Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [369]
* * *
Ivan's smile muscles were giving out. Vorhartung Castle was brilliantly appointed tonight for the Council of Counts' reception for the newly arrived Komarran delegation to Gregor's wedding, which the Komarrans persisted in calling Laisa's wedding. Lights and flowers decorated the main entry hall, the grand staircase to the Council Chamber gallery, and the great salon where dinner had been held. The party did dual duty, also celebrating the augmented solar mirror array voted by, or rammed through, depending on one's political view, the Council last week. It was an Imperial bride-gift of truly planetary scope.
The feast had been followed by speeches and a holovid presentation displaying plans not only for the mirror array, vital to Komarr's ongoing terraforming, but unveiling designs for a new jump-point station to be built by a joint Barrayaran-Komarran consortium including Toscane Industries and Vorsmythe Ltd. His mother had assigned Ivan a Komarran heiress to squire about this intimate little soiree of five hundred persons; alas that she was sixty-plus years old, married, and the empress-to-be's aunt.
Unintimidated by her high Vor surroundings, this cheerful gray-haired lady was serene in her possession of a large chunk of Toscane Industries, a couple of thousand Komarran planetary voting shares, and an unmarried granddaughter upon whom she plainly doted. Ivan, admiring the vid pix, agreed that the girl was charming, beautiful, and clearly vastly intelligent. But since she was also only seven years old, she'd been left at home. After dutifully conducting Aunt Anna and her immediate hangers-on about the castle and pointing out its most salient architectural and historical features, Ivan managed to wedge the whole party back into the crowd of Komarrans around Gregor and Laisa, and plotted his escape. As Aunt Anna, in a voice raised to pierce the hubbub, informed Ivan's mother that he was a very cute boy, he faded backwards through the mob, angling toward the servitors stationed by the side walls handing out after-dinner drinks.
He almost bounced off a young couple making their way down the side aisle, who were looking at each other instead of where they were going. Lord William Vortashpula, Count Vortashpula's heir, had lately announced his engagement to Lady Cassia Vorgorov. Cassie was in wonderful looks: eyes bright, face becomingly flushed, low-cut gown—dammit, had she done something to augment her bustline, or had she simply matured a bit over the past couple of years? Ivan was still trying to decide when she caught his gaze; she tossed her head, making the flowers wound in her smooth brown hair bounce, smirked, gripped her fiancé's arm more tightly, and stalked past him. Lord Vortashpula twittered a brief distracted greeting to Ivan before he was towed off.
"Pretty girl," said a gruff voice at Ivan's elbow, making him flinch. Ivan turned to find his cousin-several-times-removed Count Falco Vorpatril watching him from under fiercely bushy gray eyebrows. "Too bad you missed your chance with her, Ivan. Dumped you for a better berth, did she?"
"I was not dumped by Cassie Vorgorov," said Ivan a little hotly. "I was never even courting her."
Falco's deep chuckle was unpleasantly disbelieving. "Your mother told me Cassie had quite a crush on you, at one time. She seems to have recovered nicely. Cassie, not your mother, poor woman. Although Lady Alys seems to have got over all her disappointments in your ill-fated love matches, too." He glanced across the room toward the group around the Emperor, where Illyan attended upon Lady Alys with his usual quiet panache.
"None of my love matches were ill-fated, sir," said Ivan stiffly. "They were all brought to mutually agreeable conclusions. I choose to play the field."
Falco merely smiled. Ivan, disdaining to be baited further, made a polite bow to the aged but upright Count Vorhalas, who had come up to