Pleasure and Purpose (28 page)

"I have done all these things, yes. But I deny that any one of them makes me incapable of becoming King of Firth."

Thus it began.

The commentary was exhaustive. Every lord who'd signed the petition had the right to speak against Cillian or in his defense, and each had the right to call up to three witnesses to prove his stance. Devain watched every one of them with avid, greedy eyes, even while the rest of the room drooped as hour after interminable hour passed and the stories unspooled and unraveled.

Cillian could not speak for himself but had to listen to men who'd nearly crawled up his ass to eat his breakfast for him a few weeks ago now denounce him as a lecher, a cretin. A madman. He wanted to be insulted but found he could only be amused. The more he smiled, the harder Devain frowned.

The charges of debauchery and lechery soon held no weight. Too many men had themselves found pleasure in wielding or submitting to a flogger to comfortably chastise Cillian, especially when none of the girls they brought forth from his hareem said anything but that they'd had only pleasure from his touch.

One of them, a petite brunette with tawny skin who'd come to Firth from far away and had never spoken more than a few words to him threw herself at Cillian's feet and begged him to allow her to return to his service.

"No, beauty," he told her, lifting her to her feet with a tug on her hand. "I'm sorry, my pretty one. But I can't."

And no matter how Devain would seek to twist Cillian's reasons for it, he was unable. Fists flexing, he addressed the room. "A man doesn't give up his penchant for cruelty as though it were a hobby he tired of."

"No," Cillian replied, thinking of Honesty. "But sometimes he might no longer find it necessary."

The vote came as night fell. They did it the modern way, pulling the lever of a counting box that kept track of each vote, one side apiece for yea and nay. Cillian watched them, one by one, and at last let his head drop and his eyes close. In the end, he didn't want to see who stood against him.

"My lord prince." Devain's voice, strangled with fury, raised Gillian's head. "It would seem you have managed to garner the support of enough men to keep you in your place a while longer."

Cillian had no room for relief; to give in to that or joy would open the way to every other emotion he'd stamped so deep down. He was bone-weary from sitting so stiffly and now he stood, his jaw unlocking after being clenched for so long. At first he had no voice and had to clear it, but when he spoke it rang throughout the room. More than one man flinched.

"I will see my father now."

Devain's lip curled and he took his hand from the counting box. "Let us not forget what is perhaps the most important accusation. You have no wife and no prospect for one."

"I have a year to take one. If at the end of it I'm still unwed, you can try to wrestle my crown from my head again, Devain. But until then, I would see my lord father." Cillian stepped off the dais, his every joint aching but irrepressible lightness trying to bubble up from inside.

"Wait." The tallest priest spoke, rising. "There is yet the matter of your faith." Cillian had been weary before, but the brief respite had lifted him. "What of it?" It wasn't the response the priests had been looking for. The tallest spoke again, calmly.

"Do you have any?"

Devain shot them a glowering, thin-lipped stare, and Cillian thought perhaps the man had overstepped himself with the priests. "It's been documented the prince doesn't attend Temple services aside from holiday gatherings."

"This is ludicrous!" Edward spoke up from amongst the milling lords eager for their suppers. "The king himself never set foot in Temple, as it's well-known, and he's been on the throne for years! You have your results, Devain, accept your loss and let the man go see his father before it's too late!"

Cillian met Edward's eyes at last. Edward didn't return his smile at first, all thorns and bristles on Cillian's behalf. Cillian teased him into one, finally, tiny but real. Just like across the schoolroom when both were meant to be paying attention to the teacher but instead were plotting how they'd spend the cash in their pockets.

The priest moved between Cillian and Devain. "A man can have faith without ever attending a formal service, and he can worship every day without having any faith at all. But a king without faith cannot sit upon the throne of Firth. "We've not yet been so hobbled we can't prevent that. The Temple has final say in any appointment. Simply because my brothers haven't found it necessary to deny any doesn't mean we can't do it. You can read the Law of the Book and see what I say is true." Devain's grin split his lips back and turned his face into something monstrous. He made a small, reaching gesture with his hands as though grabbing the imaginary crown off Cillian's head. The priest didn't pay any attention to him, his focus on the prince.

"So I ask you again, my lord prince. Do you have faith?" It was no simple question to answer, and Cillian didn't try.

"You were sent a Handmaiden. The Order doesn't send Handmaidens to those they don't deem worthy." The priest ticked off a list on his fingertips while his brothers watched, quiet. "But what sort of man is unable to find solace even when assisted by one of the Order?"

"A man unfit to rule," Devain began, but the priest's upheld hand silenced him. Cillian faced the priest, sewing together his reply from words he plucked one by one from his mind. He knew many reasons why Honesty had been unable to complete her task. Why he'd sent her away from him before she could. And why he didn't deserve for her to try. He had many answers for the priest, who now waited with his head tilted, listening for Cillian to speak.

Even so, Cillian didn't know what he meant to say when his mouth opened. But then Bertram appeared in the doorway.

"My lord. Your father. He's gone."

And Cillian found he need say nothing at all.

You don't have to go." Erista's father leaned heavily on his cane, breathing hard. He was too proud to ask her to slow the pace or even take a break, but Erista did it anyway. "Sit with me, Papa."

She arranged her skirts around her ankles and made room on the stone bench for him. Their seat at the top of the garden path gave her a clear view to the ungroomed meadow below, where young Eslan practiced some sort of swordplay with his mentor. Taller than she by half a head, he had her eyes set in the features of his father's face. It had startled her upon seeing it, for she'd forgotten how he'd looked, her first love. Eslan mingled the best of them both, though he didn't know it.

"You don't have to," her father repeated.

"Of course I have to." Erista's voice stayed steady. She watched her son learning to be a man. "How can you look down there and see what I see and not understand that?"

"We could tell him the truth."

She turned on the bench to look at him. "Now? After all this time? You've raised him as your own son, not as grandson. You told him his siblings all died. He thinks I'm a distant cousin come to stay, not your daughter returned from the grave. The boy has lived his entire life being fed a lie. What purpose could it serve to tell him the truth, now?" Her father sighed heavily and slouched. "I'm growing older. Your mother, too. What will happen if I die before he's ready?"

She found more pity in her heart for him. The man had lost two sons, after all, to accident and illness. Yet she couldn't forget he'd lost his daughter, too, and by choice. "The fact I'm all you have left is no good reason for me to do what you wish."

"How about for mercy's sake?" Her father gave her a solemn, piercing look. Erista didn't answer. Time had passed and she'd found a large measure of forgiveness for her parents, but there would always be a space between them.

"But to a madman, Erista?"

Her father's anguished tone turned her head.

"Cillian's not a madman."

Her father shook his head. "Only a madman would advertise the position of bride as he would for a new chatelaine."

He would have to, Erista thought. He only had a year to find a wife or be deposed without any effort from Devain at all. "There are women aplenty who will overlook his past for the position he offers."

"But to send a mailing to every noble house in the closest hundred miles! It smacks of desperation at the very least. Low breeding. What sort of woman is he seeking, that would answer a call such as this?"

One like her, or so Erista hoped. She'd never told Cillian where she'd lived. Who she was. It might be foolish of her to think he was trying to find her, but she'd been foolish before. Eslan, smile wide, raised his sword and turned to them. Sunlight slanted across his face. There was no way Erista would ever do anything to take the smile from it. Honesty had ever served her well, but not this time.

"You could have a kingdom as fine as any right here," her father said. She leaned to pat his hand, then turned back to the sight of Eslan now back to battle with his teacher. She looked around the garden and to the fields where the orchards had once stood. She'd never regret returning, but this was no longer her home.

"It's not his kingdom I desire," she said, and for that her father had no answer. The Princess Erista Bellor," announced the footman, stumbling over the pronouncement of her name. "Formerly of Bellora."

That drew the attention of every eye in the room. Erista straightened. She'd faced scrutiny often enough, but it had always been easier to withstand when wearing a Handmaiden's gown. Looking at her in uniform, most people saw her function. In more fashionable clothes, they saw her as a woman.

Woman I began, and woman I shall end.

She lifted her chin to face them all.

Cillian's court was different than his father's. "Women had been allowed to join, and Erista straightened further. How many of them had come for her same reason? How many vied for the seat beside him?

"Approach the king and present yourself," said the footman, as though every day trembling, anxious women arrived and had to be reminded of protocol. Perhaps they did.

Erista moved forward on silent slippers, gliding carefully toward the dais at the end of the room. Cillian hadn't even turned his head at the sound of her name. He spoke idly to the man next to him. Edward Delaw, she saw, and was glad to witness the easy way the men smiled and laughed.

Cillian didn't look up until she'd dropped to a low curtsy in front of him, her head bowed. When she looked up, she watched his expression slide from boredom to surprise to wariness. It stopped short of the joy she'd hoped to see.

The room had been abuzz with talk but slowly fell quiet as Cillian stared. Erista held the curtsy for longer than necessary, her eyes locked with his. Her head swam at the sight of him, his red-gold hair shorter and worn loose around his shoulders. He was still so lovely.

"You're here," he said finally, and all the tension she'd been holding whooshed out of her in a sigh. 1 am.

Cillian got to his feet and took her hand. "Walk with me." Ignoring the buzz of whispers following them, she followed him out the pair of glass doors to the gardens beyond. A glance over her shoulder showed the press of many faces to the glass. They had an audience.

"Don't mind them," Cillian said. "It pleases them to watch me as though I were an exhibit in a menagerie."

He took her along the crushed stone path to a more private place sheltered by flowering shrubs. He turned, stepped back. Gave her space.

"You came," Cillian said. "I didn't know if you would. I didn't. . . think you would."

"Did you hope?" She let her gaze drink in every inch of him, not bothering to hide her appraisal.

Cillian nodded, solemn. "I did."

"Have many others come, too?"

"Oh, more than I could have imagined," he said with a familiar smirk that faded quickly into seriousness. "I find it most merry how many who'd have been hard-pressed to dance with me at a ball now offer themselves to dance between my sheets." Thin-edged jealousy sliced at her. "I believe you."

"And yet none of them were you," he said as though the very idea were unbelievable.

"Lovely story makers all of them, well versed in telling tales designed to make them seem to be everything I could ever want, and all of them naught but stories, in the end."

"Surely not all of them are dishonest."

"And none of them are you," he said again and took a step closer. "Honesty." She laughed, heat rising in her at the look on his face and the memory of his taste on her tongue. "I don't use that name any longer."

"You've left the Order."

"I have." She looked down and gestured at her gown. "I find myself in civilian garb once more."

"It suits you." He took another step.

She took one, too. "So you've not yet filled the position?"

"My dear one, it has been so long since I've filled any position I'm fair to bursting." Erista's laugh became half a sob. She drew him closer that last step and tipped her face to his. "I plead your mercy. I meant to fail you and I did." Cillian shook his head. "No, sweetness, you didn't. You went away and left me alone."

"So I failed in more ways than one." Her voice cracked as months of grief flooded it. "I shouldn't—"

He stopped her with a soft brush of a kiss. "I made my peace with Edward. I had no one, and he was there. If I'd had you to lean on, I'd never have done that, and he and I would still be estranged. I found my solace, Honesty, and it's lasted longer than a single moment."

Again, the cut of envy sliced her, but only a little and of a different sort. "I'm glad for you. For both of you."

"And you are here, now." His green eyes flashed. "That says something, does it not?" She smiled, though her throat had gone tight with emotion. "Cillian, I cannot promise you I will be any better a wife than I was a Handmaiden."

He smiled. "I'm fair certain I shall be as equally unreliable a husband as I was a patron. We are well matched, then."

A shiver ran through her. "Do you think so?"

"I think we can learn to be, if nothing else." He kissed her hand. She thought of the playroom and the sting of leather on her skin. She shivered again but looked steadily into his eyes. "As a Handmaiden I would have bent my back for your pleasure. As wife . . . I'm not sure I'd be able."