by Megan Hart
“You did.”
“And Quilla and Jericho took you to the gallery to use them.” Gabriel looked at her, tone belying his next words. “How nice.”
“She was already there when we got there,” Dane said. He struggled mightily with cutting his sliced meat, until Vernon leaned over to do it for him. “But then I skated and she talked with Uncle.”
“And I wonder what they talked about,” said Gabriel, face turning stony.
Quilla cut her own meat and sliced her potato before looking up at him, keeping her expression calm. If this dinner was going to disintegrate into ugliness, it would not be of her doing.
“We discussed many topics, my lord.”
“Did you?” His food remained untouched.
“They always talk,” Dane said. “Mostly about boring things, Father.”
“Not about gowns and poetry?” Gabriel asked.
Dane laughed and shook his head, replying with his mouth full. “Sometimes he makes her mad and she cries. But other times he makes her laugh, so I guess that’s all right. Isn’t it, Quilla?”
Gabriel’s expression now changed again, eyes narrowing. “Yes. Isn’t it?”
“Your uncle Jericho and I speak on many subjects, Dane,” said Quilla, though her answer was really for Gabriel. “Your uncle and I are friends.”
“A friend who makes you laugh and cry?” Gabriel’s question pitched low, but she heard it. “What sort of friend does that?”
Quilla lifted her chin. “An honest one.”
Dane kept up the chatter, eating his dinner without seeming to notice the sudden tension from his father. Likely because he’s used to the man’s mood swings. She had no reason to regret her conversations with Jericho Delessan. She had done nothing wrong. Whatever problems the brothers had were between them and ran far deeper than her presence in their lives.
Quilla finished her food, though she had little appetite for it. Gabriel might think he needed to fight with her, but Quilla was supposed to know what he really needed. And it wasn’t to battle with her about his brother in front of his son, who loved his uncle but worshipped his father.
When the pudding had been scraped clean from its bowl and Dane told firmly several times there was no more to be had, Jorja arrived to take her young charge away.
“Thank you for having dinner with me, Father,” Dane said formally, holding out his hand for Gabriel to shake.
“I am pleased with your behavior,” replied Gabriel with equal formality.
Dane came around the table to say good night to her, as well. “Good night, Quilla Caden.”
“Good night, Dane Delessan,” Quilla replied, but when he held out his hand for hers to shake, she pulled him into her arms for a hug, instead.
He smelled of sweet little boy, like active play and too much dessert. His hair ruffled against her cheek, and when his arms came around her neck to hug her in return, she closed her eyes at the sudden rush of emotion that filled her.
“Good night,” Dane whispered, and she felt the press of his lips against her cheek. “Sleep right, Quilla.”
“Sleep right, Dane.” She hugged him again, then let him go.
Jorja took him by the hand to lead him from the dining hall, but at the last second, Dane tugged free his hand and ran back to his father. Gabriel looked surprised at the way Dane threw his arms around him and hugged him, too, but after only a moment his arms went around his son and he hugged him back.
“Sleep right, Father.”
When the boy had gone, Quilla pushed away her plate, dessert untouched. Gabriel made no play at games. He dismissed Vernon and settled back into his chair after filling his glass with wine again.
“Have I ever made you cry?”
She held out her glass to be filled, and sipped before answering. “Do you measure my esteem by the amount of tears I’ve shed? Is that what you wish to know?”
He said nothing, just sipped, watching her. Quilla matched his gaze. The wine was good. Strong. The color of rubies in her glass. The color of the gown he’d bought her. If he had questions, she could only wait for him to ask.
“Have I made you cry, Handmaiden?”
“You have not, my lord.”
“And yet neither have I made you laugh.”
Quilla sipped again, letting the sweet, rich flavor fill her mouth before swallowing. “What are you asking me?”
“How did my brother become your friend, yet I have not?”
The question, posed in a voice so honest, so vulnerable, made her put down her glass and go to him. She settled herself onto his lap, arm around his shoulder, fingers whispering through his hair.
“You are more than a friend to me, Gabriel.”
He put his face to the comfort of her bosom, his cheek hot on her bared flesh. “I am your patron. I know.”
“You are. And I am your Handmaiden.”
His arms tightened around her. “And ’tis your purpose to give me solace.”
“And my pleasure, too. This you know.”
He held her tighter against him. “And when you have brought me absolute solace, you will leave me.”
Grief in his voice matched the fullness in her own chest and the burning of tears in her eyes. “That is the way it’s done. Yes.”
“Then though it is wrong, I do not wish to be so soothed.” Incredibly, he shook a little, his arms holding her close to his body. His voice, muffled against her chest, broke. “I won’t be.”
“Then I will have failed in my duty, my lord,” Quilla whispered, eyes overbrimming at last. She put her face into the springy, dark warmth of his hair and held on to him as tightly as she could. “Then I would have failed you.”
He looked up at her, face bleak, dark eyes gone hollow. “You could never fail me, Tranquilla. You are—”
“Oh, you gods-bedamned bitch!” The slurred voice from behind them made Quilla look up.
Saradin looked rather less pulled together than she had during the brannigan, and only slightly less wild than she had the night she’d attacked Quilla in the kitchen. Her blonde hair looked weighted and lank, the tangled strands pulled into some semblance of style made sadder because of its lack of finesse. Allora Walles had been falling behind in her duties. Saradin’s gown, finely cut and adorned, nonetheless hung upon her like sackcloth. One belled sleeve had torn, and through the gash Quilla could see a long, angry scratch.
“You smelly, oozing cunt,” Saradin continued, the ugly words falling from her lips like toads. “You bold and heartless prick!”
“Saradin,” Gabriel said, as Quilla got up from his lap.
“You. Shut. Your. Mouth.” Saradin sneered and advanced upon them. “I know what she is. She’s a whore. And you are a whoremonger.”
Gabriel’s voice was cold. “Where is your nursemaid?”
“I don’t need a nursemaid!” Saradin swiped a hand over her face, pulling it into a grim mask. She smiled, and Quilla saw with some disturbance that her teeth were yellowed. “I am not a child! I am your wife! Your lady wife!”
“Then behave as a lady,” said Gabriel. “Though why I should expect you to start now, I don’t know.”
This cold reply seemed to affect Saradin more harshly than his shout. Her face fell. She crumpled. She sank to the floor, skirts bunched around her knees. Her forehead hit the floor with a smack loud enough to make Quilla jump.
“You don’t love me,” said Saradin in a voice made of jagged angles and pointed corners. “You. Don’t.”
Quilla thought for sure Gabriel would soften at the sight of his wife’s despair, but he remained where he was. Saradin shook and a silver runner of drool strung from her lip. Several drops of blood beaded her forehead, and the white skin had already begun to purple with bruise. Her fingers twitched into claws and a low, guttural moan escaped her throat.
It hurt Quilla to look at the woman, who, if not in physical pain, surely was experiencing mental anguish. She went to Saradin, who rightly should have been her enemy, and put her arms a
round her shoulders to help her sit.
“Ring for someone,” she told Gabriel, who at first did not move. She looked up at him. “Ring for aid for your lady wife, my lord!”
Only then did he move to the line of ribbons along the wall, each connecting to a different bell. He yanked one, hard, and Quilla heard the faint jangle from far away.
“Sit, my lady,” she soothed. She dabbed at the cut on Saradin’s forehead.
Saradin shook harder. Beneath Quilla’s hands, Saradin’s flesh seemed to harden and soften, in rhythmic waves almost like contractions. But what she meant to birth was illness, not a babe, and Quilla could do nothing but wipe away the spittle clinging to her chin and look into the woman’s glazed green eyes.
“Don’t. Touch.”
“I want to help you,” said Quilla.
Saradin shook harder, her jaw clenching tight. Her body went rigid. Her eyes rolled back in her head.
“My lord, help her!”
“’Twould be better if she simply left this place,” Gabriel said, though he knelt next to his wife and his Handmaiden, and took Saradin’s hand. “For all of us, but mostly, for her.”
Saradin’s eyes, pupils so dilated they looked entirely black, rolled toward him. Her hand clenched down on his. She spoke through her clenched jaw.
“Hate . . .”
“Yes, I know you do,” said Gabriel. “For all you’ve ever shown me was contempt.”
Saradin shook her head, but seemed unable to speak again. Her gaze went to Quilla’s face. She reached for Quilla’s hand, bore down on it, hard enough to hurt, but Quilla didn’t think she meant to.
Saradin blinked. Her body stiffened once more. Her eyes closed, and she went limp in Quilla’s arms.
“My lord, will she be all right?”
Gabriel sighed. “ ’Tis the poison she took. It brought her to madness and eventually, it will kill her. But not quickly, and in much pain.”
Quilla looked down at the limp figure in front of them. “It’s a terrible thing, to have loved so much.”
He looked up, face hard. “She did not do this out of love, but out of spite. Because she knew by hurting herself it would hurt me. Do not pity her, Handmaiden. My wife brought this upon herself because she has ever been a selfish and self-absorbed woman who thinks of nothing beyond her own needs.”
Quilla again wiped Saradin’s now slack mouth free of drool. “But to see her this way . . . do you not pity her at all?”
“She took my love,” Gabriel said, “and she burnt it to ash and tossed it in my face to blind me with it.”
Bertram entered the room, his step quickening when he saw Saradin lying on the floor. “My lord—”
“Take lady Saradin to her quarters,” Gabriel said as he got to his feet. “And if you see Allora Walles there, send her to me.”
“Yes, my lord.” Bertram bent and scooped Saradin into his arms, where she dangled like a child’s cast-off doll. He cradled her close to him as he left the room.
Quilla got up from the floor. “Gabriel.”
He did not look at her face. “I think . . . it would please me if you would leave me, Handmaiden.”
“What will you do to her?”
His eyes now moved to her face, but he was not looking at her. “Allora Walles has shirked her duties here for the last time. She will get her due punishment and be sent away.”
“Send her away, my lord, if you must,” Quilla told him. “But waste not your time in retribution.”
“Do not tell me how to run my household,” Gabriel said coldly.
Quilla backed up a step at the ire in his gaze. “No, my lord.”
He gave her his back. “Go away.”
She did, leaving the dining room as a clearly shaking Allora Walles entered. She had little sympathy for Allora, who had shirked her duties time after time. She stepped aside to let the maid pass, and Allora still had the presence of mind to sneer at her, so whatever punishment she was to be meted was deserved.
Still, her feet slowed as she walked farther down the hall. Her duty was to Gabriel. To bring him the solace he denied desiring. It was her place, even if he didn’t want it to be, and she could do no less. She could not stand by and do nothing while she thought he might be doing something he would regret.
Her steps slowed, and she turned. She did not quite run; for though she knew she couldn’t let Gabriel do this, that it would stay with him far too long and leave him with guilt, for all she knew it was her duty to prevent him from continuing the punishment he did out of anger . . . for all that, she did not hurry, because no small part of her would be glad to see Allora crying.
She entered the room at a half run. “My lord! Stop!”
His hand raised, the end of his leather belt swinging. Allora wept and wailed, and again Quilla could not help the contempt that threatened to spill out in a sneer. So far, he hadn’t even touched her.
“Gabriel, that is enough.” Quilla put her hand on his arm. “She is not worth this effort.”
His arm shook under her fingers. “Let go of me.”
It pained her to admit it, but she did not understand him right then. His anger. His punishment of Allora Walles seemed overharsh to Quilla. He hadn’t beaten Jorja Pinsky, and her neglect had almost cost his son his life.
“I said,” he spoke through gritted jaws, “let me go.”
She ran soothing fingers down his arm. “Gabriel. Let her go and come with—”
He turned on her, swift as a fox snags a rabbit, and shoved her hard enough to make her stumble back two steps. She did not cry out, though her mouth opened. “Would you take what was meant for her?”
Allora looked at Quilla from red and weeping eyes. Quilla looked back at him. “There is no love lost between Allora and me, very true. But you told me once you did not wish to become your father. Don’t do it for something as worthless as this.”
“ ’Tis not the question I asked you.” He wrapped the end of the belt around his fist and stared at her. “Would you take the punishment she deserves?”
Allora let out another strangled sob. Quilla looked at Gabriel from the corner of her eye.
“If your intent is to strap me in her place, then I can only answer you one way.”
His laugh had no humor to it. “If it pleases me.”
“If it pleases you to beat me in her place, then I can do naught but bend to it. But if you ask whether I am willing to take her punishment? I would rather not.”
“Get out of the way, Handmaiden.”
She stepped in front of Allora. “I have no love in my heart for this one, but I can’t let you do this.”
“I’m warning you, Handmaiden.” His voice went low, hard. His eyes, hard, too. “If you do not get out of the way, then you will get twice what she would have.”
Without another word, Quilla unbuttoned the front of her dress, shrugging out of it without hesitation. She still wore a small bandage over the wound on her arm. She turned her back to him, put her hands on the table.
Allora looked over at her with wide eyes. Quilla glanced back before turning her attention back to the table, and her hands upon it. She’d spread her fingers wide, the sign for being all right. Not that he’d know it, or know that the closer together her fingers the less comfortable she was with what was happening.
“Handmaiden,” Gabriel said from behind them. “You don’t want me to do this.”
“Should you wish to do it, my lord, then your wish is my action.”
He made a low noise. She heard the sound of the belt being drawn through his hands. The slight whistle of it as he raised it. Her ears, long attuned to such noise, created a picture in her head, and Quilla let herself relax, not tensing against the pain she expected to come any minute.
“Get out,” she heard Gabriel say, and the sound of shoes on the floor told her Allora had scuttled away like a beetle whose rock had been overturned.
She Waited. She imagined his arm held high, belt dangling. Ready to strike . . .
The sound of Jericho’s voice made Quilla turn. He crossed the room to her in moments. His arm went around her shoulders, and she winced at his touch on her wound.
“Jericho, no,” she murmured.
“Stop it, Gabriel!” Jericho’s voice shook with anger. “What the hell are you doing?”
Now Quilla turned, expecting anger on her patron’s face. What she saw was worse, somehow, as his eyes moved from his brother, to her, to his brother’s arm around her shoulders. What she saw was nothing.
He turned away from her, the tension in his shoulders evident and visible. Then he left the room without saying anything else.
Quilla shrugged off Jericho’s arm and rearranged her gown. “Let me go. You are a troublemaker.”
“Troublemaker?” His voice sounded angry. “Because I stopped him from beating you bloody?”
“He would not,” Quilla said sternly, “have beaten me bloody.”
Jericho scowled. “He had a strap raised above your back. He was going to hit you with it.”
“He would not have!”
“How do you know this!” Jericho shouted, grabbing her by the arms. “What would you have done had he raised that strap to you, and hit you with it?”
“I would have let him!”
He let go of her and stepped back, dismay twisting his face. “But, why, Quilla? Why? Because he is your patron, you would allow him to so abuse you?”
“Not because he is my patron, no.”
His shoulders sagged. “Then what reason, Tranquilla Caden?”
“You know my reason, Jericho.”
He nodded, looking down. “I suppose I do.”
“You love an ideal. Not a woman.”
He looked up at her, eyes narrowed. “Don’t you tell me who, or what, I love. Don’t you dismiss me that way because it makes it easier for you!”
His reaction made her step back. “I’m sorry. I never lied to you. I never made you believe—”
“No. You didn’t.” He pushed past her and out of the room. She stared after him for what felt like a very long time, and then she went to find Gabriel.
He was not in his room, and though she waited for him to come back, the light of day had begun to stretch pink across the sky before he did.
