Selfish Is the Heart

  And this the man to whom they assigned the newest, who were not always the youngest, but the ones who definitely needed the most nurturing. Annalise shook her head at the reasons of the Mothers-in-Service and kept bent over her booklet. She was supposed to be writing passages that particularly spoke to her so that she might keep them close for the future.

  Bollocks.

  None of it spoke to her. She knew the text word for word, front to back and in reverse, and not a bit of it had ever made sense. Annalise suspected it never would.

  She stifled a yawn behind her fist, grateful that unlike her school days, the master wouldn’t be traveling the rows with his ruler, ready to smack her knuckles for not completing the lesson . . . though on second thought, she might prefer that to his current alternating habit of ignoring and scorning her. She drew a small pattern of stars and bars. Underneath it, the scroll of her initials, just as she had so often as a schoolgirl.

  Finally, at long last the chime sounded. An hour of leisure, then the afternoon service and evening meal, then more leisure pursuits until it was time to sleep. Annalise had already wiped her pen and replaced it in its flannel and capped the inkbottle, her booklet in her pocket, by the time the chime finished reverberating through the halls. She’d have been first out the door, too, if not for the silly bint Perdita, who spilled her text and booklet on the floor and her friends who bent to help her clean the mess but blocked the way.

  “Mistress Marony, if you please.”

  Annalise looked over her shoulder. “Yes?”

  “Would you stay a moment after the rest of the group?”

  Ah, now the silly gits were staring at her, eyes wide, mouths propped open in identical expressions of dismay. Had she ever been so wind-headed? Annalise sighed. Yes, in all likelihood, she had.

  “If it pleases you.” She’d picked up the phrase without knowing it, but when it slipped from her tongue, she was glad she’d found it for no other reason than the way it widened his eyes.

  “You needn’t address me in such a manner,” he told her when the others had gone and left them alone, the door left wide open so they could hear the voices and shuffle of feet in the hall that had replaced the soft chiming of the bell.

  “With respect? I thought you insisted upon such a manner.”

  Master Toquin—she knew his given name was Cassian, but here in this room he was more a master than a man—narrowed his eyes. “Yet something in your tone never lends itself to such an honor.”

  Her lips thinned and tightened, and Annalise bit the tip of her tongue to keep from speaking with haste. This man held a place of importance within the Order. Power.

  “It was the phrase,” he added before she could speak.

  She bit her tongue again so as not to leap to words she couldn’t retrieve. He studied her, noting her silence. He rested his fingertips, protruding from the red hem of his shirt below the black sleeve, on the desktop close to where she’d left her pot of ink.

  “You’ve not yet taken your vows,” he said.

  “Everything I do here is meant to lead me to that place when I do all in the name of service. When it becomes second nature.” She’d seen most if not all the other novitiates living as if they’d already taken their vows, and had seen it encouraged by the Sisters and Mothers-in-Service. “The best way to become a Handmaiden is to live as one, yes?”

  “But you are not one. You are not mine,” he told her with an edge to his voice she neither understood nor cared to decipher.

  “Your mercy.” Annalise bit the words so they had an edge of their own. Ragged. “You kept me for a reason?”

  He looked toward the closet. “The texts. Your eye was keen in determining which were of quality too poor for use. I’ve noted your hand is steady, as well. And your attention to the work is . . . less than attentive.”

  “I’m in the wrong group,” she told him flatly. “Perhaps you should petition the Mothers to move me from it, as I’ve done several times and been refused. Surely that would ease the burden of having me as your student.”

  His fingers drifted in a slow pattern of circles over the desktop. Her gaze fell to the circling, the tender way his fingertips stroked the polished wood. How precise his touch—and how long it had been since she’d had any such caress upon herself.

  “I should think the burden is upon you,” Toquin told her. “Since you so clearly need no instruction from me as to the text. I can see how dull you find it. But I can do naught to change the course to which you’ve been assigned. Only the Mothers can do that, and never in my experience do they do so from a plea, no matter who brings it.”

  His hand stopped the slow, steady pattern. Annalise swallowed the breath threatening to slip out of her on a sigh. When she looked up at him, he did not meet her gaze. He, too, stared at his fingers on the smooth wood.

  “It has long been our habit to have those with greater understanding instruct those with less,” he said in a low voice. “It would seem beneficial to us both, since the Mothers have determined that you should remain in study with this group, if you would become my . . . assistant.”

  “Your . . . but you don’t even like me!” The cry shot from her lips before she could stop it, and Annalise stepped back from him.

  Cassian looked at her then, eyes faintly wide. “I’ve never made such a claim!”

  “You don’t have to say it aloud, it’s evident in your every word to me. Although”—she paused, thinking—“I suppose one could say the same of the words you say to everyone. It’s generally understood you don’t like anyone. But I thought, particularly, you disliked me.”

  He took a step back, his hand knocking the inkpot and rattling it. “Land Above, Mistress Marony, why would you believe I had any especial dislike of you over any other?”

  Because she was different, she knew it by the way he looked or did not look at her. By the way his voice snagged on her name the rare occasion he chose to use it, and because he so rarely did. She knew she set his teeth on edge with her questions, her forthright-ness, her simple unwillingness to be a single bird in a simple flock.

  “Because I can assure you,” he continued, “I harbor no such preference.”

  She lifted her chin to study his face. Color tinged his cheeks, not a blush but perhaps a flush of temper. His eyes glittered. A stray hair clung to his forehead. As if he noted her perusal he pushed it away with impatient fingers.

  “If you choose not to accept the position—”

  “I’ll do it.”

  This stopped him, as her words seemed to do so often. Annalise shrugged, keeping her expression neutral so as not to reveal how much his dismissal of her had stung. Toquin’s gaze traveled over her face before settling so briefly on her eyes she wasn’t sure he’d even looked into them before he nodded and stepped back again.

  “Very well. In addition to the classes, you’ll be expected to assist me in preparation of the lessons, lend your hand in sorting the texts. Correct lessons, if necessary.”

  “I’m to become a teacher? How merry. I’d never thought myself patient enough for the task, else I’d have become a governess.” Her lips quirked despite her all-to-recent distress at his tone and words.

  Toquin didn’t give her a smile in return. Did the man ever? “A good Handmaiden is oft asked to play the part of tutor in any manner of subjects, Mistress Marony. Or so I hear tell. There are many patrons for whom solace can only come at the instruction of another.”

  “Or so you hear. I thought nobody shared such stories here. At least, such was the tale I was told.”

  His gaze slid over her, and she thought she might have seen a twitch of lip, but too late, it passed and his mouth, full and lush though it was, stayed as firm and tight as it always did. “Tale-bearing is certainly not encouraged.”

  “I will be your assistant, sir, if only to relieve myself of the interminable dullness of the role of student.”

  Toquin lifted his chin. Changed his stance. If she didn’t know better, Annalise might
have said she’d challenged him and he rose to it, but the timbre of his voice didn’t change. Nor did his expression.

  “I am aware how less than challenging you’ve found my instruction. I can’t speak for the Mothers who’ve placed you with me, but they have their reasons for all they do.”

  “Is there a person alive who has no reason for their action?” she asked, partly to poke him but mostly because she believed it to be so.

  “I’ve never known one.”

  She laughed, knowing he wouldn’t join her and yet hoping he might, just this once, slip a little. Not a hint of it. But something eased between them, some small bit of tension no longer jerking them back and forth like a dog on the end of a too-short leash.

  “Tell me when you want me,” she told him, “and I shall do my best to accommodate you.”

  His lips parted and sealed a moment later, and exasperated, she sighed. But since he’d not made comment, Annalise kept herself to silence as well.

  The first time Cassian Toquin set his gaze upon Bertricia Miltrelli the sun had just come out from behind a cloud and covered her in fire. Golden hair, golden gown, even her skin had been cast with a sheen of gold. In the span of two heartbeats, mayhap three, she’d turned in conversation with her companion, and Cassian had stumbled so clumsily he went to a knee upon the stones and tore his trousers.

  Calvis had helped him up.

  “Leave off the ale if you’re going to be a fumblefoot. Must I carry you?”

  “No.” Cassian shook his head.

  Calvis was already following his brother’s gaze. “Ah, the lady? Really, Cass? Her?”

  “She is . . .” Cassian was unable to find the words to describe her.

  “She’s the bosom companion of yonder lemon-mouthed lass, Raeletta Demanns.”

  Cassian knew Raeletta, the daughter of their father’s old school friend, and her sister Sarenissa, too. “She grew up.”

  “We all do.” Calvis slung an arm around his brother’s shoulders. “Don’t tell me you’re going to let a new-sprung set of breasts distract you from the fact that Raeletta Demanns is a pain in the arse.”

  “I’m not looking at Raeletta.”

  Calvis scoffed and knuckled Cassian’s hair until he pulled away. “Her bosom companion is no less the she-hound. Home with her for the holiday. They’re both here because our mothers have determined a brannigan is the best way to matchmake.”

  Cassian started, tearing his gaze at last from the three young women now examining his mother’s bush of captain’s buttons. “With us?”

  “By the Arrow, I should think not. Think you our mothers find either of the pair of us ready for wedding? And I daresay neither would like to imagine us ready for bedding, either.”

  “Raeletta is a year younger than us. Sarenissa a year younger even than that.”

  Calvis shrugged. “Girls are settled quicker than us. Besides, no matter the affection Madame Demanns has cultivated for our mother, she thinks we two are Void-spawned.”

  Cassian shrugged away from Calvis’s insistent grip. “She thinks that of you.”

  “Oh, ho, ho.” Calvis grinned, not at all insulted. “What’s the difference between us aside from an inch or two of prick I gained somehow when you didn’t?”

  Calvis’s taunts wouldn’t work today. Not in front of their guests. Bertricia, Cassian thought, his heart already lost. Only when his brother poked his ribs did he look again.

  “Give it up, Cass. She’ll never look at you the way you’re already staring at her. She’s not born for the likes of us.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” The breeze carried the sound of her voice to him, and Cassian flushed with deep-seated heat even though the day wasn’t overwarm.

  “It means she’s meant for courting by someone established. Wealthy. Probably for Grayson Delenard. He has a commission in the king’s guard.”

  Cassian looked at his brother. The man in question was, indeed, a guest of their parents. “He’s too old for her.”

  “Ah, but still fit. The man practices the Art every day and could fight off a room of men bent on killing him. Or the king.”

  Cassian stared at Bertricia. Was she looking across the yard at him? She wasn’t looking at Raeletta, who could talk for hours just to hear the sound of her own voice. She was, he thought. She was looking at him.

  Or at them.

  Calvis was standing on his hands, showing off, until Cassian knocked him over. Cal, laughing, tumbled to the grass and bounced up at once, showing off the green stains on his hands.

  Raeletta put her nose in the air and gave them her back. Sarenissa watched them both solemnly, but Bertricia laughed, one gloved hand over her mouth. At least until her companion saw her looking and tugged at Bertricia’s sleeve to turn her gaze as well.

  “Pay her no mind, brother. She’s naught but heartbreak, that one.”

  Much might have changed had Cassian listened to his brother.

  “Cassian?”

  He looked up from the text at which he’d been staring without reading. Serenity beamed at him from in front of the desk. She held out a small basket of simplebread and a crock of butter.

  “The remains of today’s lesson,” she told him. “I had them seed it with rosemary. I think it turned out rather well.”

  The fragrant bread sent a rumble through his stomach, and Cassian tore a bite from the loaf. “Thank you.”

  “You looked pensive,” she said.

  Cassian raised a brow. “Now more than any other time?”

  “Yes, actually. You have for the past few days.” She settled herself on the edge of the desk, one leg swinging. “You always do after Roget’s been and gone, but this time it’s lasted longer. You didn’t come to the morning meal, nor the noontime. It’s not like you to miss meals.”

  He broke off another piece of simplebread and buttered this one thickly before biting. “I’ve been busy. No more than that.”

  Her wordless murmur didn’t sound convinced. Cassian forced himself to meet her gaze so she couldn’t accuse him of looking away. Serenity looked back.

  “Roget has ever been my friend,” Cassian said at last.

  “Friends are those who feel comfortable in telling us what they think we need to hear, not always what pleases us.”

  Cassian scowled. “At what point are you pressing?”

  Serenity smiled at his irritation. “I believe you’ve spent so long in the company of women whose duty is to not pluck that you’ve grown too accustomed to never being so poked.”

  “I assure you, I’ve plenty of thorns pricking me on a daily basis.”

  She laughed. “Ah, but a flower is made more beautiful by its thorns.”

  A sharp crack against the glass turned both their heads. He was at the window before she could get there. The glass hadn’t chipped but rattled a little more loosely in the wooden frame than it might have moments before. He saw naught but the kick of small feet and dust as whatever creature had lobbed the ball ran away, leaving it behind. Serenity peered over his shoulder and stayed at the window some moments longer as Cassian returned to his desk.

  “Was that Kellen?”

  “I would guess so. Him or his conspirator.”

  She laughed gently. “They’re hardly that. Lads only, and young at that. They’ve little enough time to play, much less conspire. You should talk with them about the consequences of carelessness.”

  He sat back in his chair with a lifted brow. “I wasn’t aware they were my responsibility.”

  “Cassian,” Serenity chided and returned to her spot on his desk’s corner. “I love to dance as much as any, but the steps of this gavotte are tiresome.”

  He pushed the basket of simplebread back toward her. “Did you come to bribe me into giggling over my secrets with you? Because it won’t work.”

  “Because you can’t be bribed?”

  “Because,” he said, “I have no secrets.”

  Serenity shook her head. “How long have I known you??
??

  “I don’t keep count of such things.” He crossed his arms and put his feet up on the desk, already knowing her reply.

  “A long time. Since before you were a priest and I a Handmaiden. Do you forget we have also been longtime friends?”

  “As I said. No secrets.”

  “Not from me. Not from Roget. But . . . there are others from whom you’ve kept much.”

  He looked toward the window without meaning to and bit down on the inside of his cheek at Serenity’s triumphant look. “You speak of the boy.”

  “I do.”

  He shook his head, silent.

  She sighed and pulled a hunk of simplebread from the loaf. Forgoing butter, she bit, then winced and swallowed. “Invisible Mother, that’s dry. No solace to be gained from that, to be sure.”

  “Butter helps.”

  She put the bread down and hitched closer to him. “Would it be so difficult for you to acknowledge him?”

  “To what end?”

  “A boy needs a—”

  “Hush,” Cassian ordered. “If you would seek to truly be my friend, hold your tongue.”

  “The influence of a man,” Serenity said. “Kellen is a bright lad, with much promise. A true Blessing, Cassian.”

  She knew as well as he the boy might not be a Blessing, really, for any reason other than fortuitous timing. Cassian closed the text he’d been pretending to study when she came in. Serenity stared at it, then him.

  “Have you no desire at all to know him?”

  “I know him as well as I need to know him.”

  Serenity sighed again. “She’s not coming back, you know.”

  At this he stood so suddenly the chair flew back and hit the wall behind him. “You and Roget! Are you in league with him?”

  Startled, Serenity hopped off the desk and landed on her twisted leg. She almost fell but righted herself with a grip on the desk. Frowning, she focused on him.

  “If he said the same, it’s because we both speak the truth. Bertricia isn’t coming back to the Motherhouse. Kellen needs a parent. You’re the one he has!”

  There it was between them. Cassian sewed his mouth closed on a retort and jerked away when Serenity came ’round the desk to touch his sleeve. He refused to look at her, as well, no matter what she might accuse.