Jenna Starborn (31 page)

“Ah! Well, that is a quest well worth undertaking,” he said, moving back under the spreading branches of the tree and starting to search beside me. “Making a little girl happy.”

At first, however, we did not look like we would have much luck in our endeavor, for the grail eluded us for nearly fifteen minutes. Finally I came to my knees and let my fingers go searching through the grass, hoping to discover by texture what was invisible to the sight. “Victory!” I cried, when I finally felt the smooth, slim lengths of satin glide under my fingertips, and I held up the swatch of ribbons in a triumphant gesture.

“Bravo, Jenna! Glorious deed well-done! Now go home and write ballads about your prowess,” Mr. Ravenbeck said. He came a step closer and held out a hand. I laid my fingers in his and allowed him to pull me to my feet—just as a low, ominous, grumbling noise gathered momentum at the walls around us.

I dropped Mr. Ravenbeck's hand and glanced apprehensively over my shoulder. “What was that? It sounds like nothing so much as thunder.”

“That's just what it is, or something very like. This time of year, we tilt into the solar winds and there's no end of trouble. The by-products we release mingle with what thin layer of atmosphere Fieldstar can muster on its own, and we get these incredible rushes of energy and friction. They're not really dangerous, or haven't been yet, but at Sollbrook Manor one year, they had a fireball ride the whole length of the forcefield and shut down the complex for a day. Everyone had to be outfitted with oxygen masks and evacuated. Which is one of the reasons,” he added, “most of the landowners here have installed backup systems on their forcefields. The whole property could have been ruined, and many lives could have been lost, if Bianca had not reacted as quickly as she did and gotten everyone safely out.”

I was not particularly eager to hear stories of Bianca Ingersoll's wit and resourcefulness, and in fact I was fairly certain anyone with a modicum of intelligence would have made whatever decisions she had. But her name had been introduced, and her name had laid between us for days now, and recklessly I decided to ask now some of the questions that would determine the course of my existence.

“I'm sure she is a very quick thinker!” I said in an admiring voice. “You must be looking forward to installing her here as mistress of Thorrastone Park. She will bring all sorts of glamour to your quiet home.”

He gave me a sideways look; I could have sworn he was laughing at me, though the combination of poor light and dappling shadows made it hard to tell. “Do you think so?” he said. “My guess is that her idea of glamour is much more expensive and uncomfortable than mine, and that whatever gorgeousness she brings to my life will cost me more energy and patience than I have to spare.”

“I have never heard a love match described so well,” I said in a cordial tone of voice, and at that he laughed aloud.

“Yes, but we were made for each other! Everyone says so!” he exclaimed. “She is avaricious, I have money. She is the picture of loveliness, I appreciate beauty. She is bright, charming, elegant, vivacious—very well, I am none of those things, but my surly swarthiness makes her appear even more charming and elegant by contrast. Plus everyone expects us to marry. What can I do?”

What could he do? Every fiber of my body shouted out the answer, but I would not let the words pass my lips. Instead I said, “So, when you marry Bianca Ingersoll, I expect she will be wanting to make changes in your household.”

He was glancing out from under the tree, toward the faintly glowing lines of the forcefield, which seemed to be trembling in a ghostly wind. “Yes, she's already made that abundantly clear,” he said in a rather absent voice. “Ameletta, for instance. Bianca does not feel she is up to the task of supervising a child who is, as she put it, so emotionally needy. So she has been investigating schools on other planets—far from here, I'm afraid—where Ameletta can acquire both an education and a certain veneer of sophistication. They are not inexpensive, of course—nothing that appeals to Bianca is—but I think they may provide Ameletta with the stability that has been sadly lacking at Thorrastone Park in the past few months.”

“So you will send Ameletta away,” I said in an even voice, though I felt a surge of animosity toward his intended bride for her selfishness, and toward him for his easy ability to toss aside a small being who loved him with her whole heart. “I assume you will thus break up the rest of the household? Search for new servants, new seneschals, new technicians—new everyone?”

“I don't know. I haven't looked that far into the future,” he admitted. “Certainly Bianca intends to import a whole cadre of servants of her own—cook, housekeeper, butler, gardeners—for she hopes to change the whole look and feel of the manor. I have made it plain that no matter what she does, Mrs. Farraday has a home here till she dies, and Bianca has agreed to that condition.”

I took a deep breath. “It would seem,” I said, “that there will not be much place for me in this new home.”

Now he looked at me again, seeming to peer down at me through the lacelike shadow thrown by the tree. I could not read the expression on his face, though his voice, when he spoke, was serious.

“No, I am sure once Bianca Ingersoll is mistress of Thorrastone Park, Jenna Starborn would not be at ease there,” he said slowly. “You came to this place for its quiet and its self-containment—you came to a place much like yourself—and you will not want to stay here when it becomes restless and full of change.”

“Then I will look for a new situation,” I said, still in that incredibly calm voice I had produced from some still, small, hollow core. “I shall consult the StellarNet right away. Tomorrow morning.”

“That will not be necessary,” he said. “I have taken it upon myself to find work for all the members of my household who are displaced. I have given a great deal of thought to where you should go, for your talents are extraordinary and should not be wasted.”

“My talents are ordinary and can be employed almost anywhere,” I said. “But I would just as soon go to a friend of yours.”

“Yes—though I am not sure I would call her a friend, just an acquaintance who lives much as we do here, only more so. She and her family have been homesteaders on a new planet called Billalogia on what seems to be the far edge of the galaxy. There are only a few thousand pioneers there so far, so the community is small, but, from what I can tell, very tight-knit and social. The world is incredibly isolated, for the supply ships only come once every six months, and they have no shipyard of their own. Thus they must manufacture or hoard everything they need, and from what I understand, the labor is quite demanding. And yet my friend seems exultant to have found a place that she can farm, and claim, and turn into something of her very own, for until she went homesteading, she had almost nothing. As you can imagine, technicians are in high demand but short supply on such a world, and I'm sure you would be prized like the diamond you are.”

Every word turned my soul bleaker; every sentence painted a picture of a world more dreary than I thought the human heart could support. “Is your friend a half-cit, then?” I asked. “Is this her passport to full citizenship?”

“Yes—they all are—a world of half-cits who will, by proving up their claims, become level-two members of society. You must admit it is an exciting opportunity. The same chance would be open to you, if you took this job, to become a full citizen within five or ten years of relocating. I believe the citizenship status transfers to other worlds should you move from Billalogia, but I cannot recall. I must ask her, before I send you so very far away.”

“Yes, it does seem far away,” I said, and for the life of me, I could not keep the quaver from my voice. “Farther than the human mind can stretch itself to conceive of—farther than the soul can bear to journey from—from—”

“From what, Jenna?” he asked in a tender voice.

“From companionship—and valued friends—and—and—affection.”

“Friends—who feel affection for each other—is that what we are, you and I?” he asked, and again I could not tell what emotion hummed in his voice, though he spoke with a certain passion.

“I have believed so, Mr. Ravenbeck.”

“Like you, I am nervous at the thought of this great separation, Jenna,” he said. “If you are so many light-years distant from me, regulating your hours by the clock of a foreign sun and offering your faithful, sensible cheer to strangers, what becomes of me? What sun orders my days, what smiling face supports me through the heaviest hours? I begin to think I might unravel, and turn into so many yards of ribbon and stuffing, like one of Ameletta's dolls. You, of course, would have no such troubles. Industrious and happy on some alien planet, you'd forget all about me.”

“No, sir, not for a minute,” I choked out, and then could say nothing more. My iron will was turned to rust; I did not have the strength any longer to hold back my tears. I turned from him, as if randomly surveying the night, and began weeping silently. Whatever low sounds I might be making were conveniently covered by another round of that strange, ominous thunder rolling outside our walls.

But he was attuned to me, as I was to him, and he sensed my distress. With a hand on my shoulder, he turned me back to face him, though I kept my head lowered and would not look up.

“Why, Jenna, such sadness at such a common thing,” he said, and again his voice was so tender it only made me weep the harder. “Partings and farewells are the customary coin of life. We could not pay our way to heaven without a little grief at a good-bye we did not want to make.”

“Yes—but it is not a common thing to me,” I sobbed. “When I previously have left places behind, I did not leave behind anyone or anything that mattered to me. I was glad to go—I was eager. Now, to be torn from Thorrastone Park, where there are friends close to me, people I love—it hurts me, it is breaking my heart.”

“People you love,” he said, catching up my own words with a certain quickness. “You mean—Ameletta—and Janet, who is already gone—and Mrs. Farraday—”

“And you, sir,” I said, quieting my sobs, and finally looking up at him. “All of you.”

“Then do not go,” he said abruptly. “Stay. There will be a place for you at Thorrastone Park until you die.”

“I cannot stay!” I cried. “Even you must realize how impossible that is!”

“Impossible! Why?”

“Your bride will not have me here, and I would not stay where she is mistress.”

“I have no bride—there is no mistress of Thorrastone Park.”

“One is to be installed any day now.”

“Yes—absolutely—I will not rest until that end is attained,” he said, and his voice sounded almost feverish with resolve.

“Then I must go,” I said, and turned away from him as if to take my first steps off-planet at that very moment. But his hand was still on my shoulder, and he turned me back before I had gone more than two paces.

“No—you shall not go—you shall stay. I shall make it right,” he declared.

“You cannot make it right!” I exclaimed, and now I pulled free of him and glared up at him, and I could feel my whole body washed with a righteous fury. “You cannot be so obtuse that you do not understand me. I love you, Mr. Ravenbeck—love you with all the intensity, all the joy, all the intelligence, all the nerves and muscles and atoms of my body. I cannot unlove you just because you take a wife—I cannot unlove you just because, by the laws of our society, I am not your peer and have no claim on your notice. My love for you is elemental and immutable, and it will sustain me until I die. But it will not sustain me through your marriage to Bianca Ingersoll, a woman so unworthy of you that you could as easily have thrown yourself away on Coletta or some other avaricious creature and not debased yourself so completely. I do not blame you for not loving me, because you must, after all, live in your world and accept its dictates—but I do blame you for choosing to love Bianca Ingersoll instead. I will not compromise my principles for false laws and man-made ethics—I will not love or pretend to love someone who is not at my level. But you have done it, and I cannot watch you demean yourself, and I will leave this place as soon as I am able.”

“No—you shall not leave,” he said in a suddenly imperious voice, reaching again to catch my shoulder. I moved away.

“I am nearly packed already. You cannot hold me.”

He came forward swiftly for every step I backed away. “I can—I will—I must. I love you, Jenna, as you love me—even more so, I think, though I do not have the gift for expressing it as you do.”

This time I took three steps backward, powered by amazement. “What are you saying? Do not reach for me again, or I will scream to wake the manor house.”

But he disregarded me; he caught my shoulders and held me so I could not run away, and held me at arm's length, gazing down at me. “You, Jenna, I love you with all my heart. And with my atoms and molecules and electrons and whatever further breakdown you require. You are right—I have no love for Bianca Ingersoll, and she none for me. I have no intention of marrying her—have had none, since you entered my life. I will have no mistress of Thorrastone Park but you.”

“What!” I exclaimed, for this turnabout was too sudden and unexpected for me to credit. “First you toyed with her affections, under the full gaze of everyone in her family and everyone in your own household, and now you think to cast her off and engage my heart instead! Mr. Ravenbeck, that is despicable. It is unconscionable. I cannot be a party to this—let me go this instant!”