Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [136]
"Really? That's hard to imagine."
"You can hardly expect me to tell her he's not worth it, all things considered. But does he really dislike her? Or is it just self-defense?"
"Good question . . . For what it's worth, my driver made a joke about her the other day—not even a very offensive one—and Kou got rather frosty with him. I don't think he dislikes her. But I do think he envies her."
Cordelia left the subject on that ambiguous note. She longed to help the pair, but had no answer to offer for their dilemma. Her own mind had no trouble generating creative solutions to the practical problems of physical intimacy posed by the lieutenant's injuries, but shrank from the violation of their shy reserve that offering them would entail. She suspected wryly that she would merely shock them. Sex therapy appeared to be unheard of, here.
True Betan, she had always considered a double standard of sexual behavior to be a logical impossibility. Dabbling now on the fringes of Barrayaran high society in Vorkosigan's wake, she began to finally see how it could be done. It all seemed to come down to impeding the free flow of information to certain persons, preselected by an unspoken code somehow known to and agreed upon by all present but her. One could not mention sex to or in front of unmarried women or children. Young men, it appeared, were exempt from all rules when talking to each other, but not if a woman of any age or degree were present. The rules also changed bewilderingly with variations of the social status of those present. And married women, in groups free of male eavesdroppers, sometimes underwent the most astonishing transformations in apparent databases. Some subjects could be joked about but not discussed seriously. And some variations could not be mentioned at all. She had blighted more than one conversation beyond hope of recovery by what seemed to her a perfectly obvious and casual remark, and been taken aside by Aral for a quick debriefing.
She tried writing out a list of the rules she thought she had deduced, but found them so illogical and conflicting, especially in the area of what certain people were supposed to pretend not to know in front of certain other people, she gave up the effort. She did show the list to Aral, who read it in bed one night and nearly doubled over laughing.
"Is that what we really look like to you? I like your Rule Seven. Must keep it in mind . . . I wish I'd known it in my youth. I could have skipped all those godawful Service training vids."
"If you snicker any harder, you're going to get a nosebleed," she said tartly. "These are your rules, not mine. You people play by them. I just try to figure them out."
"My sweet scientist. Hm. You certainly call things by their correct names. We've never tried . . . would you like to violate Rule Eleven with me, dear Captain?"
"Let me, see, which one—oh, yes! Certainly. Now? And while we're about it, let's knock off Thirteen. My hormones are up. I remember my brother's co-parent told me about this effect, but I didn't really believe her at the time. She says you make up for it later, post-partum."
"Thirteen? I'd never have guessed. . . ."
"That's because, being Barrayaran, you spend so much time following Rule Two."
Anthropology was forgotten, for a time. But she found she could crack him up, later, with a properly timed mutter of "Rule Nine, sir."
* * *
The season was turning. There had been a hint of winter in the air that morning, a frost that had wilted some of the plants in Count Piotr's back garden. Cordelia anticipated her first real winter with fascination. Vorkosigan promised her snow, frozen water, something she'd experienced on only two Survey missions. Before spring, I shall bear a son. Huh.
But the afternoon had basked in the autumn light, warming again. The flat roof of Vorkosigan House above the front wing now breathed back that heat around Cordelia's ankles as she