Selfish Is the Heart Read online

  She watched him warily. “And you? Your name. Let me guess. Arrogance? Liar?”

  “Men don’t enter the Order of Solace.”

  “But men can become Temple priests.”

  “Priests keep the name of their birth unless they choose otherwise. They’re not given other names.”

  “You mean the men get to keep their identities.” She gave a small sneer. “They’re not required to take on a new persona to perform their service.”

  “Priests must take on many things. A name, at least, changes only what others call you. It can’t change who you are.”

  She sniffed and crossed her arms over her stomach. “So, what is your name? Who are you? You must have some place here, not in the stable or the yard. You said yourself they don’t allow men in the Order.”

  He waited without giving himself away while she circled ’round him, looking him over. Cassian had been so scrutinized before, many times, and even her hottest gaze could not move him. Or so he told himself as she moved closer to look at the high collar of his jacket, the length of his sleeves and hem, the cut of his trousers. She studied his hair and then focused on his face.

  “Temple priests,” she said thoughtfully, “shave their heads. So you are not a priest.”

  Even now, so many years later, this struck a small pain just below his breastbone and deep within his gut. “No.”

  “So. What are you here to test me on?”

  At least she hadn’t burst into tears. “What might you think I’m here to test you on?”

  “Ha!”

  She stepped back, twirling so the hem of her gown swirled around her boots. They were not Order-given, he saw that, but a fine travel pair she must’ve worn here. So she had been better prepared for her journey than he’d thought. The gown, though, was different. It didn’t suit her as well as her own had.

  “Is that my test? To figure your purpose?”

  Cassian sat in the empty chair and put his hands on his knees. He didn’t turn to look at her, even though she stood in his line of vision. He said nothing.

  The sound of their breathing grew very loud.

  “You won’t tell me? The others all told me. It was tedious but not shocking, any of it,” Annalise murmured finally. “I knew my letters and numbers. I knew the story of the Holy Family, more than one, in fact. I knew how to serve tea without spilling. But now . . . now, sir, what could you be here to test?”

  Her voice had dipped low, Sinder help him, deep and thick and rich as puddled honey. Women of all ages came to seek service in the Order, and they all went through the testing—but Cassian was not always called in to assist. Most often he dealt with the girls, the simpering gigglers with youth and exuberance propelling them swifter than wisdom.

  Annalise was no girl.

  “I know. You’re a man. I am a woman. I know what you’re here to learn of me.”

  “If you know,” Cassian said, “you’d be one of the first to guess without prompting.”

  She had a lovely laugh, sweet but edged with wickedness. It was designed to turn men’s heads and draw women in close. Cassian didn’t look. He did not move.

  Annalise moved around him in a slow circle as she spoke. “They tested me on many skills, but have said naught so far of what a Handmaiden is expected to do for her patrons beyond making tea and reading aloud. We all know there’s more to it than that, yes?”

  “Sometimes. I would not presume to speak for every patron or every Handmaiden.”

  “And I should not, either,” she murmured. “You need not say so aloud to chastise me. I understand when I’ve overstepped.”

  At this, finally, he looked at her. “Do you? I find that difficult to believe, given our previous conversations.”

  “You mean the ones in which you insulted me and led me astray?”

  “And yet here you are.”

  She stopped in front of him. With him seated and her standing, his gaze leveled at her breasts. He looked at her face, instead.

  For the first time since their meeting in the forest, he saw hesitation in her gaze. Her tongue slipped out, soft and pink, to trace the fullness of her bottom lip. She stiffened her shoulders.

  “Here we both are.”

  He looked, and looked again. Annalise didn’t turn her gaze from his. He admired her for that.

  “You are not here to see how rapidly I can divide a column of numbers.”

  “No. Not that.”

  She swallowed, and the motion of her throat working drew his gaze despite his best intentions to keep his eyes on hers. Her breasts lifted and fell with her breath. Her hands clenched at her sides.

  Then, slowly but with grace, Annalise sank to her knees.

  The sight of a woman in such a pose ought to no longer move him, but Cassian was still a man. Something tightened inside him when she tilted her face to look up at him from her place a scant measure from his feet, placed so firmly on the floor. Her skirt had tangled about her legs, and he reminded himself she was new to this—perhaps not to being on her knees, but to serving.

  She’d not yet learned to Wait, and that, too, would come in time. Yet Annalise sank naturally back onto her heels with her hands in her lap. The pose wasn’t quite perfect, but the ease at which she set the posture sent another tight, sharp thrill through him until he forced it away.

  “I suppose there are all sorts of service,” she whispered. “Are you here to judge my willingness, sir, or my skill?”

  Neither, in fact. He was sent inside the room to judge a novitiate’s comfort level with a strange man and her ability to sense what might set him at ease, since service to men was far different than that to women. Only some assumed from the start, as Annalise now did, that he expected sexual service, and none of them had ever been right.

  Until now.

  The thought froze him in place. Her gaze flickered over him. Cassian strained to show no reaction.

  “This would be ever so much easier if you were not so lovely,” the woman on her knees breathed, and Cassian was at once on his feet.

  “I am here to test your capacity for empathy,” he said harshly, voice rough but not with anger.

  She got to her feet. “My what?”

  He gestured at the fireplace, the teakettle, the scattered pillows on the floor. “To judge your ability to put others at ease. To sense what might make another comfortable.”

  Annalise blinked rapidly, lips parting. Then she put her hands on her hips, eyes narrowed. “Are you saying I’ve failed?”

  “My purpose here was to see how easily you figured out what another person might need,” Cassian said sternly, without looking at her.

  “Have I failed? Tell me, sir, if you find that to be true.”

  “I’m saying you should seek further training. Much further training!”

  Incredibly, she laughed again. “You accuse me of overstepping again.”

  “This is not an accusation. This is a fact. A Handmaiden is not a kitchen slut, sent to flip up her skirts at the first crook of her patron’s finger!”

  “Tell me no Handmaiden is ever asked to get on her knees and suck a patron’s cock, and I will call you a liar. Which I already know you to be,” Annalise told him.

  “I did not,” Cassian said tightly, through gritted teeth, “desire you to perform such an act upon me.”

  Annalise looked, as he had, at the teakettle and pillows, the props and tools that had gone unused. She looked back at him, her gaze hard as iron. Ungiving. And, Sinder help him, knowing.

  “Liar,” she told him. “If a test was failed, I do not think ’twas me who failed it.”

  He could say nothing, found no words. Cassian hissed in a breath and shook his head. Annalise shrugged and turned away.

  “Shall I be sent away before I’ve begun? Was this what determines my place in the Order, or not?”

  “No.”

  She slanted a sly smile at him along with a glance. “No?”

  “You’ll begin your training tomorrow,” Cassi