Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [309]
She shrugged. "So be it."
The business meeting broke up. Last chance . . . They were in the tiled hallway, with Ekaterin ushering them out, before Mark worked up the courage to blurt to her, "Are there any messages I can take for you? To Vorkosigan House, I mean?" He was absolutely certain he would be ambushed by his brother on his return, given the way Miles had briefed him on his departure.
Renewed wariness closed down the expression on Ekaterin's face. She looked away from him. Her hand touched her bolero, over her heart; Mark detected a faint crackle of expensive paper beneath the soft fabric. He wondered if it would have a salutary humbling effect on Miles to learn where his literary effort was being stored, or whether it would just make him annoyingly elated.
"Tell him," she said at last, and no need to specify which him, "I accept his apology. But I can't answer his question."
Mark felt he had a brotherly duty to put in a good word for Miles, but the woman's painful reserve unnerved him. He finally mumbled diffidently, "He cares a lot, you know."
This wrenched a short little nod from her, and a brief, bleak smile. "Yes. I know. Thank you, Mark." That seemed to close the subject.
Kareen turned right at the sidewalk, while the rest of them turned left to head back to where the borrowed Armsman waited with the borrowed groundcar. Mark walked backwards a moment, watching her retreat. She strode on, head down, and didn't look back.
* * *
Miles, who had left the door of his suite open for the purpose, heard Mark returning in the late afternoon. He nipped out into the hall, and leaned over the balcony with a predatory stare down into the black-and-white paved entry foyer. All he could tell at a glance was that Mark looked overheated, an inescapable result of wearing that much black and fat in this weather.
Miles said urgently, "Did you see her?"
Mark stared up at him, his brows rising in unwelcome irony. He clearly sorted through a couple of tempting responses before deciding on a simple and prudent, "Yes."
Miles's hands gripped the woodwork. "What did she say? Could you tell if she'd read my letter?"
"As you may recall, you explicitly threatened me with death if I dared ask her if she'd read your letter, or otherwise broached the subject in any way."
Impatiently, Miles waved this off. "Directly. You know I meant not to ask directly. I just wondered if you could tell . . . anything."
"If I could tell what a woman was thinking just by looking at her, would I look like this?" Mark made a sweeping gesture at his face, and glowered.
"How the hell would I know? I can't tell what you're thinking just because you look surly. You usually look surly." Last time, it was indigestion. Although in Mark's case, stomach upset tended to be disturbingly connected with his other difficult emotional states. Belatedly, Miles remembered to ask, "So . . . how is Kareen? Is she all right?"
Mark grimaced. "Sort of. Yes. No. Maybe."
"Oh." After a moment Miles added, "Ouch. Sorry."
Mark shrugged. He stared up at Miles, now pressed to the uprights, and shook his head in exasperated pity. "In fact, Ekaterin did give me a message for you."
Miles almost lurched over the balcony. "What, what?"
"She said to tell you she accepts your apology. Congratulations, dear brother; you appear to have won the thousand-meter crawl. She must have awarded you extra points for style, is all I can say."
"Yes! Yes!" Miles pounded his fist on the rail. "What else? Did she say anything else?"
"What else d'you expect?"
"I don't know. Anything. Yes, you may call on me, or No, never darken my doorstep again, or something. A clue, Mark!"
"Search me. You're going to have to go fish for your own clues."
"Can I? I mean, she didn't actually say I was not to bother her again?"
"She said, she couldn't answer your question. Chew on it, crypto-man. I have my own troubles." Shaking