He cut up the meat, knowing by its superior quality that the cook had thought the meal was for Master Ryan. None of the food at the Teahouse was substandard, but there was defiantly more effort put into this than anyone else in the brothel. It made eating it slowly a rather exquisite torture.<br/><br/>His gaze lifted again, and tilted his head slightly, an almost shy smile twitching his lips. “Oh. My father use to cap horse bids at five times the animal’s worth. Bids rarely got so high, but it stopped the animals being returned with a limp and a judge’s warning. But whores are not horses, and I was merely curious,” he said, his voice low and warm, a tone he hadn’t had cause to use under the Teahouse’s roof. He regretted having to tell the velvet lie, the truth about his father masking his real drive for asking. “I’ve only observed these sorts of actions from afar, I don’t understand them as well as I maybe should.” He’d never gotten one himself, and he’d not been more than a witness in the ones that had been going on in the Houses he’d worked before the Briars. And there were no virgins in that hellpit, though there had been other things auctioned there.<br/><br/>Atticus lowered his gaze to the sliced up meat and speared a piece and toyed with the fork’s shaft for a moment as he settled his thoughts. He understood that his position had not changed, that Master Ryan was still that; the master. Atticus was still staff. He had no right to try and tamper with brothel business, not even to offer advice. Not that Master Ryan needed any, especially not from him.<br/><br/>He lifted the fork and ate the morsel, his eyes shutting a moment in pleasure at the succulent, spiced taste. It was truly perfection.<br/>