No Greater Pleasure

by Megan Hart

  She could do little about the smell from the chemicals, but the scent of the brewing tea and the freshly baked simplebread at least covered it up somewhat. Today, he appeared dressed no less formally than the day before. Quilla paused, bent over the pan of simplebread, to look at him.

  “Good morning, my lord.”

  He grunted and took two steps toward the worktable before pausing and turning back. “What do I smell?”

  “Tea and simplebread, my lord.”

  “What kind of tea?”

  “Something I brewed for you myself.”

  “The kitchen is the place for baking, not my studio.” Yet he took another step forward, as though his nose were leading him despite the protests of his mind.

  “It’s only simplebread,” Quilla explained, lifting the pan with the help of a thick towel. “Really no trouble at all.”

  Delessan’s mouth turned down, but he sat in his chair, smoothing his fingers over the throw. “And what’s this? And that?”

  He pointed to the kettle and cup she’d filled with tea.

  “I thought the blanket might look nice. The kettle and cups I found in the storage closet downstairs. The others were in disgraceful repair. I thought you deserved better, but these were the best to be had.”

  She’d been slicing the simplebread and arranging the thick, fragrant slices on a plate, not looking at him. When she looked up, she met his eyes. He was staring, lips parted. When her gaze met his, he closed his mouth, thinning the lips.

  “Think you I cannot provide my own repairs to my chair? Replace my own kettle when it needs replacing?”

  Quilla handed him the plate. “Think you can? Certainly. Think you would? Nay, else you’d have done so. ’Tis my duty to provide you with what you need, my lord, so you don’t need to ask for it. I saw the kettle was imperfect, and thought to replace it, but if you prefer the old one, I will bring it back.”

  He held up the plate of simplebread, smelling it. “No. The new one is fine.”

  She waited, watching while he took a bite of the firm, fresh bread. Then she handed him a napkin. He wiped his lips free of crumbs. “I’m surprised you didn’t offer to wipe my mouth for me.”

  “You didn’t care for me washing your hands,” she pointed out matter-of-factly. “I would not assume you’d care to have me wipe your mouth.”

  That look again, as though she’d grown an extra eye. Quilla kept her expression serene as she swept the hearth clean, aware of his scrutiny. When she looked up again, he was still staring.

  “How might I serve you?”

  He looked momentarily startled. “I will arrange for you to have access to a credit account of your own. You will use it to purchase anything you think this room needs. And anything you need beyond what I’ve already given you.”

  Quilla inclined her head in acknowledgment of his generosity. “Thank you.”

  “In the afternoons, when I wish not to be disturbed, you will have time to go to the market, if you wish. Otherwise, tell Florentine or Bertram what it is you wish to order and they will arrange for the craftsman to come.”

  “Thank you.”

  He nodded abruptly and set the plate aside with only crumbs left upon it, then got up from his chair. “I don’t have all day to stand about chattering, Handmaiden.”

  He pushed past her and headed for his worktable. Behind him, as she tidied up the remains of his breakfast, Quilla smiled.

  I heard screaming in the night. This has been the third time.” Quilla watched Florentine roll out the thin dough, pat it with some flour, then cut it into strips and hang the finished noodles over the rack to dry.

  Florentine looked up at her. “You didn’t. You was dreaming.”

  “I wasn’t dreaming, Florentine.”

  “You might as well have been, for all the gossip you’ll pry from my lips.”

  Quilla smiled and handed the cook another ball of soft dough. “I wouldn’t dream of forcing you into telling tales. I’m merely telling you what I heard.”

  Florentine pausing in the rolling to give Quilla a narrow glare. “I thought Handmaidens was supposed to be respectful. You’ve got sassiness in every bone, you have.”

  Quilla laughed. “Handmaidens are trained to provide subservience of manner and provision. We are not required to be cowering mice. You can respect someone and still tease them, and likewise, treat a person with the utmost outward appearance of solicitude while inside you mock them.”

  “Either way, you’re sassy.” Florentine gestured at the young woman who’d just entered the kitchen. “You! Watch where you’re stepping, you’ll drag flour all over the place!”

  The young woman sniffed and lifted the hem of her skirts to show delicate ribboned slippers. “I merely came down to prepare the tea for my lady’s afternoon respite.”

  She smoothed a blonde curl over one shoulder and looked over at Quilla, who smiled though she could already tell this young woman was going to cause her trouble. “I’m Allora Walles, companion to my lady Saradin. Mistress of this house. And you are Tranquilla Caden, the master’s Handmaiden.”

  “You mean you came down to have me prepare the tea,” cut in Florentine, grumbling as she left off the noodle preparation and moved toward the fire to hang the kettle over the flame. “And Quilla, I daresay, already knows who the mistress of the house is.”

  “Does she?” Allora pursed perfect pink lips and stared at Quilla without bothering to hide her disdain. “I suppose a . . . Handmaiden . . . would.”

  The contempt she put into the word made Quilla grit her teeth, but she kept her smile pleasant when she replied, “I have yet to have the pleasure of making Mistress Delessan’s acquaintance.”

  “And ’tis quite unlikely that you will.” Allora moved closer to Quilla, looking over her clothes with a raised brow. “Our master has been generous with you.”

  Quilla looked at her plum-colored gown. “I brought this with me. It’s mine.”

  “Really? The fabric is exceptionally fine.” Allora reached a hand to pinch the cloth of Quilla’s sleeve. “The cut is rather elegant, too. Funny, I thought Handmaidens wore rather less than this.”

  Quilla pulled her sleeve from the other woman’s grasp. “This dress suits my preferences. If our lord Delessan chooses to clothe me differently, then I shall acquiesce to his wishes.”

  “Of course.” Allora’s smirk made Quilla purse her lips briefly, but long enough for the lady’s maid to see. The maid smiled, her blue eyes glinting. “You must tell me more about your work, Tranquilla. What a charming name, and so apt. It means calm, doesn’t it? And that’s what you do? Calm people?”

  “Yes, that is part of my function. Yes. And Allora means ‘devious beauty.’ ”

  Allora tossed her hair over her shoulders. “I need to bring my lady her tea. Otherwise she gets . . . disturbed.”

  “More’n she already is?” Florentine scoffed, but pulled the whistling kettle off the fire and poured the hot water into the teapot. “Allora, take the mistress some of those cinnamon biscuits from the cupboard. They’re in the tin with the hounds etched on top.”

  Allora heaved a sigh so great it lifted her shoulders, as though Florentine had asked her to walk a mile across broken glass, but she sauntered to the cupboard and pulled out the tin. “Extra sugar on the tray, Florentine. You know the mistress likes her tea sweet.”

  “I know you like it sweet, Allora Walles. The mistress could use a bit of sugar in her. You, on the other hand, could likely stand to cut back a bit.”

  Allora whirled, tin in hand, chin up, and eyes blazing. “A fine one to talk you are, you old fat cow!”

  Florentine only chuckled. “Fat I may be, but this is hard-earned. A badge of honor to my profession, like. You, on the other hand, my plumpy, should mayhaps concern yourself less with stuffing your face and more with some brisk walking round the gardens.”

  Allora’s mouth worked without sound while the spots of color in her creamy cheeks grew increasingly hectic. “You! I! N
ever!”

  “Never walk? That’s right, I’m being unfair. You spend plenty of time walking back and forth in front of the looking glass.” Florentine arranged the tray and handed it to the gasping Allora. “And beyond that, well, my little buttercup, my advice to you is that the sort of activity you’re accustomed to is well and good, but you’ll need to get off your back at some point and take a brisk jog, if you want to rid yourself of that second chin I see starting.”

  Allora gasped louder. “You hag! You nasty old thing! You . . . you . . .”

  “I believe the word you’re struggling so prettily to find in the vast echoing chambers of your mind is bitch,” Florentine said grandly. “And believe me, love, I’ve earned the title.”

  “You’re barely even a woman!” Allora cried and swept from the room, tray in hand, so affronted she had forgotten to use the lift.

  “Which makes it all the sweeter, doesn’t it?” Florentine started to laugh, moving back to her noodles.

  “You plagued her on purpose.” Quilla tried to sound reproving, but couldn’t.

  Florentine looked up. “Ah, but it got her off your back, did it not?”

  “You didn’t need to.”

  “It gives me great pleasure to needle that stuck-up bint, Quilla.”

  Quilla studied the cook. “Why?”

  “Because she’s convinced the purse between her legs entitles her to treat people badly. Because she acts as though she shites gold coins and pisses lemon sugar water, and it burns my biscuits. She uses her tits and her pretty blonde hair to manipulate people who ought to be smarter but ain’t, Quilla.”

  “I see.”

  Florentine turned to look at her. “You don’t see. I am Alyrian by birth. Do you know what that means?”

  Quilla thought for a moment before answering. “Alyria was a closed country for many years. It had a revolution within the past twenty-year cycle. And I’ve heard the men of Alyria hold themselves in greater esteem than they do the women.”

  Florentine patted out another ball of dough, her strong hands thinning and stretching it to make it the right thickness. “ ’Tis far more than that. For a hundred years the women of Alyria were no more than chattel. Slaves. Made to cover themselves from head to foot so as not to affront any man with the sight of their faces. Women had no rights in that land but for the right to bear children and die.”

  Quilla got up to use some of the kettle’s hot water to brew another pot of tea. She stood with her back to the fire, warming herself, while Florentine spoke.

  “I was born to a merchant father who had vowed to kill the folly, my mother, if she bore him another daughter. That’s what they called them. Follies. After Kedalya’s Folly.”

  Quilla had heard the story. Though it featured the Invisible Mother, the tale was not one in the canon of her faith. “He would have killed your mother for having another girl child?”

  “And been praised for it, no doubt.” Florentine’s tone wasn’t bitter, just resigned as she sliced the dough with her sharp knife into thin strands. “But instead, she gave my father a son. Me. Florentine Allumay. And I lived as a boy until the revolution when the women threw off their veils and took back their lives.”

  Quilla had been trained to always know what to say, even when at a loss for the right words. “She risked much. Your mother.”

  Florentine gave her a shrewd, sideways look. “Aye. She did. She died before she ever got to take off her veil.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Florentine hung the noodles on the rack and took the last of the dough from the bowl. “We were given the choice, us lads who were really lassies. Live as we’d done our whole lives, or take on new roles. I chose to leave. I went to Firth, where I met Master Delessan. I had no money. No belongings. I was slaving away in a tavern kitchen, paid with gruel and the occasional beating for good measure. He took me away. When he found out what I was, or rather what I was not, he encouraged me to leave behind the twig and berries I’d never really had betwixt my thighs. Become a woman.” She gave Quilla a sly look. “As best as I could, anyway. But a dress is only clothing. It doesn’t change who the person is, inside it.”

  “Of course it doesn’t.” Quilla watched Florentine’s strong hands work the dough. “But you are a woman.”

  “I am.” Florentine finished the last of the noodles. “Which is why that little cocktease Allora makes me so angry. She takes her twat for granted. Uses it to get things she wants. She’s a disgrace to her cunt.”

  Quilla bit her lower lip. “You think the same of me, don’t you.”

  “You”—Florentine pointed the knife at Quilla—“don’t manipulate, so far as I can see. Do I think ’tis right you spread your legs for anyone who thinks a fuck will solve their problems? No. But do I think you do it out of true purpose rather than simply to scratch an itch or further your own needs? Yes, Quilla. I do believe so, and ’tis what makes the difference.”

  Quilla didn’t much care for that assessment, but she supposed it was better than being a disgrace to her cunt. “I’m sorry, Florentine.”

  “Don’t be sorry for me.”

  “I’m not sorry for you. I’m sorry you had to endure what you did.”

  Florentine finished the last noodles and pushed the rack closer to the fire. “If I hadn’t had the life I did, I’d not have become the person I am. Crotchety, stubborn, and a right old bitch.”

  “You are a trifle difficult to endure,” said Quilla.

  Florentine looked up with a broad grin. “Yet you keep coming round. I might start to think you fancy me.”

  Quilla laughed. “Let’s just say you don’t scare me as much as you might like.”

  Florentine straightened and put both hands to her back as she stretched it, twisting at the waist. “Whatever, you’ve taken the harsh side of my tongue with a smile. ’Tis more than many could do.”

  “I’m trained to do it.”

  “Trained to be pleasant to those who berate you? I’d not make a good Handmaiden, then.”

  “No. Perhaps not. But you’re an excellent chatelaine.”

  Florentine fixed her with a serious look. “That I am, and don’t think that just because I’ve gone all soft and emotional with you today that I don’t run this house with an iron hand.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  Florentine nodded, seeming pleased. “And as for Allora, well, I like to snap her garters when I can. She’s too hoity-toity for her own good.”

  “I don’t think she likes me,” Quilla said and fixed cups of tea for Florentine and herself.

  “She rides so far up Mistress Saradin’s arse she practically lives in her throat. Of course she won’t like you. Mistress Saradin doesn’t like you.”

  “Mistress Saradin has never met me.”

  “She doesn’t need to meet you, Handmaiden. She knows what you’re here to do.”

  “And what, exactly, does she think that is?” asked Quilla, refusing to be taunted into an angry response.

  “She knows, as we all do, that you’re here to heal the master’s heart.”

  “And you all think his heart should remain unhealed?”

  Florentine shrugged. “ ’Tis not for me to say.”

  “But you will and you do, Florentine.”

  The cook nodded slowly, looking at Quilla. “I would like to see the master smile again.”

  “But his lady wife would not?”

  Florentine laughed. “Not unless ’tis her who brings it to his face. Don’t you know anything about jealousy, Quilla?”

  She knew too much about it. “I thought you said she was mad.”

  “Mad, not stupid. Insane, not incoherent.”

  Quilla sipped her tea. “I’m here for a reason. I’m sorry it won’t please everyone else, but I answer to the Order of Solace and to Master Delessan. I’ll be here until my work is done.”

  “And until you can add another arrow to Sinder’s Quiver. I know.”

  “Yes.”

  Florentin
e pulled out another bowl and began sifting flour into it. “Mistress Saradin will never like you, noble purpose or no.”

  “She doesn’t need to like me.”

  Florentine laughed. “No. She surely does not. But ’ware her, Quilla, for she’ll try to make your life so miserable you’ll think banishment to the Void a better ending.”

  Quilla shook her head. “Thanks for the warning.”

  “Oh, ’tis no warning,” said Florentine. “ ’Tis a promise.”

  Chapter 3

  So many books. From the sacred to the mundane, dozens of volumes graced the shelves. While all of them were bound in fine leather, with expensive paper, many were in disrepair. All of them were dusty. Today, Quilla had decided to begin the task of ordering them.

  “Good morning, my lord,” she said when he entered the room.

  She left the shelves and pulled the kettle from the fire just as it began to whistle, poured the hot water into the pot, and took the napkin off the basket of fresh-baked scones she’d brought with her from the kitchen.

  “How do you do that?”

  She paused in buttering the scone. “Your pardon?”

  Delessan slid into his chair and waved at the teapot. “How do you know when to put the water on so it’s ready the moment I walk out the door? ’Tis been two morns in a row.”

  “Shall we make a game of it? See how many times I can do it?” she said lightly, finishing with the scone and adding a dollop of tumbleberry jam to the top of it. She handed him the plate.

  “How did you know I like tumbleberry jam?”

  Quilla regarded him with a straight face. “Magic.”

  His lips thinned for a moment, the faintest hint of a smile quirking the corners. “You asked Florentine.”

  “Of course I did. I need to know all about you, if I’m to be your Handmaiden. What you like and what you don’t.”