The Eyes of the Beholders - A. C. Crispin [88]
“My dear Lady Margaret, since I must embark on the morrow on a voyage of perilous and uncertain conclusion, I am driven at last to confess my deepest regard for you. I admire you, but that is but the half of it.” Seizing her unwilling hand in both his own, he continued in a most agitated manner, “To be frank, my dearest Lady Margaret, I love you!”
Margaret’s confusion and utter astonishment at hearing such sentiments from the lips of the proud, high-born Rodriguez can easily be imagined; she stared at him in silence, wondering if he had lost his wits—or she hers.
As she struggled to summon words, he dropped to his knees before her on the path of the botanical garden, and, with a sudden movement, pressed her hand to his lips, not once, but several times, groaning ardently all the while, “I love you, I love you!”
Margaret in vain attempted to regain possession of her hand; she struggled to the utmost to address him with composure. “Pray relinquish my hand, Mister Rodriguez,” she cried, in an agony of embarrassment lest some solitary stroller invade their privacy at such a moment. “I must tell you that I had not known you for a fortnight before I realized that you were quite the sort of man I had been looking for all my life. If only our stations in life were more comparable! If only—”
Unable to keep a straight face any longer, Deanna Troi stopped reading and dissolved into a fit of giggles. “Oh, Data, this is hilarious!”
The android’s expression was one of pleased satisfaction. “I am relieved that you like it. I worked very hard to make the dialogue sophisticated and witty.”
“I adore it!” She giggled, turning over another page. “This is one of the best-done parodies of Jane Austen—or is it Charlotte Brontë?—that I’ve read recently! It’s hysterically funny!”
Data’s pale features suddenly froze. “It is not intended,” he said slowly, “as a parody.”
Deanna immediately stopped laughing. “It’s not?”
“No.”
“Oh, Data …” She swallowed. “I’m sorry. I thought you’d intended to parody that old-fashioned style in order to be funny.”
“I was attempting to write in a more sophisticated, mannered style, in emulation of Miss Austen’s. But this novel is intended, basically, as a serious work.” He gazed at her, his yellow eyes very intent. “As a serious work, what is your honest opinion of what I have written, Deanna?”
Troi took a deep breath. “My honest opinion is that you’re never going to get anywhere as a writer until you find your own voice, Data. It’s a well-known fact that writers write best when they write what they know. That doesn’t preclude the use of imagination, by any means—but it means that a person who has no children and detests them shouldn’t try to write for them.” She took a deep breath. “And it means that a person who has never been in love is not well advised to attempt an intense, passionate love story.”
“So you do not believe that my story is good.”
She shook her head, determined to give the android the honest opinion he’d requested. “No, Data, I don’t.”
He slowly picked up the pages and placed them back in the box. “I believe, upon reflection, that your opinion was shared by all of my other critics … but they were not as honest as you were in expressing themselves. I would like to thank you, Deanna. I needed to hear what you have just told me.”
She put out a hand toward him, feeling as though she’d just committed a minor murder of some sort. “Data, I can help you try and improve,” she offered.
“Thank you, Deanna,” he replied gravely. “I will take your offer under consideration.”
He nodded at her, rose, then walked out of the lounge. Troi stared glumly at her dish, then beckoned to Guinan. “I’ll have another of these,” she said to the hostess, indicating