Cordelia's Honor - Lois McMaster Bujold [179]
"I'm hungry," said Cordelia in wonder, as the aromas from the tray tickled her nose. "I think that's the first time in three weeks." Three weeks, since that night of horrors at Vorkosigan House.
Drou smiled, and set the tray down at the table by the front window. Cordelia found robe and slippers, and made for the coffeepot. Drou hovered, seeming ready to catch her if she fell over, but Cordelia did not feel nearly so shaky today. She seated herself and reached for steaming groats and butter, and a pitcher of hot syrup the Barrayarans made from boiled-down tree sap. Wonderful food.
"Have you eaten, Drou? Want some coffee? What time is it?"
The bodyguard shook her blonde head. "I'm fine, Milady. It's about elevenses."
Droushnakovi had been part of the assumed background, for the past several days here at Vorkosigan Surleau. Cordelia found herself really looking at the girl for almost the first time since she'd left ImpMil. Drou was attentive and alert as ever, but with an underlying tension, that same bad-guard-slink—perhaps it was only because she was feeling better herself, but Cordelia selfishly wanted the people around her to be feeling better, too, if only not to drag her back down.
"I'm feeling so much less thick, today. I talked to Captain Vaagen yesterday, on the vid. He thinks he's seen the first signs of molecular re-calcification in little Piotr Miles. Very encouraging, if you know how to interpret Vaagen. He doesn't offer false hopes, but what little he does say, you can rely on."
Drou glanced up from her lap, fixing a responding smile on her downcast features. She shook her head. "Uterine replicators seem so strange to me. So alien."
"Not so strange as what evolution laid on us, ad lib empirical," Cordelia grinned back. "Thank God for technology and rational design. I know whereof I speak, now."
"Milady . . . how did you first know you were pregnant? Did you miss a monthly?"
"A menstrual period? No, actually." She thought back to last summer. This very room, that unmade bed in fact. She and Aral could begin sharing intimacies there again soon, though with some loss of piquancy without reproduction as a goal. "Aral and I thought we were all settled here, last summer. He was retired, I was retired . . . no impediments. I was on the verge of being old for the organic method, which seemed the only one available here on Barrayar; more to the point, he wanted to start soon. So a few weeks after we were married, I went and had my contraceptive implant removed. Made me feel very wicked; at home I couldn't have had it taken out without buying a license."
"Really?" Drou listened with openmouthed fascination.
"Yes, it's a Betan legal requirement. You have to qualify for a parent's license first. I've had my implant since I was fourteen. I had a menstrual period once then, I remember. We turn them off till they're needed. I got my implant, and my hymen cut, and my ears pierced, and had my coming-out party. . . ."
"You didn't . . . start doing sex when you were fourteen, did you?" Droushnakovi's voice was hushed.
"I could have. But it takes two, y'know. I didn't find a real lover till later." Cordelia was ashamed to admit how much later. She'd been so socially inept, back then. . . . And you haven't changed much, she admitted wryly to herself.
"I didn't think it would happen so fast," Cordelia went on. "I thought we'd be in for several months of earnest and delightful experiment. But we caught the baby first try. So I still haven't had a menstrual period, here on Barrayar."
"First try," echoed Drou. Her lip curled in introspective dismay. "How did you know you'd . . . caught? The nausea?"