[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
don't be pestering your mother. She has a very bad hangover."
"A
hang over?" Nikki clearly had trouble fitting the words mother and hangover
into the same conceptual space. "She said she was sick."
"Wait till you're older, dear. You'll doubtless discover the distinction, or
lack of it, for yourself. Run along now." His smiling great-aunt guided him
firmly away. "Out, out. Go see what your Uncle Vorthys is up to downstairs. I
heard some very odd noises a bit ago."
Nikki let himself be chivvied out, with a disturbed backward glance over his
shoulder.
Ekaterin put her head back down on the comconsole, and shut her eyes.
A clink by her head made her open them again; her aunt was setting down a
large glass of cool water and holding out two painkiller tablets.
"I had some of those this morning," said Ekaterin dully.
"They appear to have worn off. Drink all the water, now. You clearly need to
rehydrate."
Dutifully, Ekaterin did so. She set the glass down, and squeezed her eyes open
and shut a few times. "That really was the
Count and Countess Vorkosigan last night, wasn't it." It wasn't really a
question, more a plea for denial. After nearly stampeding over them in her
desperate flight out the door, she'd been halfway home in the auto-cab before
her belated realization of their identity had dawned so horribly. The great
and famous Viceroy and Vicereine of Sergyar. What business had they, to look
so like ordinary people at a moment like that?
Ow, ow, ow.
"Yes. I'd never met them to speak to at any length before."
"Did you... speak to them at length last night?" Her aunt and uncle had been
almost an hour behind her, arriving home.
"Yes, we had quite a nice chat. I was impressed. Miles's mother is a very
sensible woman."
"Then why is her son such a... never mind."
Ow.
"They must think I'm some sort of hysteric. How did I get the nerve to just
stand up and walk out of a formal dinner in front of all those... and Lady
Alys Vorpatril
... and at
Vorkosigan House
. I can't believe
I did that." After a brooding moment, she added, "I can't believe did that."
he
Aunt Vorthys did not ask, What?
Page 134
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
, or
Which he?
She did purse her lips, and look quizzically at her niece. "Well, I don't
suppose you had much choice."
"No."
"After all, if you hadn't left, you'd have had to answer Lord Vorkosigan's
question."
"I... didn't... ?" Ekaterin blinked. Hadn't her actions been answer enough?
"Under those circumstances? Are you mad?"
"He knew it was a mistake the moment the words were out of his mouth, I
daresay, at least judging from that ghastly expression on his face. You could
see everything just drain right out of it. Extraordinary. But I can't help
wondering, dear - if you'd wanted to say no
, why didn't you? It was the perfect opportunity to do so."
"I... I..." Ekaterin tried to collect her wits, which seemed to be scattering
like sheep. "It wouldn't have been...
polite
."
After a thoughtful pause, her aunt murmured, "You might have said, `No, thank
you.' "
Ekaterin rubbed her numb face. "Aunt Vorthys," she sighed, "I love you dearly.
But please go away now."
Her aunt smiled, and kissed her on the top of her head, and drifted out.
Ekaterin returned to her twice-interrupted brooding. Her aunt was right, she
realized. Ekaterin hadn't answered Miles's question. And she hadn't even
noticed she hadn't answered.
She recognized this headache, and the knotted stomach that went with it, and
it had nothing to do with too much wine. Her arguments with her late husband
Tien had never involved physical violence directed against her, though the
walls had suffered from his clenched fists a few times. The rows had always
petered out into days of frozen, silent rage, filled with unbearable tension
and a sort of grief, of two people trapped together in the same
always-too-small space walking wide around each other.
She had almost always broken first, backed down, apologized, placated,
anything to make the pain stop.
Heartsick
, perhaps, was the name of the emotion.
I don't want to go back there again. Please don't ever make me go back there
again.
Where am I, when I am at home in myself?
Not here, for all the increasing burden of her aunt and uncle's charity. Not,
certainly, with Tien. Not with her own father. With... Miles? She had felt
flashes of profound ease in his company, it was true, brief perhaps, but calm
like deep water. There had also been moments when she'd wanted to whack him
with a brick. Which was the real Miles? Which was the real Ekaterin, for that
matter?
The answer hovered, and it scared her breathless. But she'd picked wrong
before. She had no judgment in these man-and-
woman matters, she'd proved that.
She turned back to the comconsole. A note. She should write some sort of cover
note to go with the returned garden plans.
I think they will be self-explanatory, don't you?
She pressed the Send pad on the comconsole, and stumbled back upstairs to pull
the curtains and lie down fully dressed on her bed until dinner.
* * *
Miles slouched into the library of Vorkosigan House, a mug of weak tea
clutched in his faintly trembling hand. The light in here was still too bright
this evening. Perhaps he ought to seek refuge in a corner of the garage
instead. Or the cellar. Not the wine cellar - he shuddered at the thought. But
he'd grown entirely bored with his bed, covers pulled over his head or not. A
Page 135
ABC Amber Palm Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abcpalm.html
day of that was enough.
He stopped abruptly, and lukewarm tea sloshed onto his hand. His father was at
the secured comconsole, and his mother was at the broad inlaid table with
three or four books and a mess of flimsies spread out before her. They both
looked up at him, and smiled in tentative greeting. It would probably seem
surly of him to back out and flee.
"G'evening," he managed, and shambled past them to find his favorite chair,
and lower himself carefully into it.
"Good evening, Miles," his mother returned. His father put his console on
hold, and regarded him with bland interest.
"How was your trip home from Sergyar?" Miles went on, after about a minute of
silence.
"Entirely without incident, happily enough," his mother said. "Till the very
end."
"Ah," said Miles. "That." He brooded into his tea mug.
His parents humanely ignored him for several minutes, but whatever they'd been
separately working on seemed to not hold their attention anymore. Still,
nobody left.
"We missed you at breakfast," the Countess said finally. "And lunch. And
dinner."
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]