No Greater Pleasure Read online

  “We will also be taking a trip to Alyria,” put in Madame Fiene, as though not wishing to be outdone. “Isn’t that so, my darling?”

  Her husband, who had been staring with unabashed admiration at Quilla, nodded. “Yes, my dear. Quite right. We shall. Next summer, exactly so.”

  This caught Saradin’s attention, and she looked away from Quilla for a moment to address Madame Fiene. “I’ve heard there are women there who still choose to wear the veil, though they needn’t. Do you suppose that’s true?”

  “Oh, I do think so, yes.” Madame Fiene took a large sip from her goblet, heedless of the way the wine dripped on her powdered décolletage.

  Saradin looked back at Quilla. “Why a woman would choose such subservience is beyond my ken. Why choose to kneel at a man’s feet when your proper place is at his side?”

  Again, the weight of many eyes burdened Quilla’s shoulders, but she showed no sign of noticing. She kept her attention upon her patron. A perfect Handmaiden, putting on a show because he wished it. A show that was also her reality, no game. This was her purpose and her place, and though there were those who would seek to shame her for it, she would not be shamed.

  “A woman who knows her place is to be greatly valued,” said Gabriel to Saradin. “And one who repeatedly oversteps her place shames herself. And her husband.”

  Ouch.

  “Even the great Sinder did not require his Kedalya to serve him on her knees,” said Saradin. “Sinder allowed Kedalya was his equal, if not his better, for she had the gift of bearing children, and he did not.”

  Gabriel looked around the table at the other men, and gave a sharp chuckle. “Well, ’tis a fine thing, then, that I sit at the head of this table, and not the great Sinder.”

  “I heard Alyrian silk is the finest available,” cut in Madame Somerholde, and the tension eased a bit.

  Quilla buttered a roll and put it on Gabriel’s plate. When he took a bite of it and butter glistened on his lips, she took up the napkin from his lap and wiped them clean. She did nothing she hadn’t done before, or wouldn’t have done had they been alone in his chambers, but having an audience to her work pricked at her serenity. She was not ashamed of what she was, but neither did she appreciate being made sport of. She didn’t care to be used to put another in her place . . . except that in this case, perhaps, she did.

  “My brother should be able to tell you that,” said Gabriel. “As ’tis his business to know of such matters.”

  Quilla happened to be glancing up as Jericho answered, and she found him staring at her. His blue eyes had gone dark in the lamp-light, liquid pools of blackness surrounded by a thin rim of blue. His gaze lured her, but his words snared her.

  “Alyrian silk is the finest, indeed, and should be worn only by those women who have beauty enough to compare to it.”

  “Then you shall be certain to buy some, Carmelia,” Saradin said.

  Jericho, still staring at Quilla, said nothing. After a moment, he bent back to his food, making a great show of cutting it and moving it around his plate, but eating very little. The conversation turned to furniture and textiles, and the places one went to find the best quality. Jericho kept silent except when pressed directly by one of the Fiene girls.

  “A woman’s best asset is not her wardrobe but her spirit,” he answered to her question about what sort of fabric was most flattering. Everyone turned to look at him; he kept his eyes fixed on the table.

  “Indeed?” replied Saradin. “And what, then, is a man’s?”

  Jericho looked up at his brother. “His honor.”

  “Particularly as regards a woman’s spirit, I suppose?” Gabriel’s reply sounded casual, but was not.

  Jericho’s stony expression flushed, and his eyes flicked down the table at Saradin, then up to Quilla before meeting his brother’s again. “Among other things, yes.”

  Solid, uncomfortable silence hovered over the table, broken then by Genevieve’s light trickle of laughter. “Shall I tell you of the most interesting book I’ve read?”

  Quilla smiled slightly. She had thought the Somerholde girl to be as dim as winter sky, but she’d been wrong. The girl was apt . . . for though she made the shift in conversation seem wind-headed, it worked.

  “Oh, do,” said one of the Fiene daughters. “And I shall tell you of the one I’ve just finished.”

  Jericho didn’t look away from his brother. Gabriel, however, cocked his head with deliberate spite toward the Somerholde girl. He raised a finger to Quilla without looking at her.

  “Wait,” he murmured, and Quilla folded herself into the Waiting on the floor next to his chair.

  It was a relief, in a way, not to have to stand and be stared at. Waiting was peace, and meditation. Waiting was easy.

  “You arrogant son of a bitch!” Jericho’s voice rang through the conservatory, and the clatter of his chair falling as he stood startled even Quilla.

  “Brother—”

  “Shut up, Gabriel!” Jericho stalked around the table to tower over Quilla. “She is a person, not a doll!”

  “She is a Handmaiden,” came Gabriel’s calm reply.

  “Get up,” Jericho said to her. “Quilla, you needn’t—”

  “Go sit down, Jericho.” Gabriel’s voice had become a silk-sheathed blade. “You are making a fool of yourself in front of our guests.”

  “Get up, Quilla,” said Jericho in a low voice. “You don’t have to let him do this to you.”

  She looked up at Jericho, “My lord Delessan—”

  “It would not please me for you to address this issue,” said Gabriel as though he were discussing the weather. “Sit down, brother, or leave the room.”

  Jericho looked at Quilla, who said nothing, then around the table. Though she could not see the faces, she could imagine the expressions upon them. Even while Waiting she could feel the embarrassed fascination of the people at the table, a combination of polite horror and gleeful expectation at the scene being laid out before them.

  “Husband, this is not the place,” began Saradin, and in the same mild tone, Gabriel interrupted her.

  “It would not please me, wife, for this conversation to continue.”

  Oh, clever and horrid man, Quilla thought, grateful her eyes were below table level, because she would not have liked to see the look on Saradin’s face. At least she knew now for whom his chastisement was meant.

  Jericho’s head snapped up and he stared down the table, presumably at Saradin. After a long moment made longer by the lack of conversation, Saradin spoke up lightly.

  “Tell me, Madame Fiene, if you prefer your settee to be upholstered in Alyrian flaxen or Gahunian weave?”

  At the other woman’s answer, the guests again moved toward safer topics. Jericho said nothing else, gave not even a bow of leave, but turned on his heel and stalked away. After a few more moments, Gabriel reached down and tapped Quilla on the shoulder.

  “Go,” he said, and Quilla got gracefully to her feet and did as he’d commanded.

  The rest of the chastising came the next morning, and she began to understand him a bit more. Gabriel did not speak to her when he came out of his bedroom and went straight to his worktable. He shrugged into his laboratory coat before she could help him, and he turned his back on her when she reached a hand to do the buttons.

  He remained silent as he went about his work as if she was not there. Though she’d been assisting him with the work for weeks, he did not take the vial she offered, but instead plucked another from its case and used that. The implication was as clear as if he’d shouted.

  “I have displeased you.”

  He made no answer, but continued with his work. The deliberate refusal to acknowledge her stung worse than a slap, for a slap could be given out of love and disinterest never could.

  She might, in the past, have angered patrons. Sometimes, absolute solace was not without its price, and she paid it for them when they were unwilling to pay it for themselves. She had also, on occasion,