Selfish Is the Heart Read online

Annalise frowned. “I’m fair certain it is, else you’d not be so insistent that it’s not. Tell me, Master Toquin, can you not simply accept my consideration? Must you fight at everything I offer?”

  She wasn’t prodding him to anger, like the other times. She was tired of that at the moment. The game had gone too far, the prize won and she uncertain of its value.

  He nodded. “Thank you. Yes. I appreciate your consideration.”

  They faced each other, and though his gaze would not settle upon hers, he wasn’t turning aside his face. He went to the armoire and pulled out a handful of clothes, then disappeared into the privy chamber without a word. Annalise, never one to allow herself to not be made comfortable, spent the time he was gone to acquaint herself further with his room.

  A spare few books on the shelves, not a one of them religious. No portraits, no sheaves of letters tied with ribbon. Nothing to indicate he had, or ever had, a lover. Nothing to show, in fact, he had anything but the Order.

  The armoire door gaped and she peeked inside, expecting to see a row of somber dark outfits. The puddle of crimson silk draped over a hook at the back gave her pause. She ran the material through her fingers, jerking her hand back at the last moment when Toquin appeared and shut the door without waiting overlong for her to remove it.

  “You were a priest?”

  He nodded. He’d put on a pale shirt, open at the throat and loose-sleeved. Dark trousers. Nothing close to fashionable and yet suiting him as much as the severity of his normal wear but in a different way.

  “That explains much.”

  “Does it?” He scowled, brows knitting. He made certain the armoire shut with a click before he backed off. “Do you always invite yourself to peruse the belongings of strangers?”

  “Are we strangers?” She glanced from the corner of her eye. Maybe such a sideways look would keep him from spooking.

  “I—”

  “You do not impress me as the sort of man who oft finds himself without words, and yet with me you would insist upon cutting them in half. Why is that?”

  He moved away from her to a table by the window, where he fiddled with the cork on a glass bottle. “It has been my experience with you from the start, Mistress Marony, that you have words aplenty so that I need none.”

  She laughed. “Is that so?”

  “It is.”

  “I would not presume to speak for you, sir.”

  His fingers stroked the bottle but didn’t open it. He looked out the window, avoiding her. She crossed to it to make a show of looking out, too, and caught his glance when they both turned.

  “I didn’t come here to spar with you. You might find that difficult to believe, but it’s true,” Annalise said.

  He sighed, not the reaction she’d expected or hoped for. “Tell me, then, your reason? For I suspect you’ll not leave until you’ve had your way, no matter how gained.”

  She didn’t want his words to sting, but they did. She straightened her shoulders. “I think we need to talk about what happened.”

  He did look at her then, straight on. “That was a mistake.”

  Again his words pricked her. She swallowed to keep her voice from cracking in her reply. “I don’t agree.”

  “If I declared that the sun rises in the morn and sets at even, you wouldn’t agree.”

  So untrue and yet she could find no blame for his statement, not based on anything that had gone between them thus far. Hateful tears pricked her eyes. This was not why she’d come. This wasn’t what she wanted.

  Vision blurred, Annalise stumbled at the doorway only to discover his hand upon it the way hers had kept him from escape earlier in the closet. He wasn’t touching her, but she felt the heat from his body against her back. She waited until he retreated before she turned.

  “I plead your mercy,” he said. “That was cruel.”

  She blinked rapidly, but the tears would not be held back. She swiped at them, angry and mortified that she should so break down, now of all times, when he was actually being kind. His thumb touched her cheek, capturing a silver droplet he lifted and rubbed away with his forefinger.

  “Please don’t cry.”

  So of course she did, bursting into ungainly, unattractive, and wholly inappropriate sobs. Annalise covered her face, but strong hands guided her to a seat upon a chair made of strong thighs and backed by a broad chest. And oh, that it should be him who so comforted her only set her to further weeping as she pressed her face to his soon-sodden shirt.

  Maybe her tears softened him, or like her, he was tired of the battle. All she knew was that his arms rocked her gently until she ceased her sobbing and curled into his warmth.

  “Have you finished?”

  She pressed her cheek to the damp fabric and smiled. “Will you let go of me if I say yes?”

  “So swiftly you may find yourself upon the floor.”

  “Then no. I think I shall cry the rest of the night.”

  He sighed, this time not so wearily and tugged at her braid until she looked at him. “Annalise . . .”

  Again, he sighed, and shifted, but she held fast to her place on his lap and he didn’t seem intent upon tumbling her to the floor, no matter his threat. “Cassian.”

  He frowned but didn’t correct her.

  “It’s a lovely name.”

  He raised a brow. “I take no credit for it, my mother named me.”

  “Your mother had good taste.”

  “So my father always said.”

  “I like you when your tone is light,” she told him softly and put her hands on his shoulders, just lightly so as not to ruin whatever this was between them.

  Cassian. The name suited him. He traced the line of her brows with one fingertip before letting his hand drop back to the small of her back to keep her in place. Her weight might’ve begun to press upon his legs, but he showed no sign of it.

  “A smile would suit your mouth, as well,” she teased.

  “My face aches when I smile.”

  “For a man whose curmudgeonly reputation is outranked only by the rumor he likes to make women cry, you have a merry sense of humor. Subtle, but merry nonetheless.”

  His mouth didn’t even twitch. “It’s not true.”

  “It is, I heard your jest not half a moment ago.”

  He shook his head. “No. The rumor isn’t true. I don’t like making women cry. I despise it. It is, in fact, a weakness, Annalise, and one I strive desperately to keep secret, so that none might take advantage of me with it. And yet now you know. Why do you suppose that is?”

  “I don’t know. Why do you suppose you told me?”

  “Because,” he said gently and pushed away a tendril of her hair clinging to her damp cheek, “if I did not tell you of my own accord, I have no doubt you would pull it from me in your own good time the way a medicus hunts for a splinter in a festered wound.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “What a disgusting and unflattering comparison, and yet, sir, how much better does the wound feel when the splinter’s been removed?”

  “I’ve been fortunate enough to never have earned a wound such as that.”

  “You wouldn’t want one,” she told him and slid her fingertips along his throat to the back of his neck. She didn’t link them. She didn’t want him bolting away as though she’d bound him.

  “No, I daresay I would not.”

  “Cassian.” She rolled the name on her tongue. “Are you telling me you are not the man everyone believes you to be?”

  It was the wrong question. He got up, not tumbling her from his lap but setting her neatly on her feet so she had to grab the front of his shirt. He put his hands over hers to loose her grip, and she didn’t force it upon him.

  “Is anyone ever the person everyone else thinks they are?”

  “You think I am brash, persuasive, and slightly wanton,” she said.

  It had been a guess, based on what she’d been told by others in the past. Cassian’s gaze flickered. She’d hoped to see another glim