What challenged her was learning how to
be
.
She looked at the other novitiates, the Sisters and Mothers. Some more accomplished than others, to be certain, but most of them with the same common serenity Annalise had not yet discovered. She chafed, frankly, not at the tasks she was set but at the notion she should perform the dullest or most odious of them not only without hesitation, but with cheerful, consistent pleasure.
Even so, there was pleasure to be found in domesticities, in simplicity. In combining the perfect measures of herbs to provide just the right brew or setting a table, making a bed with clean, sweet sheets. No matter her previous skill, Annalise learned there would always be new ways to perform.
Annalise had only been put in one place she knew to be incorrect. With other classes, once she’d proven she either already had the ability or learned it quickly enough, she was allowed to sit with other students of her level. In herb-mixing and elementary baking and pantomime she was advanced several levels within the span of a sevenday, and even in the discussion of art and history, for those two subjects she’d studied for her own pleasure and upon which could converse competently with even a scholar. Yet in the one group with whom she absolutely did not fit, Annalise was not moved.
Master Toquin’s Faith instruction.
Annalise had spent her childhood so fully immersed within the practice of the Faith she could pray in circles ’round the other women in her class. She could read with more proficiency, dissect the simple passages with greater clarity, and in addition she knew by heart dozens of other texts and commentaries Toquin never once mentioned.
He didn’t like being challenged, she’d learned that early on when she brought up an alternative argument about one of the stories. She’d thought at first perhaps it was because she was a woman, but then decided a man who’d decided to live and teach in a house solely composed of women would have to be stupid to also refuse to believe a woman could be literate, educated, and understand the Faith. No, it wasn’t her sex that kept him from admitting she could hold her own in a discourse.
It was her.
She’d asked to be removed from his class and been denied. No explanation. Just a simple refusal. It was the only time since she’d arrived Annalise felt the silent admonition that she could do as the Mothers had decided, or she could leave. She wasn’t ready to leave. She stayed in Master Toquin’s class.
This is what Annalise had thought she knew about the Order of Solace—that it was a society of women bound to practice their faith through service. That they believed each moment of absolute solace they provided their patrons sent one more arrow to fill Sinder’s Quiver, and that when it was full, the Vacant Father and the Invisible Mother would be reunited with their son and the time of peace would be at hand.
Annalise was no blush-cheeked virgin, but the idea of taking a stranger to bed—of being in charge of a patron’s satisfaction, or of being required to service a patron’s whim, had heated her. Annalise had no desire to pretend even to herself that she wasn’t curious about this part of a Handmaiden’s duty, even if she never intended to actually take her vows. Yet of all the classes to which she’d been assigned, of all the instruction she overheard other novitiates discussing, there seemed to be nothing to prepare them for the more intimate side of taking a patron.
“How do you know if you’re ready?” Annalise asked Tansy one evening in the quiet of their room.
“For a patron? We don’t have to know when we’re ready,” Tansy answered. She turned from her place at the basin where she was washing her face.
Clad in the cream-colored shift, her hair tied atop her head with a bit of green ribbon, she looked younger even than she was. Earlier she’d been wearing a layer of cosmetic, applied by a too-heavy hand, and the remains of it clung to her eyes, lips, and cheeks.
Annalise got up from her bed and crossed to take the cloth from Tansy’s hand. “Because the Mothers-in-Service know for us, is that it? Here. Let me. Who did this to you?”
“I did it to myself,” Tansy said with a sigh and tipped her face up as would a child. “Some patrons would require such.”
“Some might require you to dress as a brothel whore?”
Tansy frowned. “I meant some would require the use of cosmetic! Did I—was it too much?”
“I suppose that depends upon the eye that views it.” Annalise scrubbed gently. “And I’m fair certain you need no such heavy touch to bring out your own beauty, Tansy. Good cosmetic enhances one’s features, not obscures them.”
Tansy sighed again. “No wonder Perdita was making sport of me.”
“Perdita,” Annalise said darkly, “makes too much sport.”
“And yet she’s so far advanced. She’s already accomplished so much, and I heard that she’ll be granted a patron before the year’s end. She’s been here only a sixmonth, Annalise, and I’ve—”
“The Mothers know their business.” Annalise swiped the last bits of cosmetic from Tansy’s mouth. “There. If you like, I can show you how to apply it so none would even know you’re wearing it at all.”
“Would you? Oh, thank you!” Tansy went with skipping steps to her armoire and pulled out a casket of pots and brushes. As with everything she had, all were of the finest quality.
Annalise studied the wealth before her. “Would you take this with you to a patron?”
Tansy caught her bottom lip with her teeth. “I . . . suppose not. We’re to take only the clothes we travel in and a few other small items. The patrons provide us with what we need.”
“Do you think most men would think to provide a Handmaiden with tools such as these?” Annalise plucked a pot of lip rouge. “This is lovely, Tansy, but very costly. Patrons must be able to afford us, true, but most of them are men. And men, in my experience, think naught of such feminine fripperies as cosmetic.”
“I
could
take it with me, I suppose, even if it’s not usually done.” Tansy sounded doubtful.
Annalise smoothed Tansy’s damp hair from her forehead. The girl had skin like milk. Against it, Annalise’s fingers looked ever the darker. “It would better serve you to learn to use what you’ve access to in any household.”
“But Seducta said—”
Annalise laughed aloud, unable to help herself. Handmaidens were granted their names based upon the quality the Mothers-in-Service determined their most prominent, not necessarily the best. “Seducta? She’s the one who favors crimson lip rouge and lightens her hair, yes? The one with the overlush figure?”
Tansy, Sinder bless her, wasn’t likely to say a negative word against any of the Sisters, but her blush meant Annalise was right. Annalise laughed again and hugged Tansy quickly. The girl was sweet beyond belief.
“There are some men, true, who prefer such a woman. But you, dear one, are not that sort of woman, and I daresay will never be. Perdita might be, if she doesn’t watch the number of creambuns she stuffs into her sly mouth, and if she relies on the charm that lies between her legs rather than any other skill. And I suppose she will be granted a patron before the year’s end for that reason, as what I know of men leads me to believe there are many who require such simple solace as that. But Tansy”—Annalise made sure the girl was looking at her face before she continued—“you are different and special. You know better than I that a Handmaiden’s pleasure and purpose is never the same from patron to patron, nor from Sister to Sister. When you are granted your patron, it will be because only you can satisfy him. I know it.”
Tansy’s blue eyes welled with tears, and she clung to Annalise with a small sob. “I fear I shall never be granted a patron! Never! I stumble so, I cannot learn grace! I know the five principles, I know all the positions of Waiting, I am mired fully in my faith . . . and yet . . . I stumble, Annalise! Over and over, when it comes time for me to shine, I do not!”
“Hush.” Annalise pushed the clinging girl from her, but gently. “If there is a Handmaiden in this room, it’s surely you, not I.”
Tansy wiped at her eyes. “Oh, no. You . . . you are so bold and certain. You’ll be granted a patron soon enough. You already know so much more than most of the women who come here.”
Annalise thought of the hours spent in Master Toquin’s class and felt her mouth thin. Just two days before he’d ignored her when she tried to interject into his discussion. She hated to be ignored. “Just because I can quote the Book from back to front makes me no more ready for a patron than you, and perhaps less so, for I’ve not yet mastered the other skills necessary.”
“But you shall, easily enough. Is there aught you’ve ever set your mind to you’ve not managed?” Tansy laughed. “I would not believe it of you.”
“There are many tasks to which I’ve set myself I’ve left unfinished.” Annalise forced away her frown. “But come, let’s to the kitchen, where I swear I will show you tricks that will charm any patron, no matter how stingy he might be with frippery.”
She was not there to become a Handmaiden, she reminded herself. She was there to wait out her time until the engagement contract between her and Jacquin could be safely annulled without harm to either of them. All the rest of this was simply to pass the time.
She would not admit how she longed to set Toquin in his place. No. Nor how the way his gaze slid over her without reaction had so maddened her she’d considered launching herself into his arms to see what he’d do. How every time he turned his face she wanted to step in front of him to force him to look at her. How each time he passed she wished to move so that he might be forced to rub against her.
How much she wanted him to . . . want her.
“Annalise?”
“Put a gown on,” Annalise said absently, trying to shake off the sensual image her mind insisted on painting. “It won’t do for you to be running the halls in your shift.”
No man for whom she’d set her cap had ever resisted her. Not since she’d first grown breasts and discovered the way a turn of the face, a flip of the hair, could draw a man’s eyes the way a lamb is tracked by wolves in the meadow. Annalise knew she wasn’t commonly pretty, but that had never mattered. If she wanted a man, she’d had him, always.
And why did she want him? she thought as Tansy, chattering incessantly, shrugged into her gown and bid Annalise help her with the buttons at her throat. Why did Toquin so capture her attention? It was more than his face and form, which were a delight to any woman of discerning taste. And it was not his attitude, that arrogant coldness, the superiority. It was somewhat else, perhaps that sense of being unattainable. Of being so aloof.
She wanted to crack him open and climb inside. She wanted to see him want. She wanted, Annalise thought as she led the still tittering Tansy toward the kitchens, to see what it was like when Cassian Toquin broke.
In the kitchen, she simpered and wooed Cook, a fat biddy with a mustache and chin hairs who was just finishing the dough for the morning’s rolls when Annalise and Tansy entered. The cook, who was likely used to young women plundering her stores at strange times, waved them toward the pantry where she warned them to keep their fingers out of the crocks of honey and butter, and to clean up any messes they made. Tansy, wide-eyed, let out a deep breath when the door closed behind them.
“How did you get her to agree?”
Annalise, eyes seeking the ingredients she’d use instead of Tansy’s expensive cosmetic, shrugged. “Think you she’s never had anyone in her kitchen past hours?”
“The evening snack is the last mealtime! I never thought . . .”
“Which do you think the Order prefers, Tansy. Girls whose bellies empty in the night nibbling something in the kitchen, or being forbade such privilege and therefore sneaking food into their rooms where the bugs and rodents might congregate?”
Tansy looked so suddenly guilty Annalise knew she’d been one such girl. “Nobody ever said we were allowed to come for food . . .”
Annalise sighed and put her hands on Tansy’s shoulders to square them. “We are not children here. This is not a school. There is no punishment, for there aren’t any rules. We’re required to study and learn and grow toward the day we’re determined capable and ready to take our vows, yes?”
“Yes,” Tansy said doubtfully.
“So, if you are hungry, then why not eat?”
“But . . . I’m not hungry now.”
Annalise gave an inner sigh. “Fine. Come here to the table and let me show you how to make up your face using what any household will have.”
It took little time and effort to paint Tansy’s lips and highlight her eyes with pastes made from spices common enough Annalise could near guarantee no kitchen would lack them. The end result was lovely, as Tansy proclaimed when taken to the cloudy-looking glass hung by the kitchen’s back door.
“I’m pretty!”
“You’re always pretty, Tansy.”
Tansy touched her face in awe, then turned to Annalise. “It’s so much prettier than using all those pots of color, and so fast!”
“And so easy, so simple, that none but the most inquisitive patron need ever even know you’ve used anything at all.”
“How ever did you learn such tricks?” Tansy looked again at her smiling reflection.
Annalise wiped her hands free of the remnant of spices. “You learn to make do with what you have. Or have not.”
Tansy hugged her again, and Annalise suffered the embrace because to put Tansy off was much like trying to keep an overeager kitten from climbing one’s skirts. Tansy even went so far as to kiss her cheek. Annalise laughed.
“I’m well-pleased to have made you so happy, Tansy.”
Tansy took Annalise’s hands. “I thank the Invisible Mother every day you were assigned to share a room with me.”
“I wouldn’t go that far, Tansy, my goodness.”
“Life brings what the Invisible Mother provides.”
Annalise didn’t believe that for an instant, but she smiled and patted Tansy’s cheek. Before she could say anything, the back door flew open and two laughing figures stumbled through on a cloud of distinctive-smelling smoke.