A
nd another of the stairsteps has found her way to wedded bliss,” Jacquin Kirkol whispered into Annalise’s ear, knowing how it would tickle and make her squirm.
His fingers tightened on her hip. To anyone watching they would seem quite the happy pair, Annalise thought as his hot breath and the tip of his tongue on her lobe sent a shiver throughout her. Jacquin had been teasing her for the past hour or so as the endless wedding customs her sister had insisted on spun out the day.
“Just one more dance,” he murmured. “And then you’re free, yes?”
Annalise turned her face just barely to look at him. “You know I’m standing as her maid. I must attend her for the entire party.”
“Ludicrous.” Jacquin nipped at her neck so swiftly only someone staring at them would see it.
“Custom,” Annalise sighed and poked him in the side. “Cease to pitch this woo with me, sirrah, I’ve no time for lovemaking today.”
Jacquin pulled away with a pout that did nothing to sour his pretty face. “Bother. I might as well go home to Alyria and spend the days before our marriage tied tight in the chains of chastity.”
Annalise, her eyes on her sister, who would require food and drink soon if she meant to keep dancing with every party guest without falling over, poked him again. Hard. “Hush, you. I know for a fact you came as your grandmother’s escort and for the sake of trade, not for the mere pleasure of seeing me.”
The music slowed, the dance close to ending. Annalise made to move toward Allorisa, who didn’t look like she wanted to stop dancing, even though her face gleamed with heat and she’d made her way through every partner but for her newly bound husband. Jacquin arrested Annalise with a hand on her elbow, holding her tight. With the shield of her skirts and a turn of his body to keep most anyone from seeing, he pressed his groin to hers.
Her breath caught and she looked into his eyes. Jacquin had been a guest of her family’s near to every summer since they were both children. He’d ever been fond of kissing and petting her, but as the months drew closer to their impending marriage, he’d grown more insistent about proving his affections to her. Annalise had no issue with this, as she’d long ago relinquished the prize of her virginity and had made no secret to him about it. What was consistently more frustrating was that Jacquin often made much of an effort at wooing her, but very little at actually fucking her.
“I must attend my sister,” Annalise said through half-parted lips and laughed at his entirely too dramatic groan of frustration. “Surely you cannot expect me to slip away from all of this to service you?”
Jacquin laughed and kissed her cheek. “You, my darling, are a tauntress.”
“I could say the same of you.”
There were a bare few moments before the dance ended. Already Annalise felt the pull of expectation, of what was required. Of service anticipated. The weight of it slouched her shoulders and turned down the corners of her mouth. She could not wait for this day to end so she need no longer dance at anyone else’s whim.
Allorisa looked as though she never wanted the day to end. Annalise could scarcely blame her sister, who’d not inherited their mother’s winsome grace or their father’s casual charm, nor any of their shared attractive features. Of all the sisters, Risa was the most like their grandfather in appearance, and though Grandda was a formidable, well-liked gentleman, his face sat rather better on his shoulders than on a young woman’s. Even so, she had a lush figure and lively eyes and was as bright as a new-minted coin—but coupled with a determined disposition and no seeming ability to temper it, her intelligence had kept away suitors by the dozen. The fact that she was the sixth of seven daughters didn’t help, for it meant her dowry was nothing to brag upon. Not that her own was anything to brag upon, Annalise thought as she waited for her sister to finish a last whirl around the slate patio laid especially for this day. But at least Annalise was ebon-haired and dusky cheeked, with a merry sense of humor. At least she had that.
“Annalise, I’m thirsty,” Allorisa complained the moment her partner had bowed and left her. “By the Mother, the sun has fair roasted me!”
“Come, sister, and sit in the shade while I bring you something to drink.” Annalise took Risa’s arm and led her to the bride’s bower, hung with expensive, out-of-season flowers and ivy that cast shadows, if not coolness. “Your husband has nearly finished his dancing, as well. He’ll be along soon, I’m sure, and then we’ll have the feast.”
“I think I know the course of events at my own wedding party.” Allorisa took the mug of chilled grape wine Annalise handed her. She quaffed it back and returned the mug. Her eyes flashed and softened. “Thank you.”
“It’s hot,” Annalise said with a shrug, as though that made a difference in her sister’s disposition, when they both knew quite well it did not. “I’m fair roasted myself in this velvet.”
“But you look so lovely.” Risa said this charitably and could afford to, for though the gown had been sewn of expensive fabrics and cut to current style, it did not suit Annalise half as much as Risa’s did herself.
But then, that was the bride’s privilege. Annalise gritted out a smile. “More wine?”
Allorisa was craning her neck for the sight of her husband, Denver, who was still locked in the final waltz with some distant cousin. “Yes, yes, before he’s finished.”
Custom dictated the bride’s maid act the part of fetchencarry, so that was what Annalise would do. She refilled her sister’s cup, dodging a few well-meaning relatives who wanted to congratulate her on her upcoming nuptials, and returned it just as Denver found his new wife. The couple made a show of kissing sweetly at the request of the guests gathered ’round, and the announcement of supper was made. Annalise hung back, though her stomach rumbled. Her corset had been laced too tightly for her to enjoy the meal, and as her sister had insisted on the most gourmet of every dish, Annalise knew there would be a great many exotic dishes with tiny, insufficient portions and long pauses between the courses. If she were going to make it through this as well as sit at her sister’s elbow and serve her whatever her husband did not, she needed something to sustain her.
There was also the matter of the service her mother was now fluttering about. The Temple priests who’d performed the wedding ceremony even looked askance as Fluta Marony begged them with hands clasped to her bosom and fluttering eyelashes to lead a special afternoon service. Annalise’s mother didn’t notice the shifting sighs and looks the wedding guests gave, but even if she had, Annalise doubted it would matter. Her mother had long ago given herself fully to the Faith in every respect, though she’d left off forcing her children and husband to worship with her.
“It would be best to eat first,” said the tallest priest, the one who’d been to the house before and who knew Fluta’s eccentricities. “So that all might enjoy the service without distraction.”
It said much, Annalise thought, when a priest found her mother too enthusiastic in her worship. She took the chance to slip from the crowd. Bread and honey in the kitchen would settle her stomach while she waited on the poached quail’s eggs and copperfish roe. Annalise lifted her skirts, grateful at least for the flat-heeled slippers her sister had insisted she wear so as not to tower over her, and hopped across the kitchen threshold. Inside, the bustle and commotion did not dissuade her. Her mother preferred to cook most of their simple meals herself now that the family had so dwindled, but today all the cooking was being done by hired caterers. Annalise knew where to find the loaves of yesterday’s bread and crocks of sweet honey gathered from her father’s bees, and she ducked into the pantry without even speaking to any of the hired help.
Many manor homes had multiple pantries for wet and dry goods, chill and warm. At Marony House the kitchen had been expanded over time as money allowed and necessity dictated, so the main pantry had been carved from spare bits of space left when walls went up and others came down. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined a narrow, short hall with a jog at the end that led to the stairs of the cold cellar. The cool shadows and quiet were welcome after the hours of heat and noise outside, and Annalise paused to acclimate.
The low sound of murmured voices around the corner alerted her that she was not alone, and though she was surprised when she turned the corner, she was not shocked.
The young man wore his golden hair pulled back into an intricate braid down his back. Annalise studied his clothes, the high-throated shirt, the brightly patterned cravat, the long-cut trousers and tight-fitted westcoat that gave him his figure, rather than his body providing the form on which the clothes hung. Dressed with fashion, but not taste. Jacquin could’ve found better.
“Blessed Balls!” cried the blond young man.
“Indeed,” Annalise said with a quick sweep of her gaze over his dishevelment. She cast a longer look at his companion, who had the grace to look away. “I’ve just come for some honey. Please don’t let me interrupt.”
“But we weren’t—”
“Hush,” Jacquin said to the blond. “Mistress Marony is no fool. You should go.”
The blond nodded and ducked his head before brushing past her. The click of his bootheels was very loud, as was the creak of the pantry door and the influx of noise from the kitchen, which cut off when the door shut behind him. Jacquin leaned back against the railing to the cellar stairs. Annalise gave him her back to look for the crock of honey.
“Anna . . .”
“Hush.” She echoed him. “I am no fool.”
“Truly, we were only talking.”
One hand on the shelf to steady her, she turned with a throat afire from the effort of holding in a shout. “I believe your game involved the use of teeth and tongue, indeed, but you’ll find me fair doubtful as to it being only conversation.”
“And yet I swear to you that’s all we had, love.” Jacquin moved to touch her, and she pulled away.
They stared across the narrow space at each other. The sole illumination came from the narrow, high windows set along the roofline. There was enough light for her to have seen everything, to see all of it now. Jacquin’s frown and the flash of his eyes, the soft plumpness of his lips she recognized as the aftermath of passion.
“You dishonor me, Jacquin.”
“I swear to you, that was not my intent.”
“Then why do it? Here at my family’s house? By the Arrow, Jacquin, we are to be married in a month’s time. I know what you do in your own time before we are wed is of your own account, but . . .” Annalise swallowed hard.
“I plead your mercy. Truly, Annalise.”
Jacquin came from Alyria, where it had long been known that men who preferred the company of their own sex were freer with their public affections than was the case in some other places. Here in Evadia such intimacies were rather less accepted, at least in public. Though anything a man and a woman could get up to seemed entirely allowed, no matter how decadent, Annalise thought with bare-boned scorn as she remembered a couple she’d seen standing by the fountain. The woman wore a golden choker that would have looked like nothing more than expensive jewelry if not for the slim leash of golden chain attaching it to the bracelet of the man beside her. It had been difficult to tell if the length allowed either of them sufficient room to move apart or if they always need stay at each others’ elbows.
Annalise shuddered at the thought of it.
She sighed and leaned against the shelves, her appetite fled. She’d accepted Jacquin’s troth a year ago, just a sevenday after Allorisa had taken Denver’s. Annalise enjoyed the privileges of maidenhood and yet grew weary of being her father’s chattel. Trading that in for the position of wife seemed a pleasant enough arrangement. And she’d known Jacquin for near her entire life, after all.
She knew him.
“Hush, love, don’t cry.” Jacquin pressed a thumb to her cheek and took it away glistening with her tear. “Please. I swear to you the lad approached me. In a moment of weakness I allowed him to pull me inside—I never meant to do more than speak with him about why I must needs refuse his offer.”
Annalise captured Jacquin’s hand between hers and kissed his knuckles gently before releasing it. “Sweetheart, I know that.”
He startled and pulled his hand from hers. “Do you?”
“Think you I could know so well the color of your eyes, your favorite dessert, the way you cheat at cards, and yet not also know the other truths of you?”
“I think you don’t know as much truth as you think.”
“Jacquin, will you be happy?”
It was not the place to ask such a question, there amongst the bags of flour and crocks of jams and butters. Perhaps there was no good place to ask. Jacquin answered, anyway.
“I would do my best to try.”
Annalise sighed and ran a fingertip along the shelf, which gave up only the finest hint of dust. She rubbed it between her thumb and forefinger. “As would I. But would it be enough?”
Jacquin tilted his head to look her up and down. He stepped back. “What exactly are you saying?”
She had to strain her ears to hear even a hint of the merriment outside and maybe even that was her imagination. Outside in the garden, her sister danced with her new husband. In nine months time or close to it, Annalise guessed, her sister’s belly would swell with that man’s child, giving him an heir and Allorisa a reason to occupy her time with somewhat other than herself. Outside in the garden, guests ate and drank her parents’ hospitality, provided by their new son’s coin.
And all of that would be hers in a few short weeks. The rest of her life would stretch out in front of her—marriage. Motherhood. A pleasant home of her own and a husband who would do his best to make her happy but would never love her the way she desired, no matter how he was able to force himself toward it. She’d been able to overlook all of this before, but today, now, seeing the joy on her sister’s face and knowing it would never be hers struck something deep inside her.