by Megan Hart
The household was in an uproar. Lolly and Kirie accosted her as soon as she entered, grabbing off her cloak and stripping her down right there in the back kitchen hall. Quilla made no protest; nudity did not concern her, and false modesty had no place in this situation. She helped them as best she could with numb and shaking hands, buttons flying from the throat of her dress as Lolly tugged it off her. She stood for only a moment naked before Kirie wrapped a blanket around her but in that moment Quilla looked up and saw Jericho’s eyes upon her. His own clothes had been stripped from him, though he still wore his underdrawers. He looked quickly away, and in the next moment Rossi led her toward the small garden parlor usually used as a place for the ladies to sit and arrange flowers. The fire had been stoked to blaze, and Billy was already pouring pitchers of steaming water into a basin in front of it.
Quilla was pushed into the chair in front of the fire and her feet plunked into the steaming water. Lolly brought a towel to dry her hair. Rossi was doing the same for Jericho.
“Where did they take the lad?” Quilla found the voice to ask.
“To the nursery. He’s already in the tub,” said Rossi. “Playing with his boats and singing songs. Jorja fainted and needed to be revived.”
“Who did that, I wonder?” Quilla’s chattering teeth slowly stilled under Lolly’s ministrations.
“Florentine slapped her so hard it left a mark,” said Kirie from her place by the fire, where she was warming towels. “And Jorja said not a word. Can you imagine?”
“I can imagine very well,” replied Quilla. “If she does not lose her place here, I will be greatly surprised.”
“Or us ours,” said Jericho. “As we were the ones watching him.”
Billy reappeared with a robe which he helped Jericho put on, while Kirie brought a warm gown for Quilla. She slipped it over Quilla’s head, and though she would still need a bath to rid herself of the dirt and muck, at least the ice had begun to disappear from her veins.
“Has anyone told my brother and his wife the fate that nearly befell their son?”
“Yes, my lord. Florentine herself has gone to fetch the master from the gentlemen’s games,” said Lolly.
“And the lady mistress?” Quilla accepted the hot rum Rossi had handed her. She sipped. “She will want to know, too.”
“She’s not been found, as yet,” said Lolly with a quick glance at Kirie. “Though our lord Delessan has begun tearing up the house in search for her.”
Quilla met Jericho’s gaze, which had shuttered itself but was not unreadable. His mouth thinned, and he waved Rossi away impatiently. From the hall came the sound of shouts and running feet, though no one entered the garden parlor.
“They will find her soon, I am certain,” said Jericho. “And Sinder’s Mercy when they do.”
“She will need more than Sinder’s Mercy,” murmured Quilla.
“You’re right,” agreed Jericho. They shared another look of understanding. “She will need my brother’s.”
There had been more shouting from abovestairs. More slamming of doors. By the time Quilla could convince Lolly to let her get up and leave the garden parlor, however, silence hung over the entire household. It was the hush of every ear being turned toward something waiting to happen, and Quilla was fair certain she could guess what it was.
She went to Gabriel’s chamber, passing doors cracked open to provide listening ears with easier access. The door to his workroom was closed, and the moment she lifted the latch, shouting broke the silence in the house.
“Damn you to the Void!” Saradin’s shrill voice echoed in the hall, providing, Quilla thought, ample interest to the held-breath residents. “Damn you, Gabriel Delessan!”
The sound of shattering glass came next. The thud of some heavy object being thrown. The crack of flesh on flesh.
Quilla threw open the door and stopped at the sight in front of her. His table had been overturned. Beakers and vials on the floor. Books and paper scattered everywhere, with a pot of ink spilled in a spreading puddle on the desk. Saradin stood in the midst of the destruction, hand upraised.
Quilla watched as Saradin slapped Gabriel’s face hard enough to turn his head. The sound of it hurt Quilla’s ears. The sight of it hurt her heart.
“Don’t you dare judge me!” Saradin screamed. “Don’t you dare! Not when you have your own whore to serve you night and day, your dripping-cunt slut to warm your bed!”
She used the back of her hand this time, sending him staggering one step in the opposite direction. “The whore you parade around in front of our guests to humiliate me! The whore who eats and drinks and shits and fucks in my house! My house! My. House!” She punctuated the last words with two more slaps that looked hard enough to break her fingers.
She had raised her hand again to strike him when his hand came up and caught hers. His fingers closed down over hers, forcing them to curl into a ball. Saradin made a pained yelp and tried to get away, but Gabriel held her fast.
“She is not my whore,” Gabriel said in a voice so thick with contempt and loathing it made Saradin recoil as though he’d been the one to slap her. “She is my solace and my comfort, two things you, my lady wife, have never been.”
Saradin’s scream rose from her throat like smoke into the sky. “You bastard! You cock-sucking son of a whore! How dare you! I am your wife! I am the mistress of this house!”
“And you are a whore who was fucking a man not her husband while our son nearly died, Saradin!” Gabriel’s voice shook. “Dane could have been dead an hour gone and you’d not have known it because you were so busy putting Boone Somerholde’s cock down the back of your throat!”
She slapped him with her other hand, and he grabbed that one, too, yanking both her hands down between them to hold her still.
“You are the whore, lady,” Gabriel said, his voice colder than the ice on the pond. “You are unfit to be a mother, unfit to be a wife. You should go to your lover, if that’s what you please, and leave me and my son without the benefit of your poison presence in our lives.”
Saradin struggled in his grip without success at gaining release. Her pretty face twisted. “Your son? He’s not—”
“Shut your fucking mouth!” Gabriel roared, though Saradin kept speaking.
“—your son!” she cried, triumphant, eyes flashing with mad brilliance. She kicked out at him, yanking her hands in his grip. “He’s not even—”
“I said for you to shut your mouth!” Gabriel hit her hard enough to make blood appear at the corner of her lips, though probably not hard enough to send her to the ground. She crumpled anyway, hands shielding a face Quilla could still see bore a smile, though the words coming from her mouth belied any humor.
“Monster!” Saradin screamed. “Faithless brute! Stupid, gullible—”
He bent and grabbed her up by the hair, his fist raised to strike her again. Quilla crossed the floor in five strides to grab his arm and keep it from coming down.
“My lord! No!”
Saradin laughed, eyes flashing back and forth from Gabriel to Quilla. “Ah, so the bitch comes to save her lord and master.”
Gabriel let go of her, adding a push that knocked her again to the ground. She sprawled for real this time, skirts spreading out around her. Saradin let out a cry of rage tempered with surprise—as though, despite all that had already happened, she could not believe he would actually throw her away.
Gabriel shook off Quilla’s hand and strode to the ruins of his worktable. He stooped and grabbed up a small bottle, which he tossed at Saradin. It landed neatly in the lap of her skirt. She lifted it, then looked up at him with wide eyes, the screams for a moment forgotten.
“Do us both a favor,” Gabriel said in a voice like stone. “Next time, make sure you finish the job.”
Then he turned his back on her, and Saradin got to her feet. She staggered as she rose but there was no hand to steady her. She gripped the small bottle but did not take it with her. Instead, she tossed it to the f
loor at Quilla’s feet, where the glass broke and released a stream of silver liquid that broke apart into a hundred tiny beads that within moments had rejoined to form a whole. Without another word, Saradin left the room, slamming the door behind her.
For one eternal moment, Quilla was not certain what to do. She had never faltered in this way before. She had perhaps at times questioned which course of action would be best for her to take. She had, upon occasion, done the wrong thing. But she had never, in all her time of service, not been able to make a choice at all.
The moment ended when he turned to face her. His eyes held no expression. Naught she could read or interpret. Yet, somehow, that made it easier for her to understand what it was he needed.
“Get you gone from my sight, Handmaiden.”
She might have touched him, had she not sensed that to do so would be to invite his anger. Instead, she Waited. At least, the physical position of the Waiting—the mental place remained out of her grasp. On her knees before him, head bowed, hands placed one palm against the other’s back in her lap, Quilla Waited for her patron to speak.
When another long moment passed without a word from him, nor a gesture, nor a movement, she lifted her face to look at him. His face had gone the color of expensive parchment. His lips, pale, too, had compressed into a thin line, neither smile nor frown but something horrid in between.
“I could have lost him.”
Five words that spoke more than a thousand ever could. Quilla got to her feet and put her arm around his waist. She thought he might faint, and if he did, she would be able to do little to support him. If she could get him to sit, she might fend off his tumble.
Gabriel fought her attempt at assistance and refused to take the seat into which she was gently trying to force him. “Walk with me, my lord,” Quilla said, instead. “Let me draw you a bath.”
He allowed her that, following without protest as she led him through his bedroom and into the privy chamber, where she urged him to sit and at last he did, on the wooden bench along the wall. She wet a cloth with cool water and placed it on the back of his neck as he put his face into his hands.
“I could have lost him, Handmaiden.”
“But you did not, my lord. And he will be fine.”
She turned the spigot to fill the large bathtub, making certain to light the brazier underneath to keep the water hot. She turned back to Gabriel and knelt at his feet, removing his boots and stockings and setting them aside. She unbuttoned his shirt and opened it, pulling it off his arms to leave him bare-chested. The tub had filled quickly while she worked and the water steamed.
“Prithee allow me to help you stand,” she said, and he did. She loosed the buttons of his trousers and slid them down over lean hips and strong thighs. He wore thin linen underdrawers beneath and she removed them as well before taking his hand and urging him toward the tub. He got into it with the stiff-legged vulnerability of an old man, or one who has been wounded. Gabriel settled into the water with a sigh, and Quilla turned off the spigot.
The narrow, polished wooden planks making up the floor had darkened with wet when he got into the tub. It soaked the hem of her gown. She reached for a pitcher and a handful of soft soap.
“Will you allow me to wash your hair?”
He nodded, eyes closed, head tipped back against the tub, his fingers gripping the curved wooden rim so tight the knuckles had gone white. Quilla lathered his thick, dark hair, keeping the soap from his eyes and rinsing again and again with a clean pitcher of water until she’d finished.
By that time, his grip had relaxed and the rise and fall of his chest slowed. Taking the soap and a fresh pitcher of water, Quilla set them on the floor near the drain set into the center of the floor. Then she stripped out of her gown and scrubbed away all signs of pond dirt. She washed her hair, too, until the length of it squeaked clean and it fell in rippling lengths down her back. Then she got into the tub with him. Water splashed over the sides.
His eyes flew open, startled. “What are you doing?”
Quilla didn’t answer with words. Instead, she put herself into his arms, the front of her against the front of him, their legs tangled in the water. She tucked her head into the hollow of his neck and shoulder.
“Handmaiden . . .”
“Shh,” she hushed him. “Quiet, Gabriel.”
It was the first time she’d addressed him by his name. He did nothing after that, not for a long time. The water cooled. Then he put a hand beneath her chin and lifted her face to his. His mouth aligned with hers, and he kissed her.
He took her from the tub and to his bed, both of them still dripping, and he dried her with linen sheets and warmed her with the weight of his body and heat of his kisses as he covered her with them. He made love to her, and she to him, both taking and giving in equal amounts.
It had begun as Service but ended up as something more. She hesitated when his mouth trailed from her breast, over the slope of her belly, to find the curls between her legs and the small, burning nub there. But when he pushed her gently back as she tried to sit, she did as he’d requested without words and let him part her thighs to make love to her with his tongue and hands.
She gave him her pleasure, the sound and scent and taste of it, and she shattered on his tongue, calling out his name as her climax broke her apart and put her back together. When he kissed her again she tasted herself on him and it sent another surge of pleasure through her, that he could have been so intimate with her. That his solace and his need had become part and parcel her own, the two entwined, that giving her pleasure meant his was made greater.
He closed his eyes when he slid inside her, his breath leaving him in a gasping sigh. He gathered her to him, buried his face in her neck, and suckled there as he began to move. Slow, even strokes that hit her core each time and made her gasp aloud and run her nails down the seam of his spine.
He bit her skin and she arched beneath him at the pleasure pain it caused. Gabriel moved inside Quilla, but more than that, he was with her. Not only bodies joined, but minds aligned, because when he opened his eyes to meet her gaze, she saw herself reflected there.
“You are what I need,” he murmured, dipping to breath in her ear as his pace quickened. “You are solace. You are my Handmaiden.”
“I am yours,” Quilla replied, lifting her hips to meet his thrusts. Another ball of tension had begun to tangle in her belly, radiating spokes of pleasure to every limb. “I am yours.”
“You are mine.” He shook, his thrust becoming uneven, his breath a rasping gasp. “Tranquilla Caden . . .”
Hearing it was enough to send her over the edge again, and though she was no stranger to the pleasures her body could sustain, this was all at once more and greater than she had ever felt before.
“It would well please me if you would stay,” he murmured into her hair before rolling off to lie beside her on the pillows.
“Then of course I shall.”
He sighed, eyes already closing. In moments his steady breathing told her he slept. And soon, she did, too.
Quilla woke before Gabriel in the darkness of predawn and got out of bed to bathe and dress, to prepare the fire and the water for his tea. She went to the kitchen to gather some breakfast, for her own stomach grumbled with emptiness and she knew his would do the same.
The way to the kitchen wasn’t long, and she had a good memory for the twists and turns of the corridor. Even so, she was grateful for the light of the candle as she made her way to the kitchen. The fire had been left to embers, and the red glow cast the room in an odd half light that did nothing to help the ache in her head.
Quilla set her candle down on the table and blew out the flame, not wanting to waste the wax when the light from the fire was adequate for her needs. She found the loaf of bread, covered with a white cloth, on the counter, and sliced a piece.
So intent on slicing the bread and pulling out the crock of butter, Quilla didn’t notice the figure in the corner until it spoke, startli
ng her into dropping the knife she was using. It clattered and spun along the floor, coming to a rest at the feet of the figure, which bent to retrieve it. The person, male or female, she couldn’t be certain which, tilted the blade so it caught the firelight.
“Pretty, pretty.”
The voice, husky and low, was nevertheless of indeterminate gender, until bending into the firelight again, the fall of hair showed Quilla to whom it belonged. Saradin, profiled in shadows and flickering red and gold, must have smiled because Quilla saw the flash of teeth. Smiled, or perhaps sneered. At any rate, the expression seemed fierce enough to keep Quilla from moving closer.
“Mistress Saradin.”
“Mistress is how you may address me, as your mistress I am.” Her laugh was like broken glass grating over stone. “Yes. And you’re the whore my husband hired to soothe him.”
“Respectfully, my lady Delessan. I am a Handmaiden. Not a whore.”
Saradin turned her head and spat into the fire, making it sizzle and hiss. “Shut your mouth! You’re a whore!”
The unfairness of it never ceased to irritate Quilla, no matter how many times she faced the same accusations. It was not, however, her place and, therefore, not her pleasure, to argue. Instead, she held out her hand for the bread knife.
“Would you like some tea and toast, my lady? I was going to make some for myself. I’d be pleased to provide some for you, too.”
The woman gave another low laugh. “You think to woo me the way you do my husband?”
“No, my lady. Only to offer you some of what I was going to prepare for myself. That’s all.”
“I would take nothing from your hand!” The laugh became a snarl. “Nothing, do you hear me?”
With a strangled, snarling cry, the woman launched herself at Quilla, the blade raised high. Her ferocity made up for the lack of any real skill with which she wielded it. The down slash would have caught Quilla in the shoulder, had she not been turning as the woman struck. Instead of burying itself hilt deep in her body, the knife skimmed down the length of Quilla’s arm and hit the wooden table just beside her with enough force to snap the blade from the handle.
