Miles in Love (81 page)

"
Yes
milady!" Pym snapped to attention, and his hand spasmed to the security pad.

The doors swung wide. Ekaterin stormed blindly through, head-down, into the chest of a startled, stocky, white-haired man wearing a colorful shirt and a pair of disreputable, worn black trousers. Ekaterin bounced off him, and had her hands caught up by the, to her, inexplicable stranger. A tall, tired-looking woman in rumpled travel-skirts, with long roan-red hair tied back at the nape of her neck, stepped up beside them, saying, "What in the world . . . ?"

"Excuse me, miss, are you all right?" the white-haired man rumbled in a raspy baritone. He stared piercingly at Miles, lurching out of the light of the foyer in Ekaterin's wake.

"No," she choked. "I need—I want an auto-cab, please."

"Ekaterin, no, wait," Miles gasped.

"I want an auto-cab
right now
."

"The gate guard will be happy to call one for you," the red-haired woman said soothingly. Countess Cordelia Vorkosigan, Vicereine of Sergyar—
Mother
—stared even more ominously at her wheezing son. "And see you safely into it. Miles, why are you harrying this young lady?" And more doubtfully, "Are we interrupting business, or pleasure?"

From thirty years of familiarity, Miles had no trouble unraveling this cryptic shorthand to be a serious query of,
Have we walked in on, perhaps, an official Auditorial interrogation gone wrong, or is this one of your personal screw-ups again?
God knew what Ekaterin made of it. One bright note: if Ekaterin never spoke to him again, he'd never be put to explain the Countess's peculiar Betan sense of humor to her.

"My dinner party," Miles grated. "It's just breaking up."
And sinking
.
All souls feared lost.
It was redundant to ask,
What are you doing here?
His parents' jumpship had obviously made orbit early, and they had left the bulk of their entourage to follow on tomorrow, while they came straight downside to sleep in their own bed. How had he rehearsed this vitally-important, utterly-critical meeting, again? "Mother, Father, let me introduce—
she's getting away
!"

As a new distraction rose from the hallway at Miles's back, Ekaterin slipped through the shadows all the way to the gate. The Koudelkas, having perhaps intelligently concluded that this party was over, were decamping en masse, but the wait-till-we-get-home conversation had undergone a jump-start. Kareen's voice was protesting; the Commodore's overrode it, saying, "You
will
come home now. You're not staying another minute in this house."

"I
have
to come back. I
work
here."

"Not any more, you don't—"

Mark's harried voice dogged along, "Please, sir, Commodore, Madame Koudelka, you mustn't blame Kareen—"

"You can't stop me!" Kareen declaimed.

Commodore Koudelka's eye fell on the returnees as the rolling altercation piled up in the hallway. "Ha—Aral!" he snarled. "Do you realize what your son has been up to?"

The Count blinked. "Which one?" he asked mildly.

The chance of the light caught Mark's face, as he heard this off-hand affirmation of his identity. Even in the chaos of his hopes pinwheeling to destruction, Miles was glad to have seen the brief awed look that passed over those fat-distorted features.
Oh, Brother. Yeah. This is why men follow this man—

Olivia tugged her mother's sleeve. "Mama," she whispered urgently, "can I go home with Tatya?"

"Yes, dear, I think that might be a good idea," said Drou distractedly, clearly looking ahead; Miles wasn't sure if she was cutting down Kareen's potential allies in the brewing battle, or just the anticipated noise level.

René and Tatya looked as though they would have been glad to sneak out quietly under the covering fire, but Lord Dono, who had somehow attached himself to their party, paused just long enough to say cheerily, "
Thank
you, Lord Vorkosigan, for a most memorable evening." He nodded cordially to Count and Countess Vorkosigan, as he followed the Vorbrettens to their groundcar. Well, the operation hadn't changed Donna/Dono's vile grip on irony, unfortunately . . .

"Who was that?" asked Count Vorkosigan. "Looks familiar, somehow . . ."

A distracted-looking Enrique, his wiry hair half on-end, prowled into the great hall from the back entry. He had a jar in one hand, and what Miles could only dub Stink-on-a-Stick in the other: a wand with a wad of sickly-sweet scent-soaked fiber attached to its end, which he waved along the baseboards. "Here, buggy, buggy," he cooed plaintively. "Come to Papa, that's the good girls . . ." He paused, and peered worriedly under a side-table. "Buggy-buggy . . . ?"

"Now . . . 
that
cries out for an explanation," murmured the Count, watching him in arrested fascination.

Out by the front gate, an auto-cab's door slammed; its fans whirred as it pulled away into the night forever. Miles stood still, listening amid the uproar, till the last whisper of it was gone.

"Pym!" The Countess spotted a new victim, and her voice went a little dangerous. "I seconded you to look after Miles. Would you care to explain this scene?"

There was a thoughtful pause. In a voice of simple honesty, Pym replied, "No, Milady."

"Ask Mark," Miles said callously. "He'll explain everything." Head down, he started for the stairs.

"You rat-coward—!" Mark hissed at him in passing.

The rest of his guests were shuffling uncertainly into the hallway.

The Count asked cautiously, "Miles, are you drunk?"

Miles paused on the third step. "Not yet, sir," he replied. He didn't look back. "Not nearly enough yet. Pym, see me."

He took the steps two at a time to his chambers, and oblivion.

_"G
ood afternoon, Mark." Countess Vorkosigan's bracing voice spiked Mark's last futile attempts to maintain unconsciousness. He groaned, pulled his pillow from his face, and opened one bleary eye.

He tested responses on his furry tongue.
Countess. Vicereine. Mother.
Strangely enough,
Mother
seemed to work best. "G'fertn'n, M'thur."

She studied him for a moment further, then nodded, and waved at the maid who'd followed in her wake. The girl set down a tea tray on the bedside table and stared curiously at Mark, who had an urge to pull his covers up over himself even though he was still wearing most of last night's clothing. The maid trundled obediently out of Mark's room again at the Countess's firm, "Thank you, that will be all."

Countess Vorkosigan opened the curtains, letting in blinding light, and pulled up a chair. "Tea?" she inquired, pouring without waiting for an answer.

"Yeah, I guess." Mark struggled upright, and rearranged his pillows enough to accept the mug without spilling it. The tea was strong and dark, with cream, the way he liked it, and it scalded the glue out of his mouth.

The Countess poked doubtfully at the empty butter bug tubs piled on the table. Counting them up, perhaps, because she winced. "I didn't think you'd want breakfast yet."

"No. Thank you." Though his excruciating stomach-ache was calming down. The tea actually soothed it.

"Neither does your brother. Miles, possibly driven by his new-found need to uphold Vor tradition, sought
his
anesthetic in wine. Achieved it, too, according to Pym. At present, we're letting him enjoy his spectacular hangover without commentary."

"Ah."
Fortunate son.

"Well, he'll have to come out of his rooms eventually. Though Aral advises not to look for him before tonight." Countess Vorkosigan poured herself a mug of tea too, and stirred in cream. "Lady Alys was very peeved at Miles for abandoning the field before his guests had all departed. She considered it a shameful lapse of manners on his part."

"It was a shambles." One that, it appeared, they were all going to live through. Unfortunately. Mark took another sluicing swallow. "What happened after . . . after the Koudelkas left?" Miles had bailed out early; Mark's own courage had broken when the Commodore had lost his grip to the point of referring to the Countess's mother as a
damned Betan pimp
, and Kareen had flung out the door proclaiming that she would sooner walk home, or possibly to the other side of the continent, before riding one meter in a car with a pair of such hopelessly uncultured, ignorant, benighted Barrayaran
savages
. Mark had fled to his bedroom with a stack of bug butter tubs and a spoon, and locked the door; Gorge and Howl had done their best to salve his shaken nerves.

Reversion under stress, his therapist would no doubt have dubbed it. He'd half hated, half exulted in the sense of not being in charge in his own body, but letting Gorge run to his limit had blocked the far more dangerous
Other
. It was a bad sign when Killer became nameless. He had managed to pass out before he ruptured, but only just. He felt spent now, his head foggy and quiet like a landscape after a storm.

The Countess continued, "Aral and I had an extremely enlightening talk with Professor and Professora Vorthys—now,
there's
a woman who has her head screwed on straight. I wish I'd made her acquaintance before this. They then left to see after their niece, and we had a longer talk with Alys and Simon." She took a slow sip. "Do I understand correctly that the dark-haired young lady who bolted past us last night was my potential daughter-in-law?"

"Not anymore, I don't think," said Mark morosely.

"Damn." The Countess frowned into her cup. "Miles told us practically nothing about her in his, I think I'm justified in calling them
briefs
, to us on Sergyar. If I'd known then half the things the Professora told me later, I'd have intercepted her myself."

"It wasn't my fault she ran off," Mark hastened to point out. "Miles opened his mouth and jammed his boot in there all by himself." He conceded reluctantly after a moment, "Well, I suppose Illyan helped."

"Yes. Simon was pretty distraught, once Alys explained it all to him. He was afraid he'd been told Miles's big secret and then forgot.
I'm
quite peeved at Miles for setting him up like that." A dangerous spark glinted in her eye.

Mark was considerably less interested in Miles's problems than in his own. He said cautiously, "Has, ah . . . Enrique found his missing queen, yet?"

"Not so far." The Countess hitched around in her chair and looked bemusedly at him. "I had a nice long talk with Dr. Borgos, too, once Alys and Illyan left. He showed me your lab. Kareen's work, I understand. I promised him a stay of Miles's execution order upon his girls, after which he calmed down considerably. I will say, his science seems sound."

"Oh, he's brilliant about the things that get his attention. His interests are a little, um, narrow, is all."

The Countess shrugged. "I've been living with obsessed men for the better part of my life. I think your Enrique will fit right in here."

"So . . . you've met our butter bugs?"

"Yes."

She seemed unfazed;
Betan, you know
. He could wish Miles had inherited more of her traits. "And, um . . . has the Count seen them yet?"

"Yes, in fact. We found one wandering about on our bedside table when we woke up this morning."

Mark flinched. "What did you do?"

"We turned a glass over her and left her to be collected by her papa. Sadly, Aral did not spot the bug exploring his shoe before he put it on. That one we disposed of quietly. What was left of her."

After a daunted silence, Mark asked hopefully, "It wasn't the queen, was it?"

"We couldn't tell, I'm afraid. It appeared to have been about the same size as the first one."

"Mm, then not. The queen would have been noticeably bigger."

Silence fell again, for a time.

"I will grant Kou one point," said the Countess finally. "I do have some responsibility toward Kareen. And toward you. I was perfectly aware of the array of choices that would be available to you both on Beta Colony. Including, happily, each other." She hesitated. "Having Kareen Koudelka as a daughter-in-law would give Aral and me great pleasure, in case you had any doubt."

"I never imagined otherwise. Are you asking me if my intentions are honorable?"

"I trust your honor, whether it fits in the narrowest Barrayaran definition or encompasses something broader," the Countess said equably.

Mark sighed. "Somehow, I don't think the Commodore and Madame Koudelka are ready to greet me with reciprocal joy."

"You
are
a Vorkosigan."

"A clone. An imitation. A cheap Jacksonian knock-off."
And crazy to boot.

"A bloody expensive Jacksonian knock-off."

"Ha," Mark agreed darkly.

She shook her head, her smile growing more rueful. "Mark, I'm more than willing to help you and Kareen reach for your goals, whatever the obstacles. But you have to give me some clue of what your goals
are
."

Be careful how you aim this woman.
The Countess was to obstacles as a laser cannon was to flies. Mark studied his stubby, plump hands in covert dismay. Hope, and its attendant, fear, began to stir again in his heart. "I want . . . whatever Kareen wants. On Beta, I thought I knew. Since we got back here, it's been all confused."

"Culture clash?"

"It's not just the culture clash, though that's part of it." Mark groped for words, trying to articulate his sense of the wholeness of Kareen. "I think . . . I think she wants
time
. Time to be herself, to be where she is, who she is. Without being hurried or stampeded to take up one role or another, to the exclusion of all the rest of her possibilities.
Wife
is a pretty damned exclusive role, the way they do it here. She says Barrayar wants to put her in a box."

The Countess tilted her head, taking this in. "She may be wiser than she knows."

He brooded. "On the other hand, maybe I was her secret vice, back on Beta. And here I'm a horrible embarrassment to her. Maybe she'd like me to just shove off and leave her alone."

The Countess raised a brow. "Didn't sound like it last night. Kou and Drou practically had to pry her nails out of our door jamb."