No Greater Pleasure

  She lifted her chin, allowing herself anger. “If I have failed you, it’s because you’ve thwarted me at every turn. It’s because you find more comfort in your misery than you do from anything else!”

  She did not see the back of his hand, but even if she had, she wouldn’t have ducked it. His slap caught her full on the face and sent her staggering, then to her knees in front of him, holding her stinging cheek. Tears blurred her vision.

  “That is your place,” Gabriel said. “On your knees.”

  She tried to Wait, and could not do it. True patience failed her. Her heart remained selfish. The thorns had become too sharp for her to appreciate the beauty of the flower.

  “I am your Handmaiden. I am your solace and”—her voice faltered, but she kept on—“your comfort. I am what you need before you know you need it.”

  Gabriel put his hand to his crotch and rubbed himself without evident pleasure. “And if I need your mouth upon me?”

  She rose higher on her knees and reached without hesitation toward him, but her fingers stopped a breath from touching him. She looked up at him, unsure if she would find her voice until she actually spoke.

  “No.”

  “No?” His hand snaked out and grabbed a fistful of her hair, pulling her upright. He shook her as a mother dog shakes its naughty pups. “You tell me no?”

  She put her hand over his to lessen the pain of his grasp, but did not otherwise try to get away. “I say no!”

  Gabriel pushed her down and took several steps back, away from her. “Get back on your knees.”

  She looked at him, her equilibrium shattered, self-confidence gone, her world tilted on its axis and spinning too fast. Years of training no longer mattered.

  “I will not.”

  “What’s the matter, Handmaiden? Have you forgotten your purpose and your place? You’ve been on your knees for me before.”

  She had, but not for this reason. Not for her humiliation.

  “You need not do this.”

  “And do you not understand, it has nothing to do with need, and everything to do with want! Are you not here to fulfill my every desire? Now, I tell you again, get on your knees.”

  She looked up at him and shook her head. “No, Gabriel.”

  This time, she brought up her own hand when his came down, and hers blocked the blow. The force of it reverberated down her arm, but she kept steady.

  “Submissive does not mean without defense,” Quilla said.

  Something indefinable glittered in his gaze. “Have you found your limits, Quilla Caden?”

  She did not answer, and after a moment he took his hand away. “I am not asking you to do anything you have not done before, and eagerly.”

  Still, she said nothing, and Gabriel stared at her. His gaze raked her from head to foot. “What sort of Handmaiden does not do her master’s bidding?”

  Quilla put her hand over her heart, which had physically begun to hurt. Now her silence was from inability to form words, rather than pointed refusal. She could not speak. She could not breathe. His words, the name he’d called her, hurt worse than his slap.

  He laughed without joy, his smile cruel and unflattering. He was again the man she had first met surrounded by gloom and the acrid stink of chemicals. Tears fell faster for what had been lost.

  “What sort?” He paused, contempt on his face making her cringe but not step away. “One who has failed.”

  Failed.

  Before she could say anything, had she words to speak, Gabriel leaned in close. Like a lover stealing a kiss he put his mouth to her ear. His breath caressed the side of her face; the brief, hot moistness of his lips brushed her earlobe.

  “If you will not get on your knees to suck my cock, then you will surely get on your knees to crawl for me.”

  She did not immediately obey. His hand on her shoulder pushed her toward the floor, and she ended up on her hands and knees. The bare wooden floor scraped her palms. A splinter gouged her, bringing blood to the wound not healed. He walked back, away from her.

  “Crawl for me,” Gabriel said. “You told me once you had never tested your limits. I would test them, now.”

  Trembling, Quilla put her forehead to the floor, hands by the side of her head, palms up. He had seen her Wait in Readiness, and in Remorse, and in Submission. Now she Waited in the fourth position, one she had never used. Abasement.

  “I plead your mercy, my lord—”

  “I said crawl !”

  The fury in his voice spurred her forward. Her gown tangled around her legs, making her lurch forward. Somehow that lack of grace made it worse, as though humiliation could be made worse by clumsiness.

  “Let me see those lovely legs. Lift your skirt.”

  She did, hiking up the length of material around her waist with one hand while she moved forward on the other. Now her knees scraped the floor, and that small sting was made tenfold worse by Gabriel’s laughter. She moved forward again at his demand, her stomach twisting in her gut. But she did it, perhaps helpless to not do it, and not because she was his Handmaiden.

  Because she loved him.

  “That’s it,” she heard him say. “Crawl for me.”

  She shook so fiercely she bit her tongue and tasted blood. That metallic ocean again—it made her stop. She turned her head to look at him.

  And then she got to her feet. Her dress fell back to her feet, the hem sweeping the dirty floor. She looked at her scraped and filthy palms, then up at him.

  “Get back on your knees,” Gabriel said. “For one task or another.”

  She shook her head. Her heart seemed to turn inside her chest, the pain of it sharp, like a knife. “No.”

  “No?” His voice had gone soft. Dangerous. His fingers tugged his belt from the loops, and he wrapped the buckle end of it around his palm. “You still tell me no?”

  She stared at him unflinching, though every inch of her felt as though she was shaking out of control. “I will not do this.”

  Gabriel slid the end of the belt through his hands, drawing it between them. “What of your purpose and your place? What of your duty, Handmaiden?”

  He sneered. This was not the man she loved. This was a monster. She sought any sign of the man she loved, but found none. Only a grief-twisted monster, and though she knew she ought to find pity for him, create excuses, there were none to be had.

  “You have failed in them.”

  She lifted her chin, facing him without tears. “ ’Tis my purpose and my place to bring you solace. To make you happy. What you are asking is not to do either, but instead to bring me misery.”

  A terrible smile turned his mouth ugly. “Perhaps ’tis your misery that will bring me solace.”

  She swallowed against a parched throat. “I am your Handmaiden. Not your whore, or your whipping boy. If I have failed—”

  “You have brought me nothing but misery!” he yelled. The belt snapped taut again between his hands. “And I would appease mine own through watching yours, but you refuse me even that!”

  He had broken her. She heard her own voice, coming as though from another throat, something far away and without emotion.

  “If I no longer please you, then release me.”

  “You will not do what I ask?” A hint of incredulity had found its way into his voice at last, and the belt slackened in his grip. “You will still refuse me? You will choose failure over pleasing me?”

  “If I no longer please you,” Quilla repeated, “then you may release me. You know how it must be done.”

  “And if I do not wish to release you?”

  She stared at him steadily, though her mind had gone as far away as her voice and she did not really see him. “If I no longer—”

  “Shut up!” The whistle of the belt striking the back of the chair emphasized his cry. “You’re not some bloody key-wound doll!”

  She said nothing, her spine straight, though everything inside her felt twisted. The landscape of her emotion had become a barren wastela
nd with storm-stripped trees and drought-cracked earth.

  The belt cracked down again, this time onto the table next to her, coming close enough for her to feel the breeze of its passing. She did not flinch. Her eyes stayed wide and fixed upon his face. She had broken, but she would not bend.

  A third time, he raised the belt and she steeled herself for its sting on her shoulders. Gabriel did not strike her. His hand hesitated at the top of its arc. She saw the leather shake as his hand shook.

  “I release thee,” he said the first time. He lowered the belt, tossed it aside with a low, disgusted cry. He looked at her, face naked with anguish, and the sight should have moved her but no longer could. His eyes, red-rimmed, welled with tears, he stepped toward her as though it hurt him to do it. “I release thee.”

  Quilla did not move. She did not soften. She could not. She’d gone dead inside. She felt his hands on her upper arms as Gabriel came close and gathered her against him. She felt his breath in her hair as he pressed his face there. She felt the thump of his heart against her chest. She heard him whisper, heard his voice catch and break, felt his tears against the side of her neck as he wept against her.

  “I . . .” He shuddered, but said nothing further.

  “I release thee.” Black ice coated the words, and she heard him moan as he spoke them.

  He fell at her feet, gathering her hem in his hands and covering his face with it, but Quilla stepped away from him without waiting for him to move out of the way. She left the room without looking back, not even when he called out her name.

  Chapter 15

  The world’s beauty is such that not even death is forever. Flowers die and leave their seeds to bloom again in spring. Bare trees grow green. Everything cycles toward the new, everything has a place, all that dies becomes reborn in its own time and for its own purpose.

  One full spring had gone, one full summer, one season of harvest, and one of snow. Quilla was a year older, her face thinner, her hair longer, her hands one year unheld, her lips one year unkissed.

  One year, and she was no longer dead. She had, like the flowers and the leaves, bloomed again. Now she sat on her front porch, a glass of chilled tea at her side and the scent of spring breeze on her face.

  She wore red, a color she’d once been told she would not choose. She wore it in memory of a man who had loved her when he should not have, and in thought of a man who had not when he had needed to. She wore no shoes and the loose fabric of her skirt exposed her calves to the fragrant air.

  She sipped her drink and watched the path leading through the meadow to her front door. In the summer the grass would be high and dust would announce a visitor. Now, springtime rain had dampened the dirt, and the grass had not yet sprouted; she saw the man on the other side of the meadow with no trouble at all. She watched him walk toward her, but she did not rise to greet him.

  She had finished her drink by the time he reached her porch. The honey she’d used to sweeten it clung to the bottom of the glass, and she tipped it up to drink the last bit, swiping her tongue over her lips to rid them of the stickiness.

  He wore not the fashionable coat of a lord now, nor the white coat of an alchemist. He wore a white shirt, loose at the throat, and dark, travel-worn trousers gone ragged at the cuffs. He’d tied his dark hair at the nape of his neck with a leather cord. Beard scruffed his cheeks.

  “They told me in the Order you had gone.” He looked up at her. “They would not tell me how to find you.”

  “And how did you?”

  He looked up at her. “What worth is wealth if it cannot bring you what you most need?”

  She had been wrong to think she had found her way back to life; to existence, yes, but not to life.

  She stood and stepped away, turning her face. Seeing him was nearly too much; like staring into the sun, it might leave her blind. He followed her inside her bright and comfortable cottage, far less grand than Glad Tidings but imbued with far more warmth. She settled him at her scrubbed, worn table and put the kettle on to heat.

  “You remember, still. How I like it.” He meant the tea, which she put before him in a heavy porcelain cup painted with gillyflowers.

  The words “I do” of course hovered on her tongue’s tip, but she swallowed them. She poured another cup and busied herself with sweetening it to her taste. She stirred it, then set down the spoon and watched amber liquid make a small puddle on the tabletop.

  “Where is Dane?” she said finally. “Where is your son?”

  “He is with Florentine and Jorja. With those who love him well when I am unable to care for him. He is safe, Quilla. I swear to you.”

  She looked up then, her gaze calculating. “He is safe. But is he well?”

  “He weeps at night for his mother, and for his uncle who loved him as I should have.” Gabriel paused, his gaze meeting hers. “And he weeps for you. As we all do.”

  She got up from the table and went to the sink to pump herself some cold water. She looked out the window to the small garden in her backyard that would someday grow onions and tomatoes.

  “I can scarcely imagine Florentine weeping over anything,” she said at last. “Much less over me.”

  Untruth did not lie with ease upon her tongue, for she had, in fact, seen Florentine weep and could imagine those tears without difficulty. She filled her glass with sweet, cool water and drained it.

  “We all miss you sorely.”

  She allowed a faint smile to pass over her lips as she turned to face him. “You came all this distance to tell me of a household weeping for the memory of me?”

  He nodded, looking at his tea. “I did so, yes.”

  “I see.” She crossed her arms in front of her, a gesture of protection, though he had done naught to threaten. “And what of you, Gabriel Delessan?”

  “I have missed you more than any of the others,” came the reply, pitched low but still audible. His gaze rose to meet hers, and in the light from the window she saw the red reflection of her gown in his eyes. “I have been nearly torn asunder from missing you.”

  Quilla did not yield. She had left the Order, a Handmaiden no longer. She did not need to please him.

  He sighed and put his head in his hands for a moment, and she saw the elbows of his shirt were worn. He needed taking care of. She stayed where she was, her gaze lingering on him while he did not look at her.

  “How long will you be staying here?”

  He looked up at that, disbelief and gratitude mixing in his expression. “You aren’t sending me away?”

  She turned her back and pretended to busy herself with a pan of bread rising on the counter. “I know the length of your journey, Gabriel. I would not send you on your way with an empty stomach and travel-sore limbs. You may take such rest as you need.”

  She glanced over her shoulder at him, wanting to make her meaning clear. “ ’Tis only me, here. I am beholden to myself alone. I choose who stays or goes.”

  The chair scraped along the floor as he stood. She saw him from the corner of her eye, his shape a familiar shadow, his proximity creating a tingle of awareness along her skin—but wisely, he did not touch her.

  “I would be glad of your hospitality, Tranquilla Caden. I would be honored by it.”

  She kept her back straight as she punched and kneaded the dough. “I do not live a life of idleness here, Gabriel. And I have little need for an alchemist. If you would stay, then you’ll need to work for your board.”

  “If it pleases you.”

  Her own words thrown at her that way, from him, stilled her hands inside the soft, warm dough. “I will not know if it pleases me or not until it is done.”

  Then he moved away from her, and she felt the loss of his almost-touch keenly, but she said nothing, and they stayed together in silence for the rest of that day.

  She woke before the dawn to a crackling fire and tea set out for her; to bread sliced and toasted and glistening with butter and jam. The way she liked it. She had not been the only one to
watch and learn, to remember.

  Quilla sat at the table across from him. He’d shaved and bathed. He smelled good, like soap and work, like fire smoke and also fresh air. A cut across the back of one hand had her reaching for it.

  “What happened?”

  “I am still more skilled with a mortar and pestle than an ax. ’Tis naught. A scratch.”

  It was more than that, and she stood to retrieve a small basin of water and some rolled bandages from the cupboard. “If you don’t dress this, it could get infected.”

  In silence he allowed her to tend his wound, capturing her fingers with his before she could pull away her hand. He held it until she looked up at him. His thumb traced the curve of her palm and the scar there.

  Quilla tugged gently, and he released her. “You would do well to change that dressing daily.”

  He nodded, not arguing. Watching her. She stared back at him, but she was the first to look away.

  It didn’t seem to matter that he was better suited to brannigans and academic pursuits than physical labor. Gabriel took over the chores of chopping wood, of clearing the garden of stones, of lining the path with rock crushed by his hammer. He greeted her every morning with tea and breakfast, and a fire, and he sent her to bed every night with the same words.

  “May the Invisible Mother keep you.”

  At last, one night, she relented. Her foot upon the stairs, she glanced back at him, lying on his pallet by the fire. “Until the morning comes,” she finished the traditional blessing.

  That night, she did not sleep so well.

  A cry woke her in the night and she was out of her bed and down the stairs before she knew quite what she was doing. The fire had gone low and dim, but she saw him with no trouble. He’d thrown off the light blankets and curled on his side in a ball.

  Another cry escaped him, and she went to him. Touched his shoulder. “Gabriel.”

  His eyes opened and he sat, covered in sweat. He reached for her and she allowed him to hold on to her, her arms going around him and his face tight against her breast.