Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [435]
Slowly, with the deepest distress in her strange gold eyes, Taura wrapped the box in the cloth and handed it to him.
* * *
Then Roic found himself facing the task, all by himself, of stirring up ImpSec's Imperial headquarters in the middle of the night. He almost wanted to wait for Pym's return. But he was a Vorkosigan armsman: senior man present, even if merely because sole man present. It was his duty, it was his right, and time was of the essence, if only to relieve Taura's troubled mind at the earliest possible instant. She hovered, bleak and worried, as he gulped for nerve and fired up the secured comconsole in the nearby library.
A serious-looking ImpSec captain reported to the front hall in less than thirty minutes. He recorded everything, including Roic's verbal report, Taura's description of what the pearls had looked like to her, both their accounts of Madame Vorsoisson's witnessed symptoms, and a copy of Pym's original security check records. Roic tried to be straightforward, as he'd often wished witnesses would have been to him back in Hassadar, although in this version the fraught confrontation in the antechamber became merely, Sergeant Taura voiced a suspicion to me . Well, it was true .
For Taura's sake, Roic made sure to mention the possibility that the pearls had not been sent by Quinn at all, and pointed out the other gift certainly known to be from her. The captain frowned and bundled up the cat blanket as well, and looked as though he wanted to bundle up Taura along with it. He carried off the pearls, the still-purring blanket, and all related packaging in a series of sealed and labeled plastic bags. All this chill efficiency took a bare half hour more.
"Do you want to go to bed?" Roic asked Taura when the doors closed behind the ImpSec captain. She looks so tired . "I have to stay up anyway. I can give you a call to your room when there's any news. If there's any news."
She shook her head. "I couldn't sleep. Maybe they'll have something soon."
"There's no telling, but I hope so."
They settled down to wait together on a sturdy-looking sofa in the antechamber opposite the one displaying the gifts. The noises of the night—odd squeaks of the house settling against the winter cold, the faint whir or hum of distant automated machinery—were very noticeable in the stillness. Taura stretched what Roic suspected were knotted shoulders, and he was briefly inspired to offer a back rub, but he wasn't sure how she'd take it. The impulse dissolved in cowardice.
"Quiet around here at night," she said after a moment.
She was speaking to him again. Please, don't stop . "Yeah. I sort of like it, though."
"Oh, you too? The night watch is a philosophical kind of time. Its own world. Nothing moving out there but maybe people being born or people dying, necessity, and us."
"Eh, and the bad night people we're put on watch against."
She glanced through the archway into the great hall, and beyond. "Apparently so. What an evil trick . . . ." She trailed off in a grimace.
"This Quinn . . . you've known her a long time?"
"She was in the Dendarii mercenaries at the time I joined the fleet—original equipment, she says. A good leader; a friend by many shared disasters. And victories, sometimes. Ten years adds up to some weight, even if you're not watching. Especially if you're not watching, I suppose."
He followed the thought spoken by her glance, as well as her words. "Eh, yeah. God spare me from ever facing such a puzzle. It would be as bad as having your count revolt against the Emperor, I suppose. Or like finding m'lord in on some insane plot to murder Empress Laisa. Shouldn't wonder that you've been running around in circles in your head all night."
"Tighter and tighter, yes. I couldn't enjoy the Emperor's party from the moment I thought of it, and I know Miles so wanted me to. And I couldn't tell him why—I'm afraid he thought I was feeling out of place. Well, I was, but it wasn't a problem, exactly. I'm usually out of place." She blinked tawny eyes gone dark and wide