No Greater Pleasure Read online

  “If it pleased you.” The standard reply, but said with teasing. She put her hand in the bag and closed her fingers upon the leather journal. “I brought something for you, as well.”

  “Did you?” He cocked his head to look at her. Behind him, Jericho had lifted Dane in the air and the boy was laughing himself into hiccups. Gabriel kept his eyes on hers. “What is it?”

  She handed him the journal. “For your work. To replace the one that was ruined.”

  “I have other notebooks. You needn’t have wasted your coin on another.”

  She raised an eyebrow, her gaze solid on his. “Then perhaps I shall take this one back?”

  He did not laugh, as he never did, but the corners of his mouth tilted the barest amount. “Perhaps I can force myself to use it.”

  She handed it to him, and when he took it, their fingers touched. “I hope it pleases you.”

  Before he could answer, a feminine shriek shot across the courtyard. “Jericho!”

  Gabriel straightened, his gaze leaving Quilla’s and growing distant again. He took two measured steps away from her, the sudden formality between them as solid as a wall of brick. “Saradin.”

  Saradin lifted her skirts to skip across the stones, her golden curls atumble over her shoulders. “Jericho Delessan! You have returned!”

  “Ah, sister,” said Jericho, turning.

  His posture, so easy in the marketplace, in the carriage, and with his nephew, became stiff. He left off holding up the bag of sweets with which he’d been tormenting Dane and handed them to the boy, then put his hand over his heart and executed a perfect bow that stopped Saradin in her tracks.

  “Brother,” she replied coyly. “It has been too long since your presence graced this house. It has been sore lacking in frivolity.”

  She threw a glance over her shoulder at Gabriel, whose posture now echoed his brother’s. Two men, so alike in stature and form, the only difference in their features the color of their hair and eyes. They faced off, a woman and a child between them, and the air fair crackled with sudden tension that Saradin appeared not to notice.

  She held out her hand to Jericho, who seemed to have no choice but to take it or else seem rude. He brought it to his lips with such brief attention that it was clear to Quilla, at least, that he wanted no part of Saradin’s flirting. Gabriel’s wife, on the other hand, giggled like a schoolgirl and fluttered her hands at him before turning back to her husband with flushed cheeks and bright eyes.

  “Your brother has been naughty, has he not, my lord husband? Depriving us of his company these long months?”

  “Indeed.” Gabriel looked at his wife, not at his brother. “He has been most inconsiderate.”

  “But he’s back now.” Saradin nodded as though pleased with herself. “And oh, what gay times we shall have. I’ve learned a new card game, Jericho, which I must teach you. ’Tis most merry.”

  Jericho nodded stiffly. Gabriel might not be looking at him, but he had not taken his eyes off his brother until now, when his gaze flickered to Quilla, then back to Saradin. His smile grew bright again, though it didn’t seem to meet his eyes.

  “I look forward to it.”

  “Come, wife,” said Gabriel. “I’m certain my brother is fair weary from his journey and would like to eat and rest.”

  “Oh, yes, of course.” Saradin turned on tiny, slippered toes and clapped her perfect little hands. “I’ve told Florentine to make tea in the parlor. Let us see if she’s done so!”

  She swept past Quilla without a second look, and Quilla’s amused glance followed her. The woman was either oblivious or a great actress, or a good mixture of both. It did not bother her to be so ignored. She knew the woman treated the house staff in the same manner—invisible unless needed.

  With another look at his brother, Jericho took Dane by the hand and started toward the house. “Let’s go find Jorja, shall we?”

  Dane skipped alongside his uncle, chattering away, and after a moment, Gabriel looked at her. “You are dismissed, Handmaiden. Seek your entertainment elsewhere until the morrow, when I should have need of you again.”

  “Yes, my lord.” She watched him go, then went inside to her own room.

  Chapter 6

  Jericho’s presence at Glad Tidings helped the house live up to its name. With Gabriel’s brother in residence, more laughter rang through the halls, Florentine made better desserts because the other lord Delessan liked sweets, and the young lord Delessan ran rampant through the house, terrorizing the staff with his uncle-approved escapades.

  The rest of the house might have been in high spirits, but Gabriel withdrew to his work and his temper, leaving Quilla at a loss as to how, exactly, to soothe him. He snapped more ferociously when she confused amelium with bareelium. He threw vials of half-completed potions against the walls when they did not coagulate correctly, and left her with the mess of broken glass and stinking fluid to clean. He worked at an almost frantic pace, as though by focusing on his work he need not focus on his brother, his son, or his wife.

  Quilla tried hard to understand him, but he would not be understood. He did not want to be understood, nor soothed. Placating him was impossible. He wanted cocao when she made tea, scones when she brought simplebread, her aid when she busied herself with other tasks, and her absence when she offered her help.

  “This is clearly not crystallized quartz!” he shouted at her one day when she tried to hand him a bottle with a faded label she thought had contained the ingredient he wanted. “Are you an inbred simpleton that you cannot comprehend what it is I wish of you?”

  “Are you an arrogant, crotchety curmudgeon with absolutely no idea of how to treat people?” she shot back, and threw the vial down so hard it bounced on the scarred wooden floor but didn’t shatter. “Yes! Yes, you are!”

  She turned to stalk out of the room, heart pounding and tears sparking behind her eyes. True patience, she reminded herself, but it didn’t work. Fury made her hands shake. She hadn’t made it halfway to the door when he caught her by the elbow and spun her around to face him.

  “How dare you speak to me that way?”

  She yanked her arm from his grip. The faint rise of his brows showed surprise, perhaps at her strength. “How dare you continue to abuse me so?”

  He made as though to grab her again, and she stepped back, her arms going up to cover herself in a defensive posture. He watched her and did not try to reach for her again.

  “I thought Handmaidens were bound to please their patrons.”

  She did not relax her stance. Submissive did not mean without defense. There were patrons who did not understand the line, and despite what he’d told her about never giving in to the desire to hit someone, at that moment she did not trust him.

  “And patrons are understood to at least attempt to be pleased.”

  He scowled. “I hired you to assist me with my work. To make my life easier.”

  “And yet nothing I do makes you happy!” she shot back. “You’re incapable of being pleased!”

  He took a step toward her, and she raised her hands, her posture clear. She would strike back if he touched her. Gabriel looked at her hands and did not move closer.

  “You would allow me to take a strap to your back, but you would not allow me to come closer when I would apologize for my behavior?”

  She narrowed her eyes. “One has naught to do with the other. Is that your intent? To plead my mercy for being an insufferable prat? Or maybe you intend to bruise my arm again with your inconsiderate grip.”

  He blinked at her words, and in an instant had bowed his head, one hand over his heart. “I do plead your mercy, Handmaiden. I was out of turn. I beg your forgiveness. I have been . . .”

  “Insufferable,” she repeated. “Intolerable. Rude. Shall I go on?”

  He kept his head lowered but raised his eyes, hand still over his heart. “I don’t believe ’tis necessary, no. I am full aware of how ill I have treated you.”

  She put her hand