Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [410]
The Commodore gave him a little nod, and a crooked smile. "You're doing fine, son. Just keep on."
Kareen's hand squeezed his. Mark cleared his suddenly inexplicably tight throat, and considered the novel thought that not only could you have a family, you might even have more than one. A wealth of relations . . . "Thank you, sir. I'll try."
Olivia and Dono themselves rounded the corner of the Residence then, arm in arm, Olivia in her favorite primrose yellow, Dono soberly splendid in his Vorrutyer House blue and gray. The dark-haired Dono was actually a little shorter than his intended bride, Mark noticed for the first time. All the Koudelka girls ran to tall. But the force of Dono's personality was such that one hardly noticed the height differential.
They arrived at the group, explaining that they'd been told by five separate people to go try the maple ambrosia before it was gone. They lingered, while Kareen collected another armload of samples, to accept congratulations from all assembled. Even Ivan rose to this social duty.
When Kareen returned, Olivia told her, "I was just talking to Tatya Vorbretten. She was so happy—she and René have started their little boy! The blastocyst just got transferred to the uterine replicator this morning. All healthy so far."
Kareen, her mother, Olivia, and Dono all put their heads together, and that end of the conversation became appallingly obstetrical for a short time. Ivan backed away.
"It's getting worse and worse," he confided to Mark in a hollow voice. "I used to only lose old girlfriends to matrimony one at a time. Now they're going in pairs."
Mark shrugged. "Can't help you, old fellow. But if you want my advice—"
"You're giving me advice on how to run my love life?" Ivan interjected indignantly.
"You get what you give. Even I figured that one out, eventually." Mark grinned up at him.
Ivan growled, and made to slope off, but then paused to stare, startled, as Count Dono hailed his cousin Byerly Vorrutyer, just passing by on the walk leading to the Residence. "What's he doing here?" Ivan muttered.
Dono and Olivia excused themselves and left, presumably to share their announcement with this new quarry. Ivan, after a short silence, handed his empty cup to Kareen and trailed after them.
The Commodore, scraping the last of his ambrosia out of his cup with the little spoon provided, stared glumly after Olivia clinging joyfully to her new fiancé. "Countess Olivia Vorrutyer," he muttered under his breath, obviously trying to get both his mouth and his mind around the novel concept. "My son-in-law, the Count . . . dammit, the fellow's almost old enough to be Olivia's father himself."
"Mother, surely," murmured Mark.
The Commodore gave him an acerbic look. "You understand," he added after a moment, "just on principles of propinquity, I always figured my girls would go for the bright young officers. I expected I'd end up owning the general staff, in my old age. Though there is Duv, I suppose, for consolation. Not young either, but bright enough to be downright scary. Well, maybe Martya will find us a future general."
At the bug butter table, Martya in a mint-green gown had stopped by to check on the success of the operation, but stayed to help dish out ambrosia. She and Enrique bent together to lift another tub, and the Escobaran laughed heartily at something she said. When Mark and Kareen returned to Beta Colony, they had agreed Martya would take over as business manager, going down to the District to oversee the startup of the operations. Mark suspected she would end up with a controlling share of the company, eventually. No matter. This was only his first essay in entrepreneurship. I can make more. Enrique would bury himself in his development laboratory. He and Martya would both, no doubt, learn a lot, working together. Propinquity . . .
Mark tested the idea on the tip of his tongue, And this is my brother-in-law, Dr. Enrique Borgos . . . Mark moved so as to place the Commodore's back to the table, where Enrique was