Pleasure and Purpose (21 page)

"Because it would be most merry to see how long it takes us to find the center, and because I fancy finding out how private such a place might be." Forcing away her dark thoughts, she grinned at him, then dropped a slow wink.

Cillian, for all his swaggering and his private room full of naked women, blushed. The color rose high on his cheeks and sent heat swirling throughout her body at the sight. This man . . . oh, this man was not at all what she'd expected.

"I haven't been to the center," Cillian said, but followed. Like lovers, they strolled through the gate of woven vines laced with bits of ribbon and beads. Honesty paused to set one strand to swinging. "What are these?" He laughed. "They're called braggart's laces."

Honesty stroked along another length of satin with a glass bead dangling from the end.

"And what do they do?"

"They're left by those who've visited the maze. If a couple has been . . . intimate . . . whilst inside, the gentleman begs a bit of lace or ribbon and a bead from the lady, and they string it there."

"How unfortunate I don't have any extra beads with me, then." She watched him, curious at how he reacted to her gentle teasing, and when he hesitated under the gate, she stopped to tip her face to his. "At home, we had a gate much like this leading into my father's orchards. But nobody hung beads and ribbon. We called it the kissing gate, though. Because every time you passed beneath, you were supposed to kiss your fingertips and press them to the vines. For luck. And if you happened beneath the gate at the same time as another ..."

"You kissed them?" Cillian laughed.

Honesty tipped her face farther, lips pursed. He didn't bend to kiss her. He looked around as though checking to see if they would be seen, and Honesty tucked this observation away the way she'd done with everything else over the past few days. He was a puzzle she couldn't stop herself from wishing to solve.

"You kissed them," she said. "For luck."

"Let it never be said I've too much luck to throw away the chance for more." Cillian angled his mouth above hers.

The kiss was brief and almost chaste, but it was enough to satisfy her for the moment. She tugged his hand and drew him into the maze, which was well plotted, with dead ends aplenty and many alcoves perfectly suited for intimacies. She took advantage of the ones they discovered, finding that each time she kissed him or urged him to kiss her, the prince softened a bit more until by the time they discovered the maze's center, they both were breathing fast and grinning. She moved to the low stone bench set in front of a small ornamental pond.

Cillian didn't follow at first, even when Honesty leaned back to give him room beside her. He swiped a hand across the back of his mouth and then over his hair, which had begun to come loose from the braid she'd tied in it earlier. He went to the pond and knelt to peer into the water.

"It's lovely here," he said.

"It is. You've never been?" Honesty watched as Cillian dipped his fingertips in the water and then wiped them without concern on his trouser leg. She'd not have imagined him to ever be so careless with his clothes.

He shook his head. "No. This is a place for lovers."

"But you've had—" His expression stilled her tongue. "You've had lovers, Cillian." He shrugged and looked away. "No. Not the sort one brings to a garden maze."

"I find that difficult to believe."

He shrugged again. "Do you, truly? When you know all about me? She'd yet to read the documents about him, her reluctance ridiculous now as well as shameful. She couldn't tell him she hadn't thought him worth the effort at first. "You've brought me here, now."

He laughed and shook his head. "I believe you've brought me, Honesty. Not the other way 'round."

"Very well. So I've brought you here to the center of this maze. Shall you have your wicked way with me?" She gestured again for him to sit beside her, and this time, he did. She stroked a tendril of hair from his cheek. "Cillian. I have no ribbons or beads, but I think I'd like to give you something to brag upon."

"Is that what I need? To make love to you on the grass in front of that pond?" He turned his head to kiss the hand stroking his hair. "How do you know me, Honesty, that you might decide what my soul needs, truly?"

He wasn't the first to ask her, and she answered him as she did everyone else. "Not everything I do is based on some grand cosmic scheme."

He kissed her hand again and captured it between his. "I thought everything you did was designed to send me toward solace. I thought you did nothing else but work toward that goal. So you could leave."

"I . . ." Words failed her, for to speak anything but agreement would be a lie.

"I know it's the truth. I was a fool to believe there could be anything different about a Handmaiden than any other woman. I was . . . well, I was a madman." Cillian pressed the flat of her hand to his cheek. "But I thank you for staying. I do feel more at peace with you at my side."

A blithe reply rose to her lips and hovered there without leaping free. The first time she'd seen him he'd been flogging a woman tied to an ironwood cross with a group of naked women waiting for his attentions, and she'd assumed he'd be easy to put aside. Honesty swallowed guilt, the taste bitter on her tongue. She'd set out to fail him, and she'd nearly managed.

She couldn't do it.

Honesty swallowed the pretty speech that would do everything to make him happy and yet would still be false. "I wanted to fail you."

He didn't even give her a curious look. "Of course you did. You arrived to find me in my playroom . . . and my temper ... I am impossible, as I've been so often told. I'm more than you should have been given. I understand."

Honesty shook her head. "No, Cillian. You don't understand.

My desire to leave had nothing to do with you. I didn't even know you. She shifted closer, and he put their hands, fingers tangled, into his lap. When he didn't answer, Honesty took a deep breath and gave him the truth. "I've long felt I was no longer suited to this vocation. Each time I helped a patron toward solace I was left a bit emptier. My last patron . . . she was very ill. I thought it would be a few weeks before she passed into the Land Above, yet she lingered for months. Nothing I did could possibly bring her any comfort, other than the most basic of physical, and I'm a Handmaiden, not a medicus. I could do nothing for her, but leaving meant being assigned a new patron. One who'd demand rather more of me than I'd grown accustomed to providing."

"A patron such as I."

"Yes. Just like you." She leaned to kiss his mouth, but tenderly. "One who truly needed me."

Cillian said nothing.

Honesty sat back but didn't let go of his hands. "I knew I couldn't possibly provide you with what you needed any more than I could have done it for my last patron. Only unlike her, the failure to serve would have come from inside me, not circumstances I couldn't control. And for the first time since joining the Order, I didn't care. I plead your mercy. I shouldn't have taken this assignment."

"But you did. And you stayed."

She ducked her head and chuckled. "I haven't had a bed partner in a long time. I . . . was weak."

Cillian made a soft noise. "I thought they would send me someone who would change everything."

Honesty didn't let go of his hands, a decision rising from inside her. "You've not found it to be so. I plead your mercy. There's still time."

Cillian's laugh had little humor to it. "One always imagines it would be so, yes?"

"I would make it so." She watched him while he pulled his hands gently from hers and got off the bench to stare again at the pond.

"I've never courted a woman, Honesty. Nor a man, for that matter. I have never pinned a posy on anyone during the Feast of Sinder, and I haven't ever walked hand-in-hand or whispered love poetry. I had ever thought when I was a lad there would be time for me to do such things, that I would, one day, wed and have children and take the throne from my father."

"And why should you not expect that to happen now?" Curious, she watched him pace, his fine boots scuffing the neatly trimmed grass.

"With whom? With you?"

Honesty watched him in silence for a few minutes before replying. "Perhaps not from me. But after me. If I do the work I was sent to do."

He laughed, low. "I shouldn't have sent for you. I should send you away, but I find myself unable."

Her heart stuttered at his words. She reached for his hand. "Then I shall find myself unable to go."

Cillian had long known he was a coward. If he were not, he'd have put Lord Devain in his place some time ago. Instead he'd watched the son-of-a-bastard seek to replace him in the king's affections. It hadn't been difficult. King Allwyn had ever looked at his son and seen his dead wife's face, and while any amount of prancing ponies and sweets had convinced the king he loved his boy, it had never done much to convince Cillian. Now he watched Devain whisper into the king's ear. Something snide, by the way Gillian's father chortled and gestured for another platter of pastries to be brought from the long buffet table set for the court to enjoy.

He had his own plate of food brought to him by Honesty, who'd filled it with all his favorites without asking what he liked. He didn't know if she'd guessed or if she'd remembered a list from something he'd filled out and sent to the Order, but it didn't matter. She'd brought it to him without him having to ask.

Now she sat with a book in the chair behind him. Not at his side, for that would be inappropriate, but nor was she hidden away. Nobody had commented when they arrived, though her presence on his arm had earned a few curious looks. He hadn't presented her to his father. She wasn't his betrothed.

But she was special, he thought, watching her flip through the pages of a text he'd found so deadly dull he'd never read past the first few chapters. She glanced up and saw him looking and gave him a smile he returned. She did know what he needed. Only a few days had passed since the conversation in the garden maze, but everything had changed for the better since then. He wasn't foolish enough to believe sex had caused the difference, but what it was, exactly, Cillian didn't know. She'd warmed to him, somehow, and he'd . . . well. . .

He trusted her.

The Order had sent her because she was best suited to him. She would do her best for him, and not only because it was her purpose. He believed it would be her pleasure, too. She was no Stillness, not what his dear Edward had found, but then he wasn't Edward and would never be.

He'd asked her to come with him today because he found with Honesty at his side, nothing seemed to urge him into a temper the way most everything did without her. Though she hadn't taken over his every whim—the tea had gone unboiled and the tidying had been left to the maid she'd reinstated, but more often than not it was the simple, quiet touch of her hand or her smile that led him toward peace when he felt himself leaning toward rage. She walked with him in the gardens and listened to him talk as though every word he said made utter sense, and she urged him to laughter with her gentle jests. She slept beside him and rose beside him, and the day only truly began at the moment he first saw her smile.

The men waiting to speak with him were impatient, but he made them wait as he took his seat at the table on the dais where they would come to plead for what they wanted. As head of the Council of Fashion, he didn't have much of import or interest to decide. Setting the length of trousers and dip of decolletage, determining which jewels were in style and which wouldn't be seen on any noble of worth had little value to him other than it gave him control over those who sneered behind their hands at him. More than once Cillian had deliberately set a style that wouldn't flatter someone who'd irritated him, which had been most of his father's court at one time or another.

Now he listened to all those who'd come to make requests. Velvet merchants, gemists, leather makers. And through every boon granted and every one turned away, Cillian watched Devain court his father.

Devain saw him watching, even if the king didn't, and when the last merchant had gone, he left Allwyn's side and made his way toward Cillian. "Is now the time?"

"I've just finished." Cillian affected a disinterested tone that fooled neither of them. Devain put a foot on the dais and an elbow on his knee, his chin in his hand, to stare upward. He flicked a glance toward the king Cillian couldn't miss. "I think you'll have time to listen to me. Won't you? It's about a new shipment of Alyrian lace I'm expecting."

"Alyrian lace is heavily taxed." By long custom, not Cillian's choice, but one he'd never changed.

"That's what I want to speak to you about."

Cillian had imagined as much. It was impossible to keep the curl from his lip. "I'm in no mood to favor changing a long-structured tax, Devain. That tax provides a tidy source of income."

Devain raised a brow. "Indeed I know it, for I've paid it often enough. But surely you can see the . . . advantages ... to granting an exemption."

"To you? And not to anyone else?"

Devain inclined his head in a manner meant to be graceful. "There would be advantages, as I said, in your granting exemptions for certain businesses. There would be disadvantages to denying them, I think."

Cillian's stomach churned. Devain had never asked him for a boon. His dabbling in the fashion industry had begun only recently. Rumor had it his home estates had been mismanaged. Some said it was because Devain's wife had let the field manager she was fucking woo her into making bad decisions with the crops. Rumor had it Devain was more inflamed by her lack of judgment in the management of their finances than in who she let into their marriage bed, and Cillian had no trouble believing this was true. Even so, until now Devain had kept his financial interests far from anything to which Cillian could provide benefit. His courting of the king had been a subtle insult all noted but none spoke on, unless the rumors had been so well kept from Cillian he'd not heard them, and he had no trouble believing that to be true, as well.