Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  And this the man to whom they assigned the newest, who were not always the youngest, but the ones who definitely needed the most nurturing. Annalise shook her head at the reasons of the Mothers-in-Service and kept bent over her booklet. She was supposed to be writing passages that particularly spoke to her so that she might keep them close for the future.

  Bollocks.

  None of it spoke to her. She knew the text word for word, front to back and in reverse, and not a bit of it had ever made sense. Annalise suspected it never would.

  She stifled a yawn behind her fist, grateful that unlike her school days, the master wouldn’t be traveling the rows with his ruler, ready to smack her knuckles for not completing the lesson . . . though on second thought, she might prefer that to his current alternating habit of ignoring and scorning her. She drew a small pattern of stars and bars. Underneath it, the scroll of her initials, just as she had so often as a schoolgirl.

  Finally, at long last the chime sounded. An hour of leisure, then the afternoon service and evening meal, then more leisure pursuits until it was time to sleep. Annalise had already wiped her pen and replaced it in its flannel and capped the inkbottle, her booklet in her pocket, by the time the chime finished reverberating through the halls. She’d have been first out the door, too, if not for the silly bint Perdita, who spilled her text and booklet on the floor and her friends who bent to help her clean the mess but blocked the way.

  “Mistress Marony, if you please.”

  Annalise looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Would you stay a moment after the rest of the group?”

  Ah, now the silly gits were staring at her, eyes wide, mouths propped open in identical expressions of dismay. Had she ever been so wind-headed? Annalise sighed. Yes, in all likelihood, she had.

  “If it pleases you.” She’d picked up the phrase without knowing it, but when it slipped from her tongue, she was glad she’d found it for no other reason than the way it widened his eyes.

  “You needn’t address me in such a manner,” he told her when the others had gone and left them alone, the door left wide open so they could hear the voices and shuffle of feet in the hall that had replaced the soft chiming of the bell.

  “With respect? I thought you insisted upon such a manner.”

  Master Toquin—she knew his given name was Cassian, but here in this room he was more a master than a man—narrowed his eyes. “Yet something in your tone never lends itself to such an honor.”

  Her lips thinned and tightened, and Annalise bit the tip of her tongue to keep from speaking with haste. This man held a place of importance within the Order. Power.

  “It was the phrase,” he added before she could speak.

  She bit her tongue again so as not to leap to words she couldn’t retrieve. He studied her, noting her silence. He rested his fingertips, protruding from the red hem of his shirt below the black sleeve, on the desktop close to where she’d left her pot of ink.

  “You’ve not yet taken your vows,” he said.

  “Everything I do here is meant to lead me to that place when I do all in the name of service. When it becomes second nature.” She’d seen most if not all the other novitiates living as if they’d already taken their vows, and had seen it encouraged by the Sisters and Mothers-in-Service. “The best way to become a Handmaiden is to live as one, yes?”

  “But you are not one. You are not mine,” he told her with an edge to his voice she neither understood nor cared to decipher.

  “Your mercy.” Annalise bit the words so they had an edge of their own. Ragged. “You kept me for a reason?”

  He looked toward the closet. “The texts. Your eye was keen in determining which were of quality too poor for use. I’ve noted your hand is steady, as well. And your attention to the work is . . . less than attentive.”

  “I’m in the wrong group,” she told him flatly. “Perhaps you should petition the Mothers to move me from it, as I’ve done several times and been refused. Surely that would ease the burden of having me as your student.”

  His fingers drifted in a slow pattern of circles over the desktop. Her gaze fell to the circling, the tender way his fingertips stroked the polished wood. How precise his touch—and how long it had been since she’d had any such caress upon herself.

  “I should think the burden is upon you,” Toquin told her. “Since you so clearly need no instruction from me as to the text. I can see how dull you find it. But I can do naught to change the course to which you’ve been assigned. Only the Mothers can do that, and never in my experience do they do so from a plea, no matter who brings it.”

  His hand stopped the slow, steady pattern. Annalise swallowed the breath threatening to slip out of her on a sigh. When she looked up at him, he did not meet her gaze. He, too, stared at his fingers on the smooth wood.

  “It has long been our habit to have those with greater understanding instruct those with less,” he said in a low voice. “It would seem beneficial to us both, since the Mothers have determined that you should remain in study with this group, if you would become my . . . assistant.”

  “Your . . . but you don’t even like me!” The cry shot from her lips before she could stop it, and Annalise stepped back from him.

  Cassian looked at her then, eyes faintly wide. “I’ve never made such a claim!”

  “You don’t have to say it aloud, it’s evident in your every word to me. Although”—she paused, thinking—“I suppose one could say the same of the words you say to everyone. It’s generally understood you don’t like anyone. But I thought, particularly, you disliked me.”

  He took a step back, his hand knocking the inkpot and rattling it. “Land Above, Mistress Marony, why would you believe I had any especial dislike of you over any other?”

  Because she was different, she knew it by the way he looked or did not look at her. By the way his voice snagged on her name the rare occasion he chose to use it, and because he so rarely did. She knew she set his teeth on edge with her questions, her forthright-ness, her simple unwillingness to be a single bird in a simple flock.

  “Because I can assure you,” he continued, “I harbor no such preference.”

  She lifted her chin to study his face. Color tinged his cheeks, not a blush but perhaps a flush of temper. His eyes glittered. A stray hair clung to his forehead. As if he noted her perusal he pushed it away with impatient fingers.

  “If you choose not to accept the position—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  This stopped him, as her words seemed to do so often. Annalise shrugged, keeping her expression neutral so as not to reveal how much his dismissal of her had stung. Toquin’s gaze traveled over her face before settling so briefly on her eyes she wasn’t sure he’d even looked into them before he nodded and stepped back again.

  “Very well. In addition to the classes, you’ll be expected to assist me in preparation of the lessons, lend your hand in sorting the texts. Correct lessons, if necessary.”

  “I’m to become a teacher? How merry. I’d never thought myself patient enough for the task, else I’d have become a governess.” Her lips quirked despite her all-to-recent distress at his tone and words.

  Toquin didn’t give her a smile in return. Did the man ever? “A good Handmaiden is oft asked to play the part of tutor in any manner of subjects, Mistress Marony. Or so I hear tell. There are many patrons for whom solace can only come at the instruction of another.”

  “Or so you hear. I thought nobody shared such stories here. At least, such was the tale I was told.”

  His gaze slid over her, and she thought she might have seen a twitch of lip, but too late, it passed and his mouth, full and lush though it was, stayed as firm and tight as it always did. “Tale-bearing is certainly not encouraged.”

  “I will be your assistant, sir, if only to relieve myself of the interminable dullness of the role of student.”

  Toquin lifted his chin. Changed his stance. If she didn’t know better, Annalise might