No Greater Pleasure by Megan Hart
“Gabriel,” she said from the doorway to his bedroom as he entered the workroom. “Come to bed, for I am fair certain you are weary.”
Without a word, he did, pushing past her and toward the bed, where he lay down. She took off his shoes and did what she could to make him comfortable before she slipped into the bed next to him and put her arms around him.
“I don’t love him,” she whispered against Gabriel’s shoulder.
He turned to face her, his arms going around her and gathering her close. She felt wetness against her cheek as he pressed his face to hers, the covers a cocoon around them, a cave. A shield.
And they needed to say nothing more after that.
Chapter 13
It was the first time she had known him not to work. Gabriel stayed in bed all day, the rise and fall of his breathing like a metronome in the blinds-dimmed room.
Quilla stayed with him until she was certain he would not wake anytime soon, and then she slipped from bed and washed and dressed, and she went to a part of the house in which she’d never been.
Saradin Delessan’s rooms were luxurious, spacious, and well appointed, with tall windows letting in the sunlight. A fire crackled in the grate, but the room still kept a chill.
The mistress sat in a chair near the window. Her hair unkempt, her clothes in disarray, she looked up when Quilla came in. Her eyes blazed. Her mouth twisted, and she laughed.
Quilla sat down in the chair across from her patron’s wife, looking at the other woman calmly. Saradin laughed harder, her chest hitching. Silver drool strung itself from her mouth. The laugh became a cackle and a shriek. Saradin leaned forward, mouth stretched with the screaming giggles, pausing every so often to take in a deep, gasping breath before starting to laugh again.
Quilla watched her without expression for a few moments. Then she slapped Saradin’s face hard enough to almost knock the other woman off her seat. Saradin’s laughter cut off sharply, leaving behind silence.
Her hand went to her cheek, where the white imprint of Quilla’s fingers was filling in with red. The blow had knocked her sideways, and now she turned upright, slowly. A low, grinding growl came from her throat. She used the heel of her hand to wipe the spittle from her chin.
“You dare.”
“I dare,” replied Quilla. “Sit up straight and listen to me, Saradin Delessan.”
Saradin did, the sly light of madness still in her eyes but underlaid now with comprehension. She spat to one side and touched her lips as though to check for blood, but there was none. Quilla had been careful not to cut her, though Saradin had not shown her the same consideration.
“You will listen to me,” Quilla told her without inflection, neither kindness nor cruelty.
Saradin nodded.
Quilla leaned forward to look into Saradin’s eyes. “You will stop your torture of him, do you understand? You will cease this badgering. You will cease these histrionics, these hysterics, you will keep yourself under control.”
One short burst of laughter escaped Saradin’s lips but she clamped her mouth shut on it immediately. “I am mad, unless you hadn’t heard.”
“We are all of us mad,” replied Quilla, an edge of ice creeping into her tone. “We are all of us damaged in some way.”
Saradin’s body quivered and her eyes fluttered. More drool puddled at the corners of her mouth, and she wiped it away. “You think ’tis so simple?”
“No. I do not think ’tis simple at all. But I do believe it is necessary.” Quilla sat back in her chair, watching the other woman. “You are a spiteful, selfish, and shameless bint, but you are his wife and the mother of his child. Gabriel feels he has a duty to you. And you are making him sick from it.”
A flash of something—grief, perhaps, if the woman could feel it—shaded Saradin’s green eyes momentarily gray. “I only want to love him.”
“No. You only want him to love you. ’Tis not the same thing at all.” Quilla looked her over, this woman who had everything any woman could have wanted, and who had thrown it all away.
Saradin didn’t flinch. A grin stretched her mouth, baring teeth. “And what threat do you promise, should I discover my madness unchanged, my mind unhinged? What threat do you promise, if my mind is unhinged? What threat? What threat do you promise?” Her repeated words were not rambling mutters, but purposeful spears of language, thrown with skill.
“There is no help for your madness,” said Quilla. “I merely tell you to cease being such an unbearable bitch.”
Saradin turned her face so her mouth whispered against Quilla’s ear, almost a kiss. “You ask me to do this for him?”
“No, my lady,” replied Quilla, in her own whisper. “For yourself, for I daresay that is the one person for whom you have ever done anything.”
“And if I do not? Do not? And if. I. Do. Not?”
Quilla leaned in even closer, keeping her voice pitched low. “Then I will take him away from you entirely, you stupid bitch, and you will have nothing.”
Saradin’s hand flashed out and tangled in Quilla’s hair, yanking her head back. It hurt, but Quilla made no sign of it. The woman was fast, and yes, she was mad—but she was not entirely unpredictable.
“I would like to kill you.”
“I don’t doubt that, my lady. But you won’t.”
“No?” Saradin sneered, yanking Quilla’s head back farther and shaking her. She was strong, for being so small. “It would not be the first time.”
“Say you true?” Quilla put her hand over Saradin’s and used the leverage to stand. Though the other woman still had a handful of her hair, Quilla’s height allowed her to shove Saradin into her chair again.
Saradin let go of Quilla. “The eel enjoyed her. As he’d enjoy you, too.”
Quilla looked at her. “You killed the other maid. The one who carried his child?”
Saradin pulled her feet up onto the chair and wrapped her arms around her knees, her body shuddering and quaking again. Her teeth chattered. “Bitch thought to give him a son, a real son, his son. Bitch thought to take my place. Little cunt thought to replace me . . .” Her voice trailed off and she laughed again. “I don’t think he ever fucked her, mind. I don’t think he did. She wanted him, though, I knew it, I smelled it on her, saw it in her eyes, smelled it and tasted it on her. . . .”
“You killed her and she was not even his lover?” Quilla’s voice dipped low with disgust.
Saradin’s strangled laugh edged out from clenched jaws. She shook harder, eyes fluttering. Her fingers linked so tight her knuckles turned white as she held her knees close to her body.
“He is mine, he is mine, he is mine, Handmaiden, and you can fuck him but he is mine!”
Quilla stood. “Remember what I said, Saradin.”
Saradin sneered and spat again on the floor, turning her face away, but she did not argue. “Get out of my room.”
“If you truly love him, you would not hurt him so.”
“I said get out!”
Quilla looked again at the woman, but said nothing else, and left her to her madness.
Don’t know what he thinks we’ll do without Allora Walles.” Florentine’s muttered grumble caught Quilla’s ear. “He has dismissed Allora because she did not do her duty, Florentine.”
The chatelaine sniffed and added spice to the stew before turning from the fireplace, hands on her ample hips. “And left us the burden of caring for her, instead!”
“She doesn’t leave her room,” said Quilla implacably, arranging her tray of tea and biscuits.
Since Quilla’s talk with her, Gabriel’s wife had not made a peep. She’d stayed in her room, not speaking, barely moving from the window long enough to eat or sleep. It had been almost a week.
Rossi had been promoted to the position of lady’s maid, which seemed to thrill her and cause Florentine what seemed to be an unwarranted amount of consternation. Now, the cook frowned and looked Quilla up and down.
“Rossi isn’t made for that job, bein
Something in the way Florentine said the girl’s name made Quilla look up from the plate of biscuits. “Her charge has been most subdued, Florentine. I should think Rossi would enjoy the respite.”
Florentine frowned. “I like Rossi here. She’s the best of the three.”
“Most likely why Gabriel chose her.” Quilla studied her friend, realization dawning along with a slow smile. “Florentine. You and Rossi?”
Florentine looked startled, then scowled, bustling around the kitchen and not looking at Quilla.
Quilla laughed lightly. “That’s . . .”
“ ’Tis what?” cried Florentine, turning, eyes ablaze. “ ’Tis what?”
“Lovely,” said Quilla. “Lovely for the pair of you to have found one another.”
Some of the fire went out of Florentine’s gaze, but she didn’t soften entirely. “She’s too young.”
“Florentine, you’re far from too old.”
The cook bent back to her work, using sharp movements that betrayed her agitation. “I was a lad a long, long time ago.”
Quilla put down her tray and went to the other woman, touched her shoulder. Florentine looked up, her face softer than Quilla had ever seen it. She blinked back tears, and the sight of them moved Quilla near to tears herself.
They sat at the same time, Florentine as though her legs had given out, and Quilla following.
“ ’Tis been more than twenty years since I ran from Alyria in the aftermath of the revolution. I’d lived my whole life as a lad, Quilla Caden, and lived in fear of being found out by those who’d have killed me for it.”
Quilla took Florentine’s hand. She knew little about Alyria and the way of life there, just that there had been a war, and that women had once been forced into servitude there.
“They didn’t let us love women,” continued Florentine in a voice unlike her normal bluster. “But I did. Born female, living male, loving women . . . I was a freak of the worst sort. And then, the war, and the women rose up and the prince became our king upon the birth of her son. . . .” Florentine’s voice shuddered. “And they were allowed to take off their veils. I could have become a woman, but I was afraid, Quilla. Because what was I? A man? Or a woman? Living as one and loving the same? So I ran, over the mountains, and then I met Master Gabriel, and he brought me here.”
“And now you’ve found someone to love,” Quilla said gently. “Where is the shame in that? You are as you were made, Florentine. You can be nothing else.”
“If she fails, as Allora did,” Florentine said in a low voice, “he will send her away, as well.”
“Rossi won’t fail. She is smarter than Allora Walles ever was. And Saradin is quiet, now. Rossi will be able to care for her appropriately.”
Florentine took her hand from Quilla’s and wiped her face, voice gruff. “Saradin has been quiet before. I don’t trust her.”
“Nor I,” admitted Quilla. “But I believe Rossi will be fine.”
Florentine sighed. “He never should have married that bint.”
“But he did,” said Quilla with a small smile.
“And now we are all stuck with her.”
“Yes.”
Florentine looked at Quilla. “Would that he’d met you sooner.”
“If he had not married her, he might never have needed me.”
Florentine rolled her eyes. “When will you stop being so bloody complacent?”
“Oh, perhaps when I die,” Quilla teased as she got up to finish with her tray.
“Huh,” huffed Florentine. “Maybe sooner than that.”
“You never know,” answered Quilla. “You never know.”
The wind rustled the leaves in the trees and made Gabriel cough. And heat—welcome at first after the many dreary months of winter. Hot wind and the sound of coughing woke Quilla from her sleep.
The instant she opened her eyes, they stung and watered. Gabriel still coughed beside her in the bed, not beneath the trees in the meadow, not under a hot summer sky. She sat upright into the cloud of smoke hovering over the bed and fell back at once, choking.
Quilla covered her mouth and nose with her hand and shook Gabriel, who had ceased coughing. She cried out his name, but he did not respond. She shook him harder, and he stirred feebly.
From someplace far away, she heard the sound of shouting, mostly drowned out by the roaring that she knew now was not made by the summer breeze in the trees.
“Fire!” Quilla shook Gabriel harder. “Fire! Wake up!”
He didn’t respond. Quilla, still naked, rolled out of bed and hit the floor with a thud hard enough to clack her teeth together. The air was clearer down here, but not by much, and she gasped in a deep breath. She crawled to the privy chamber and reached for the taps on the bathtub. Water splashed, ringing, against the tub’s metal sides. She threw in every towel and washcloth she could find, soaking them before dragging them out. She wrapped one around her body, her head, her hands, then flung the others over her shoulder and crawled back beneath the ever-lowering layer of smoke to the bed.
“Gabriel!”
She slopped the sopping cloths over his face and he startled, eyes opening. She realized she could see him, that the light from outside was highlighting his face, not white moonlight but the shifting red gold of fire.
“Fire!”
He blinked and started to sit. Quilla put her hand on his chest, pointing to the smoke now hovering mere arrows above them. She tugged him until he rolled off the bed and onto the floor.
The fall and the soaked towels seemed to revive him, because he shook himself and reached for her. She could not hear his words, though his lips moved. The noise of the fire, the sound of the rushing wind overwhelmed all other sound.
She helped him wrap himself in the cloths, already drying in the heat. “We have to crawl! Stay low!”
He could not have heard her, but he nodded in understanding. They crawled. The floor under her bare knees was hot. Smoke made her cough and blinded her; her head connected solidly with the door frame because she misjudged the distance. The tears of pain helped wash the smoke from her eyes. Gabriel’s hand closed upon her ankle.
Invisible Mother, Quilla prayed as she crawled. If ever I have offended thee with thought or action, I beg forgiveness. Save your servant, Holy Mother, I beseech thee. Or if not me, please, by the Land Above, save the one I love.
The fire’s roar grew louder in the hall. Quilla could see nothing. Gabriel moved up alongside her, his face so black with smoke the whites of his eyes appeared startling.
“Dane!”
She saw his lips form the name of his son and fear again thudded her heart. She nodded. Dane’s room was on the second floor along with the other bedrooms. To get there, they would have to get down the stairs.
How they made it she would never know, for the smoke curtained the stairs and made watching their path impossible. Backward they went, knees and hands, bumping with every step until, at last, she tumbled backward into the second-floor hall and Gabriel caught her.
“Window!”
Gabriel pointed toward the end of the hall. Quilla nodded. Again, they crawled. Her knees began to bleed. A bit farther down the hall, the prostrate form of a man blocked them.
Bertram, red hair blackened with soot, face smeared with ash, lay unconscious. Quilla unwrapped one of her hands and put the now barely damp towel over his face. He did not wake. She could not feel the beat of his heart or see the rise and fall of his chest, but she did not think he was dead. She did not want to believe it.
Gabriel stood, the upper half of his body disappearing into the smoke. His hands came down to lift Bertram, and Quilla followed as Gabriel dragged the houseboy down the hall.
Glass broke, the pieces like diamonds scattered on the hall carpet. Before she could stop herself, Quilla had crawled atop some of them, and the cuts on her knees bled afresh. She used a towel to brush the floor clear, but glass still stuck in her flesh, and she had no time to
In another moment Gabriel knelt in front of her. Blood streamed down his arms from dozens of cuts on his now bare hands. He put his arm around her waist and hauled her upright. She found the wall with her hand, and then the window frame, still bristling with glass. The air rushing in tasted so sweet she thought she might intoxicate herself with it.
Gabriel yanked the towel from around her head and used it to smash out the rest of the glass from the window frame. He pushed her to the window. He meant to push her out.
“No!” Quilla shook her head, resisting. “Dane!”
Flames licked out of the windows on the second floor. Oh, sweet Invisible Mother! Those are Saradin’s rooms!
In the courtyard below, she saw figures. Billy. Florentine. Some of the stable hands, passing bucket after bucket of water to each other and splashing them at the house. The cobblestones glistened. The snow around the house had melted, leaving bare earth, ringed with white, behind.
“Go, Quilla!”
“No! I won’t leave you!”
Just below them was the roof to the small portico. The snow had melted off it and was running in rivulets down the gutter. Bertram lay on the ground just below it, one of the housemaids bent over him.
“Go, Quilla!”
She shook her head, resisting. Gabriel gave her no other chance at protest. He grabbed her arms, the pain of her unhealed wound making her cry out. He lifted her over the sill. Her hands grabbed for purchase. He pushed harder. A piece of glass he’d missed tore the flesh of her palm. Blood made her grasp slip. She dangled, falling, and only his grip upon her arm kept her from tumbling to the ground.
Gabriel lowered her as far as he could. Her toes brushed the roof of the portico. He let her go. Quilla stumbled, slipped, and went down hard enough to crack the clay tiles. She tried to scream but had no breath. She slid toward the edge of the roof until her feet hooked into the gutter and stopped her from going all the way over. She slipped more, scraping her side along the gutter as she rolled over the side, but managing to catch herself at the last minute yet again.