"Lord Vorkosigan," cried Enrique, his voice quavering with relief, "I don't know how I can ever repay you!"

Miles held up a hand, dryly, to cut him off in midlaunch. "I'll think of something."

Martya, a little more alive to Miles's nuances than Enrique, smiled acerbically and took the Escobaran by the hand. "Come on, Enrique. I think maybe we'd better start working off your debt of gratitude by going down and cleaning up the lab, don't you?"

"Oh! Yes, of course . . ." Firmly, she hauled him off. His voice drifted back, "Do you think he'll like the butter bugs Ekaterin designed . . . ?"

Ekaterin smiled down fondly at Miles. "Well played, love."

"Yes," said Mark gruffly. He found himself staring at his boots. "I know how you feel about this whole project. Um . . . thanks, eh?"

Miles reddened slightly. "Well . . . I couldn't risk offending my cook, y'know. She seems to have adopted the man. It's the enthusiastic way he eats my food, I suppose."

Mark's brows lowered in sudden suspicion. "Is it true that a Count's Residence is legally a part of his District? Or did you just make that up on the spot?"

Miles grinned briefly. "Look it up. Now if you two will excuse us, I think I'd better go spend some time calming the fears of my in-laws-to-be. It's been a trying morning for them. As a personal favor, dear brother, could you please refrain from springing any more crises upon me, just for the rest of today?"

"In-laws-to . . . ?" Kareen's lips parted in thrilled delight. "Oh, Ekaterin, good! Miles, you—you rat! When did this happen?"

Miles grinned, a real grin this time, not playing to the house. "She asked me, and I said yes." He glanced up more slyly at Ekaterin, and went on, "I had to set her a good example, after all. You see, Ekaterin, that's how a proposal should be answered—forthright, decisive, and above all, positive!"

"I'll keep it in mind," she told him. She was poker-faced, but her eyes were laughing as he led her off toward the library.

Kareen, watching them go, sighed in romantic satisfaction, and leaned into Mark. All right, so this stuff was contagious. This was a problem? Screw the black suit. He slipped an arm around her waist.

Kareen ran a hand through her hair. "I want a shower."

"You can use mine," Mark offered instantly. "I'll scrub your back . . ."

"You can rub everything," she promised him. "I think I pulled some muscles in the tug-of-Enrique."

By damn, he might salvage this afternoon yet. Smiling fondly, he turned with her toward the staircase.

At their feet, the queen Vorkosigan-liveried butter bug scuttled out of a shadow and waddled quickly across the black-and-white tiles. Kareen yipped, and Mark dove after the huge bug. He skidded to a halt on his stomach under the side table by the wall just in time to see the silver flash of her rear end slide out of sight between the baseboard and a loose paving stone. "God damn but those things can flatten out! Maybe we ought to get Enrique to make them, like, taller or something." Dusting his jacket, he climbed back to his feet. "She went into the wall." Back to her nest in the walls somewhere, he feared.

Kareen peered doubtfully under the table. "Should we tell Miles?"

"No," said Mark decisively, and took her hand to mount the stairs.

EPILOGUE

From Miles's point of view, the two weeks to the Imperial wedding sped past, though he suspected that Gregor and Laisa were running on a skewed relativistic time-distortion in which time went slower but one aged faster. He manufactured appropriate sympathetic noises whenever he encountered Gregor, agreeing that this social ordeal was a terrible burden, but, truly, one that everyone must bear, a commonality of the human condition, chin up, soldier on. Inside his own head, a continuous counterpoint ran in little popping bubbles, Look! I'm engaged! Isn't she pretty? She asked me. She's smart, too. She's going to marry me. Mine, mine, all mine. I'm engaged! To be married! To this woman! an effervescence that emerged, he trusted, only as a cool, suave smile.

He did arrange to dine over at the Vorthys's three times, and have Ekaterin and Nikki to meals at Vorkosigan House twice, before the wedding week hit and all his meals—even breakfasts, good God—were bespoken. Still, his timetable was not as onerous as Gregor's and Laisa's, which Lady Alys and ImpSec between them had laid out in one-minute increments. Miles invited Ekaterin to accompany him to all his social obligations. She raised her brows at him, and accepted a sensible and dignified three. It was only later that Kareen pointed out that there were limits to the number of times a lady wanted to be seen in the same dress, a problem which, had he but realized it existed, he would gladly have set out to solve. It was perhaps just as well. He wanted Ekaterin to share his pleasure, not his exhaustion.

The cloud of amused congratulation that surrounded them for their spectacular betrothal was marred only once, at a dinner in honor of the Vorbarr Sultana Fire Watch which had included handing out awards for men exhibiting notable bravery or quick thinking in the past year. Exiting with Ekaterin on his arm, Miles found the door half blocked by the somewhat drunken Lord Vormurtos, one of Richars's defeated supporters. The room had mostly emptied by that time, with only a few earnestly chatting groups of people left. Already the servers were moving in to clean up. Vormurtos leaned on the frame with his arms crossed, and failed to move aside.

At Miles's polite, "Excuse us, please," Vormurtos pursed his lips in exaggerated irony.

"Why not? Everyone else has. It seems if you are Vorkosigan enough, you can even get away with murder."

Ekaterin stiffened unhappily. Miles hesitated a fractional moment, considering responses: explanation, outrage, protest? Argument in a hallway with a half-potted fool? No. I am Aral Vorkosigan's son, after all. Instead, he stared up unblinkingly, and breathed, "So if you truly believe that, why are you standing in my way? "

Vormurtos's inebriated sneer drained away, to be replaced by a belated wariness. With an effort at insouciance that he did not quite bring off, he unfolded himself, and opened his hand to wave the couple past. When Miles bared his teeth in an edged smile, he backed up an extra and involuntary step. Miles shifted Ekaterin to his other side and strode past without looking back.

Ekaterin glanced over her shoulder once, as they made their way down the corridor. In a tone of dispassionate observation, she murmured, "He's melted. You know, your sense of humor is going to get you into deep trouble someday."

"Belike," Miles sighed.

* * *

The Emperor's wedding, Miles decided, was very like a combat drop mission, except that, wonderfully, he wasn't in command. It was Lady Alys's and Colonel Lord Vortala the Younger's turn for nervous breakdowns. Miles got to be a grunt. All he had to do was keep smiling and follow orders, and eventually it would all be over.

It was fortunate that it was a Midsummer event, because the only site large enough for all the circles of witnesses (barring the stunningly ugly municipal stadium) was the former parade ground, now a grassy sward, just to the south of the Residence. The ballroom was the backup venue in the event of rain, in Miles's view a terrorist plan that courted death by overheating and oxygen deprivation for most of the government of the Imperium. To match the blizzard that had made the Winterfair betrothal so memorable, they ought to have had summer tornadoes, but to everyone's relief the day dawned fair.

The morning began with yet another formal breakfast, this time with Gregor and his groom's party at the Residence. Gregor looked a little frayed, but determined.