Pleasure and Purpose Read online

  "Regret doesn't give me solace." Cillian's voice edged along her skin, rough as brambles.

  "No, I daresay it doesn't." She tilted her head to offer him a smile he didn't return.

  "You're not what I was expecting."

  "I rarely am." Honesty's smile gave away none of her desire to turn his face with a slap at his tone. Once she'd been in his place. It

  had taken her years of training to learn her craft. "But since no matter what the Order tells anyone in advance, they never know what to expect, I'm used to that." This raised his eyebrow, and he put his hands on his hips to rake her with his gaze. He would say he thought she'd be prettier, Honesty thought, and braced herself not to react. With no food in her belly and not enough sleep to gentle her emotions, it would be harder for her to play at sweetness. It had been difficult for a long time.

  "That seems ridiculous and inefficient. They told you all about me, did they not?" She nodded. Pages and pages of documents she'd meant to read on the train but which had remained in the bottom of her hand-trunk. "Of course."

  "Am I what you expected?"

  "Yes," Honesty answered at once, though truth be told, she hadn't thought of him at all beyond the fact he'd been born to a crown and depended on someone else for his happiness.

  "What's your name?"

  "Honesty."

  The corner of his mouth quirked. "You only have the one?" She had another name, but didn't use it with her patrons. It raised too many questions about her ancestry. "Honesty is all you need."

  Her empty stomach had been only partially satisfied with the drink. Now it rumbled and she put a hand over it to quell the noise. "Might I beg something to eat? I've come a long way in the past few days, and while I do plead your mercy for not being ready to serve you at once, I'll be far better able to begin once I'm fed."

  His pale cheeks colored. "It's not enough for me to nurse you, now I'm to be your kitchen drab, as well?"

  Honesty bit back the retort threatening to spill from her lips and offered a gentle smile and inclination of her head. "I would imagine a man of your stature would hardly need to serve. Surely you could ring for someone to bring me some fruit and cheese, perhaps a biscuit?"

  He stared for so long she thought he would refuse, which would I make this the shortest assignment she'd ever taken. She hadn't arrived quite ready to serve, that was true, but he was still required to provide her with food, shelter, and clothing appropriate for the seasons and activities. If he refused to feed her, she would walk out without another look behind her. She tensed, half hoping he'd give her reason to do just that. Cillian nodded sharply, instead. "Indeed. The hour grows late, nearly the first chime. Fare will be limited."

  Honesty looked at him through lowered lashes. Deference was simple to feign and always well received. "Whatever your kitchen can provide its prince at this late hour will certainly suffice."

  She waited the span of four, five, six heartbeats before he began to laugh. He'd been gorgeous in disapproval, but in mirth his face lit up from within and turned his countenance into a sun from which she had to avert her eyes.

  "You are clever," he said. "I do like that."

  "I'm happy to please you," Honesty said, and if her response was made with less than what her name claimed her to be, nobody knew it but herself. he'd made use of his bath chamber while they waited for the food and now sat before him with her hair damp and skin gleaming. She smelled of his soap, a scent that had never aroused him on his own flesh but clung to hers in such a manner he fought the urge to lean forward and sniff her as though he were a hound. She wore one of the simple linen gowns he'd given her, cut in the same style as the one she'd worn upon her arrival but in sheer rose instead of dark blue. The material clung to every curve and showed the dusky circles of her aureoles and the triangle between her legs, but Honesty didn't seem to notice she was as good as naked before him. Or perhaps she didn't care.

  She had the manners of a noblewoman, Cillian noted as Honesty used her knife to push a mouthful of tumbleberry jam onto her spoon before she tucked it between her lips. And yet in the next moment she used her fingers like a peasant to lift a slice of cold duck. She ate swiftly, efficiently, without lingering or sighing over the food, which was the best his cook could prepare at this hour. Cillian had taken her comment about his kitchen to heart, and though he rarely called for a meal past the ten chime, he'd wanted to see just what would happen if he did.

  Consequently, the table in his chambers had been set with fine linens and porcelain and silver utensils. Wine poured, butter served in its own small crock, platters of artfully arranged delicacies provided. The effort deserved to make an impression. The Handmaiden sipped once more from her wine and wiped her mouth with a napkin made of finer lace than graced most of his courtiers' cuffs. "Delicious."

  "You ate it like a peasant in the field." It wasn't true. She'd eaten with gusto, but daintily. Emotion flashed in her dark eyes. "I was hungry."

  Such a simple statement, devoid of pretense, but it set him back more surely than if she'd woven an elaborate tale that failed to convince him. "You were . . . hungry."

  "Oh, certainly." She gave him that bedamned smile again, and again he caught a flash of something in her gaze. "I thank you for the meal. If you could show me to where I might sleep, I'm certain we'd both like to go to bed. The hour, as you said, is late." The chit knocked him fair to speechless. Show her to her bed? As though she were a common houseguest, a visitor? And he the chambermaid?

  "Madame," Cillian said as he rose from the table to tower over her, "I believe you overstep."

  And did the woman cower in front of him? Did she drop to her knees? She did not, but instead merely stared up at him with another of those half smiles that quirked a dimple in her cheek.

  "I plead your mercy," she said calmly. "It will take me some time to learn what you like and how best to serve you. I thought it might be best to start in the morn, when we've both had time to rest.

  Cillian had taken his hand to many women before this one, though never in anger. Others might believe it of him, might accuse him of being quick with his fists, and he didn't disabuse them. People believed what they would. But now, watching her small smile, Cillian wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.

  "Is this a Handmaiden's task? To put me off with request after bedamned request and provide me with nothing? I thought your purpose was to provide me with solace," Cillian bit out. "And I am not soothed!"

  Honesty had risen and taken his hand with her soft and warm fingers before he knew to pull it away. "Then please, sir, allow me to assist you." She drew him from the table toward an upholstered chair. With those small, soft hands she urged him to sit, and to his surprise but not, perhaps, to hers, Cillian did.

  "Your hair," Honesty murmured, "is in atrocious condition." Her words, each a thorn, pricked him. "There are perhaps three men who could say such a thing to me with immunity, and not a woman alive who would dare."

  "Apparently there is at least one, for I've just said it." Her nimble fingers ran through the length of his hair and snagged in it, pulling.

  Cillian had neither Edward's bulk nor Alaric's height, and it had deceived many into thinking him weak. When his fingers clamped onto her wrist, Honesty could have no such misconception. His squeeze arrested her hand, and yet she didn't flinch.

  "Your hair," she murmured, "is tangled and doesn't befit you. Let me brush it." Cillian caught his reflection in a looking glass across the room, and his lip curled. He'd allowed his hair to grow overlong in a direct thumb-bite at the Council of Fashion, over which his father insisted he preside. The length made it more difficult to manage, and the time in his playroom had worked it through with sweat. He'd pushed most of it off his face, but tendrils had escape and floated, careless. He looked disheveled, at the least. Atrocious, as she'd said.

  Honesty had already gone to his dressing table and found the brush. "See how much nicer this will be, and then you'll sleep."

  She took a