Pleasure and Purpose

by Megan Hart

  "Damn you to the Void!" he shouted into her face, spittle dotting her cheeks. Her arms were taut with muscle for all they were so slim, but he could wrap his fingers all the way around them, and he squeezed tighter. Tighter still when she made no reply. "Damn you to the Void, you stupid, ugly whore! How dare you?"

  The sickness rushed through him, setting him on fire, making him shake. He bared his teeth to make her flinch.

  She made no move to get away from him, not when he shook her again. Nor when he shouted, and nor when he snapped his teeth so close to the flesh of her throat he swore he could taste the flavor of her soap. She made him a dog with her gaze, and that was what he became. What he'd been.

  "You live in filth!" she shouted into his face, her voice dipping low when he let her go.

  "Everything you have of beauty has been broken or dirtied, and you live within the trash like an animal that knows no better, but you do know better, Alaric. You squeak about love but what I see here tells me you know nothing of it. You know only selfishness and spite. I know naught of the man you were, but of the one I see before I wish to know little more."

  He let her go. He stepped back. She looked him up and down and sneered.

  "No wonder she left you."

  The words shot him surely as an arrow and he went to his knees. His forehead found the floor. Alaric was aware of pain but it couldn't compare to the agony ripping through the rest of him.

  When he looked up, she was gone and he was unable to tell if an hour had passed, or a day. Sunlight shafted through the window and hit the same place on the rug it had always done, but that told him nothing. He cradled his head and his palm came away spotted with dried blood. The sickness had passed, at least for the moment, though pain deep within his muscles still locked them tight. His stomach clenched on emptiness. No wonder she left you.

  But she hadn't left him. If she'd left him, she would be gone. He would not have to see her, or listen to her laughter from across the room, or hear her name on someone else's lips. He wouldn't have to suffer knowing she'd sent him away.

  He got to his feet, every muscle screaming, but bit back the moan. His joints creaked as though age had settled onto him all at once instead over the passage of years. His stomach no longer leaped up to burn his throat, but the nausea had been little worse than this constant, nagging pain that flared into agony with every step. He went to the door to the hall but the knob wouldn't turn. Locked in? As though he were a common prisoner? Alaric kicked the door, heedless until the pain that ripped through him indicated that he wore no boots. He fell to the carpet and pounded it until his fists bruised, but that didn't open the lock.

  Nor did it bring back the Handmaiden.

  He curled into a ball on the floor for a long while, but then got to his feet. He looked around the room, and it tilted every which way as his head swam. He blinked away the red haze and drew in breath after breath until he no longer felt he might fall. Alaric paused when his bare foot crunched against the remains of a puzzle box of shaved and polished wood. Once the pieces had fit together so smoothly they appeared as one solid block, but at some time over the past few weeks he'd torn it apart and ruined the tiny, coiled springs inside that held it together. What had looked solid and unyielding had proven to be fragile and all too easy to destroy.

  He drew back his foot to kick it aside but stopped himself. Instead, he bent to lift the shattered frame with its dangling shreds of wood. He cradled it for a minute in his two palms. Larissa had given him the box. The center, seen only by someone clever enough to undo the puzzle, had held a miniature portrait of her. He looked for it now, knowing the sight of her face would hurt, but looking anyway. It wasn't there, but he didn't throw down the box. He took it to the woodbasket next to the fireplace. It would burn as well as any log.

  Alaric turned, his sore foot one more complaint to add to the list, and looked 'round his room. He'd never cared overmuch for the sorts of expensive furnishings Cillian craved. It had never mattered to him what hung on his walls or the name of the maker who built his chair. But it had mattered to his lady, who'd been the one to pick out almost every item in these rooms. It had given her pleasure to use both her coin and his for such a project, and Alaric had never minded, no matter the cost or how he might have to put himself into debt for it. She'd made these rooms more than a simple apartment in a king's castle. She'd made them a luxury.

  Broken now, a paradise no longer. Alaric toed aside a stack of papers he couldn't recall throwing to the floor. Beneath rested an inkpot, its contents spread across the carpet upon which he'd once made love to Larissa for an entire afternoon. He could still taste her, and his fingers came to his mouth unbidden at the memory.

  Alaric stood, eyes closed, in the center of the room as he fought for one breath. Then another. And the next, each as sharp and hot in his lungs as breathing fire. When he opened them, nothing had changed. No lady stood waiting, beckoning. No room full of sunshine and laughter, no table laid with food for them to share. She had sent him from her,

  the laughter that once had suffused him with joy turned horrible in its mocking. He looked around the room again and breathed deep but found no trace even of her perfume. The stink of spoiled food reached him, and the subtle odor of dirt. He'd have stunk of it himself, had that. . . woman . . . not cleaned him.

  Even now his cock twitched at the memory, and he cursed his body for a fool. A disloyal fool at that. She had a soft touch, yet there was no forgetting she could be harsh, too. He hadn't even asked her name.

  Had it mattered? He hadn't sent for her and didn't want her, no matter how his traitorous prick tried to prove otherwise. Now he reached past the drawstring of the trousers she'd forced upon him and pinched his inner thigh hard enough to bring tears to his eyes and a grunt from his lips. Then harder, fiercely enough to bruise.

  The desk had already been tidied. She must have done it. Dull anger knocked his innards as he moved toward it, intent on scattering the neat piles of papers she'd made, but his hand stayed at the last moment, and at the sight of the tray of bread and milk she'd told him about. His stomach rumbled and he put a hand on it. Stale bread and milk would have made him retch not so long before but now it looked as good to him as any meal he'd ever eaten.

  He fell to without manners, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. He could eat only a little before his stomach protested and he stifled a belch. He paused, waiting to see if his makeshift supper would exit the way it had arrived, but nothing came up but a sour taste.

  He still wanted oblivion. His hands, in fact, shook with the wanting of it. In a few more hours the craving would be very bad, he thought. But not the worst he'd ever undergone. He might even be able to get through it, if he had to. If he wanted to. As Alaric looked around the room again, he thought of the Handmaiden's smooth touch and her cool gaze. She didn't know him at all, and never would, if he had his way. But he wouldn't give her the pleasure of being right about him.

  He was no beast, bound to live in squalor. His lady had not left him, and though she'd turned him away, it was not because of how he lived or dressed or kept his chambers. That Handmaiden was wrong. It was naught he'd done that had ruined his lady's favor . . . Alaric stopped, aware he'd been stooping to lift a pile of books to put them back in their places on the shelves.

  Back aching, he held on to the bookshelf with one slim volume in his hand. He stared at it for some long time before sliding it into place, aligned with the others. Then the next. He'd done nothing to make his lady abandon him. He had, in fact, done everything she wanted, no matter how she pushed. No matter what she asked. Any humiliation had been hers for the taking, any punishment she granted, he'd borne. She had a heavy hand and a sharp tongue, and her sadism was finely honed. She'd always known just where to prick him to force the blood, and which places to pinch to leave a bruise. And he'd given it all to her, whatever she'd asked.

  In the end, she'd laughed, her arm looped through another's. A man Alaric didn't even know, so
me minor lord from an outlying province, come to town in his out-of-fashion boots and his hair too short. He'd looked at her with adoration, though, the same as Alaric always had, and she'd looked back.

  He should never have been surprised. He knew her, after all. Lady Larissa was not a woman without reputation. Alas, just as he'd never dreamed she'd give him her favor, once she had he'd never dreamed she would take it away. He'd fallen into the crevasse of her affections and hadn't cared how deep. She became his light, his dark, his everything. He'd given up everything he had to her command and been glad to do it. He'd left lovers aplenty, some of them brokenhearted though he'd ever been truthful about his whims. If the warnings he provided hadn't sufficed, he'd always supposed it to be their own fault if they lost themselves in him. How different it was with the ribbon on the other wrist.

  He loved her, and she no longer loved him, if she ever had. And thinking back, Alaric believed it quite possible she had not, no matter what she'd told him. He ran a fingertip over the leather volumes, put back in their places, and thought how easy it had been to set them right, after all.

  The rest of the room took him little longer, for the ruin he'd caused left him little to save. Anything torn or too harshly abused he set aside in a pile to be given out to the pauper's hostel. Anything still in good condition he returned to its place, but even though he had to pause often to catch his breath or ease the ache in his muscles, by the time night fell he'd finished.

  He was just ringing for a maid when the door opened. The Handmaiden came in, her arms full of sheets and towels and followed by a maid bearing a tray of food. His stomach rumbled and he stepped forward at once, but a look from the Handmaiden silenced him. The maid, also silent, set down the tray and retreated at once. The Handmaiden disappeared into the bedchamber, where he'd not yet gone. She came out a moment later, dusting her hands. She looked around the room.

  "You did a fine job, Alaric."

  He straightened at the familiar way she, a stranger, addressed him. "I thought for sure you'd gone for good."

  She looked at him solemnly, her eyes narrowed, before she shook her head. "No. I haven't gone."

  Unexpected relief rushed through him, and he cursed it as much as he'd cursed his prick's interest before. He didn't want to wish to impress her, no matter how nice it had been to hear her praise the job he'd done. His gaze fell upon a few of the items he'd yet to tidy—one of them a small portrait of Larissa he hadn't been able to figure out where to put.

  Larissa had ever wanted what she didn't have; she thought nothing of stealing a lover or wheedling someone out of a bauble if she thought it would suit her better than it would a companion. She'd kept Alaric longer than many of her suitors and accepted his proposal, but she hadn't become his wife.

  Yet how would she feel should she see him on bended knee to another? She could scarcely bear to watch her favorite horse being ridden by a groom or her cast-off gowns on the backs of her servants. How would she feel to see Alaric bent to another woman, even one hired for the purpose?

  Perhaps especially one such as that?

  Alaric looked the Handmaiden in the eyes. "I plead your mercy for my behavior earlier. It was inexcusable."

  "It was excusable," she said quietly. "Perhaps not pleasant, but you had your reasons. However, I expect we shall not need to ever have such a discussion ever again." By the Void, he'd struck her, hadn't he? If not struck, shaken. A flash of the memory came to him and the heat of shame sent him to his knees without a second thought. "I plead your mercy," he muttered. "I should never have taken a hand to you in that manner. After what felt like a lifetime, he felt the soft touch of her hand on top of his head. He lifted it to look at her. The Handmaiden, whose name he still didn't know, gave him such a look of sweet compassion he wanted to weep.

  "I forgive you. Make no more of it, Alaric. What matters is not what you did but what you shall do."

  "And . . . what shall I do?" he asked.

  She smiled. "Why, whatever I tell you to, of course."

  Love. Alaric had claimed he would refuse her even the hope of it from him, and his words had sliced open a wound in her Mina didn't wish to notice. Not because she longed for such a thing from him, by the Holy Family, no. Mina was a woman of faith; she believed in much she couldn't see or hear or touch . . . but she did not believe in love. She knew the power of it, certainly, for more than one man had declared it from his knees in front of her. She'd taken it as her due, or as something necessary to lead them to the solace for which they'd depended on her. She'd even believed they meant it. She simply didn't believe it was real. Men had begged her to stay, and she had always gone. She would always go.

  But still it was more pleasant to be craved than despised.

  More proof she'd been too long without a patron if she was allowing her emotions to get in the way of what she knew must be done. Selfish is the heart that thinks first of itself, Mina reminded herself firmly and turned her attention back to Alaric. He'd not been trained to act the part of serving maid, ladies' maid, or any other type of maid, and it didn't particularly please Mina to have him act as such. It wasn't the act of cleaning she required from him. It was obedience.

  If his mind were occupied with organizing books and sweeping the floor, he'd be less apt to worry about the pain in his guts from the lack of the drug. It was gnawing, she knew that, and the pain would be just beginning. She'd had little enough experience with addicts, though she'd brought her entire collection of medicinal teas. Some would help. Some wouldn't.

  But for now his belligerence, some part of it from the drugs, the rest from his other pain, had faded. She'd seen a glimmer in his gaze when she returned and knew what it meant. She'd have been more surprised had he greeted her on his knees and with a bent head. If he'd been in that sort of place, he'd scarcely have needed her at all. No, wherever his former lady had taken him, it was not a place Mina wished to go.

  She would take him to her own places, in due time.

  "Alaric." She said it quietly from her place in the chair by the fire where she'd been watching him go about the tasks she'd set.

  He turned, the peasant trousers riding low on his hips. They'd lit no lamps and the fire's red-gold glow reflected off the sheen of sweat covering his chest. He'd become almost frantic in his efforts as the sun dipped lower outside the window and finally disappeared. She didn't think either of them believed it was from his desire to please her. He blinked and swallowed hard, then wiped the back of his hand across his lips. His chest heaved with a breath. His nipples tightened, though it was hard for her to tell if it were from arousal or the chill of fever.

  "Rest, now."

  He shook his head. "No. I. . . you were right. I've made a mess and I need to clean it up. This is an intolerable mess. It's not fit for you . . . not fit for me . . ." His voice scratched and rasped. Alaric waved a hand when his voice failed him. He closed his eyes, bit his lower lip. He cried out and went to one knee, a hand clutching at and toppling the nearest chair. It landed with a crash.

  She was on her feet at once. "Alaric, you must rest now." He shook his head, the blond locks lank with sweat. He bent his head, so she couldn't see his face. Mina went to him. "Come."

  She took the hand still holding the chair and helped him to his feet. Took him to his bed, which she had fitted with fresh sheets while he'd been cleaning. She laid him down and he went without protest, his body already twitching. She took his trousers down over his hips and off, then undressed quickly and slipped in next to him with nothing but skin between them.

  His prick rose, though she doubted he meant to make any sort of love. She curled herself against his back and stroked his shoulders when the muscles spasmed. She crooned to him in wordless songs when he muttered and cried out. When he sweated through the top sheet, she got up and replaced it with a clean one.

  All through the night she eased him as best she could with everything she could do. None of it was enough, but it was all she had. When morning broke, so did th
e fever, and so did he.

  She followed him to the bath chamber while he was sick. She cleaned him up without a moment's hesitation. When he begged her for the oblivion, she gave him tea mixed with herbs, instead. When he made to leave and found the door still locked, he raged at her for the key.

  He called her the worst names and made the most evil threats, none of which moved her. When at last he collapsed on the wet, cold floor of the bath chamber, she covered him with a cloth and rang for breakfast. She took it from the maid when she arrived and sent her off with a note for Cillian and Edward. Then she bathed herself quickly and dressed in a fresh gown identical to the one she'd worn the day before. She smoothed the fabric on her arms and bodice, and over her belly. She combed her hair and brushed her teeth, all while Alaric moaned and jerked on the floor in a fitful sleep. And when he woke, she brought him a bowl of hot broth and spooned it into his mouth. She bathed his brow with cool cloths and got him back into bed, again with fresh sheets she'd put there. She sat with him until he slept again, this time without twitches and jerks and maybe, without dreams.

  She slept herself and woke to find him sitting, staring at her. Shadows circled his eyes, but his gaze was clear. He'd dressed in a pair of loose-fitting linen trousers of the same cut as the peasant garb she'd given him, but clean. He'd brushed his hair, too, and bound it at the nape of his neck with a length of cord.

  Mina sat. "You've been up and about."

  Alaric nodded. "I. . . yes."

  "How do you feel?"

  "As though I'd been trod on by wild boars."

  She sat up and stretched, aware she'd slept in her clothes. "That well?" Alaric ducked his head. His laughter pleased her, weak as it was. "It was a long night."

  "Yes. Have you eaten?" She watched him carefully. He looked tired, but not ill, his muscles without the twitching that indicated craving.

  "Yes. Thank you."