No Greater Pleasure Read online

  Quilla had known people like that lake. Sparkling and pretty on the surface, black and dangerous beneath. She preferred it the other way around, definitely.

  His faint muttering caught her ear and she tilted her head to better catch his words. He was not asking for her. He was reciting some sort of list, perhaps of ingredients or a formula. She went back to what she was doing, unobtrusive, silent, allowing him to forget she was even there at all.

  Quilla kept to the far side of the room, away from his workspace. Every so often the sharp, acrid smell of something burning made her pause to see what he was doing, but she did not go closer to see.

  She’d oiled the hinges of his door, and now she used a cloth soaked in flax oil she’d taken from the kitchen to polish the carved wood until the dust had vanished and gleaming wood remained. She used the same oil on the picture frames, the mantel, the bookcase, the chair, until the wood in the room no longer shrouded itself with dust. She ran a finger over the back of the chair. While the cloth covering the seat might be faded and patched, the wooden frame was of very high quality. Either the master had fallen into harder times than he was used to, or else he simply did not care. Likely the latter, she thought, stealing another peek at him.

  The white coat he’d put on over his clothes bore several stains. He’d donned a pair of heavy gloves reaching all the way to his biceps. A startling contraption of leather straps, eyepieces, and different-sized lenses covered his face, making one eye look twice the size of the other. As he turned, still muttering, she caught sight of the color of his eyes, magnified behind the lenses.

  Gabriel Delessan had eyes the color of Loch Eltourna, like sun-dappled water, gray and green and blue . . . and with a hint of darkness beneath.

  “ ’Twas my understanding I would not need to provide you with a list of tasks to keep your attention, Handmaiden.”

  Heatroses again bloomed in Quilla’s cheeks, but she kept her voice and expression neutral when she replied.

  “Nay, my lord. You do not. I was merely pausing to be certain you had no additional need of me. The way you turned made me think you were going to speak to me.”

  “If I had something to say to you, I’d say it, and likely without bothering to turn ’round to capture your attention.” Delessan looked around the room and took off the contraption over his eyes. His gaze flickered as he looked at the polished wood. “A subtle change, Handmaiden. One would almost not notice you’d done anything at all.”

  Quilla pressed her lips together so as not to seem impertinent by smiling. She inclined her head by way of response, instead. “It’s often the most gradual of changes that affect us most, my lord Delessan.”

  “Indeed.” He seemed about to say more, then put his lenses back on and started back to work.

  Still smiling, Quilla returned to her own tasks. Any heavy cleaning she would save for a time when he was not in the room, so as not to disturb him. Although, she thought, watching him bend over a series of beakers, it seemed unlikely she’d even be noticed.

  His concentration was admirable, but then she supposed it would have to be. Alchemy was not an easy discipline to practice. The work was complicated and sometimes dangerous, from what she understood, and though the rewards could be great, there could also be much disappointment.

  Much like serving the Order, she thought as she ran her cloth over the rickety side table and arranged a lace cloth over the top to hide the splintered wood. Vast potential for personal reward and also much disappointment.

  She judged the time by the growling of her stomach and assumed his would be as empty as hers. She slipped out of the room to head for the kitchen, where she found Florentine hunched over a pot of bubbling stew, her gray curls askew beneath her floppy cap and her broad, coarse face red with exertion.

  “Florentine, I need to make the master a tray.”

  “What?” Florentine stood up so fast her cap flew onto the floor.

  Quilla bent quickly to pick it up and handed it back. “A tray? For his midday meal.”

  Florentine snatched the cap from Quilla’s hand and slapped it back on her head. She snorted. “Master don’t usually eat midday.”

  “And he’s far too thin because of it,” replied Quilla. “I’m going to make certain he eats today. He can’t work all day long without food.”

  Florentine gave her a squinty-eyed glare. “No? He’s done it plenty o’ times afore.”

  Quilla put her hands on her hips. “Florentine, what, exactly, is your problem with allowing me to do my job?”

  The fat chatelaine sniffed, nose in the air. “I ain’t got a problem, Miss Fancy Breeches. None ’tall.”

  “Fine, then. A tray? I’ll be happy to fix it myself if you show me—”

  “You might be going to have your fingers in all of the master’s spaces, Mistress Fancy, but this kitchen is my place! I’ll fix Master Gabriel his tray, I will!”

  Quilla knew when to step back. “Very well.”

  She watched Florentine pull out a tray with carved wooden handles and set it on the thick butcher-block table in front of the fire. The cook ladled a generous helping of stew into a bowl, added a loaf of thick-sliced bread and a small crock of butter. Utensils. A flagon of ale. A small saltcellar, a luxury Quilla noticed but did not remark upon. The household couldn’t be in very dire straits if the cook had enough salt to send an entire cellar along on the tray without needing it in the kitchen.

  “Napkin,” Quilla prompted.

  Florentine raised a bushy eyebrow. “What?”

  “A napkin. Surely you have them?”

  “For fancy dinner parties, sure and I do.”

  “He’ll need one to wipe his mouth on from the gravy.” True patience, Quilla. “Surely you don’t expect him to use his sleeve?”

  “Nah, but I thought he might use your’n,” Florentine said slyly. “Or mayhaps you’d lick his mouth clean—”

  Quilla had been rearranging the items on the tray to balance the weight. At Florentine’s words, she slammed her hand down on the table hard enough to make the dishes jump.

  “You will not speak to me that way!” Her voice echoed around the room. She stepped closer to Florentine. The much larger woman took a step back. “You will accord me the respect I deserve, Florentine. I am a Handmaiden, and in the employ of your master. Beyond that, I have never done aught to give you reason to disparage me. Think you not because I am mild-tongued and calm of manner that I am some addlepated twit you can shove about to serve your own purposes, or insult without retribution. I have served in lowly houses and fine palaces. I have been Handmaiden to shepherds and to kings. And while you may not approve of my function, and you may not understand it, let not your own jealousy make a mockery of what I am and what I do. I accord you the respect your position demands. I ask you do the same to me.”

  “Or what?” Florentine’s sneer seemed halfhearted, the threat in her tone forced. “You’ll tell the master on me?”

  “Do you really think I’d have to?” Quilla regarded the other woman carefully. “Master Delessan impresses me as the sort of man who’d find out all on his own. Think you he’d be pleased to discover his cook berating his Handmaiden? Even if he holds no great affection for me, he is paying dearly for my services. He’d be no more likely to accept you treating me badly than he would if you abused a fine carriage horse or hunting hound.”

  “You liken yourself to a horse or a hound and yet you get affronted when I call you a whore?”

  Quilla shrugged and went back to arranging the tray to make it easier to carry. “I’m no more that than you, Florentine. We’re both paid to perform a service to the master. You to feed his body, I his soul.”

  Florentine huffed. “But you don’t deny you’d warm his bed if he asked.”

  Quilla regarded Florentine with a raised eyebrow. “And you wouldn’t?”

  That seemed to stun the fat chatelaine into silence, jaw agape and eyes wide. Yet she didn’t deny the assertion, and Quilla pushed past her to o