Free Selfish is the Heart by Megan Hart Page B

and hem, the cut of his trousers. She studied his hair and then focused on his face.
    “Temple priests,” she said thoughtfully, “shave their heads. So you are not a priest.”
    Even now, so many years later, this struck a small pain just below his breastbone and deep within his gut. “No.”
    “So. What are you here to test me on?”
    At least she hadn’t burst into tears. “What might you think I’m here to test you on?”
    “Ha!”
    She stepped back, twirling so the hem of her gown swirled around her boots. They were not Order-given, he saw that, but a fine travel pair she must’ve worn here. So she had been better prepared for her journey than he’d thought. The gown, though, was different. It didn’t suit her as well as her own had.
    “Is that my test? To figure your purpose?”
    Cassian sat in the empty chair and put his hands on his knees. He didn’t turn to look at her, even though she stood in his line of vision. He said nothing.
    The sound of their breathing grew very loud.
    “You won’t tell me? The others all told me. It was tedious but not shocking, any of it,” Annalise murmured finally. “I knew my letters and numbers. I knew the story of the Holy Family, more than one, in fact. I knew how to serve tea without spilling. But now . . . now, sir, what could you be here to test?”
    Her voice had dipped low, Sinder help him, deep and thick and rich as puddled honey. Women of all ages came to seek service in the Order, and they all went through the testing—but Cassian was not always called in to assist. Most often he dealt with the girls, the simpering gigglers with youth and exuberance propelling them swifter than wisdom.
    Annalise was no girl.
    “I know. You’re a man. I am a woman. I know what you’re here to learn of me.”
    “If you know,” Cassian said, “you’d be one of the first to guess without prompting.”
    She had a lovely laugh, sweet but edged with wickedness. It was designed to turn men’s heads and draw women in close. Cassian didn’t look. He did not move.
    Annalise moved around him in a slow circle as she spoke. “They tested me on many skills, but have said naught so far of what a Handmaiden is expected to do for her patrons beyond making tea and reading aloud. We all know there’s more to it than that, yes?”
    “Sometimes. I would not presume to speak for every patron or every Handmaiden.”
    “And I should not, either,” she murmured. “You need not say so aloud to chastise me. I understand when I’ve overstepped.”
    At this, finally, he looked at her. “Do you? I find that difficult to believe, given our previous conversations.”
    “You mean the ones in which you insulted me and led me astray?”
    “And yet here you are.”
    She stopped in front of him. With him seated and her standing, his gaze leveled at her breasts. He looked at her face, instead.
    For the first time since their meeting in the forest, he saw hesitation in her gaze. Her tongue slipped out, soft and pink, to trace the fullness of her bottom lip. She stiffened her shoulders.
    “Here we both are.”
    He looked, and looked again. Annalise didn’t turn her gaze from his. He admired her for that.
    “You are not here to see how rapidly I can divide a column of numbers.”
    “No. Not that.”
    She swallowed, and the motion of her throat working drew his gaze despite his best intentions to keep his eyes on hers. Her breasts lifted and fell with her breath. Her hands clenched at her sides.
    Then, slowly but with grace, Annalise sank to her knees.
    The sight of a woman in such a pose ought to no longer move him, but Cassian was still a man. Something tightened inside him when she tilted her face to look up at him from her place a scant measure from his feet, placed so firmly on the floor. Her skirt had tangled about her legs, and he reminded himself she was new to this—perhaps not to being on her knees, but to serving.
    She’d not yet learned to Wait, and that, too, would come in time.