Mark looked both grateful and awed to be so maternally defended, as if . . . well . . . just so. As if no one had ever done so before.

"If he's so rich, why is he paying my daughter in IOUs?" demanded Da. "Why can't he just draw something out?"

"Before the end of the period?" said Mark, in a voice of real abhorrence. "And lose all that interest ?"

"And they're not IOUs," said Kareen. "They're shares!"

"Mark doesn't need money," said Tante Cordelia. "He needs what he knows money can't buy. Happiness, for example."

Mark, puzzled but pliable, offered, "So . . . do they want me to pay for Kareen? Like a dowry? How much? I will —"

"No, you twit!" cried Kareen in horror. "This isn't Jackson's Whole—you can't buy and sell people . Anyway, dowries were what the girl's family gave the fellow, not the other way around."

"That seems very wrong," said Mark, lowering his brows and pinching his chin. "Backwards. Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"I don't care if the boy has a million marks," Da began, sturdily and, Kareen suspected, not quite truthfully.

"Betan dollars," Tante Cordelia corrected absently. "Jacksonians do insist on hard currencies."

"The galactic exchange rates on the Barrayaran Imperial mark have been improving steadily since the War of the Hegen Hub," Mark started to explain. He'd written a paper on the subject last term; Kareen had helped proofread it. He could probably talk for a couple of hours about it. Fortunately, Tante Cordelia's raised finger staunched this threatened flow of nervous erudition.

Da and Mama appeared lost in a brief calculation of their own.

"All right," Da began again, a little less sturdily. "I don't care if the boy has four million marks. I care about Kareen."

Tante Cordelia tented her fingers thoughtfully. "So what is it that you want from Mark, Kou? Do you wish him to offer to marry Kareen?"

"Er," said Da, caught out. What he wanted , near as Kareen could tell, was for Mark to be carried off by predators, possibly even along with his four million marks in nonliquid investments, but he could hardly say so to Mark's mother.

"Yes, of course I'll offer, if she wants," Mark said. "I just didn't think she wanted to, yet. Did you?"

"No," said Kareen firmly. "Not . . . not yet, anyway. It's like I've just started to find myself, to figure out who I really am, to grow. I don't want to stop ."

Tante Cordelia's brows rose. "Is that how you see marriage? As the end and abolition of yourself?"

Kareen realized belatedly that her remark might be construed as a slur on certain parties here present. "It is for some people. Why else do all the stories end when the Count's daughter gets married? Hasn't that ever struck you as a bit sinister? I mean, have you ever read a folk tale where the Princess's mother gets to do anything but die young? I've never been able to figure out if that's supposed to be a warning, or an instruction."

Tante Cordelia pressed her finger to her lips to hide a smile, but Mama looked rather worried.

"You grow in different ways, afterward," Mama said tentatively. "Not like a fairy tale. Happily ever after doesn't cover it."

Da's brows drew down; he said, in an odd, suddenly uncertain voice, "I thought we were doing all right . . ."

Mama patted his hand reassuringly. "Of course, love."

Mark said valiantly, "If Kareen wants me to marry her, I will. If she doesn't, I won't. If she wants me to go away, I'll go—" This last was accompanied by a covertly terrified glance her way.

"No!" cried Kareen.

"If she wants me to walk downtown backwards on my hands, I'll try. Whatever she wants," Mark finished up.

The thoughtful expression on Mama's face suggested that at least she liked his attitude. . . . "Is it that you wish to just be betrothed?" she asked Kareen.

"That's almost the same as marriage, here," said Kareen. "You give these oaths."

"You take those oaths seriously, I gather?" said Tante Cordelia, with a flick of her eyebrow toward the occupants of the mystery couch.

"Of course ."

"I think it's down to you, Kareen," said Tante Cordelia with a small smile. "What do you want?"

Mark's hands clenched on his knees. Mama sat breathless. Da looked as if he was still worrying about the implications of that happily-ever-after remark.

This was Tante Cordelia. That wasn't a rhetorical question. Kareen sat silent, struggling for truth in confusion. Nothing less or else than truth would do. Yet where were the words for it? What she wanted was simply not a traditional Barrayaran option . . . ah. Yes. She sat up, and looked Tante Cordelia, and then Mama and Da, and then Mark in the eye.

"Not a betrothal. What I want . . . what I want—is an option on Mark."

Mark sat up, brightening. Now she was speaking a language they both understood.

"That's not Betan," said Mama, sounding confused.

"This isn't some weird Jacksonian practice, is it?" Da demanded suspiciously.

"No. It's a new Kareen custom. I just now made it up. But it fits." Her chin lifted.

Tante Cordelia's lips twitched up in amusement. "Hm. Interesting. Well. Speaking as Mark's, ah, agent in the matter, I would point out that a good option is not infinitely open-ended, nor all one-way. They have time limits. Renewal clauses. Compensation."

"Mutual," Mark broke in breathlessly. "Mutual option!"

"That would appear to cover the problem of compensation, yes. What about time limits?"

"I want a year," said Kareen. "To next Midsummer. I want at least a year, to see what we can do. I don't want anything from anybody," she glared at her parents, "but to back off !"

Mark nodded eagerly. "Agreed, agreed!"

Da jerked his thumb at Mark. "He'd agree to anything!"

"No," said Tante Cordelia judiciously. "I think you'll find he won't agree to anything that would make Kareen unhappy. Or smaller. Or unsafe."

Da's frown took on a serious edge. "Is that so? And what about her safety from him? All that Betan therapy wasn't for no reason!"

"Indeed not," agreed Tante Cordelia. Her nod acknowledged that seriousness. "But I believe it has been effective—Mark?"

"Yes, ma'am!" He sat there trying desperately to look Cured. He couldn't quite bring it off, but the effort was clearly sincere.

The Countess added quietly, "Mark is as much a veteran of our wars as any Barrayaran I know, Kou. He was conscripted earlier, is all. In his own strange and lonely way, he fought as hard, and risked as much. And lost as much. Surely you can grant him as much time to heal as you needed?"

The Commodore looked away, his face grown still.

"Kou, I wouldn't have encouraged this relationship if I thought it was unsafe for either of our children."

He looked back. "You? I know you! You trust beyond reason."

She met his eyes steadily. "Yes. It's how I get results beyond hope. As you may recall."

He pursed his lips, unhappily, and toed his swordstick a little. He had no reply for this one. But a funny little smile turned Mama's mouth, as she watched him.

"Well," said Tante Cordelia cheerfully into the lengthening silence, "I do believe we've achieved a meeting of the minds. Kareen to have an option upon Mark, and vice versa, until next Midsummer, when perhaps we should all meet again and evaluate the results, and consider negotiating an extension."

"What, are we supposed to just stand back while those two just—carry on?" cried Da, in a last fading attempt at indignation.

"Yes. Both to have the same freedom of action that, ah, you two," she nodded at Kareen's parents, "had at the same phase of your lives. I admit, carrying on was made easier for you, Kou, by the fact that all your fianc?e's relatives lived in other towns."