Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [221]
"Our bugs . . . ?" he suggested, though he accepted it without demur. "Please . . . ?"
The goop didn't smell bad, actually. In fact, it had a scent rather like roses, roses and ice cream. She nevertheless found the impulse to lick the stickiness off her hand to be quite resistible. Mark . . . was less so. "Oh, very well." I don't know how he talks me into things like this. "It's a deal."
Chapter Five
Armsman Pym admitted Ekaterin to the grand front hall of Vorkosigan House. Belatedly, she wondered if she ought to be using the utility entrance, but in his tour of a couple of weeks ago Vorkosigan hadn't shown her where it was. Pym was smiling at her in his usual very friendly way, so perhaps it was all right for the moment.
"Madame Vorsoisson. Welcome, welcome. How may I serve you?"
"I had a question for Lord Vorkosigan. It's rather trivial, but I thought, if he was right here, and not busy . . ." She trailed off.
"I believe he's still upstairs, madame. If you would be pleased to wait in the library, I'll fetch him at once."
"I can find my way, thank you," she fended off his proffered escort. "Oh, wait—if he's still asleep, please don't—" But Pym was already ascending the stairs.
She shook her head, and wandered through the antechamber to the left toward the library. Vorkosigan's Armsmen seemed impressively enthusiastic, energetic, and attached to their lord, she had to concede. And astonishingly cordial to visitors.
She wondered if the library harbored any of those wonderful old hand-painted herbals from the Time of Isolation, and whether she might borrow—she came to a halt. The chamber had an occupant: a short, fat, dark-haired young man who crouched at a comconsole that sat so incongruously among the fabulous antiques. It was displaying a collection of colored graphs of some kind. He glanced up at the sound of her step on the parquet.
Ekaterin's eyes widened. At my height, Lord Vorkosigan had complained, the effect is damned startling. But it wasn't the soft obesity that startled nearly so much as the resemblance to, what did they call it for a clone, to his progenitor, which was half-buried beneath the . . . why did she instantly think of it as a barrier of flesh? His eyes were the same intense gray as Miles's—as Lord Vorkosigan's, but their expression was closed and wary. He wore black trousers and a black shirt; his belly burgeoned from an open backcountry-style vest which conceded the spring weather outside only by being a green so dark as to be almost black.
"Oh. You must be Lord Mark. I'm sorry," she spoke to that wariness.
He sat back, his finger touching his lips in a gesture very like one of Lord Vorkosigan's, but then going on to trace his doubled chin, pinching it between thumb and finger in an emphatic variation clearly all his own. "I, on the other hand, am tolerably pleased."
Ekaterin flushed in confusion. "I didn't mean—I didn't mean to intrude."
His eyebrows flicked up. "You have the advantage of me, milady." The timbre of his voice was very like his brother's, perhaps a trifle deeper; his accent was an odd amalgam, neither wholly Barrayaran nor wholly galactic.
"Not milady, merely Madame. Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Excuse me. I'm, um, your brother's landscape consultant. I just came in to check what he wants done with the maple tree we're taking down. Compost, firewood—" She gestured at the cold carved white marble fireplace. "Or if he just wants me to sell the chippings to the arbor service."
"Maple tree, ah. That would be Earth-descended botanical matter, wouldn't it?"
"Why, yes."
"I'll take any chopped-up bits he doesn't want."
"Where . . . would you want it put?"
"In the garage, I suppose. That would be handy."
She pictured the heap dumped in the middle of Pym's immaculate garage. "It's a rather large tree."
"Good."
"Do you garden . . . Lord Mark?"
"Not at all."
The decidedly disjointed conversation was interrupted by a booted tread, and Armsman Pym leaning around the doorframe to announce, "M'lord will be down in a few minutes, Madame Vorsoisson. He says, please don't go away."