by Megan Hart
“Mistress, my knowledge of herbs is limited,” Cassian told her, though he had a guess as to why she would request his presence. “I’m not sure what I could offer your students.”
Serenity smiled. “The trefoil’s properties are threefold, and many believe they’re tied to the blessings of the Holy Family. If you would be so kind as to come and speak to my class—they’re all first seasons, by the way, I’ve traded with Patience—about the comparisons between the story and the flower. I think they would find it most enlightening.”
Cassian gave a quick look around the hall and found it empty, then allowed his gaze to slide over Serenity’s familiar features. He liked her. Had known her for longer than he’d been here at the Order. An accident had left her right leg scarred and stiff; her limp had made it unlikely she’d ever be sent to serve a patron. Most patrons were men, after all, and no matter what any might say, men were all too often first concerned with appearance.
“And you would have me speak to your students on the lessons they’ll eventually learn in my own class if they’re unfamiliar with it already?”
Serenity ducked her head with a laugh. “I must confess my patience with these first-season novitiates is wearing thin, unlike that of my Sister.”
“She is aptly named,” Cassian said.
“She is, indeed. And perhaps they will attend to the lesson better should it come from your lips than mine. At least in this instance. And I grow weary of them, I admit that as well. I could use a bit of a break from attempting to force knowledge into their heads.”
Cassian tried not to laugh, but Serenity knew him too well to believe his frown. “Why did you trade?”
“Because after five years of teaching the same lessons without cease, my Sister and I have both grown . . . overaccustomed to our roles. We thought a trade of duties might enliven our circumstances.”
It was the first time Cassian had ever heard Serenity even hint at dismay over her role as constant teacher instead of being sent out to serve patrons.
“And you’ve not found it to be so?”
“Indeed,” Serenity said, “I have not. Please, Cassian. Come speak to my class and tell them the story, that I might have a rest from their constant prattling.”
“And you believe they’ll hold their tongues for my instruction?” Cassian shook his head. “Am I so formidable?”
“I have witnessed for myself your ability to strike women into dumbness.” Serenity raised a brow. “And it is not always because of your temper.”
Cassian’s smile faded. He put a hand over his heart, made a formal half bow. “I regret I am unable to attend your class this morn, mistress.”
“Cassian—”
But he was already stepping back, his back turned. His boots thudded on the wooden planks as he went down the hall toward the stairs. He did not look back.
Once in his own classroom, he closed the door and leaned against it, head bowed. Serenity, of all the Sisters-in-Service, might possibly be considered more than a colleague, but a friend. She, of all of them, knew the depth and breadth of his tale, for she’d been there for its entirety.
She wasn’t wrong about his temper, which was both formidable and famous. That she could tease him about it said much of her fondness for him. He had behaved badly.
But he must. Respect, mutual kindness, even fear he could tolerate. Perhaps fear he would even encourage. But fondness and compassion he could not abide.
They were dangerous to him, and would remain ever so.
Jacquin. Enough.” Annalise pushed him from her.
“I swear to you, I can make this work.”
“I want you to stop.”
Jacquin retreated, frowning, his mouth wet and swollen from kisses. Her own mouth felt swollen, too. Sore, in fact.
She sighed. Jacquin, who had spent the better part of the past two chimes attempting to convince her there should be no obstacle to their marriage, echoed the sigh. Over her head he drew in a breath of herb from the bowl she’d declined moments before. The fragrant smoke tickled her nostrils, and Annalise shifted on the settee to lean against its opposite arm. Watching him, she put her feet up and into his lap.
“They ache,” she explained. “Pinch-toed slippers.”
“Ah.” Jacquin set the bowl onto the side table and worked her toes with his strong fingers.
She winced when he rubbed the soles. “My sister’s doing. I told her my feet are too broad for pointed toes, but she insisted.”
“Your sister is such a fancy slut.”
Annalise barked laughter and nudged him with her foot. “Hush, Jacquin. My father would have you slaughtered if he knew you were here in my bedchamber sampling my sweets before the wedding.”
“He would not, and you know it. You’re far past the age anyone could expect an intact virtue.”
Annalise nudged him again, though what he said was true and she’d certainly dispensed with her virtue a long time past. “Sirrah!”
“And far too beautiful,” Jacquin added gallantly. He lifted her foot to his mouth and kissed the toes. “But I shall remain ever so silent if it causes you to rethink your answer.”
“It’s still no,” she said.
With another sigh Jacquin put her feet from his lap, grabbed up the bowl, and got off the settee. With his hair unbound and falling in thick, golden sheaves over his shoulders, his body trim and lean, he cut a fine picture Annalise had no trouble admiring as he paced. She particularly enjoyed his long thighs and the sculpted mounds of his buttocks.
“Stop staring at my arse.” He actually sounded irritable as he looked at her over his shoulder. “It’s unseemly since you are so insistent upon denying me your hand in marriage.”
“Jacquin, sweet, my love. My darling. You must admit I’m right. It would leave us both terribly unhappy.”
“Don’t coo at me as though I were some simpleton to be put off with a handshake.”
He was truly upset. Annalise rose from the settee and slipped into a spidersilk robe, belting it at her waist before pursuing him. She put a hand on his shoulder and he turned, his mouth drawn into a frown.
He punched a fist into his palm. “I must marry. I must have an heir some day. I must have a wife to stand beside me.”
“Why take a wife when a chatelaine and a good household staff could do the job as well and you’d not be beholden to her?”
“A wife lends ever so much grander an appearance than a slew of servants,” Jacquin said dryly.
Annalise shrugged. “I adore you, Jacquin. You know that. You’ve long been my best companion. It seemed natural enough that we should marry. It seemed right when our parents proposed it.”
Jacquin turned and took both her hands. “So, what has changed? Surely not the sight of me with that lad. I told you, he meant nothing. And as for the rest . . . I blame the worm and herb. I shouldn’t have so indulged before making love to you . . . I swear to you, Annalise, I am capable.”
“Capable, perhaps, but do you desire me?”
His gaze faltered a little at that. “I do desire to marry you.”
Annalise looked at the settee, and the bed, the blankets rumpled from their efforts. “I would not be enough for you, Jacquin.”
His mouth worked, but no words came for some long moments. Then he sighed and scraped back the hair from his forehead. The bowl had gone out and he put it aside. His eyes had grown red from the herb and his emotions.
“Nor,” Annalise added gently, “would you be, for me. I think we’ve proven that.”
“I told you, that lad meant naught to me. Less than naught.”
Her fingers tightened, curling over something she no longer held and perhaps never truly had. “But someday, someone would. And what, then? Would you have me be the cuckold?”
“I would never ask you to keep your affections solely to me, Annalise.”
“But I would wish to grant them so, to my husband. So, yes, seeing you with your lad is what swayed my mind from the idea that our marri
age would be anything but a farce. And I refuse to live my life in such a manner. You would do well to have the same pride.”
He stared at her, long and hard, then grabbed up his breeches. His shirt. He dressed quickly, without looking at her. “Do you know of the shame our families will feel if you dissolve this? Do you understand that I will still be expected to wed someone—a woman, yes, and that I will still intend to do so? And that you, for that matter, would indeed be expected to marry some other man?”
“I would be free to take a husband who—”
“And where will you find him?” Jacquin asked.
His cruelty was unexpected and unusual and set her back a step. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, sweeting, that you agreed to my troth in the first case because you despised all the other choices. You told me yourself a man who’d take a wife without a dowry must have other very good reasons—”
“Such as love,” Annalise said.
“I love you!”
“And yet you cannot bring yourself to make love to me. Months of pitching your woo, of petting, of teasing,” Annalise said, but gently, for she did care a great deal for her longtime friend. “And yet here we have it, the truth. You can’t bring yourself to put your cock inside me, Jacquin. The very thought of it makes you shudder with distaste. I love you, too, as I ever have. But I cannot face a life of seeking my pleasure outside the marriage bed.”
“I’d never have taken you for your mother’s daughter.”
Annalise frowned. “I make this choice not because I fear the Void or offending the Invisible Mother. I simply want to wed a man who . . . wants me. Really wants me. In all ways.”
“I want the status of a bride. You wish to avoid the millstone weight of a husband who doesn’t love you. We are both at a loss. And yet you refuse to marry me. What shall we do? Our families expect another ceremony. Your father has already agreed to take me into his trade, at no small relief to me as the youngest son of my own father, with no chance at gaining anything from his business. How shall we sever this bond without disgrace and without giving up our friendship? I will not allow that,” Jacquin said sternly, raising a finger in lecture. “I adore you too fully to let that happen.”
“And I you.” She embraced him, then stepped back.
She tapped her teeth with her thumbnail as she paced. An idea was forming in her mind, amorphous and vague but taking shape as she walked. “I will think of a way to work this for us both.”
She hushed him when he made to speak, and Jacquin gave in to silence. The scent of herb floated between them; she took some, though it was not her habit to partake. The weight of his gaze followed her around the room as she paced it, thinking. Thinking.
Her mother’s daughter. Could she be that? Annalise held back a shiver of disdain. Her mother had given herself up to the Faith before Annalise was even born; she’d never known her mother to be anything but disturbingly devout. Yet something decent had come from her mother’s devotion. Annalise had been well-schooled in the Faith. Better than well-schooled, she’d had the benefit of instruction most young women—indeed, most young men, lest they decide to become priests—could expect. She could not become a priest, of course.
But she could become something else.
“A vision,” she said at last.
“Of what?”
“I don’t yet know, but something that will lead me to . . . solace.”
“What?” Jacquin, who’d been lounging, sat straight up on the settee. “Surely you don’t mean—”
“It’s perfect.” Annalise clapped her hands and whirled to face him.
“Sweetheart, you could barely bring yourself to serve your sister on her wedding day. Surely you cannot expect to bind yourself in service to anyone else. By the Arrow, Annalise, at least with a husband you can say no. As a Handmaiden—”
“As a Handmaiden,” Annalise said, “I shall never be required to wed. And you, love, as attached to me, a woman of faith, shall not be required to marry anyone either so long as our arrangement is not dissolved. Which, I might add, it need never be so long as I remain a novitiate and never a Sister-in-Service. Or so I understand it.”
Annalise, in fact, understood very little of the Order of Solace and its workings. She did, however, know quite a lot about society, honor, and expectation. She’d watched six sisters walk ahead of her after all.
“And what of when you are no longer a novitiate and are expected to actually serve?”
She shrugged. “It could be years before I’m deemed ready. Longer, should I . . . linger.”
“You wouldn’t dare!”
She laughed. “I might. And by that time I’ll be so old I’ll never be expected to marry. And my father will have passed along the business to you. It will all be lovely and wonderful.”
“I think you are either the most foolish or brilliant woman I have ever met. How will you do it?”
“Tomorrow. You will accompany me in a walk through the forest. You’ll be a witness to my vision. Two days from now, you’ll be betrothed to a religious woman and I’ll be heading to the Motherhouse.”
Laughing, they danced together, and his kiss fell upon her mouth with affection but no passion. And that was fine, Annalise thought, for physical pleasure could always be gained from one place or another, but true emotion was much more difficult to acquire.
Chapter 3
Inside the stone and brick walls of the Motherhouse, Cassian knew his place. It was not the one he’d been born to, nor the one he’d taken when he left boyhood behind, but it was the one he’d accepted when he’d first walked through the gates. Now, he admitted, he would scarcely know what to do with himself should he find himself put from it. He knew his place in the yard, as well, where he put himself through the paces of the Art. And in the town, where he sometimes frequented the tavern with his old friend Roget.
It was in the forest where he sometimes walked, seeking to follow the path of the Allcreator, that Cassian should have felt the most comfortable, and it was there he felt the least. In the forest, beneath the trees, he could strip away everything else he had become. He walked the woods anyway, knowing he would never find what he sought.
It was punishment, not reward.
Sometimes he was followed—not all the novitiates who came to serve were worthy of the Order. Just as they giggled at him from their view through the windows, so on occasion did one or two of them slip away from the Motherhouse to tread in his footsteps, to see what their teacher did when he was not instructing them. On those days he simply walked and walked until they grew tired of trying to discover his secrets, or weary of keeping pace with his much longer legs.
Today, however, Cassian had no audience. He’d not gone very far into the trees or strayed off the winding path that led away from the manicured grounds of the Motherhouse and toward the main road. This was nothing like the path Sinder had taken when He strode the world, bringing light into the Void and breathing the winds, but then Cassian had long ago ceased to expect he would ever feel what the Allcreator had.
He’d also long ago ceased to feel melancholy about it. Now he sat on a large rock to the side of the path, his face tipped toward the dapples of sunlight slanting through the tall trees. He had a hunk of bread, some dried fruit, and a flagon of sweet wine. Most importantly, he had time. His own time, under no obligations to anyone, and though he would never give up his place in the Order, Cassian relished these quiet moments here alone.
So when the sound of crunching heels came to him from beyond the bend in the path, Cassian didn’t look up in pleasant expectation. There could be only one person coming this way. Merchants and tradesmen came to the Motherhouse from the other direction, by the main road. Visitors to the Order, of which there were few, also came by way of the road and not the path through the woods. Only potential novitiates came this way.
Judging by the sounds, the newcomer was far enough away that he could slip off into the woods and avoid her. Or he could simply turn
back down the path and arrive at the Motherhouse before her. But the warmth of the sun and sweetness of the wine was too tempting. He didn’t want to move.
Temple priests had no mantras, no five principles to repeat. Priests had the Word and the Law, and hours of study and interpretation. A single sentence could take a year of dissection, a year after that of argument, and still not be accepted as fact. Some brothers devoted their lives to the eternal discussion of what determined the Word and the Law. Cassian had ever preferred the more mundane, the hands-on aspects of practicing his faith. Endless rounds of discussion and argument, the minutiae of interpretation, had never been his style. For Cassian, faith was black and white, not multiple shades of gray.
So he had nothing to muse upon now as he sat and waited, no thoughts inside which to lose himself. By the time the first sight of the woman appeared ’round the bend in the path, he’d finished a handful of fruit and broken a crust of the bread into small pieces that better fed the birds than his stomach. The soft crunch-crunch of her feet on the path’s crushed rocks paused when she saw him, and he thought at first she would flee.
He’d not have blamed her had she turned heel. A woman alone, coming across a man in the woods, far away from any who might protect her—even though she wore the cloak of a Seeker, she’d be a fool not to have a moment’s hesitation. There were men stupid enough to risk the Order’s wrath to take their pleasure where it was unwanted.
Cassian took no pride in the fact that his gender made him suspect, but it was the truth, and any woman who relied on the protection of a garment was indeed a fool in Cassian’s eyes. Yet he didn’t move away. She would have to pass him, if she dared.
She moved forward, one foot in front of the other, her head high, her gaze direct. The closer she got, the more Cassian could see. It was not the cut of her cloak but the quality of the fabric that told him she came from wealth, and it was the force of her stride that told him she came from privilege. She might be a fool, at that. A privileged fool.
