Miles Errant - Lois McMaster Bujold [324]
"Good heavens, I'm babbling. I'm sorry."
"No! I like listening to you talk."
"That's a first. In this family, I'm lucky to get a word in edgewise. I didn't talk till I was three. They had me tested. It turned out it was just because my sisters were answering everything for me!"
Mark laughed.
"Now they say I'm making up for lost time."
"I know about lost time," Mark said ruefully.
"Yes, I've . . . heard a little. I guess your life has been quite an adventure."
"Not an adventure," he corrected. "A disaster, maybe." He wondered what his life would look like, reflected in her eyes. Something shinier. . . . "Maybe when I get back I can tell you a bit about it." If he got back. If he brought this off.
I'm not a nice person. You should know that, before. Before what? The more over-extended their acquaintance became, the harder it would be to tell her his repellent secrets.
"Look, I . . . you have to understand." God, he sounded just like Bothari-Jesek, working up to her confession. "I'm kind of a mess, and I'm not just talking about my outsides." Hell, hell, and what had this nice young virgin to do with the arcane subtleties of psycho-programming tortures, and their erratic results? What right had he to put horrors in her head? "I don't even know what I should tell you!"
Now was too soon, he could feel that clearly. But later might be too late, leaving her feeling betrayed and tricked. And if he continued this conversation one more minute, he'd drift into abject-blurting mode, and lose the one bright, un-poisoned thing he'd found.
Kareen tilted her head in puzzlement. "Maybe you ought to ask the Countess."
"Do you know her well? To talk to?"
"Oh, yes. She and my mother are best friends. My mother used to be her personal bodyguard, before she retired to have us."
Mark sensed the shadowy league of grandmothers again. Powerful old women with genetic agendas. . . . He felt obscurely that there were some things a man ought to do for himself. But on Barrayar, they used go-betweens. He had in his camp an ambassadoress-extraordinary to the whole female gender. The Countess would act for his good. Yeah, like a woman holding down a screaming child to get it a painful vaccination that would save it from a deadly disease.
How much did he trust the Countess? Did he dare trust her in this?
"Kareen . . . before I come back, do me a favor. If you get a chance to talk privately to the Countess, ask her what she thinks you ought to know about me, before we get better acquainted. Tell her I asked you to."
"All right. I like to talk with Lady Cordelia. She's sort of been my mentor. She makes me think I can do anything." Kareen hesitated. "If you're back by Winterfair, will you dance with me again at the Imperial Residence Ball? And not hide in the corner this time," she added sternly.
"If I'm back by Winterfair, I won't have to hide in the corner. Yes."
"Good. I'll hold you to your word."
"My word as Vorkosigan," he said lightly.
Her blue eyes widened. "Oh. My." Her soft lips parted in a blinding smile.
He felt like a man who'd gone to spit, and had a diamond pop accidently from his lips instead. And he couldn't call it back and re-swallow it. There must be a Vorish streak in the girl, to take a man's word so seriously.
"I have to go now," he said.
"All right. Lord Mark—be careful?"
"I—why do you say that?" He hadn't said a word about where he was going or why, he swore.
"My father is a soldier. You have that same look in your eyes that he gets, when he's lying through his teeth about some difficulty he's heading into. He can never fool my mother, either."
No girl had ever told him to be careful, as though she meant it. He was touched beyond measure. "Thank you, Kareen." Reluctantly, he cut the comm, with a gesture that was nearly a caress.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Mark and Bothari-Jesek hitched a ride from Barrayar back to Komarr on an ImpSec courier vessel very like the one they'd ridden before, the last favor, Mark swore, that he would ever ask of Simon