Selfish is the Heart (15 page)

He drew himself up, shoulders stiff, making himself a rock. “You are required to act as a Handmaiden, Mistress Marony, whether you’ve taken your vows or not.”

Void take her, she laughed at that. Low and sweet, the sound set the hairs on the back of his neck upright. She shook her head.

“Ah, Master Toquin. I’ve seen you practicing the Art in the mornings. How do you figure any of us learn to please a patron in the most basic manner if we don’t practice our own . . . art?”

He didn’t want to think of her with those men, and didn’t want to think of why the thought so set him back. He wasn’t blind. He knew the women sought their pleasure from the few men here upon the estate—he’d been approached more than once himself, after all. Roget was wrong in that Cassian never faced temptation.

“Then go back to them,” he said in a voice thick with disdain. “Finish what I interrupted.”

He walked again, putting her behind him. Her voice followed, if she did not. He didn’t want to let it slow him, but it did, so that he might fully hear what she had to say.

“Thank you for rescuing me,” Annalise called softly.

“You didn’t need rescue.”

“But you were there anyway.”

He wanted to denounce this as coincidence, of no consequence, but his mouth knew it as a lie and wouldn’t form the words. He kept his silence, then. From behind him he heard another laugh, then the soft swish of her slippers in the grass.

When he turned at last, she wasn’t there, and where she’d gone Cassian could not tell.

A
t last, a letter came. Annalise recognized Jacquin’s hand on the envelope before she flipped it to reveal the wax pressed with his family’s seal. Her betrothed had sent her a missive and her own parents had not. She couldn’t say why this so amused and touched her, only that it did.

She found the letter slipped beneath her door upon rising in the morning, but as the chime for morning service had already sounded and she was going to be late no matter how she might run, Annalise had folded the soft paper into a double square so the thickness of it became unwieldy and slipped it into her sleeve. It scratched her arm, gouged her deep, left her distracted. What had he written? What had happened since she’d been gone?

Services had become no more bearable, the only point of light was the fact she never had to explain her reason for silence. If she could not, or would not speak for herself, the priests did it for her. Even so, she could scarcely pull out the letter and read it right there in the temple, nor at the morning meal after. Not if she wanted to read it in privacy without someone seeking to tug it away from her, either the letter itself or the contents.

No, she wanted to read it, but alone, and there was very little time or space to be alone as a novitiate. So Annalise kept the letter in her sleeve where it might remind her without cease of news from home.

By the afternoon, anticipation had worn a hole in her patience. She took her customary place in Master Toquin’s classroom and slipped the letter from her sleeve onto the desk in front of her. The man would begin his lessons, talking on and on, and the other girls would spend the time with vapid questions, grasping at the most basic philosophies and yet never catching them. He’d never called on her because she always had an answer or another question for him, and since three nights ago when he found her behind the stables, he’d ignored her even further. She’d have plenty of time to read her letter.

In her school days, Annalise had perfected the art of reading notes slipped to her by her classmates and hidden in the text or beneath the slateboard. She made no such effort now. She was no longer a girl and these classes earned no grades.

So when the shadow sifted over the letters, words, sentences, Annalise looked up expecting to see one of the other girls, curious about what she was doing. Toquin stood over her desk. He did not look happy.

“This is not the place for personal correspondences.”

Annalise did not often find herself without words, and this occasion was no different. “I’ve read the text you assigned already.”

“There are others to be studied.”

Annalise took the time to look around the room at the other novitiates, all of whom had left off their studies to watch. Her stomach had clenched and dropped at the sound of his voice, but she drew a deep breath before she replied. She was not a child.

“I know those as well, sir, which I believe you might well have guessed.”

“Are you saying you so well understand the Word of the Book you need study no further?” He had thick, dark lashes that closed over eyes the deep, bitter brown of cacao.

“I’ve studied the words in this text, yes.”

“Scholars tend their lessons for lifetimes without fully comprehending the entire Word, and you’d have me believe you’ve accomplished what they give their lives to do?” Toquin looked over the letter Annalise hadn’t tried to cover up. “And for what? This?”

He snatched up the letter and read the first line, his eyes shifting over the words. “A love letter?”

“Is it a love letter? It would appear you’ve more knowledge of it than I, since I’ve barely had the chance to read it.” She held out her hand, but he didn’t return it.

“This is not the place,” he said again, “for your personal correspondences.”

Annalise pushed away from the desk and stood, her fingers stiff not from fear but anger. “Then I shall tuck it away to be read another time.”

She held out her hand, but Toquin backed away, letter kept tight, reading it as he went. He backed up against his desk and stopped, eyes roaming over the words as Annalise could only stare in sick and silent outrage. She looked ’round the room once more, but nobody dared stare this time.

Annalise clenched her fists at her sides but didn’t stride to him or yank the paper from his grasp. “Give me back my letter.”

He looked up at her then, the letter folding into squares in his long, strong fingers. “Tell me the name of the forest in which Sinder came upon Kedalya.”

“What?” Annalise opened her hand. Her nails had left small marks in the palms.

“The name of the forest. A scholar would know it.”

Murmurs and shuffles smoothed over her, but if anyone were looking at her, she ignored them. Annalise swiped her tongue over her lips and swallowed against sudden dryness. He watched her as she did, not with the quick, sharp eyes of a cat with its prey but a flat, dead gaze.

“I’ve made no claims to be a scholar—”

“Your mercy,” he cut in smoothly. Snide. “You’re greater than a scholar, for you’ve studied all these texts and know them well enough to need no further instruction. So tell me the name of the forest.”

“You hold my missive prisoner for the sake of a name?” She gaped at him but only briefly before she thought of how such an expression might give him pleasure. She sealed her lips, tight and straight, bit her tongue to keep from saying more.

“I would.”

As the youngest of seven daughters, Annalise had been long accustomed to taunts and teases. Favorite dollies stolen and held above her head while she wailed, treats promised but never given. Handed-down finery she’d spent hours in refitting only to lose when the sister who’d given it up found new desire for the fabric or ribbons she added to make it her own.

“The forest in which Sinder first came upon his bride is not referred to by name in the texts you’ve assigned us.” Simple texts, not detailed. Not deep. Perfect as a base for study, but she’d absorbed more than what lay between the pages in her first six years.

His palm closed around the paper of her letter. It would be so well-creased by now, so dampened by being kept next to her skin for so many hours and now held tight in his palm, the ink surely would have run. She’d only read the first few lines. Now perhaps she might not be able to read any of it.

“But it has a name.”

The forest could be said to have more than one name. She didn’t know all of them. “If I tell you the name of the forest, you’ll return my letter to me? That is your price?”

“Indeed, mistress. I shall.”

Her jaw went so tight the clicking of her teeth sounded too loud in her ears, blocking even the sudden harsh thump of her heart. Without the assistance of her stays, Annalise had found her posture much less stiff than had been her wont, but now a rod of iron could not have made her back any straighter.

She had options. She could run and snatch at the letter, perhaps struggle for it. She could leave the room and seek a Mother to whom she could complain. Or she could give him what he wanted.

Instead, she sat back at her desk. She settled her journal to one side of the text and her pens in their flannel atop the journal. She folded her hands together, fingers linked tight to keep him from seeing any sight of them trembling.

“No.”

Someone, Wandalette, perhaps, gasped. Toquin held the letter tighter in his fist for one breath, then two, before reaching behind him to place it gently on the top of his desk. He straightened. The high band of his collar bulged with the motion of his throat as he swallowed.

“No,” he murmured.

The chime sounded for the session’s end, but not a person in the room moved. Annalise focused on his face, on the ache in her fingers from clutching them so tight together, on the hard bench beneath her rear and the faintest whiff of breeze come from some unknown source.

“You,” he told the room, “are all dismissed.”

It was as though he’d set them loose, hounds from a gate, the way they all sprung up from their desks and fled the room. Only Annalise lingered, rising slowly from her seat and gathering her belongings while his gaze did its best to weight her shoulders or trip her step.

His voice caught her at the door. “You would leave behind that which you desire to prevent me from gaining?”

She stopped, but didn’t look at him. “The others may be giddy, silly bints. I am not.”

“This show of temper may describe you as otherwise.”

Annalise gave a half turn on the toe of her slipper so that it squeaked on the wood floor. “I’ve not raised my voice. This is no show of temper.”

“Of disobedience, then.”

Again her hands clenched and ached. “I was not aware I’m required to obey you.”

He hadn’t moved even a hair since she’d stood from her seat and made to leave without approaching him. Now he passed a hand along the edge of the desk, over the letter. “You act as no Handmaiden.”

Now she turned fully, so fast her skirts swirled. “I am not
your
Handmaiden, sir. Good day.”

Without a further word or look, Annalise left the room and slammed the door behind her. He would not come after her. Would he?

“Annalise.” Mother Deliberata, who’d been the one to first welcome Annalise to the Order, had just rounded the corner. “Is all well?”

Sister Merriment, who’d been walking arm in arm with the Mother, gave a curious glance to the door behind Annalise. “You fair to shook the door from its hinges.”

“Your mercy. In my haste I was overexuberant in its closure.” Annalise, upon the second curious glance of Sister Merriment at her fists, relaxed her fingers. “If you’ll excuse me?”

“And how are you finding your first days here at the Order?” Deliberata asked calmly, ignoring Annalise’s request. “Have you settled comfortably?”

“Ah, yes, Mother. I have.” It was no lie—aside from the abominable, irascible man inside the room behind her, Annalise had been fully welcomed, or at the least ignored, by everyone else she’d encountered.

“It’s no small thing,” Deliberata continued, “to leave one’s home and family behind, to seek a life of service. If there is aught I can provide for you, Annalise, you must let me or one of the other Mothers know. We seek only to encourage our future sisters, you know.”

Which was a far cry from what she could have expected from other apprenticeships, Annalise well knew. “I understand, Mother. Thank you.”

“It can be difficult to adjust,” Deliberata said with a tilt of her head. “Should you ever feel you cannot mold yourself to our expectations . . .”

Before Annalise could protest against such an event, the door opened behind her. Cassian stepped through it, his mind clearly on other pursuits, as he nearly collided with her. Only his swift reaction, grabbing at her elbow to move her slightly out of the path of his feet, kept her toes from being trod upon. Annalise shivered, remembering how gracefully he’d moved three nights ago.

“Master Toquin,” Deliberata murmured. “I see that you are making haste, as well.”

He would denounce her now. She could be cast from the Order, Annalise knew it, though nobody would dare speak of those who’d been thrown out. There were rules and as Deliberata had said, expectations. Now he would reveal her to be unsuitable or worse, unwilling.

“Your letter,” he said, and her throat closed tight on the breath she’d been sipping. “You left it behind.”

He’d not yet left off his grip of her elbow and now his fingers twitched. The heat of his touch could not possibly have penetrated the weight of her sleeve, and that wasn’t where Annalise felt it. Her belly took the spark and kindled it to flame, fanned higher when she looked directly into his eyes.

He let go of her as if she’d burned him.

“Your letter,” Cassian said again.

Annalise took the proffered paper, folded neatly. She didn’t thank him, not trusting her voice. He was still looking into her eyes, and now he cut his gaze toward Deliberata and Merriment.

“Your mercy, ladies, for the interruption.” With that, he disappeared back into his room.

The door shut behind him with a small, soft click.

With both women staring at her, Annalise slipped the letter discreetly into her sleeve and cleared her throat. “It would seem I have much to learn from Master Toquin in how to properly close a door.”