by Megan Hart
“No. I told you then, as I tell you now, I would be a good husband to you. Better even than many who claim to wed for love alone and no other reason. At least with me, you’d know my intentions were ever to you and our family first, before all else.”
Annalise put her hand back in her lap and shook her head slowly. “A husband who cannot make love to his wife? You said you wished heirs, Jacquin. How would you expect to get them upon me, when the . . .” She swallowed at the memory, which still stung after all this time. “When the very act of touching me intimately caused you such distress?”
He paced afresh, boots clacking on the wood. “I was a fool. I allowed myself to depend too much upon the aid of worm and herb, thinking I needed—”
She stood, then, to pace herself. Heart pounding. Stomach just a little sick at the memory even now. “I don’t want a husband who has to drug himself to make love to me!”
“It would be different now,” Jacquin said in a low voice. “If you would only allow me to prove it.”
Somehow, Annalise found herself in his arms, her hands cupping his face. It seemed strange to look into his eyes without having to tip back her head or stand on her toes. Stranger to smell a whiff of pomade and sharp-spiced cologne.
“It’s true I came here for the wrong reasons. But I think now I’ve discovered the right ones.”
Jacquin shook his head, took her palms and kissed each one. His gaze bore into her. “I know you don’t believe me, but I do love you.”
“I do believe it. In your way.”
He let her go and stalked to the railing to look out across the pond. “I shouldn’t have let you go.”
“You had no choice.”
He shook his head without looking at her. “I had a choice. I could’ve kept you close to me. Brought the priests, had a wedding . . .”
She laughed. “You think you might have forced me to be your bride? Oh, Jacquin, I thought you knew me better than that.”
She frowned a moment later when she saw he was serious. “You mean it.”
“We’d have been wed a month already. My babe already planted in your belly, perhaps.” He turned to her, jaw set and eyes icy. “None of this nonsense with you running away, me having to face your parents—”
“My parents! You were happy to have me come here so that we might delay the wedding without dissolving it! So that you might still have the benefit of working at my father’s side without the mess of either of us being expected to find another partner! This was what we agreed together, Jacquin, yet now you make it out that somehow this was all my decision? All my fault?”
She stomped her foot, not calm or composed, unable to keep her voice from rising. “You blame me?”
“The only person who finds your service here worthy is your lady mother! And her only because she’s so far gone into her religious madness she believes you’ll be the one to do it, to provide your patron with that moment of solace that will at last fill Sinder’s Quiver.”
Jacquin had ever been respectful of her mother, no matter the woman’s fantasies. To hear him speak of her with such derision sent a wave of unease through Annalise. She swallowed the bitter taste of bile on the back of her tongue.
“Why did you come here?”
“When you didn’t answer my first letter, and weeks had passed without hearing from you, I realized how much I missed you, Annalise.”
She gave a soft snort at that. “Surely you had enough to occupy you, what with working for my father and your other pursuits.”
“None of it was as merry as my time spent with you, this I swear. I missed you. I understood why you left, and I wished to make amends. Where’s the harm in that?”
“No harm. But this changes naught.” Annalise leaned against the gazebo’s other railing. “Much has changed for me, in ways I’d never thought possible.”
“We have a contract,” he reminded her. “If you dissolve it, your father will have to pay the price. And it’s a steep one. The business has flourished since I joined him.”
Her brow furrowed. “Are you threatening me?”
“No, no. Land Above, no,” Jacquin protested. “I swear to you, not that. I’m merely telling you I’ve come all this way, at no great ease—”
“I know the hardship of the journey, Jacquin. I made it without benefit of your luxurious transportation, as a matter of fact.”
Solemnly, he nodded. “I know it. And I can see your time here’s been good for you. Made you . . . amenable. It’s most pleasing.”
This raised a brow. “Surely I’ve not changed so much.”
He laughed a little. “Sweetheart, you’ve ever been unhesitantly spoken and forward with your thinking. Why else have you found it so difficult to find a suitor?”
Anger, thin and cold, burned in her chest. “My difficulties with courtship cannot be traced to my personality, for I know full well my face and figure more than made up for it. Men—most men,” she amended with a slightly derisive look at him she didn’t bother to hide, “seem to put up with a lot in order to wet their wicks. If I had difficulty finding suitors, it was because of my father’s lack of business sense and the six sisters who came before me, eating up all the dowry.”
“All the more reason for you to renew our betrothal.”
“Why? Because I might never have another offer?”
“That’s not what I said.”
Annalise sniffed. “It’s what you implied, Jacquin, and you know it. I must be honest. If this is how you’ve come to plight your troth, you’re fair disappointing in the execution of it!”
“Please, please, sweetheart, can’t we talk about this? Will you not allow me to show I’ve changed? Not my heart,” he said quietly, “for that ever was yours. But my body.”
She allowed him to take her in his arms and kiss her. His mouth, so familiar, no longer urged her to sighs, but she parted her lips for him anyway to let him stroke his tongue inside. His groan startled her enough to pull away, but his hands gripped her hips and held her close.
“See?” He whispered against her mouth. “Or rather, feel.”
True, the heat and hardness of his groin between them seemed to indicate arousal. Annalise sighed into Jacquin’s kiss this time, closing her eyes and letting his tongue and hands urge a reaction from her. It wasn’t working, not when her mind filled with an image of dark eyes, dark hair, broad shoulders, and that stern, unforgiving mouth . . .
“See? Yes, sweetheart, you see, we could be good together.” Jacquin’s voice had gone hoarse. He pushed her to the bench to slide a hand between her thighs, her gown a barrier to his touch. “Just allow me to prove it, and I swear you’ll have no more qualms.”
They’d kissed many times before, much this way, and Jacquin was correct. It did feel different. It felt . . . wrong.
“No.” She pushed at his chest until he left off.
Breath hitching, pink on his cheeks, eyes a little glazed, Jacquin blinked. “What?”
“This isn’t right.”
“Of course it’s right. It’s as right as anything ever was. We’re betrothed, sweetheart. You agreed to be my bride and I your husband, and I’m here to show you it can work. It will work.”
He kissed her again, for even longer this time, but though his hands roamed over her body Annalise felt nothing but resignation. Was this what it would be like to serve a patron, she thought, her mouth taking his kiss but naught else.
“Where is your head?” Jacquin snapped, and got up from the bench to run a hand over his hair. “Not with me, I’m fair certain of that.”
“Your mercy,” Annalise said.
He turned. “You’ll not even give me a chance?”
“I . . . Jacquin . . . I . . .” Annalise sought words she couldn’t find.
He got on his knees in front of her, clasping her hands tight. “Sweetheart, I do swear to you I will be ever the most faithful of husbands to you, if only you’ll come back to me.”
Annalise kissed his fingers and put aside hi
s hands, then stood. The wooden floor might well have worn through, the pair of them had done so much pacing. She ran a hand along the railing, skipping fingertips over the possibility of splinters.
“I believe you would be miserable,” she said at last and turned to find him slumped upon the bench, a cut-stringed marionette. “Look at you, you’re miserable now.”
He drew a heavy sigh, shoulders lifting. He gave her a naked gaze she couldn’t bear and yet refused to ignore. “Annalise, just come home. There are circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
He held out his hands, fingers spread. “Your father and I don’t see eye to eye on the business. I’ve made your father more money since you’ve been gone than he’s made in your entire lifetime, yet he balks me at every turn. He refuses to grant me the partnership he promised would be mine upon our wedding. Instead he holds me off with promises he cannot possibly produce. That would change if you came back. Became my wife, the way we’d planned. It would be a good life for you, Annalise, I can promise you that.”
Emotion, twisted and tangled, tightened her throat, hoarsened her voice. “But will it be a good life for you, love?”
Jacquin blinked, mouth pressing tight closed on whatever he meant to say. His shoulders sagged. And there it was, the truth of it all.
She went to him because she could, now, in a way that had been impossible for her even a few weeks ago. She went to her knees in front of him on the hard boards, her gown doing little to cushion but not caring. She took his hands in hers, this time, reversing the roles. She squeezed gently.
“I could never,” she said, “ask you to give up who you are to make a life with me. Not ever, Jacquin. I care for you too fully to expect such a sacrifice.”
He took his hand from hers to touch her cheek, then slide it to the back of her neck and anchor there. To pull her close and kiss her, softly this time, and without forced passion. He rested his forehead to hers, eyes closed, for a full long moment before he let her go.
“Care too fully,” he echoed with a hollow laugh. “But not love.”
So much had changed, as she’d said, and Annalise felt wrung out from it. Torn up. What she’d thought was love had turned to somewhat else; what she’d believed was loathing had become somewhat new, as well.
“I will always care for you. And love you as my dearest friend. The way we have ever been, Jacquin.”
His brow lowered. Another grim look. He stood, leaving her behind to once again look out over the pond. His fine clothes hung off him as though somehow he’d shrunk in the past few moments. He put his hands on the railing, shoulders hunched, and when he spoke, he sounded nothing like the merry Jacquin Annalise had always known.
“Tell me something.”
“Anything.”
“Is it because you’ve truly found a calling?”
Annalise hesitated in her answer to be certain she didn’t lie. Jacquin didn’t turn to look at her. She sighed. “I wish I could tell you yes, or no, but the truth is I have no answer for that. If you asked me that yestermorn, I’d have easily said yes. But now, here with you, I can only be certain I know what I do not want rather than being sure of what I do.”
He kept his back to her. “So you would continue on this path?”
“That of training in the Order? I don’t seek to leave it now, no.”
“That’s not what I meant. This path, this refusal not to break our betrothal.”
At this, she hesitated again. “If I dissolve it, will you require of my father the full price of the contract?”
“Yes.”
She flinched at that, thinking he’d never been so stern before, but knowing he was in the right to demand her father pay.
He turned. “I could earn a pretty sum for the expense of losing you, Annalise. I could live quite well upon it, should your father have it to give, which I know for a fact he does not. He’d have to tithe himself to me for a goodly long time, not to mention that I’m fair certain such a break would urge him to put me from the trade altogether and leave me with naught but the pittance he could provide each year.”
“It does so often come to money,” she said. “I told you.”
Jacquin didn’t laugh. His gaze darkened. “You know I’m the youngest son, not the heir, not even eligible to inherit a bedamned thing from my father, should he ever even die. You know my chance of making any success for myself came from aligning myself with your father, taking over his business, for he’s made a good reputation even if he’s had no success with keeping hold of his coin. It was to be the perfect arrangement. You the last daughter, I the final son. And now . . . there is nothing. If we don’t wed, your father will put me from the trade and I will have naught but the taste of success to sustain me. Even if I were so bold as to attempt to simply take his business, I’d have no capital for it. How much longer do you think your father will accept this arrangement, Annalise? Or the Order? At some point you must decide, become a Handmaiden. Or come home.”
“I can’t decide now.”
“How long can you stay here without it?”
She shrugged. “They don’t judge by how long the journey, only the destination. Forever, I suppose, so long as I’m still working toward my goal.”
“Could you be happy here? Really, sweetheart, in that drab gown, in the company of women, no outlet for your passion?”
“In years, perhaps my father would have enough to pay you off appropriately,” she said, “should I break from you then. Or you could have earned enough, built enough of your own contacts, to be a success out from beneath his wing.”
“Do you really want to stay here for years? Do you really expect me to wait that long, putting off the questions, convincing your father to keep me on as the son-in-law his daughter refuses to take? Your father’s a sorely poor businessman with a tendency toward indulgences, but he’s far from stupid. He’s already begun questioning your progress. My intentions. And he knows . . . he suspects, sweetheart.”
“What? That this was a plot?”
“Your reasons for making it,” Jacquin said. “I’ve been discreet, but people do talk.”
“Allow me to ask you this. If not for my father’s business, would you wish to marry me?”
“I care for you fully,” Jacquin said from twisted lips. “We have ever been the best of friends.”
What she’d meant as compliment, he’d turned to insult. “Answer my question.”
He said nothing.
She wanted none of this. Not his anger or disdain, not knowing everything for which she’d wished for the past two years had become as naught. She didn’t touch him. They stared at each other, a distance between them that had never been there and she feared now ever would.
“I will not break with you, Jacquin. Go and tell my father I have doubts about my calling, but I need a bit more time to discern if what I feel is true. Go and . . . do whatever it is you wish.”
He gave her a stiff half bow. She couldn’t recall if he’d ever been so formal with her. She curtsied, knowing she’d never done such a thing for him.
“This can’t go on forever, Annalise.”
“I might be asked to take my vows. If I discover this is a true calling, and I become a Handmaiden, what then?”
“Then you’ll have no choice but to break with me.”
“Then I suppose you’d be well served to do your best in filling my father’s coffers, so that when the time comes you might profit.” Cold words said with too much heat.
The kiss surprised her, harsh and fierce as it was, and she froze in his embrace. When he moved his mouth to her ear, the wet heat of his words made her shiver. His hands gripped her tight, too tight, and for the first time since ever she’d known him, Annalise feared the man holding her so close.
“Everything I have I would hold as close as this. And yet you are forcing me to let it go.”
He let her go as he said it. She pushed away from him. “Has it come to such a thing, that we should be enemies?�
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“Such a decision, I would say, is yours to make. As you’ve made it clear I can do naught to otherwise sway you.”
Her jaw tightened, briefly. “Did you really think all it would take was a few kisses to convince me?”
“It could’ve been more than that.”
“Here? In the gazebo? Where any might see? Surely you don’t think I’m such a doxy as that, Jacquin!”
He stared hard and made no reply.
She gasped at the affront and turned on her heel. She was already halfway down the hill before he caught up to her, fingertips snagging her sleeve and turning her. A breeze blew the lace at his throat, and it seemed ever more flouncy and unnecessary an accessory.
“You,” she said through gritted teeth, “take your hand away from me. Right now.”
He did, but her arm hurt where he’d squeezed. “When you become a Handmaiden, you’ll do whatever your patron needs, yes?”
“Yes. That’s the purpose.”
“So why not take me as your patron, then? Do what I need? What I want? What difference is there between serving some stranger and giving me what I require? You’ll balk at my affections yet suck a stranger’s cock? What sort of calling is that?”
“There’s so much more to it than that!”
“Then why not me?” Jacquin demanded.
“Giving you what you want is not the purpose of a Handmaiden!”
“Oh, yes. Solace. Well, let me tell you, sweetheart, I can assure you that I should achieve solace should you just come back home and wed me as we’d arranged, so that I might continue as we planned.”
“As you planned, and my father planned!”
“And as you desired!” Jacquin spit to the side.
“I begin to believe you never cared for me as you say, if you could so turn upon me now. I would imagine if your affection was real, you’d be happy for me should I discover this calling is true. If I should decide to become a Handmaiden, I’d be doing good for the world. It’s no small thing, Jacquin. If this is truly my path, I would imagine you might be more willing to honor it.”
“You’re being selfish,” he said.
This took her aback near more than anything else he’d said, and the words rose without effort. “Selfish is the heart that thinks first of itself.”