by Megan Hart
Three years is not such a long time to be in love, unless that love is not returned. Cassian knew the full length of that time, every measure the sun traced in the sky, every breeze that blew, every season’s cycle. All of it became as nothing but a way to track how long he’d loved her. For three years, Cassian loved Bertricia, until at last, one day, she loved him back.
He knew the moment she did. It was a change in her laugh and the tilt of her smile, a shift of her gaze. She’d tolerated him before that, accepted the small gifts he gave, partnered with him during the games of snap me and quoites that characterized the annual brannigan his mother held in concord with Raeletta and Sarenissa’s mother, and to which Bertricia was invariably invited. Once or twice she’d even allowed him to kiss her chastely when they walked in the garden, only ever on the cheek or the hand, and she never offered but only allowed.
And then one day, she loved him.
He could never know why. He’d never asked. He’d taken the gift of her affection without question, fearing to ask for too much explanation lest she change her mind. Decide she loved someone else.
His brother, perhaps.
Cassian would’ve worried less if Calvis had shown any inclination toward “she-hound the second,” as he liked to call Bertricia. Calvis had an eye and taste for feminine flesh that Cassian both understood and reviled. Women, to his mind, were meant to be adored and cherished, mayhap pursued but with respect. The way he’d courted Bertricia.
Calvis, on the other hand, made his way through the women of their acquaintance like a farmer in the fields, plucking, tasting, tossing aside. Only unlike a farmer, Calvis never kept what he harvested. It had made him near irresistible.
If his brother had set his gaze on Bertricia, Cassian would’ve known not to fear. No woman kept his attention for longer than it took for him to bed her a few times. But as it was, Calvis never looked at her twice without curling his lip. If the two were in the same room, Calvis left it, no matter how prettily Bertricia might flutter her lashes or attempt to draw him into conversation.
“I don’t understand how you can fawn and mewl over her, brother.”
“I love her. It’s not fawning or mewling, Calvis, it’s . . . courtship.”
Calvis snorted into Cassian’s ear, his arms bound tight ’round his brother from behind. He’d caught Cassian in Snapping Turtle. Cassian didn’t struggle to get away. It would only lead Calvis into further demonstration of his growing prowess with the Art, a pastime rapidly becoming more than a hobby.
“And do you think she’ll concede to wed you, little brother?”
Cassian turned his face so he and Calvis were cheek to cheek. It was a surer way to get his brother to release him. “I hope she will. That’s all I can do.”
Calvis let him go. “You have nothing to offer her.”
It was not the first time his brother had tried to taunt him into an argument, and Cassian’s patience was wearing thin. How was it he could love his brother so much, more than any other, more than their parents, and yet grow to loathe the very sight of him?
“I have myself. I have everything to offer her.”
“You’re going to be a priest, Cassian. What woman wants a priest for a husband?”
“A woman of the Faith might find a priest a very fine husband.”
Again, Calvis snorted. He took a few steps away, his fingers curled into loose fists he slowly raised to waist-height before putting one foot forward into one of the positions of the Art. Cassian didn’t know which one. Cassian didn’t care.
“Priests have no wage. What will you use to buy her those pretty gowns she so adores? The cosmetic for her face? The cream pies to stuff her gullet?”
Cassian crossed his arms, watching his brother and wondering at how they looked the same and yet were nothing alike. “Priests have their living granted them—”
“Priests do. It’s not enough to support a family.”
At the thought of it, a family with Bertricia—children—Cassian smiled. Calvis saw it, and scowled. He moved forward, jabbing and ducking while Cassian did little more than shift out of the way.
“Fight me, little brother.”
“No.”
“Fight me,” Calvis wheedled. “You know you wish to.”
“I don’t wish to!”
“Fight me!” Another jab. Calvis circled.
Cassian stood his ground, jaw set, gaze steady. “Why? So you might take comfort from knowing you can beat me?”
“So I can take comfort from knowing you are yet a man, not a smooth-groined eunuch.” Calvis danced closer, then away, forming his body into the bends and dips of the Art with greater skill than he’d had even the week prior.
“You are good at what you do,” Cassian said.
This stopped his brother in place. “Are you too afraid?”
Cassian shook his head. “Why can’t you accept that I’m good at what I want to do, too?”
“Being a priest?” Calvis spat the word to one side. “Is that what will please you? Shaving your head, dressing in robes, smelling of oil and incense? Spending your days in the temple or in study, dissecting ancient words written so long ago none might know their meaning but only guess at it, and your nights in the arms of a woman who will never be satisfied with what you might offer?”
“I want to speak for those who are unable!” Cassian cried, pushed at last to anger. “What is so wrong with that?”
“She will make a cuckold of you!” Calvis shouted, and was upon his brother in the time it took to exhale.
Toe to toe, eye to eye. A matched pair. Calvis began it.
Cassian was the one who ended it.
Thinking of it now, the past long gone, he remembered the pride he’d felt at beating his brother. It had been good at the time, bitter later. It was a lesson well-learned.
Things would not change, Cassian told himself and knew it to be a lie no matter how many times his mind formed the thought. Everything would change. He’d opened himself to Annalise, just the least small bit, and there was no taking it back.
All had changed already, based on the smile she gave him from her seat in the pew during morning services. She’d sought his gaze deliberately, though he stayed in the shadow of the alcove, and she found it with unerring ease. She lifted a brow, pursed her mouth, waggled her brows in a mockery of the priest on the beemah that even Cassian could not deny was perfection.
She sat down with him at breakfast, too, settling her bowl of porridge on the table and sliding into the chair across from his while he looked in shock. Then she lifted a brow and dug her spoon into the porridge as though daring him to say anything against her presence. Which of course, Cassian did not.
Not that the meal was silent. He guessed no man could remain quiet in Annalise’s presence, for she would insist upon discussion. Call and answer, he thought, when she drew out of him a reply to a question he never thought he’d give.
“But which do you believe?” She spread a hot buttered scone with a thick layer of tumbleberry jam. “Of all the commentaries you’ve studied, which do you hold most dear?”
Cassian had chosen a plate of fried eggs and thick sausage to break his fast, but had eaten little since Annalise first sat. Now he sliced the sausage into even slices and listened carefully to the click of his knife up on the plate. “Must I choose one?”
“Yes. If you were led to the edge of a cliff and forced to decide or be pushed off, which would you pick?”
Around the room, the rows of benches were alive with wriggling, chatting women. Most of them were looking at the table he shared with Annalise. It wasn’t the first time he’d been the subject of such scrutiny, but he’d always found it easy to ignore before. Now, with her there, he felt as though they sat beneath a crimson banner designed to draw every eye. Annalise didn’t seem to notice. More likely, she simply did not care.
“What are my choices?”
She pointed at him with her spoon. “You tell me.”
He bit, ch
ewed, swallowed. She watched him. Cassian drank some bitter tea. “I’ve studied a full score and twenty different versions of the discovery story. Some differ by so bare a margin as a word or two in their interpretation. Yet you ask me to pluck one from the air as a street performer might pull scarves from a sleeve?”
“Pretty analogy.” She tilted her head and gave him a smile he didn’t deserve. “But not a pretty answer.”
“Why is this so suddenly a topic of such import you must accost me with it over our breakfast?”
Again the smile, this time with a sly look ’round the room. “I thought mayhap it would set you more at ease to feign we are discussing topics of import rather than simply sharing a table. If you like, I can merely gaze upon you with fluttering lashes and a few winsome sighs, so that all who are watching us so indiscreetly might have something over which to gossip.”
Cassian tightened his jaw and stared at his plate. “I’m well aware of how we’re being observed. Would you insist upon drawing attention?”
“Cassian,” Annalise said in a dropped-low voice meant for him and none to overhear, “I would not. Which is why if any should decide to listen they’d hear only a subject of what is unlikely to be of any interest.”
He looked at her, the knot in his stomach easing. “Should I fear your deviousness, or admire it?”
She reached with her knife to spear a chunk of his sausage and tuck it into her mouth. She chewed it solemnly but didn’t swallow before saying, “I’d prefer admiration.”
The chime sounded for the end of the meal and the beginning of the day’s study. They both stood at the same time. Annalise ate the last bit of her scone and licked her fingers, one by one.
He pretended not to notice.
“You didn’t eat,” she said.
“I found my appetite much diminished.”
“By the company?” She laughed. “I should take umbrage, sir, to such a statement!”
“The company was fine,” he said, surprising himself.
The room emptied quickly while they stayed in place at the table. “The conversation, then.”
It had been that, but not for reasons she might think. “I’m unused to such talk first thing in the morning, that’s all.”
Annalise gave a soft snort he found utterly endearing. “I daresay you’re unused to a good many things, Cassian.”
He stared in reply. “I should go. I have groups of study to lead.”
“And I,” Annalise said dryly, “have napkins to fold and tea to pour. My goodness, however shall I fend off the palpitations of my excitement, I do not know.”
She made it so easy to laugh, and if the laughter itself sounded like a creaking door and stuck like a cushion full of pins in his throat, it wasn’t because of her. “Do your best.”
She waved a hand at him. “I shall see you later this afternoon, for our study group, yes?”
“Yes.”
She stood then, on tiptoe, and he thought for one wild moment she meant to kiss him right there. After all they’d said, all he’d done, she’d done, she would be so bold. But, with a bedamned grin quirking her lips, all Annalise did was pluck a few crumbs from the front of his jacket.
“There. We can’t have you entertaining the scores of novitiates looking as though you had nobody to care for you.”
“But I—” He began and fell to silence at the slow, small shake of her head.
“You do. Now.”
The mask of blankness fought at his features; he felt it struggling to turn him into a puppet. “We agreed . . .”
“To be friends, yes?”
He was helpless against that tilted head, that quirk of her mouth. “Yes.”
“Friends take care of one another, Cassian. I would expect as much from you, should I cover the front of my gown with my meal or should my smile reveal a mouthful of green. Surely you’ve had friends before.”
Serenity was perhaps his longest acquaintance, and she’d never have dared brush his crumbs. Roget wouldn’t have cared. “None like you.”
Annalise laughed, bright and merry. The sound of it rang through the empty dining room. “Never a one like me. I am the only me.”
“I need to go.”
“You do. We both do.”
Cassian watched the light fall from the window and across her hair. “I shall see you this afternoon, Annalise.”
“And I,” she told him, spinning on her toe and moving toward the door so he might watch her go, “shall look forward to it.”
He saw her before that, at the noon meal when she again took her place at his table.
“In all the years I’ve been here, nobody has ever dared sit in that chair when I am in this one,” he told her when she put down her plate.
Annalise arched a brow. “I wonder why? Could it have been your disposition?”
“There is a reason for my disposition.” And it wasn’t helped by his rumbling stomach, empty since he’d been unable to finish the morning meal. Looking at his plate of cold sliced meat, a biscuit, a side of greens, he wondered if her presence at the table would cause him to forgo this meal as well.
It hadn’t dampened her appetite. Annalise tucked in with the efficiency of a sailor, managing conversation and chewing with nary a pause between bites—and yet with the most impeccable of table manners. And she talked, oh, how she talked. Of all she’d done that morn in her various studies. Of her friend Tansy, who even now was staring at them from across the room, and who’d begged an explanation from her after the morn meal and whose answer had been waved aside by Annalise, who explained around a bite of biscuit that it was nobody’s business but theirs.
“I am in awe of your ability to run your mouth,” Cassian said at last when she’d paused long enough and with such an expectant look he understood he was expected to reply.
“If you don’t cease your pretty flatteries, I fear I shall become overenamored of my own worth.”
She’d made him laugh again. “And your plate is nearly clean amongst all the chatter.”
“I speak because you will not. Mayhap I eat because you do not.”
He looked again at his plate and carefully folded a slice of beef inside a biscuit. “I’m eating.”
She watched him silently while he chewed, then gave a soft shrug. “Do I so unsettle your stomach that you find it difficult to eat? I don’t mean to.”
“You could eat at a different place, as you used to.” Cassian wiped the corner of his mouth, his appetite flaring to life so that he gobbled the rest of his beef and biscuit.
“And be deprived of your company? No. Besides, I like you when you talk to me.”
He paused with his mug halfway to his mouth, then drank so as not to answer. This didn’t mean they passed the rest of the meal in silence, only that she kept the conversation light for the rest of it. At the end of it, unlike in the morn, Annalise didn’t linger overlong.
She smiled at him over her shoulder as she caught up to a few of the other novitiates, women Cassian knew by sight but not name. They bent their heads together the way women did, and he wondered if the soft rise of their laughter was directed at him.
And he wondered if being the cause of laughter was better than being the reason for tears.
Chapter 16
Tansy was giving her longways glances, never meeting Annalise’s gaze but looking away every time Annalise lifted her head from the square of linen upon which she was stitching. It was fair irritating the way she did it, as though Annalise wouldn’t notice. Annalise, for her part, had aching fingers, sore eyes, and a headache from squinting at the intricate design she thought would never bring a person a second’s solace, no matter how pretty she made it.
“What?” she asked finally, when Tansy had looked up from her own piecework again. “I know my flower knots are uneven, but truthfully, Tansy, I need no judgment from you upon my handiwork.”
“Oh, no, your work is lovely!”
Annalise watched the deep flush creep from Tansy’s collar up h
er throat and over her cheeks. Even her forehead pinked. “What, then? You’ve been goggling at me since we began.”
Tansy pricked at her linen square, embroidered ’round the edges with a pattern of leaves and flowers. She looked at every other woman in the room rather than meet Annalise’s eyes. “It’s just . . . you didn’t eat with us today.”
“Oh. That.” Annalise looked at the work in her hands and pressed her lips together. “I’m sure I’ll be at your table again. I wasn’t aware you were so regretting the loss of my company.”
Perdita shifted in her chair. Annalise had been wondering how long it would take her to speak. “What Tansy means to say is, why on earth were you eating with Master Toquin?”
“I like him.”
There was nobody in the room who even pretended to work, now. Annalise looked at them all in turn and set aside her own piece. She rubbed at the aching tips of her fingers.
“Is it so difficult to believe I might enjoy his company?”
“Because he made you his assistant,” Tansy put in helpfully with a look ’round at the other women. “Annalise is so well-acquainted with the verses—”
“Yes, yes, we know all about how wonderful Annalise is,” snapped Perdita impatiently. She leaned forward to pin Annalise with a beady glare. “But really, Annalise, what we want to know is how, by the Land Above, did you get him to allow it?”
“What? Sitting with him at his table? I didn’t ask his permission, first of all. I wasn’t aware we had assigned seats.” It was the sort of non-answer that would pinch madness into Perdita, and sure enough, the other woman’s eyes flashed.
“It’s not your proficiency in the Faith, is it?”
“I’m certain I don’t know what you mean.” Annalise spoke calmly, though she felt anything but. She felt like reaching across the space between them and slapping the smile from Perdita’s fat face. “Master Toquin and I are . . . friends.”
Not by her choice, and despite what he’d said, mayhap not by his. She’d tried, by the Arrow, but he’d done his best to stop her. Not with coldness or anger as had been his previous habit, but his implacable resistance to even the most mild of her overtures was disheartening, to say the least. And worse, actually, than his annoyance, for at least then he’d been reacting.
