Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [333]
She wheeled to watch them pass, her eyebrows rising in amusement. "New recruits for science?" she asked Mark as they thumped out of sight, giggling.
"For enterprise. Martya had a flash of genius. She put a bounty on escaped butter bugs, and set all the Armsmen's spare children to rounding them up. A mark apiece, and a ten-mark bonus for the queen. Enrique is back to work splicing genes full-time, the lab is caught up again, and I can return my attention to financial planning. We're getting bugs back at the rate of two or three an hour; it should be all over by tomorrow or the next day. At least, none of the children seem yet to have hit on the idea of sneaking into the lab and freeing Vorkosigan bugs, to renew their economic resource. I may devise a lock for that hutch."
The Countess laughed. "Come now, Lord Mark, you insult their honor. These are our Armsmen's offspring."
"I would have thought of that, at their age."
"If it weren't their liege-lord's bugs, they might have." She smiled, but her smile faded. "Speaking of insults . . . I wanted to ask you if you'd heard any of this vile talk going around about Miles and his Madame Vorsoisson."
"I've been head-down in the lab for the last several days. Miles doesn't come back there much, for some reason. What vile talk?"
She narrowed her eyes, slipped her hand through his arm, and strolled with him toward the antechamber to the library. "Illyan and Alys took me aside at the Vorinnis's dinner party last night, and gave me an earful. I'm extremely glad they got to me first. I was then cornered by two other people in the course of the evening and given garbled alternate versions . . . actually, one of them was trolling for confirmation. The other appeared to hope I'd pass it on to Aral, as he didn't dare repeat it to his face, the spineless little snipe. It seems rumors have begun to circulate through the capital that Miles somehow made away with Ekaterin's late husband while on Komarr."
"Well," said Mark reasonably, "you know more about that than I do. Did he?"
Her eyebrows went up. "Do you care?"
"Not especially. From everything I've been able to gather—between the lines, mostly, Ekaterin doesn't talk about him much—Tien Vorsoisson was a pretty complete waste of food, water, oxygen, and time."
"Has Miles said anything to you that . . . that leaves you in doubt about Vorsoisson's death?" she asked, seating herself beside the huge antique mirror gracing the side wall.
"Well, no," Mark admitted, taking a chair across from her. "Though I gather he fancies himself guilty of some carelessness. I think it would have been a much more interesting romance if he had assassinated the lout for her."
She sighed, looking bemused. "Sometimes, Mark, despite all your Betan therapist has done, I'm afraid your Jacksonian upbringing still leaks out."
He shrugged, unrepentantly. "Sorry."
"I am moved by your insincerity. Just don't repeat those no doubt honest sentiments in front of Nikki."
"I may be Jacksonian, ma'am, but I'm not a complete loss."
She nodded, evidently reassured. She began to speak again, but was interrupted by the double doors to the library swinging wide, and Miles escorting Commodore Duv Galeni out through the anteroom.
Seeing them, the Commodore paused to give the Countess a civil good-day. The greeting he gave to Mark was just as civil, but much warier, as though Mark had lately erupted in a hideous skin disease but Galeni was too polite to comment on it. Mark returned the greeting in kind.
Galeni did not linger. Miles saw his visitor out the front door, and retraced his steps toward the library.
"Miles!" said the Countess, rising and following him in with an expression of sudden concentration. Mark trailed in after them, uncertain if she'd finished with him or not. She cornered Miles against one of the sofas flanking the fireplace. "I understand from Pym that your Madame Vorsoisson was here yesterday, while Aral and I were out. She was here,