Pleasure and Purpose (16 page)

"No sense in fidgeting," the old man told her from over the edge of his paper. "Wherever you're going will still be there when you get there, I'm sure." That was true enough, as well as discouraging. Honesty concentrated on reciting the mantras of the Order in her head, trying to ignore the smell of singed odenbeast and the curious glances her gown garnered. No matter where she went it seemed there were always those who hadn't seen a Handmaiden in the flesh, and who didn't believe she was as human as the rest of them.

As the hours melted into one another and her stomach grew emptier, it had never been so difficult to convince herself that true patience was its own reward. By the time the train, cleaned of its unexpected passenger, rolled into the station, so many hours had passed beyond her estimated arrival that Honesty doubted there'd be anybody to meet her. She knew all too well how impatient princes were. So when the man, head bent to his chest and shadowed by the brim of his hat, stirred at the sound of the train and got to his feet, Honesty didn't expect him to greet her.

"Miz?"

She clutched her hand-trunk to her side, wary. Handmaidens were under the protection and long-reaching arm of the Order of Solace, but that didn't stop every idiot from believing he might be the first to get away with taking what other men needed to pay for.

"You waiting for a ride?" he asked when Honesty didn't answer. The man turned out not to be some randy scouse git with an aim at mischief, but the Prince of Firth's own man, sent to fetch her from the station. He firmly ensconced Honesty in a carriage so finely made it was like riding in a jewel-case. And she the jewel, she mused, settling onto the black velvet seats with a spread of her skirts. She didn't mean to sleep, but weariness overtook her. She'd had a hard few days of travel. Though all Handmaidens had personal rooms within the main Motherhouse in Neaku, the Order of Solace had sister-houses in many of the provinces. She'd most recently come from one of them, fresh from her last assignment without even a trip home before beginning the next.

She woke when the carriage halted and Bertram opened the door to let in a breath of fresh night air that smelled of rain. The sky held no hint of moon or stars and though she couldn't see them, Honesty felt the weight of the clouds like a mantle over her shoulders when she stepped out with Bertram's hand to assist her.

She lifted her face to breathe in the wet-thick breeze. "Storms are coming."

"Oh, aye."

As if at her word, thunder rumbled. She laughed gently at Bertram's assessing face. "I like the rain."

"So do the fields, Miz." Bertram grinned, showing straight white teeth set in sharp contrast to his shadowed face. "We'd best get you inside." Night hid the palace, which was just as well. Honesty didn't need to count the number of towers or judge the quality of the brick and marble. She wasn't here for that. Her interest lay inside with the prince who'd called for her. Everything else was merely the cream on the custard.

At this time of night, only sentries roamed the halls. Sentries and drunkards, she thought as they passed a thick wooden door half cracked to show a party of young lords inside. The sounds of their revelry and the scent of herb reached even to the hall, and Honesty paused, assuming her prince might be amongst the merrymakers, but Bertram only shook his head and motioned with one thick finger for her to follow down another set of corridors, more plainly dressed, and around the corner to a dusty, unkempt hall.

"He's down here." He pointed to a door at the end of the hall. She waited, but clearly he wasn't going to take her farther. Honesty blinked, stifling a yawn. Bertram nodded and stood aside. There was no sense in waiting, she saw. Honesty went through the door.

A short flight of stone steps took her to another door, the wood of this one outlined in scrolled black metal ornamentation. The gas lamps had been dimmed to dusk here, and she blinked again to clear her vision of the dust motes dancing. She pushed the door open.

She'd been trained to expect anything from her patrons. To withstand much and look past more. Even so, Honesty recoiled at the thick, rolling scent of sweat and sex and blood that assaulted her the moment she walked through the door.

She saw a girl bound by her wrists to a cross of ironwood, naked, her back crisscrossed with welts. Her head hung down and her tawny flesh gleamed with sweat. Her shoulders rose and fell with

each breath. There were other girls, too, most naked though a few wore sheer night rails that hid nothing. Had Bertram sent her to the wrong room?

Tendrils of red fog edged her vision like lace. Hunger and exhaustion assaulted her, along with the heat and miasma in the room. Honesty drew in a breath, lip curling at the taste of the air. It gave her no respite. If anything, every breath she drew made the buzz in her ears and her sudden unsteadiness worse.

Then she noticed the man. Stripped to the waist, he stood with his back to her. Long, thick hair tumbled over his shoulders and down to the center of his back in the colors of ferlafruits. Amber, russet, glints of gold that caught in the gaslight. His hair was enough to make her throat close tight on a breath meaning to escape as a sigh, but when he turned to face her . . . oh, Invisible Mother.

He was beautiful.

His upraised hand gripped the handle of a flogger, leather tails dangling. Sweat ran down his face and across his lips, and his tongue darted out to swipe it away. He dropped the flogger to his side.

"Who are you?"

His voice, fluid and melodious, reminded her of the stream in her father's orchard as much as his hair had called to mind the fruits. Honesty, shaken by memory, took a step back, her hand over her heart. She didn't answer.

"Invisible Mother," whispered the Prince of Firth. He dropped the flogger and stepped over it, unheeded, toward her. "You're her."

And then she fell.

‘I’ve had fluttering eyelashes and curtsies directed my way," Cillian murmured, "but I must say until today I've never had a woman faint dead away at the sight of me." Consternation flooded her, and Honesty struggled to sit. The blankets that had been tucked so tightly around her waist tugged at her as she moved, and the prince, for there was no question he could be anything else, shifted his chair a bit away from the bed so she had space to move.

"I plead your mercy," Honesty said, her voice rough.

The prince poured a cup of water from a pitcher and handed it to her. "Bertram was under orders to bring you directly to me. If I'd known you weren't able to handle the sight, I'd have given him different instructions."

Honesty sipped, the cool water sliding down her throat slowly enough to give her time to answer. She hadn't fainted in months, though she was prone to dizziness when she went too long without a meal, and she was still a little disoriented. If given her choice, she'd have put her head back on the pillow, but the prince was staring at her with such expectation she knew that wouldn't suit him. It didn't matter what she wanted. Selfish is the heart that thinks first of itself. The mantra rose easily enough in her mind, even if it settled less certainly in her heart.

He had green eyes, like grass, but spangled with white, like the sea flecked with foam. This, too, reminded her of the home of her childhood. Honesty made to speak again, but thoughts of her life before still crowded her tongue, and they had no place here. No purpose. They would bring no pleasure—not to him and certainly not to herself. Prince Cillian, Prince of Firth, her patron, leaned forward curiously in his chair to capture her gaze with his. Looking into his eyes was much the same as staring into the sea had always been. She thought she might drown in that gaze, should she allow it. Honesty looked away. "I plead your mercy. I was overcome from my journey, not the sight of you. I ought to have demonstrated more appropriate control." His hand lifted, whether to strike or caress her, Honesty couldn't tell. He withdrew his touch at the last moment. The prince stood, still shirtless. His finely cut oxenhide trousers clung to him as though they'd been made of ink poured over his legs.

"The Order promised me a Handmaiden, and yet here I sit, bathing your wrists and head as though I were the maid instead of you. Tell me," Cillian said in a voice low but nowhere near soft, "is this the way your Order trains you to behave?"

"No. I plead your mercy, as I said." Honesty pushed back the covers. She was in the prince's bed, if the sheets were anything to judge it by. Someone had removed her shoes and stockings, and her bare feet reproached her further. She swung them over the edge of the bed and tested her equilibrium before she stood.

He was not a tall man, and she didn't have to tilt her head to look at his face. She spoke softly as a matter of training, not because she was by nature soft. "Your mercy, sir. I was remiss. I should've made certain to eat and drink and sleep properly, so that I might adequately serve you upon my arrival. I regret I didn't do so." Not that she'd had the chance to do so, not with so little time between leaving her last house and being summoned here. It was unusual, if not unheard of, for a Handmaiden to be assigned a new patron within hours of being released from the last, but Lady Valennda hadn't yet been wound into her shroud before Honesty had received the summons to move on. She hadn't been given time to protest.

"Regret doesn't give me solace." Cillian's voice edged along her skin, rough as brambles.

"No, I daresay it doesn't." She tilted her head to offer him a smile he didn't return.

"You're not what I was expecting."

"I rarely am." Honesty's smile gave away none of her desire to turn his face with a slap at his tone. Once she'd been in his place. It

had taken her years of training to learn her craft. "But since no matter what the Order tells anyone in advance, they never know what to expect, I'm used to that." This raised his eyebrow, and he put his hands on his hips to rake her with his gaze. He would say he thought she'd be prettier, Honesty thought, and braced herself not to react. With no food in her belly and not enough sleep to gentle her emotions, it would be harder for her to play at sweetness. It had been difficult for a long time.

"That seems ridiculous and inefficient. They told you all about me, did they not?" She nodded. Pages and pages of documents she'd meant to read on the train but which had remained in the bottom of her hand-trunk. "Of course."

"Am I what you expected?"

"Yes," Honesty answered at once, though truth be told, she hadn't thought of him at all beyond the fact he'd been born to a crown and depended on someone else for his happiness.

"What's your name?"

"Honesty."

The corner of his mouth quirked. "You only have the one?" She had another name, but didn't use it with her patrons. It raised too many questions about her ancestry. "Honesty is all you need."

Her empty stomach had been only partially satisfied with the drink. Now it rumbled and she put a hand over it to quell the noise. "Might I beg something to eat? I've come a long way in the past few days, and while I do plead your mercy for not being ready to serve you at once, I'll be far better able to begin once I'm fed."

His pale cheeks colored. "It's not enough for me to nurse you, now I'm to be your kitchen drab, as well?"

Honesty bit back the retort threatening to spill from her lips and offered a gentle smile and inclination of her head. "I would imagine a man of your stature would hardly need to serve. Surely you could ring for someone to bring me some fruit and cheese, perhaps a biscuit?"

He stared for so long she thought he would refuse, which would I make this the shortest assignment she'd ever taken. She hadn't arrived quite ready to serve, that was true, but he was still required to provide her with food, shelter, and clothing appropriate for the seasons and activities. If he refused to feed her, she would walk out without another look behind her. She tensed, half hoping he'd give her reason to do just that. Cillian nodded sharply, instead. "Indeed. The hour grows late, nearly the first chime. Fare will be limited."

Honesty looked at him through lowered lashes. Deference was simple to feign and always well received. "Whatever your kitchen can provide its prince at this late hour will certainly suffice."

She waited the span of four, five, six heartbeats before he began to laugh. He'd been gorgeous in disapproval, but in mirth his face lit up from within and turned his countenance into a sun from which she had to avert her eyes.

"You are clever," he said. "I do like that."

"I'm happy to please you," Honesty said, and if her response was made with less than what her name claimed her to be, nobody knew it but herself. he'd made use of his bath chamber while they waited for the food and now sat before him with her hair damp and skin gleaming. She smelled of his soap, a scent that had never aroused him on his own flesh but clung to hers in such a manner he fought the urge to lean forward and sniff her as though he were a hound. She wore one of the simple linen gowns he'd given her, cut in the same style as the one she'd worn upon her arrival but in sheer rose instead of dark blue. The material clung to every curve and showed the dusky circles of her aureoles and the triangle between her legs, but Honesty didn't seem to notice she was as good as naked before him. Or perhaps she didn't care.

She had the manners of a noblewoman, Cillian noted as Honesty used her knife to push a mouthful of tumbleberry jam onto her spoon before she tucked it between her lips. And yet in the next moment she used her fingers like a peasant to lift a slice of cold duck. She ate swiftly, efficiently, without lingering or sighing over the food, which was the best his cook could prepare at this hour. Cillian had taken her comment about his kitchen to heart, and though he rarely called for a meal past the ten chime, he'd wanted to see just what would happen if he did.

Consequently, the table in his chambers had been set with fine linens and porcelain and silver utensils. Wine poured, butter served in its own small crock, platters of artfully arranged delicacies provided. The effort deserved to make an impression. The Handmaiden sipped once more from her wine and wiped her mouth with a napkin made of finer lace than graced most of his courtiers' cuffs. "Delicious."