No Greater Pleasure Read online

  Quilla bit her lip at Florentine’s blunt portrayal of Mistress Delessan’s lady’s maid. “Are you so certain she is that?”

  Florentine grinned, and Quilla marveled how the woman’s smile turned her from gruff and mannish to almost but not quite pretty. “No, but ’tis wondrous fun to say, ain’t it?”

  Quilla shook her finger. “Florentine, Allora might not be my favorite person in this household, but I can’t judge her bedtime habits.”

  “No, I don’t suppose you would.” Florentine gave a sly grin. “Though I haven’t any issue with doing it. And besides, I don’t guess it matters much to you whose bed she’s warming?”

  “You’re trying to draw my curiosity into the slop bucket.” Quilla ladled two bowls of savory stew and set one down in front of the cook. “And it won’t work.”

  “Not even if I tell you I heard the distinctive sound of Allora Walles’s whiny little screams of ecstasy coming from our other lord Delessan’s rooms for three nights running?”

  Quilla’s hands barely paused in setting down the bowls, and she kept her face studiedly neutral. “What the other lord Delessan does with his nights is not of my concern.”

  “ ’Tis not what he does with his nights but with his prick that I should think would interest you.”

  Quilla looked up. “Florentine, you know that’s not true. I am Gabriel’s Handmaiden. My concerns are for him alone.”

  “And he’s not taking you into his bed, either,” retorted Florentine, “the daft git. So nobody would blame you for turning your gaze to one who would.”

  That made Quilla’s mouth open in surprise. “I’ve told you again and again, I am not a whore. I’m not here to fuck him, Florentine! That’s not . . . it’s not my purpose and my place . . .”

  Her hands were trembling, and she fisted them to keep them still, stunned and discomfited by her display of emotion.

  “ ’Tis your place if ’twould bring him comfort, no?”

  “He doesn’t ask for that.”

  “I thought,” said Florentine, “you was supposed to just know. To give him what he needs before he knows he needs it. All that rot. Ain’t you just supposed to know? Or is it that you’re too afraid he’ll turn you down and you think you won’t be able to stand it?”

  Quilla went to the case holding the flatware and slid open the spoon drawer, pulling out two and shoving them both into the bowls. “And I thought your job was to bake bread and roast fowl, not to dissect mine.”

  “Oooh.” Florentine didn’t look at all put in her place. “If you’re going to insult me, Quilla Caden, you’re going to have to do better than that.”

  Quilla put her hands on her hips. “Well, how about this, you nosy bitch? My purpose is not any of your concern. If my patron wishes me in his bed, to his bed I’ll go, and because ’tis my place to be there and no other reason.”

  “Better, but I’m still not sufficiently wounded, emotionally. A few disparaging remarks about my appearance might do the trick. Or might not.”

  A smile tilted Quilla’s lips against her will. “You have poor taste in dresses and the color green does not suit you.”

  Florentine put her hand over her heart. “Oh, oh you wound me, you foul-tongued harpy!”

  Quilla laughed. “I’m sorry.”

  Florentine opened her eyes, rolling them. “Mistress, you’d need to say much worse than that to make me weep.”

  “I know it. We can’t all have a talent for insult.”

  “Nor can we all have a talent for complacency,” said Florentine, scooping a mouthful of stew. “But we create a nice balance, do we not?”

  The friendly words surprised Quilla, who smiled. “I think so, yes.”

  “A friend is someone who’ll tell you what you need to hear even when you don’t want to hear it, no?”

  “Among other things, I think so. Yes.”

  Florentine gestured toward Quilla with the spoon. “Then you’ll take this as coming from a friend, Quilla. That ornery son of a bastard up there needs more from you than tea and dusting. And if you wait for him to ask for it, you’ll be failing in your duty.”

  “Why are you all at once so concerned about my duty?” Quilla asked, stung. “When I came here, you called me a whore because you assumed I’d be sharing his bed.”

  “When you came here, I didn’t know you’d be good for him,” Florentine shot back.

  “You think I’m good for him?”

  “I think you could be better for him,” said Florentine, typically not blowing any sunshine when smoke would suffice. “He’s too stubborn to see it, but you should.”

  “Are you suggesting I seduce him?” The thought held more appeal than she might have admitted a few months ago. “I’ve never . . .”

  “Never had to? I don’t imagine so.” Florentine gave Quilla’s face and body a long, lingering look tinged with playful lasciviousness. “But then you’ve never had our lord Delessan for a patron before. They’re all different, no?”

  “They’re all different, yes.”

  “And you feel different about this one.”

  Quilla shook her head. “No. He is my patron. That’s all.”

  Florentine let out a snort. “If you say so. And neither does a certain yellow-haired swain catch your eye, either.”

  “Of course not.”

  Florentine sighed. “You’re not much of a liar.”

  Quilla dipped her spoon into her stew and sampled it. “And you’re an unsubtle harridan.”

  She looked up to see Florentine’s mouth hanging open for a moment. “Sinder’s Balls!”

  Quilla ate some more stew while Florentine shook her head.

  “You’ve managed to cut me, Handmaiden.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No,” said Florentine with a broad grin. “You ain’t.”

  “You’re right.”

  Florentine regarded her steadily. “Convince our master we needs an entertainment and I’ll forgive you.”

  Quilla laughed. “What sort of entertainment, Florentine? We’ve gone back to the start of our conversation. You told me card tournaments are not enough.”

  “Invisible Mother, no.” Florentine waved her hands. “Don’t you know what staff finds the most entertaining? Parties.”

  “You want me to suggest to my patron he throw a party for us?”

  Florentine scoffed. “By the Quiver, no, you dolt. He would never. A party for us would be absurd. A party for them’s what lives in this house abovestairs. A real brannigan. For him and his lady wife, and his beloved halfling brother.”

  Quilla raised an eyebrow. She wasn’t familiar with the local term, brannigan, but gathered from Florentine’s face that it was some sort of large party. “Forgive me, Florentine, but the thought of Gabriel holding a party for himself is even more absurd a thought than asking him to throw one for the staff.”

  “Again, you don’t know the master as well as you think you do. He enjoys parties, with the right guests. They put him in a grand mood. He can be quite the host when it suits him. You just need to convince him it will suit him.”

  “A brannigan, as you call it, will create much work for you and for the maids, the stable men . . . for all of you. How can that be entertainment? I should think the girls would far rather finish all their chores during the day and play their cards at night.”

  Florentine gave a grunt. “Idle hands pall after a while. You have your purpose and your place, and we have ours.”

  It made sense, put that way. “And why am I made the emissary to convince him to have a party?”

  “Ahh, not only a party. A brannigan. An endless, grand affair with much carousing and entertainments, and food and drink and general merriment. With hunts and games and dancing, and illicit sex in the bushes.”

  “Anyone who wants to have illicit sex in the bushes now would be mad,” Quilla said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

  “You, my dearest popkin, are the emissary because you’re the one supposed to gi