No Greater Pleasure (33 page)

“ ’Tis not the question I asked you.” He wrapped the end of the belt around his fist and stared at her. “Would you take the punishment she deserves?”

Allora let out another strangled sob. Quilla looked at Gabriel from the corner of her eye.

“If your intent is to strap me in her place, then I can only answer you one way.”

His laugh had no humor to it. “If it pleases me.”

“If it pleases you to beat me in her place, then I can do naught but bend to it. But if you ask whether I am willing to take her punishment? I would rather not.”

“Get out of the way, Handmaiden.”

She stepped in front of Allora. “I have no love in my heart for this one, but I can’t let you do this.”

“I’m warning you, Handmaiden.” His voice went low, hard. His eyes, hard, too. “If you do not get out of the way, then you will get twice what she would have.”

Without another word, Quilla unbuttoned the front of her dress, shrugging out of it without hesitation. She still wore a small bandage over the wound on her arm. She turned her back to him, put her hands on the table.

Allora looked over at her with wide eyes. Quilla glanced back before turning her attention back to the table, and her hands upon it. She’d spread her fingers wide, the sign for being all right. Not that he’d know it, or know that the closer together her fingers the less comfortable she was with what was happening.

“Handmaiden,” Gabriel said from behind them. “You don’t want me to do this.”

“Should you wish to do it, my lord, then your wish is my action.”

He made a low noise. She heard the sound of the belt being drawn through his hands. The slight whistle of it as he raised it. Her ears, long attuned to such noise, created a picture in her head, and Quilla let herself relax, not tensing against the pain she expected to come any minute.

“Get out,” she heard Gabriel say, and the sound of shoes on the floor told her Allora had scuttled away like a beetle whose rock had been overturned.

She Waited. She imagined his arm held high, belt dangling. Ready to strike . . .

“What are you doing? Stop!”

The sound of Jericho’s voice made Quilla turn. He crossed the room to her in moments. His arm went around her shoulders, and she winced at his touch on her wound.

“Jericho, no,” she murmured.

“Stop it, Gabriel!” Jericho’s voice shook with anger. “What the hell are you doing?”

Now Quilla turned, expecting anger on her patron’s face. What she saw was worse, somehow, as his eyes moved from his brother, to her, to his brother’s arm around her shoulders. What she saw was nothing.

He turned away from her, the tension in his shoulders evident and visible. Then he left the room without saying anything else.

Quilla shrugged off Jericho’s arm and rearranged her gown. “Let me go. You are a troublemaker.”

“Troublemaker?”
His voice sounded angry. “Because I stopped him from beating you bloody?”

“He would not,” Quilla said sternly, “have beaten me bloody.”

Jericho scowled. “He had a strap raised above your back. He was going to hit you with it.”

“He would not have!”

“How do you know this!” Jericho shouted, grabbing her by the arms. “What would you have done had he raised that strap to you, and hit you with it?”

“I would have let him!”

He let go of her and stepped back, dismay twisting his face. “But, why, Quilla? Why? Because he is your patron, you would allow him to so abuse you?”

“Not because he is my patron, no.”

His shoulders sagged. “Then what reason, Tranquilla Caden?”

“You know my reason, Jericho.”

He nodded, looking down. “I suppose I do.”

“You love an ideal. Not a woman.”

He looked up at her, eyes narrowed. “Don’t you tell me who, or what, I love. Don’t you dismiss me that way because it makes it easier for you!”

His reaction made her step back. “I’m sorry. I never lied to you. I never made you believe—”

“No. You didn’t.” He pushed past her and out of the room. She stared after him for what felt like a very long time, and then she went to find Gabriel.

He was not in his room, and though she waited for him to come back, the light of day had begun to stretch pink across the sky before he did.

“Gabriel,” she said from the doorway to his bedroom as he entered the workroom. “Come to bed, for I am fair certain you are weary.”

Without a word, he did, pushing past her and toward the bed, where he lay down. She took off his shoes and did what she could to make him comfortable before she slipped into the bed next to him and put her arms around him.

“I don’t love him,” she whispered against Gabriel’s shoulder.

He turned to face her, his arms going around her and gathering her close. She felt wetness against her cheek as he pressed his face to hers, the covers a cocoon around them, a cave. A shield.

And they needed to say nothing more after that.

Chapter 13

 

 

 

 

 

I
t was the first time she had known him not to work. Gabriel stayed in bed all day, the rise and fall of his breathing like a metronome in the blinds-dimmed room.

Quilla stayed with him until she was certain he would not wake anytime soon, and then she slipped from bed and washed and dressed, and she went to a part of the house in which she’d never been.

Saradin Delessan’s rooms were luxurious, spacious, and well appointed, with tall windows letting in the sunlight. A fire crackled in the grate, but the room still kept a chill.

The mistress sat in a chair near the window. Her hair unkempt, her clothes in disarray, she looked up when Quilla came in. Her eyes blazed. Her mouth twisted, and she laughed.

Quilla sat down in the chair across from her patron’s wife, looking at the other woman calmly. Saradin laughed harder, her chest hitching. Silver drool strung itself from her mouth. The laugh became a cackle and a shriek. Saradin leaned forward, mouth stretched with the screaming giggles, pausing every so often to take in a deep, gasping breath before starting to laugh again.

Quilla watched her without expression for a few moments. Then she slapped Saradin’s face hard enough to almost knock the other woman off her seat. Saradin’s laughter cut off sharply, leaving behind silence.

Her hand went to her cheek, where the white imprint of Quilla’s fingers was filling in with red. The blow had knocked her sideways, and now she turned upright, slowly. A low, grinding growl came from her throat. She used the heel of her hand to wipe the spittle from her chin.

“You dare.”

“I dare,” replied Quilla. “Sit up straight and listen to me, Saradin Delessan.”

Saradin did, the sly light of madness still in her eyes but underlaid now with comprehension. She spat to one side and touched her lips as though to check for blood, but there was none. Quilla had been careful not to cut her, though Saradin had not shown her the same consideration.

“You will listen to me,” Quilla told her without inflection, neither kindness nor cruelty.

Saradin nodded.

Quilla leaned forward to look into Saradin’s eyes. “You will stop your torture of him, do you understand? You will cease this badgering. You will cease these histrionics, these hysterics, you will keep yourself under control.”

One short burst of laughter escaped Saradin’s lips but she clamped her mouth shut on it immediately. “I am mad, unless you hadn’t heard.”

“We are all of us mad,” replied Quilla, an edge of ice creeping into her tone. “We are all of us damaged in some way.”

Saradin’s body quivered and her eyes fluttered. More drool puddled at the corners of her mouth, and she wiped it away. “You think ’tis so simple?”

“No. I do not think ’tis simple at all. But I do believe it is necessary.” Quilla sat back in her chair, watching the other woman. “You are a spiteful, selfish, and shameless bint, but you are his wife and the mother of his child. Gabriel feels he has a duty to you. And you are making him sick from it.”

A flash of something—grief, perhaps, if the woman could feel it—shaded Saradin’s green eyes momentarily gray. “I only want to love him.”

“No. You only want him to love you. ’Tis not the same thing at all.” Quilla looked her over, this woman who had everything any woman could have wanted, and who had thrown it all away.

Saradin didn’t flinch. A grin stretched her mouth, baring teeth. “And what threat do you promise, should I discover my madness unchanged, my mind unhinged? What threat do you promise, if my mind is unhinged? What threat? What threat do you promise?” Her repeated words were not rambling mutters, but purposeful spears of language, thrown with skill.

“There is no help for your madness,” said Quilla. “I merely tell you to cease being such an unbearable bitch.”

Saradin turned her face so her mouth whispered against Quilla’s ear, almost a kiss. “You ask me to do this for him?”

“No, my lady,” replied Quilla, in her own whisper. “For yourself, for I daresay that is the one person for whom you have ever done anything.”

“And if I do not? Do not? And if. I. Do. Not?”

Quilla leaned in even closer, keeping her voice pitched low. “Then I will take him away from you entirely, you stupid bitch, and you will have nothing.”

Saradin’s hand flashed out and tangled in Quilla’s hair, yanking her head back. It hurt, but Quilla made no sign of it. The woman was fast, and yes, she was mad—but she was not entirely unpredictable.

“I would like to kill you.”

“I don’t doubt that, my lady. But you won’t.”

“No?” Saradin sneered, yanking Quilla’s head back farther and shaking her. She was strong, for being so small. “It would not be the first time.”

“Say you true?” Quilla put her hand over Saradin’s and used the leverage to stand. Though the other woman still had a handful of her hair, Quilla’s height allowed her to shove Saradin into her chair again.

Saradin let go of Quilla. “The eel enjoyed her. As he’d enjoy you, too.”

Quilla looked at her. “You killed the other maid. The one who carried his child?”

Saradin pulled her feet up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees, her body shuddering and quaking again. Her teeth chattered. “Bitch thought to give him a son, a real son, his son. Bitch thought to take my place. Little cunt thought to replace me . . .” Her voice trailed off and she laughed again. “I don’t think he ever fucked her, mind. I don’t think he did. She wanted him, though, I knew it, I smelled it on her, saw it in her eyes, smelled it and tasted it on her. . . .”

“You killed her and she was not even his lover?” Quilla’s voice dipped low with disgust.

Saradin’s strangled laugh edged out from clenched jaws. She shook harder, eyes fluttering. Her fingers linked so tight her knuckles turned white as she held her knees close to her body.

“He is mine, he is mine, he is mine, Handmaiden, and you can fuck him but he is mine!”

Quilla stood. “Remember what I said, Saradin.”

Saradin sneered and spat again on the floor, turning her face away, but she did not argue. “Get out of my room.”

“If you truly love him, you would not hurt him so.”

“I said get out!”

Quilla looked again at the woman, but said nothing else, and left her to her madness.

 

 

 

D
on’t know what he thinks we’ll do without Allora Walles.” Florentine’s muttered grumble caught Quilla’s ear. “He has dismissed Allora because she did not do her duty, Florentine.”

The chatelaine sniffed and added spice to the stew before turning from the fireplace, hands on her ample hips. “And left us the burden of caring for her, instead!”

“She doesn’t leave her room,” said Quilla implacably, arranging her tray of tea and biscuits.

Since Quilla’s talk with her, Gabriel’s wife had not made a peep. She’d stayed in her room, not speaking, barely moving from the window long enough to eat or sleep. It had been almost a week.

Rossi had been promoted to the position of lady’s maid, which seemed to thrill her and cause Florentine what seemed to be an unwarranted amount of consternation. Now, the cook frowned and looked Quilla up and down.

“Rossi isn’t made for that job, being run ragged by a madwoman.”

Something in the way Florentine said the girl’s name made Quilla look up from the plate of biscuits. “Her charge has been most subdued, Florentine. I should think Rossi would enjoy the respite.”

Florentine frowned. “I like Rossi here. She’s the best of the three.”

“Most likely why Gabriel chose her.” Quilla studied her friend, realization dawning along with a slow smile. “Florentine. You and Rossi?”

Florentine looked startled, then scowled, bustling around the kitchen and not looking at Quilla.

Quilla laughed lightly. “That’s . . .”

“ ’Tis what?” cried Florentine, turning, eyes ablaze. “ ’Tis what?”

“Lovely,” said Quilla. “Lovely for the pair of you to have found one another.”

Some of the fire went out of Florentine’s gaze, but she didn’t soften entirely. “She’s too young.”

“Florentine, you’re far from too old.”

The cook bent back to her work, using sharp movements that betrayed her agitation. “I was a lad a long, long time ago.”

Quilla put down her tray and went to the other woman, touched her shoulder. Florentine looked up, her face softer than Quilla had ever seen it. She blinked back tears, and the sight of them moved Quilla near to tears herself.

They sat at the same time, Florentine as though her legs had given out, and Quilla following.

“ ’Tis been more than twenty years since I ran from Alyria in the aftermath of the revolution. I’d lived my whole life as a lad, Quilla Caden, and lived in fear of being found out by those who’d have killed me for it.”