Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [123]
"Well, that's one vote he's assured of tomorrow," Cordelia joked to her father-in-law, helping him get stiffly out of his jacket in the stone-paved foyer.
"Ha. He's lucky to get it. He's picked up some damned peculiar radical notions in the last few years. If he wasn't my son, he could whistle for it." But Piotr's seamed face looked proud.
Cordelia blinked at this description of Aral Vorkosigan's political views. "I confess, I've never thought of him as a revolutionary. Radical must be a more elastic term than I thought."
"Oh, he doesn't see himself that way. He thinks he can go halfway, and then stop. I think he'll find himself riding a tiger, a few years down the road." The count shook his head grimly. "But come, my girl, and sit down and tell me that you're well. You look well—is everything all right?"
The old count was passionately interested in the development of his grandson-to-be. Cordelia sensed her pregnancy had raised her status with him enormously, from a tolerated caprice of Aral's to something bordering perilously on the semi-divine. He fairly blasted her with approval. It was nearly irresistible, and she never laughed at him, although she had no illusions about it.
Cordelia had found Aral's earlier sketch of his father's reaction to her pregnancy, the day she'd brought home the confirming news, to be right on target. She'd returned to the estate at Vorkosigan Surleau that summer day to search Aral out down by the boat dock. He was puttering around with his sailboat, and had the sails laid out, drying in the sun, as he squished around them in wet shoes.
He looked up to meet her smile, unsuccessful at concealing the eagerness in his eyes. "Well?" He bounced a little, on his heels.
"Well." She attempted a sad and disappointed look, to tease him, but the grin escaped and took over her whole face. "Your doctor says it's a boy."
"Ah." A long and eloquent sigh escaped him, and he scooped her up and twirled her around.
"Aral! Awk! Don't drop me." He was no taller than herself, if, um, thicker.
"Never." He let her slide down against him, and they shared a long kiss, ending in laughter.
"My father will be ecstatic."
"You look pretty ecstatic yourself."
"Yes, but you haven't seen anything until you've seen an old-fashioned Barrayaran paterfamilias in a trance over the growth of his family tree. I've had the poor old man convinced for years that his line was ending with me."
"Will he forgive me for being an offworlder plebe?"
"No insult intended, but by this time I don't think he'd have cared what species of wife I dragged home, as long as she was fertile. You think I'm exaggerating?" he added at her trill of laughter. "You'll see."
"Is it too early to think of names?" she asked, slightly wistful.
"No thinking to it. Firstborn son. It's a strict custom here. He gets named after his two grandfathers. Paternal for the first, maternal for the second."
"Ah, that's why your history is so confusing to read. I was always having to put dates next to those duplicate names, to try and keep track. Piotr Miles. Hm. Well, I guess I can get used to it. I'd been thinking of . . . something else."
"Another time, perhaps."
"Ooh, ambitious."
A short wrestling match ensued, Cordelia having previously made the useful discovery that in certain moods he was more ticklish than she. She extracted a reasonable amount of revenge, and they ended laughing on the grass in the sun.
"This is very undignified," Aral complained as she let him up.
"Afraid I'll shock Negri's fisher of men out there?"
"They're beyond shock, I guarantee."
Cordelia waved at the distant hoverboat, whose occupant steadfastly ignored the gesture. She had been at first angered, then resigned to learn that Aral was being kept under continuous observation by Imperial Security. The price, she'd supposed, of his involvement in the secret and lethal politics of the Escobar War, and the penalty for some of his less welcome outspoken opinions.
"I can see why you took up baiting them for a hobby. Maybe we ought to unbend and invite them to lunch or something.