by Megan Hart
"I have a year to take one. If at the end of it I'm still unwed, you can try to wrestle my crown from my head again, Devain. But until then, I would see my lord father." Cillian stepped off the dais, his every joint aching but irrepressible lightness trying to bubble up from inside.
"Wait." The tallest priest spoke, rising. "There is yet the matter of your faith." Cillian had been weary before, but the brief respite had lifted him. "What of it?" It wasn't the response the priests had been looking for. The tallest spoke again, calmly.
"Do you have any?"
Devain shot them a glowering, thin-lipped stare, and Cillian thought perhaps the man had overstepped himself with the priests. "It's been documented the prince doesn't attend Temple services aside from holiday gatherings."
"This is ludicrous!" Edward spoke up from amongst the milling lords eager for their suppers. "The king himself never set foot in Temple, as it's well-known, and he's been on the throne for years! You have your results, Devain, accept your loss and let the man go see his father before it's too late!"
Cillian met Edward's eyes at last. Edward didn't return his smile at first, all thorns and bristles on Cillian's behalf. Cillian teased him into one, finally, tiny but real. Just like across the schoolroom when both were meant to be paying attention to the teacher but instead were plotting how they'd spend the cash in their pockets.
The priest moved between Cillian and Devain. "A man can have faith without ever attending a formal service, and he can worship every day without having any faith at all. But a king without faith cannot sit upon the throne of Firth. "We've not yet been so hobbled we can't prevent that. The Temple has final say in any appointment. Simply because my brothers haven't found it necessary to deny any doesn't mean we can't do it. You can read the Law of the Book and see what I say is true." Devain's grin split his lips back and turned his face into something monstrous. He made a small, reaching gesture with his hands as though grabbing the imaginary crown off Cillian's head. The priest didn't pay any attention to him, his focus on the prince.
"So I ask you again, my lord prince. Do you have faith?" It was no simple question to answer, and Cillian didn't try.
"You were sent a Handmaiden. The Order doesn't send Handmaidens to those they don't deem worthy." The priest ticked off a list on his fingertips while his brothers watched, quiet. "But what sort of man is unable to find solace even when assisted by one of the Order?"
"A man unfit to rule," Devain began, but the priest's upheld hand silenced him. Cillian faced the priest, sewing together his reply from words he plucked one by one from his mind. He knew many reasons why Honesty had been unable to complete her task. Why he'd sent her away from him before she could. And why he didn't deserve for her to try. He had many answers for the priest, who now waited with his head tilted, listening for Cillian to speak.
Even so, Cillian didn't know what he meant to say when his mouth opened. But then Bertram appeared in the doorway.
"My lord. Your father. He's gone."
And Cillian found he need say nothing at all.
You don't have to go." Erista's father leaned heavily on his cane, breathing hard. He was too proud to ask her to slow the pace or even take a break, but Erista did it anyway. "Sit with me, Papa."
She arranged her skirts around her ankles and made room on the stone bench for him. Their seat at the top of the garden path gave her a clear view to the ungroomed meadow below, where young Eslan practiced some sort of swordplay with his mentor. Taller than she by half a head, he had her eyes set in the features of his father's face. It had startled her upon seeing it, for she'd forgotten how he'd looked, her first love. Eslan mingled the best of them both, though he didn't know it.
"You don't have to," her father repeated.
"Of course I have to." Erista's voice stayed steady. She watched her son learning to be a man. "How can you look down there and see what I see and not understand that?"
"We could tell him the truth."
She turned on the bench to look at him. "Now? After all this time? You've raised him as your own son, not as grandson. You told him his siblings all died. He thinks I'm a distant cousin come to stay, not your daughter returned from the grave. The boy has lived his entire life being fed a lie. What purpose could it serve to tell him the truth, now?" Her father sighed heavily and slouched. "I'm growing older. Your mother, too. What will happen if I die before he's ready?"
She found more pity in her heart for him. The man had lost two sons, after all, to accident and illness. Yet she couldn't forget he'd lost his daughter, too, and by choice. "The fact I'm all you have left is no good reason for me to do what you wish."
"How about for mercy's sake?" Her father gave her a solemn, piercing look. Erista didn't answer. Time had passed and she'd found a large measure of forgiveness for her parents, but there would always be a space between them.
"But to a madman, Erista?"
Her father's anguished tone turned her head.
"Cillian's not a madman."
Her father shook his head. "Only a madman would advertise the position of bride as he would for a new chatelaine."
He would have to, Erista thought. He only had a year to find a wife or be deposed without any effort from Devain at all. "There are women aplenty who will overlook his past for the position he offers."
"But to send a mailing to every noble house in the closest hundred miles! It smacks of desperation at the very least. Low breeding. What sort of woman is he seeking, that would answer a call such as this?"
One like her, or so Erista hoped. She'd never told Cillian where she'd lived. Who she was. It might be foolish of her to think he was trying to find her, but she'd been foolish before. Eslan, smile wide, raised his sword and turned to them. Sunlight slanted across his face. There was no way Erista would ever do anything to take the smile from it. Honesty had ever served her well, but not this time.
"You could have a kingdom as fine as any right here," her father said. She leaned to pat his hand, then turned back to the sight of Eslan now back to battle with his teacher. She looked around the garden and to the fields where the orchards had once stood. She'd never regret returning, but this was no longer her home.
"It's not his kingdom I desire," she said, and for that her father had no answer. The Princess Erista Bellor," announced the footman, stumbling over the pronouncement of her name. "Formerly of Bellora."
That drew the attention of every eye in the room. Erista straightened. She'd faced scrutiny often enough, but it had always been easier to withstand when wearing a Handmaiden's gown. Looking at her in uniform, most people saw her function. In more fashionable clothes, they saw her as a woman.
Woman I began, and woman I shall end.
She lifted her chin to face them all.
Cillian's court was different than his father's. "Women had been allowed to join, and Erista straightened further. How many of them had come for her same reason? How many vied for the seat beside him?
"Approach the king and present yourself," said the footman, as though every day trembling, anxious women arrived and had to be reminded of protocol. Perhaps they did.
Erista moved forward on silent slippers, gliding carefully toward the dais at the end of the room. Cillian hadn't even turned his head at the sound of her name. He spoke idly to the man next to him. Edward Delaw, she saw, and was glad to witness the easy way the men smiled and laughed.
Cillian didn't look up until she'd dropped to a low curtsy in front of him, her head bowed. When she looked up, she watched his expression slide from boredom to surprise to wariness. It stopped short of the joy she'd hoped to see.
The room had been abuzz with talk but slowly fell quiet as Cillian stared. Erista held the curtsy for longer than necessary, her eyes locked with his. Her head swam at the sight of him, his red-gold hair shorter and worn loose around his shoulders. He was still so lovely.
"You're here," he said finally, and all the tension she'd been holding whooshed out of her in a sigh. 1 am.
/>
Cillian got to his feet and took her hand. "Walk with me." Ignoring the buzz of whispers following them, she followed him out the pair of glass doors to the gardens beyond. A glance over her shoulder showed the press of many faces to the glass. They had an audience.
"Don't mind them," Cillian said. "It pleases them to watch me as though I were an exhibit in a menagerie."
He took her along the crushed stone path to a more private place sheltered by flowering shrubs. He turned, stepped back. Gave her space.
"You came," Cillian said. "I didn't know if you would. I didn't. . . think you would."
"Did you hope?" She let her gaze drink in every inch of him, not bothering to hide her appraisal.
Cillian nodded, solemn. "I did."
"Have many others come, too?"
"Oh, more than I could have imagined," he said with a familiar smirk that faded quickly into seriousness. "I find it most merry how many who'd have been hard-pressed to dance with me at a ball now offer themselves to dance between my sheets." Thin-edged jealousy sliced at her. "I believe you."
"And yet none of them were you," he said as though the very idea were unbelievable.
"Lovely story makers all of them, well versed in telling tales designed to make them seem to be everything I could ever want, and all of them naught but stories, in the end."
"Surely not all of them are dishonest."
"And none of them are you," he said again and took a step closer. "Honesty." She laughed, heat rising in her at the look on his face and the memory of his taste on her tongue. "I don't use that name any longer."
"You've left the Order."
"I have." She looked down and gestured at her gown. "I find myself in civilian garb once more."
"It suits you." He took another step.
She took one, too. "So you've not yet filled the position?"
"My dear one, it has been so long since I've filled any position I'm fair to bursting." Erista's laugh became half a sob. She drew him closer that last step and tipped her face to his. "I plead your mercy. I meant to fail you and I did." Cillian shook his head. "No, sweetness, you didn't. You went away and left me alone."
"So I failed in more ways than one." Her voice cracked as months of grief flooded it. "I shouldn't—"
He stopped her with a soft brush of a kiss. "I made my peace with Edward. I had no one, and he was there. If I'd had you to lean on, I'd never have done that, and he and I would still be estranged. I found my solace, Honesty, and it's lasted longer than a single moment."
Again, the cut of envy sliced her, but only a little and of a different sort. "I'm glad for you. For both of you."
"And you are here, now." His green eyes flashed. "That says something, does it not?" She smiled, though her throat had gone tight with emotion. "Cillian, I cannot promise you I will be any better a wife than I was a Handmaiden."
He smiled. "I'm fair certain I shall be as equally unreliable a husband as I was a patron. We are well matched, then."
A shiver ran through her. "Do you think so?"
"I think we can learn to be, if nothing else." He kissed her hand. She thought of the playroom and the sting of leather on her skin. She shivered again but looked steadily into his eyes. "As a Handmaiden I would have bent my back for your pleasure. As wife . . . I'm not sure I'd be able."
Arousal flared in his eyes, but deep within and not frighteningly. "As you once said, there are more pleasures to be had than at the end of a whip."
She studied him, looking for any sign of insincerity, no matter how well meant. She found none. There was more to him than there'd been before, she thought as she reached to stroke his hair from his face. The Cillian she'd known had worn himself like a costume. The man before her stood easily in his skin.
"Shall we marry, then?" she asked him. "Men and women have wed with less acquaintance and for worse reasons."
"Indeed they have, though I should hope ours will be better than that." Cillian's mouth quirked. "And as for acquaintance, I have the better part of a year left before I'm required to marry."
Erista raised a brow. "Oh?"
Cillian reached into his pocket and drew forth a length of silken white ribbon that tangled, then dangled tantalizingly from his fingers. He looked down the path to the glimpse of the entrance to the hedge maze and the bower decorated with braggart's laces. Anticipation crawled along her spine, tightening her nipples and sending heat between her thighs. Wielded by any other man the ribbon would have meant nothing, but in Cillian's hand it reminded her all too well of how it felt to be bound with his desire.
"I had hoped to have time to woo you," Cillian said.
She took the ribbon and wound it around her wrists, watching how his eyes lit and his tongue wet the center of his bottom lip.
"Then I say we find the center of the maze," she told him, already backing in that direction and watching him follow. "And perhaps we might have reason to hang this ribbon on the bower when we come out."
She'd begun to love him when he needed her, but standing before him now, Erista discovered how much better it was for him to want her instead.
Determinata
Chapter 17
It's highly irregular." The Mother-in-Service, Compassiona, peered over the rims of her spectacles at Mina, then tapped the thick sheaf of papers on the desk in front of her. Her pen, as ever, left not so much as a dot of unwanted ink.
"I don't suppose it's for me to judge such a thing. If the Mothers say I am to go, I go." Mina shrugged.
Compassiona sighed and steepled her fingers beneath her chin. "Determinata, my dear, I know you've no qualms about the assignment. But I do. It's highly irregular, and it chafes me to know that simple rules are broken for the promise of a coin. It's not the way the Order should be run."
Mina reached to snag the top paper and ran down the list upon it with her finger. "He looks a worthy patron, Mother. And the application is thorough." Compassiona shook her head. "But he's not the one who filled it out, Determinata. No matter his need, he wasn't the one to request it. I don't like it at all, but who am I to go above my fellow Mothers-in-Service who've decided to allow an exception to this case? They say it's because he is worthy, as indeed you've said, but in the end I fear their reasons are baser than that. And I hate to see . . ." She stopped herself and shook her head again. "But never mind. It's not your worry."
Mina smiled at the older woman, whom she'd known since she'd been a Sister-in-Service along with Mina. "I told you. I don't mind."
She more than didn't mind. The man's case had intrigued her enough that no matter how unorthodox the procedure had been to approve him as a patron of the Order of Solace, she was willing to take him. It had been too long since she'd been assigned anyone at all. Mina looked at the other woman carefully. Compassiona had ever been one to fret but something on her face prompted Mina to ask, "Has there been a question of my ability to serve?"
She had wondered as the months passed and she'd remained behind while others came and went, if there'd been a reason beyond that which she could know. The Mothers-in-Service didn't often choose to explain themselves. Most of the Sisters didn't care—but most of them had little enough rest between their patrons. A few weeks, a month. There were not so many of them in service that the demand could be outstripped by the supply. If anything, more of her Sisters craved a break from their work. For Mina it had been longer than a full twelvemonth since she'd returned from her last assignment. Compassiona looked surprised. "No, of course not. The other Mothers agreed unanimously you were the best suited for this patron."
Mina, as was her constant habit, kept her back straight and didn't give away her emotions in her expression. She and Compassiona had known each other for many years. If anyone at the Order knew how to understand Mina, it was the woman in front of her now. Yet Mina often got the impression her longtime Sister-in-Service didn't understand her at all. That few of them did. She was different than the others. No less qualified, no less committed. No less, as her given na
me proved, determined.
"The other Mothers? Not you?"
Compassiona hadn't become a Mother without effort and experience, and now she leaned her chin in her hand to stare across the desk. "Oh, I'm sure you'll suit him just fine. I've no doubts about that at all. But will he suit you?"
"Is that ever a question of import? Do you doubt me?" Her voice didn't shake, but Compassiona had been well named, as they all had, and she didn't need to hear anxiety to sense it.
"I've never doubted you. Worried for you, yes. Many times." Mina got up from her chair and went to the window to stare down at the lawns below. In the distance she could see the bare, stripped fields. "You needn't. But if my vocation is in question . . ."
She let her voice trail off, not making her statement a challenge. Compassiona sighed. Neither spoke for a few moments, long enough for Mina to draw herself inward. A flower is made more beautiful by its thorns, she thought. But what of the thorns? Did not the flowers beauty make their sting all the easier to bear? She had ever thought herself the thorn and not the bloom.
"I daresay nothing you do could be questioned, Sister."
Mina turned to meet her friend's gaze. "Do you suggest I believe myself better able to decide my actions than the Mothers?"
"No. I know you understand your place here. I just want you to be certain you wish to take this patron. You can refuse. You always can refuse."
"But I've been deemed the best for him, yes?"
Compassiona sighed. "Yes."
"Then I shall go."
"If you're sure," Compassiona said doubtfully before laughing. "What am I saying? Of course you're certain, Mina. I've never known you to be anything else. And it's not often we are petitioned for a patron with his . . . needs. He does seem to require your special touch."
Mina's fingers twitched at the thought. "I hope so."
Compassiona cleared her throat and shuffled the papers. "All is in readiness, then. I suppose you'll be off in the morning?"
