Pleasure and Purpose Read online

  He'd been a fool to think he could buy affection. Purchase peace. She didn't know him and never had, and now he hoped she never would. He would have that, at least. The memory of how she'd taken his hand and thought him an entirely different man. She stared up at him with eyes softer than any she'd ever given him. Cillian didn't want her pity. He willed the lie to his lips and into his eyes and forced himself to believe it so she would, too.

  "Perhaps I do," he told her. "But I no longer want you." The king had not yet died, the prince had been put into custody, and Honesty had been escorted from the palace with only the clothes on her back and the hand-trunk she'd brought with her. She hadn't been allowed to see him, but caught a glimpse of that fine fall of red-gold hair from a distance as he'd been hustled down a far-off hallway.

  "They can't put him in gaol," she said as Bertram opened the carriage door for her. "He's a prince! And he's committed no crime, he can't be treated like a common criminal!" It might have pained the man to have to treat her with so little compassion, but his orders had come directly from that insufferable idiot, Devain. Bertram, his fingers clutched uncomfortably tight on her upper arm, shook his head. "He's not only having to face the Council of the Book about whether he's fit to succeed his father, he's having to face the Temple priests now, too."

  The glare he gave her meant this was somehow her fault, and though she knew she couldn't be held accountable, her stomach dropped. She shook off his grip and clutched her hand-trunk closer to her. He'd already searched it, the humiliation of having to prove she wasn't a thief was nothing compared to what Cillian must feel having to fight for his rightful place. Bertram had the grace to look discomfited.

  "The priests? Why?"

  Bertram shrugged, looking down, and gestured at the carriage. "Please, get in. I'm to take you to the train, lady. Please just get in."

  "No. You tell me what's going on. It's obvious Devain has had it out for him for a long time and can do this only because the king fell so suddenly ill. If the king had named another his heir it would have had to go through the council, yes? Before now? So Devain is merely using the king's illness to throw everyone into confusion. He's been plotting this for a long time."

  Bertram cleared his throat. "Lady, it's not for me to say." It had been a long time since Honesty had played these kinds of games, though she'd learned them at her father's knee. A long time since she'd had to stretch her mind in so many directions to imagine what might be done and how it might affect an entire situation. She'd been focused for so long, her duties to one person at a time, so now she struggled to put into place all the pieces she could grasp.

  She was missing too many. "Why is he being questioned by the priests, Bertram? Firth is of the faith but not strongly so. I've never even heard the Temple chimes once since I've been here."

  Bertram sighed heavily. "It's not enough for Devain to prove the prince's lack of ability, he's now got more against him than madness and debauchery and whatever else he's thrown out. Since you failed—•"

  Guilt slashed at her. "I didn't fail him."

  The man looked at her. "Since our prince sent you away, since he declared his Handmaiden of no use to him, Devain is contending the prince is incapable of solace. He's incapable of anything but what he's known to be, and therefore, unfit to rule. Devain has a strong and solid case, the documented support of the king himself, and the support of many of the lords of the court. He's been stoking this fire for some time while, forgive me for saying it, our prince has been playing at everything but what he was meant for. It's no wonder Devain's been able to topple him from his place."

  "He's not toppled yet," Honesty said.

  "No. But he will be," Bertram said. "There is no way around it, lady. You can't take away what he done in the past or what has happened since, and you can't take away the fact he's not done what's required of all our princes before they become kings."

  "Which is what?" she cried, wishing more than ever she'd read the papers in her hand-trunk when she was meant to. "What, by the Arrow, could he have needed to do that would keep him from taking his place?"

  Bertram sighed, apparently accepting she wouldn't do as she was told until he gave her what she wanted. "He's not married, lady. Nor betrothed, nor has he ever been and nor will anyone send their daughter to him."

  This struck her back a step. "The prince must be wed before he becomes king?"

  "Or promised in some fashion. How else can he get an heir?" Bertram shrugged and rubbed his forehead. "The king has sent his requests to many with whom he'd like to make an alliance. Because of what happened, none will take it."

  "What happened, what happened," she cried, irritated. "Everyone says it's because of what happened, but I scarce can think of anything that he might have done that would be so terrible years later!"

  "He killed someone, lady, and went to the madhouse for it." Bertram's low voice held shame, but truth.

  Honesty's stomach turned again, twisting. "He's not insane." Bertram looked pointedly at the open door. "You would be one of the few to think so."

  "He's not... I would know. He's not crazy, Bertram." Honesty got up into the carriage and arranged her skirts out of the way of the door.

  "There's all kinds of crazy, lady," Bertram replied and closed the door so firmly there was no way he could hear anything she said after that.

  In moments the carriage began its rocking and a short time after that Honesty was on the train, moving out of the station and away from Firth. She hadn't even asked where they were sending her but assumed it was back to the Motherhouse. She stared out the window as night fell and the countryside changed. She stared through darkness and until the light again filled the sky.

  Then she pulled open her hand-trunk and began to read.

  Chapter 15

  The plate of food stood untouched on the table, drawing flies, but Cillian didn't bother even to wave them away. Devain hadn't been so foolish as to try and hold the king's son as he would have a man of lesser status, but even if the room was decently appointed it was still a cell, and though the food was as fine as any that had ever graced Cillian's table it was still a prisoner's fare. It turned his stomach to take even a mouthful. He hadn't even taken any of the small ale Devain had ordered for him.

  What he wanted was a bath and some sleep, but the former had been denied him these five days past and the latter he dared not take. They kept you from bathing to demoralize you and put you closer to the beast they claimed you to be, but sleep was when they came to hurt you. Lessons well learned and not forgotten. Devain would know that and would be watching Cillian for signs of it breaking him, but Cillian refused to give the bastard even a hint that this treatment had affected him. He wore his soiled, five-days-worn clothes as though attired for a formal ball, and he stretched out on the thin mattress of the cot and closed his eyes for hours at a time, though he didn't sleep. He'd had visitors aplenty, for Devain couldn't dare deny him that, either. Cillian greeted them as though holding court, even as he knew sluts like Persis Denviel were coming so as to brag on his closeness with the prince rather than true concern. Alaric had come, looking worse than Cillian, his blond hair dulled and tangled and shadows on his face but bringing a bowl of herb to share and news of what was being said, mostly about the king's health and what had brought him low, speculation it was something other than his long habit of overindulgence. Rumors of if the king had indeed officially named Devain as his heir and denounced Cillian, and if he had the right to do so. Nonsense, mostly, but satisfying nonetheless. The country might have shaken its collective head at Cillian's recent exploits, but most of them couldn't also forget he was the son of Queen Ingrid, their beloved, that he bore her features and the color of her hair, and how they'd celebrated his birth and first steps as though he were their own dear boy and not only the king and queen's.

  Edward came, too, grim-faced but determined, revealing what was being said in the court amongst the lords who'd judge him when the time came. Devain had been hasty, a