That seemed to mollify him a bit, because he said, “Really? What are the others?”
“The color of my eyes, the size of my feet and hands, my height, the roundness of my breasts,” Quilla told him matter-of-factly.
Most times, the answer stumped them, but not this man. He scowled, deep blue gray eyes made dark with the expression. “I didn’t call for you because of the size of your breasts.”
Quilla nodded again. “But if my age—”
“ ’Tis not.” Delessan’s scowl further creased his face. “Florentine, you can go.”
The chatelaine nodded and glared at Quilla, then bustled out of the room. Quilla remained where she was. This man was going to be more than a challenge. He was going to be downright difficult.
Quilla had never left an assignment. It had been a point of pride for her that no matter how difficult or demanding a patron, she stayed until she provided them absolute solace, or they sent her away. In the Order of Solace, no shame came from failure to ultimately please. It was understood that some people refuse to be pleased no matter what they are offered. Shame came from giving up.
“How old are you?”
“Eight and twenty, my lord.”
He snorted and put his hands behind his back. Gabriel Delessan was a tall man and broad-shouldered. He had the body of a laborer dressed in a gentleman’s clothes, rather formal for the time of day and the work he did, she thought. Her eyes assessed him as she had the room. He could have been any age from thirty to forty, his dark hair without hint of silver. Black trousers. White shirt buttoned up high at the throat. Gray vest, four-buttoned, none undone. His black coat had been tailored to fit him exquisitely, the sleeves hitting him at the wrist instead of midhand, as was the current fashion, and in a flash Quilla understood that was not because his clothes were out of fashion, but that he’d had them tailored that way. He worked with his hands. Shorter sleeves were more practical. The jacket, on the other hand, came to midthigh instead of the currently popular waist length. The clothes made him look severe, forbidding, not a man who could be bothered wasting time with trivialities.
“Is it always the policy of your Order to teach its servants to stare?”
Quilla blinked, startled at being caught. She lowered her eyes. “No, my lord. I plead your mercy.”
“For Sinder’s sake,” her patron said. “Get off your knees.”
Quilla did as he’d asked, standing in one fluid motion gained from years of practice. She waited a moment, watching him. His gaze traveled over her with the same apparent attention to detail she’d given him. Quilla was used to being scrutinized. It wasn’t unheard of for new patrons to ask her to strip down to skin the first time she met them. Particularly the mistresses, who often seemed to want to reassure themselves her body was no more seductive or luxurious than theirs; even if it was, they always managed to find some flaw to point out and feel better about.
But this man looked her over, fully clothed, and made her feel more naked than if he’d ordered her to strip. When at last his eyes settled on her face, she knew he could see the heatroses blooming on her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes.
“If I wanted a whore I could get one from the market for a tenth of the cost of having you,” he said, his indifferent tone worse than if he’d sounded condescending.
She’d been well trained in keeping her emotions in check, but this bald, bored statement slapped her harder than if he’d sneered the words. She blinked, her mouth dropping open enough to allow a small hiss to escape her lips before she gathered her presence of mind and pressed them together.
“I am not a whore.”
Delessan’s face proved perfectly suited to amused sarcasm as one brow lifted and his mouth quirked into some sad semblance of a smile that had no humor behind it. “Then what makes you think I want you on your knees?”
For there is no greater pleasure than providing absolute solace.
The words calmed her enough to reply without a dip or change of her voice.
“The position is called Waiting, Readiness. It shows I am ready to please you.”
His smirk became a full-blown sneer. “And if it pleased me to have you strip out of that nasty, travel-worn rag?”
“I would do it.”
“And if it pleased me to have you suck my cock?”
She flinched a bit at the harshness of his words. Did she imagine the flicker in his eyes? Pleasure at seeing her flinch? Disgust? Quilla discovered she could not read him, and she did not like that. Not at all.
“If it pleased you for me to do that, then I would.”
“So how does that make you not a whore?”
She centered herself by letting her heart beat another four times. Taking another four breaths. Blinking a quartet of times more.
“The fact I am here at all tells me the Order approved your request,” she said evenly. “Which means the Mothers-in-Service were satisfied you understood the purpose and place of a Handmaiden. It has never been my experience that they were wrong. So if they sent me to you, ’twas because they felt your petition was worthy of merit. That you had need of what I could provide. I trust the Mothers and I trust the Order. I am a Handmaiden. I am here to please you. To provide one small part of your life that is perfect solace. If that includes sucking your cock, then it is my pleasure to do so.”
“It’s not your pleasure,” he corrected. “It’s your job.”
The vehemence that coated his last word raised her eyebrows. “My job, then, if you insist.”
“Then don’t claim you’d do it for the pleasure of it.” Delessan gave her his back. “I abominate lies and I abhor pandering. I sent for a Handmaiden so I wouldn’t have to deal with that. No simpering maids thinking a bedding will provide them extra favors. No kowtowing servants who bluster and flatter with the thought of bilking me out of an extra Festival bonus. No sly assistants filling my head with tales of my own brilliance while they steal my work out from under me.”
He turned, eyes flashing. “I want someone to serve me in all ways because it is her job and her duty, and so I will know it’s her place to do so without thought of reward. I want to trust that when I tell you to do something it will be done the way I want it done, when I want it done, and how. Immediately and without interpretation. Without hope of personal gain. I want a Handmaiden because it’s your sole function to provide me with what I need, and I am not required to concern myself with the bloody awful task of actually trying to provide anything in return.”
Quilla had been beaten by patrons who gained their pleasure from physical proof of their dominance. She could handle pain. She was trained in that. She’d been insulted. She’d been treated with coldness and impersonality, even with disdain.
She had never, until now, heard anyone distill the essence of her function into something so soiled, so awful, so utterly devoid of joy.
She blinked and heard her voice, faint and just a bit shaky. “I am here to please you, my lord.”
His gaze traveled over her once again, from head to foot, his face twisting with slowly growing disgust. “It would please me to see you clean and dressed appropriately, and not looking like you’d just come off the rubbish heap. Get out and don’t come back until you’re clean.”
She nodded, an unfamiliar pricking at the back of her eyes making her realize she was close to tears. “If it—”
“You’re dismissed!” he barked. “No chatter! Get out!”
Without another word, Quilla did as he’d ordered. When the door had closed behind her, she leaned against the wall, one hand out to support herself on knees gone weak. She swallowed the lump in her throat and blinked away the unaccustomed sting of tears, straightened her back, and began to make her way back to her quarters.
He didn’t even ask me my name.
H
e’ll call for you when he’s ready to, and not before. And don’t go up there until he does.”
Florentine’s words of wisdom made Quilla roll her eyes. “It’s been four days, Florentine. I wasn’t sent here to idle my days away.”
The chatelaine snorted. “I’ve plenty for you to do, don’t you worry.”
Quilla smiled as she hulled peas and put them in a large wooden bowl. “I’m sure you do. But nevertheless, it’s not my job to peel potatoes and stir soup.”
Florentine put a finger to the tip of her sharp nose and pushed it upward, offering Quilla an unappetizing view up her nostrils. “Well, hoity-toity do, excuse me.”
“You know it as well as I do,” said Quilla. “If he wanted another kitchen maid, he’d have hired one.”
“I don’t pretend to know what the master wants. I only take care of the kitchen. And oversee the others.”
“And run this household,” added Quilla, who couldn’t help a fondness for the large, brusque woman. “ ’Tis no simple task to be chatelaine and cook, as well.”
Florentine bent over the pot of stew simmering on the fire. “Used to be another, but he up and married the twit eight years hence, and the house has been up to me ever since. He never ought to have hired the girl, and I told him so at the time, for she was little more than a pair of bright green eyes and a mop of golden hair. She came highly recommended, of course, from that finishing school what likes to turn out pretty young things looking to wed a successful man. She did well enough. She knew what she wanted, at least. Knew how to run a house to please herself—and her man.”
Quilla paused, thinking. “There’s been no sign of her. Is she ill?”
Florentine stood up with a groan, rubbing her lower back. “Ill? The twit’s gone mad. Before the boy was born—”
“Boy?” This stopped Quilla’s hands again in surprise. “He has a son?”
“Aye, young Dane. Off someplace with his uncle Jericho right now.” Florentine gathered a bundle of dried herbs and began grinding them with her mortar and pestle. “Forgive me for trying to tell you the story, my fine miss. I suppose ’tis my lack of social grace that makes it all right to keep interrupting me.”
Quilla bit the inside of her cheek to keep from smiling. “I plead your mercy, madame. Please, go on.”
“Like I was saying,” continued Florentine with an exaggerated sniff. “Before the boy was born, Mistress Saradin found the responsibilities of marriage somewhat more trying than she’d imagined. Also, the master’s work keeps him secluded and distracted. Not the way you’d like to be when you have a pretty young wife who’s used to your attention. Oh, he doted on her, sure enough, no question. But his work, you see. ’Tis all about his work.”
Quilla could imagine the end to this tale. “She had an affair.”
“Oh, not just one, my know-it-all miss. Many. Seems the Mistress Saradin wasn’t happy without a slew of beaux dancing attendance upon her, especially when she could nary seem to keep her husband’s focus. He gave her whatever she wanted, but not enough of it. Naught was ever enough for her.”
“She sounds perfectly lovely,” said Quilla wryly.
“Lovely she was in face and form, but she was also young. Too young for the master, who’s been old since he was born, I believe.” Florentine dropped a handful of herbs and spices into the stew, tasted it, then smacked her lips. “So it came to pass that the master discovered his wife in the arms of another man. His assistant, as a matter of fact, a young bloke by the name of Ravine. Turns out Ravine had been working for another alchemist before he come to apprentice himself to the master, and was intending to take away what he learned here back to his old master. I’m not sure which hurt the master more greatly, the betrayal of his wife or of his ’prentice. At any rate, he threatened to turn them both out, and when it came to be told that Ravine had no money of his own to provide the mistress a place in keeping with her standards, she left off with him and tried to woo herself back into the master’s good graces by telling him she was going to have his child.”
“Sweet Invisible Mother,” Quilla murmured. “No wonder he’s such a curmudgeon.”
Florentine snorted. “He was always like that. Dark, like. Kind beneath it, but dark all the same. Of course, after she poisoned herself he lost much of the kindness.”
“Poisoned!”
Florentine gave Quilla a shrewd look. “Oh, aye. Found out the master had been slipping it to the housemaid assigned to clean his rooms, and her belly was sprouting, too. When Mistress Saradin found out, she wrecked his studio and took a draught of sommat meant to kill herself. Well, she didn’t do her studying, because what she took didn’t kill her, only sent her mad, like. Didn’t hurt the boy, thank Sinder, though she might have killed him. Came out fine, the spitting image of his mother, fair-haired but blue-eyed. Not a speck of his father in him, that one, aside from his smarts. Dane’s smart as Sinder, he is.”
“Why does he not make a dissolution?”
Florentine looked at her as though Quilla were an idiot. “Because of the boy, of course. He sends the mother away, he must needs send away the lad, too. No man has the right to keep his own child iffen he sends away the mother. Not here in Gahun, at least, and I don’t think ’tis any righter than making it go the other way, mind, but ’tis the way it is.”
“But surely, if she’s mad—”
“Mad when she wants it,” said Florentine dismissively. “Mad when ’tis convenient. Mad when ’twill get her sympathy.”
The entire story had left Quilla almost breathless. “And the housemaid?”
“Took the money the master give her, conveniently ‘lost’ the child, and disappeared.”
“You don’t believe she was pregnant.”
Florentine rolled her eyes. “Not my place to say who or what the master does, my uppity miss, but seems far likelier to me he couldn’t be bothered with the girl and she took advantage of his situation to push her luck. But he never denied her claim, not to anyone I know of, and he took care of her. So did he, or didn’t he? ’Tis not my place to judge.”
“That’s possibly the most horrible story I’ve ever heard.”