Miles in Love - Lois McMaster Bujold [437]
"Enough to kill someone?" Taura's tone was tense.
"Enough to kill a bloody elephant, the lab boys say." Pym moistened dry lips. "And I checked it myself. I bloody passed it." His teeth clenched. "She was going to wear them to—m'lord would have . . ." He choked himself off and ran a hand over his face, hard.
"Does ImpSec know who really sent them, yet?" asked Taura.
"Not yet. But they're all over it, you can believe."
A vision of the deadly pale spheres lying on milady-to-be's warm throat flashed through Roic's memory. "Madame Vorsoisson touched the pearls last night—night before last, that is now," said Roic urgently. "She had them on for at least five minutes. Is she going to be all right?"
"ImpSec is dispatching a physician to Lord Auditor Vorthys's to check her—one of their toxins experts. If she'd taken in enough to kill her, she'd have died right then, so that's not going to happen, but I don't know what other . . . I have to go now and call m'lord there and warn him to expect a visitor. And . . . and tell him why. Well done, Roic. Did I say well done? Well done." Pym drew a shaken, unhappy breath, and strode back out.
Taura, her chin in her hand as she drooped over her plate, scowled after him. "Jacksonian neurotoxin, eh? That doesn't prove much. The Jacksonians will sell anything to anyone. Although Miles made enough enemies there in some of our old sorties, if they knew it was intended for him they'd probably offer a deep discount."
"Yeah, I imagine tracing the source is going to take a little longer. Even for ImpSec." He hesitated. "Although wouldn't they just know him on Jackson's Whole under his old covert ops identity? Your little admiral?"
"That cover's been well-blown for a couple of years, he tells me. Partly as a result of the mess his last mission there produced, partly from some other things. Over my head." She yawned, hugely. It was . . . . impressive. She'd been up since dawn, Roic was reminded, and hadn't slept through the afternoon as he had. Stranded in what must seem to her an alien place, and wrestling terrible fears. All by herself. For the first time, he wondered if she was lonely. One of a kind, the last of her kind if he understood correctly, without home or kin except for that chancy wandering mercenary fleet. And then he wondered why he hadn't noticed her essential aloneness sooner. Armsmen were supposed to be observant. Yeah?
"If I promise to come by and tell you if I get any news, d'you suppose you could try to sleep?"
She rubbed the back of her neck. "Would you? Then I think I could. Try, that is."
He escorted her to her door, past m'lord's dark and empty suite. When he clasped her hand briefly, she clasped back. He swallowed, for courage.
"Dirty pearls, eh?" he said, still holding her hand. "Y'know . . . I don't know about any other Barrayarans . . . but I think your genetic modifications are beautiful."
Her lips curved up, he hoped not altogether bleakly. "You are getting better."
When she let go and turned in, a claw trailing lightly over the skin of his palm made his body shudder in involuntary, sensual surprise. He stared at the closing door, and swallowed a perfectly foolish urge to call her back. Or follow her inside . . . he was still on duty, he reminded himself. The next monitors-check was overdue. He forced himself to turn away.
* * *
The sky outside was shifting from the amber night of the city to a chill blue dawn when the gate guard called Roic to code down the house shields for m'lord's return. As the armsman who'd been called out to chauffeur drove the big car off to put away, Roic opened one door to admit the hunched, frowning figure. M'lord