thought held more appeal than she might have admitted a few months ago. “I’ve never . . .”

“Never had to? I don’t imagine so.” Florentine gave Quilla’s face and body a long, lingering look tinged with playful lasciviousness. “But then you’ve never had our lord Delessan for a patron before. They’re all different, no?”

“They’re all different, yes.”

“And you feel different about this one.”

Quilla shook her head. “No. He is my patron. That’s all.”

Florentine let out a snort. “If you say so. And neither does a certain yellow-haired swain catch your eye, either.”

“Of course not.”

Florentine sighed. “You’re not much of a liar.”

Quilla dipped her spoon into her stew and sampled it. “And you’re an unsubtle harridan.”

She looked up to see Florentine’s mouth hanging open for a moment. “Sinder’s Balls!”

Quilla ate some more stew while Florentine shook her head.

“You’ve managed to cut me, Handmaiden.”

“I’m sorry.”

“No,” said Florentine with a broad grin. “You ain’t.”

“You’re right.”

Florentine regarded her steadily. “Convince our master we needs an entertainment and I’ll forgive you.”

Quilla laughed. “What sort of entertainment, Florentine? We’ve gone back to the start of our conversation. You told me card tournaments are not enough.”

“Invisible Mother, no.” Florentine waved her hands. “Don’t you know what staff finds the most entertaining? Parties.”

“You want me to suggest to my patron he throw a party for us?”

Florentine scoffed. “By the Quiver, no, you dolt. He would never. A party for us would be absurd. A party for them’s what lives in this house abovestairs. A real brannigan. For him and his lady wife, and his beloved halfling brother.”