No Greater Pleasure Read online

  The household was in an uproar. Lolly and Kirie accosted her as soon as she entered, grabbing off her cloak and stripping her down right there in the back kitchen hall. Quilla made no protest; nudity did not concern her, and false modesty had no place in this situation. She helped them as best she could with numb and shaking hands, buttons flying from the throat of her dress as Lolly tugged it off her. She stood for only a moment naked before Kirie wrapped a blanket around her but in that moment Quilla looked up and saw Jericho’s eyes upon her. His own clothes had been stripped from him, though he still wore his underdrawers. He looked quickly away, and in the next moment Rossi led her toward the small garden parlor usually used as a place for the ladies to sit and arrange flowers. The fire had been stoked to blaze, and Billy was already pouring pitchers of steaming water into a basin in front of it.

  Quilla was pushed into the chair in front of the fire and her feet plunked into the steaming water. Lolly brought a towel to dry her hair. Rossi was doing the same for Jericho.

  “Where did they take the lad?” Quilla found the voice to ask.

  “To the nursery. He’s already in the tub,” said Rossi. “Playing with his boats and singing songs. Jorja fainted and needed to be revived.”

  “Who did that, I wonder?” Quilla’s chattering teeth slowly stilled under Lolly’s ministrations.

  “Florentine slapped her so hard it left a mark,” said Kirie from her place by the fire, where she was warming towels. “And Jorja said not a word. Can you imagine?”

  “I can imagine very well,” replied Quilla. “If she does not lose her place here, I will be greatly surprised.”

  “Or us ours,” said Jericho. “As we were the ones watching him.”

  Billy reappeared with a robe which he helped Jericho put on, while Kirie brought a warm gown for Quilla. She slipped it over Quilla’s head, and though she would still need a bath to rid herself of the dirt and muck, at least the ice had begun to disappear from her veins.

  “Has anyone told my brother and his wife the fate that nearly befell their son?”

  “Yes, my lord. Florentine herself has gone to fetch the master from the gentlemen’s games,” said Lolly.

  “And the lady mistress?” Quilla accepted the hot rum Rossi had handed her. She sipped. “She will want to know, too.”

  “She’s not been found, as yet,” said Lolly with a quick glance at Kirie. “Though our lord Delessan has begun tearing up the house in search for her.”

  Quilla met Jericho’s gaze, which had shuttered itself but was not unreadable. His mouth thinned, and he waved Rossi away impatiently. From the hall came the sound of shouts and running feet, though no one entered the garden parlor.

  “They will find her soon, I am certain,” said Jericho. “And Sinder’s Mercy when they do.”

  “She will need more than Sinder’s Mercy,” murmured Quilla.

  “You’re right,” agreed Jericho. They shared another look of understanding. “She will need my brother’s.”

  There had been more shouting from abovestairs. More slamming of doors. By the time Quilla could convince Lolly to let her get up and leave the garden parlor, however, silence hung over the entire household. It was the hush of every ear being turned toward something waiting to happen, and Quilla was fair certain she could guess what it was.

  She went to Gabriel’s chamber, passing doors cracked open to provide listening ears with easier access. The door to his workroom was closed, and the moment she lifted the latch, shouting broke the silence in the house.

  “Damn you to the Void!” Saradin’s shrill voice echoed in the hall, providing, Quilla thought, ample interest to the held-breath residents. “Damn you, Gabriel Delessan!”

  The sound of shattering glass came next. The thud of some heavy object being thrown. The crack of flesh on flesh.

  Quilla threw open the door and stopped at the sight in front of her. His table had been overturned. Beakers and vials on the floor. Books and paper scattered everywhere, with a pot of ink spilled in a spreading puddle on the desk. Saradin stood in the midst of the destruction, hand upraised.

  Quilla watched as Saradin slapped Gabriel’s face hard enough to turn his head. The sound of it hurt Quilla’s ears. The sight of it hurt her heart.

  “Don’t you dare judge me!” Saradin screamed. “Don’t you dare! Not when you have your own whore to serve you night and day, your dripping-cunt slut to warm your bed!”

  She used the back of her hand this time, sending him staggering one step in the opposite direction. “The whore you parade around in front of our guests to humiliate me! The whore who eats and drinks and shits and fucks in my house! My house! My. House!” She punctuated the last words with two more slaps that looked hard enough to break her fingers.

  She had raised her hand again to strike him when his hand came up and caught hers. His fingers closed down over hers, forcing them to curl into a ball. Saradin made a pained yelp and tried to get away, but Gabriel held her fast.

  “She is not my whore,” Gabriel said in a voice so thick with contempt and loathing it made Saradin recoil as though he’d been the one to slap her. “She is my solace and my comfort, two things you, my lady wife, have never been.”

  Saradin’s scream rose from her throat like smoke into the sky. “You bastard! You cock-sucking son of a whore! How dare you! I am your wife! I am the mistress of this house!”

  “And you are a whore who was fucking a man not her husband while our son nearly died, Saradin!” Gabriel’s voice shook. “Dane could have been dead an hour gone and you’d not have known it because you were so busy putting Boone Somerholde’s cock down the back of your throat!”

  She slapped him with her other hand, and he grabbed that one, too, yanking both her hands down between them to hold her still.

  “You are the whore, lady,” Gabriel said, his voice colder than the ice on the pond. “You are unfit to be a mother, unfit to be a wife. You should go to your lover, if that’s what you please, and leave me and my son without the benefit of your poison presence in our lives.”

  Saradin struggled in his grip without success at gaining release. Her pretty face twisted. “Your son? He’s not—”

  “Shut your fucking mouth!” Gabriel roared, though Saradin kept speaking.

  “—your son!” she cried, triumphant, eyes flashing with mad brilliance. She kicked out at him, yanking her hands in his grip. “He’s not even—”

  “I said for you to shut your mouth!” Gabriel hit her hard enough to make blood appear at the corner of her lips, though probably not hard enough to send her to the ground. She crumpled anyway, hands shielding a face Quilla could still see bore a smile, though the words coming from her mouth belied any humor.

  “Monster!” Saradin screamed. “Faithless brute! Stupid, gullible—”

  He bent and grabbed her up by the hair, his fist raised to strike her again. Quilla crossed the floor in five strides to grab his arm and keep it from coming down.

  “My lord! No!”

  Saradin laughed, eyes flashing back and forth from Gabriel to Quilla. “Ah, so the bitch comes to save her lord and master.”

  Gabriel let go of her, adding a push that knocked her again to the ground. She sprawled for real this time, skirts spreading out around her. Saradin let out a cry of rage tempered with surprise—as though, despite all that had already happened, she could not believe he would actually throw her away.

  Gabriel shook off Quilla’s hand and strode to the ruins of his worktable. He stooped and grabbed up a small bottle, which he tossed at Saradin. It landed neatly in the lap of her skirt. She lifted it, then looked up at him with wide eyes, the screams for a moment forgotten.

  “Do us both a favor,” Gabriel said in a voice like stone. “Next time, make sure you finish the job.”

  Then he turned his back on her, and Saradin got to her feet. She staggered as she rose but there was no hand to steady her. She gripped the small bottle but did not take it with her. Instead, she tossed it to the f