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sure if it is pre-wedding nerves or something worse. When he spots Taura looking through the wedding gifts late one night, and pocketing an elegant strand of pearls that supposedly had been sent by Admiral Quinn, he tries to intervene, hating to think she might be just a thief after all. But Taura's modified eyesight has spotted something on the pearls, and Roic convinces her to let him take them to Imperial Security for a more detailed examination. Her suspicion proves correct; the necklace is poisoned with a deadly neurotoxin cunningly designed to pass a cursory inspection. Ekaterin's wearing it for only a few minutes when she first tried it on was enough to make her quite ill, and prolonged exposure would have killed her for sure. The culprit behind the plan is revealed to be Lord Vorbataille, a minor noble who had gotten caught up in a Jackson's Whole criminal ring, and had been arrested a few days earlier trying to flee off-planet. Taura and Roic are the heroes of the wedding for foiling the plot, with Taura becoming Ekaterin's Second during the ceremony. After seeing Lord and Lady Vorkosigan off on their honeymoon, Taura and Roic reach a new mutual understanding, one that leads to some romantic fireworks of their very own.

Diplomatic Immunity (2001)

More than a year after their marriage, Miles and Ekaterin have enjoyed a well-deserved two-month galactic honeymoon, and are returning to Barrayar for the births of their children when an Imperial courier ship brings a message from Emperor Gregor. Miles is assigned to investigate an incident at Graf Station, in the Union of Free Habitats, located in an area known as Quaddiespace. Members of a Barrayaran military escort, guarding a Komarran trade fleet, got into an incident that resulted in the Barrayarans shooting up a local police station to try and free some of their men. Graf Station responded by locking down the entire merchant fleet in the docks, and holding all the passengers until the mess can be sorted out, hence Gregor's request that Miles see to the matter, as he is the closest to Quaddiespace. Taking Ekaterin with him, Miles is acutely aware of time ticking away before the births of their children, gestating in uterine replicators back on Barrayar, and wants to wrap things up as quickly as possible. However, his initial impression of the station only reveals more problems. Although a Barrayaran ensign, Dmitri Corbeau, who seems to have fallen in love with a quaddie ballet dancer, was the initial cause of the ruckus, Lieutenant Solian, the Komarran-born Barrayaran security liaison with the merchant fleet, has gone missing in the station, leaving only several liters of blood in an airlock, suggesting something dire has happened to him. Miles also finds another surprise—Bel Thorne, the Betan hermaphrodite who resigned its commission from the Dendarii at Miles's request several years ago after the second Jackson's Whole mission, is working at Graf Station as Portmaster, and is also on the Barrayaran Imperial Security payroll as an informer. Miles investigates the station brawl as well as the missing security officer, and finds more questions than answers. Ensign Corbeau is seeking asylum at Graf Station, which would make him a deserter from the Barrayaran military, and have serious repercussions for relations between the two cultures. Even more unusual, Lieutenant Solian seems to have completely disappeared. Initial suspects include a strange-looking, genetically modified man anxious to leave the station, as well as another Betan hermaphrodite, Ker Dubauer, who is worried about a cargo of uterine replicators. After someone tries to kill Miles, Bel, or Ker with a rivet gun, Miles is inclined to view the new herm as the real target, until he inspects the Betan's cargo, and finds it to be human fetuses, not bioengineered animals as Dubauer claimed. He also figures out that Dubauer isn't a hermaphrodite, but is a Cetagandan ba, the neuter class that the haut-ladies practice their genetic engineering on before releasing the changes into their future generations. Before