"I . . . I . . ." Ekaterin tried to collect her wits, which seemed to be scattering like sheep. "It wouldn't have been . . . polite ."

After a thoughtful pause, her aunt murmured, "You might have said, `No, thank you.' "

Ekaterin rubbed her numb face. "Aunt Vorthys," she sighed, "I love you dearly. But please go away now."

Her aunt smiled, and kissed her on the top of her head, and drifted out.

Ekaterin returned to her twice-interrupted brooding. Her aunt was right, she realized. Ekaterin hadn't answered Miles's question. And she hadn't even noticed she hadn't answered.

She recognized this headache, and the knotted stomach that went with it, and it had nothing to do with too much wine. Her arguments with her late husband Tien had never involved physical violence directed against her, though the walls had suffered from his clenched fists a few times. The rows had always petered out into days of frozen, silent rage, filled with unbearable tension and a sort of grief, of two people trapped together in the same always-too-small space walking wide around each other. She had almost always broken first, backed down, apologized, placated, anything to make the pain stop. Heartsick , perhaps, was the name of the emotion.

I don't want to go back there again. Please don't ever make me go back there again.

Where am I, when I am at home in myself? Not here, for all the increasing burden of her aunt and uncle's charity. Not, certainly, with Tien. Not with her own father. With . . . Miles? She had felt flashes of profound ease in his company, it was true, brief perhaps, but calm like deep water. There had also been moments when she'd wanted to whack him with a brick. Which was the real Miles? Which was the real Ekaterin, for that matter?

The answer hovered, and it scared her breathless. But she'd picked wrong before. She had no judgment in these man-and-woman matters, she'd proved that.

She turned back to the comconsole. A note. She should write some sort of cover note to go with the returned garden plans.

I think they will be self-explanatory, don't you?

She pressed the Send pad on the comconsole, and stumbled back upstairs to pull the curtains and lie down fully dressed on her bed until dinner.

* * *

Miles slouched into the library of Vorkosigan House, a mug of weak tea clutched in his faintly trembling hand. The light in here was still too bright this evening. Perhaps he ought to seek refuge in a corner of the garage instead. Or the cellar. Not the wine cellar—he shuddered at the thought. But he'd grown entirely bored with his bed, covers pulled over his head or not. A day of that was enough.

He stopped abruptly, and lukewarm tea sloshed onto his hand. His father was at the secured comconsole, and his mother was at the broad inlaid table with three or four books and a mess of flimsies spread out before her. They both looked up at him, and smiled in tentative greeting. It would probably seem surly of him to back out and flee.

"G'evening," he managed, and shambled past them to find his favorite chair, and lower himself carefully into it.

"Good evening, Miles," his mother returned. His father put his console on hold, and regarded him with bland interest.

"How was your trip home from Sergyar?" Miles went on, after about a minute of silence.

"Entirely without incident, happily enough," his mother said. "Till the very end."

"Ah," said Miles. "That." He brooded into his tea mug.

His parents humanely ignored him for several minutes, but whatever they'd been separately working on seemed to not hold their attention anymore. Still, nobody left.

"We missed you at breakfast," the Countess said finally. "And lunch. And dinner."

"I was still throwing up at breakfast," said Miles. "I wouldn't have been much fun."

"So Pym reported," said the Count.

The Countess added astringently, "Are you done with that now?"

"Yeh. It didn't help." Miles slumped a little further, and stretched his legs out before him. "A life in ruins with vomiting is still a life in ruins."

"Mm," said the Count in a judicious tone, "though it does make it easy to be a recluse. If you're repulsive enough, people spontaneously avoid you."

His wife twinkled at him. "Speaking from experience, love?"

"Naturally." His eyes grinned back at her.

More silence fell. His parents did not decamp. Obviously, Miles concluded, he wasn't repulsive enough. Perhaps he should emit a menacing belch.

He finally started, "Mother—you're a woman—"

She sat up, and gave him a bright, encouraging Betan smile. "Yes . . . ?"

"Never mind," he sighed. He slumped again.

The Count rubbed his lips and regarded him thoughtfully. "Do you have anything to do ? Any miscreants to go Imperially Audit, or anything?"

"Not at present," Miles replied. After a contemplative moment he added, "Fortunately for them."

"Hm." The Count tamped down a smile. "Perhaps you are wise." He hesitated. "Your Aunt Alys gave us a blow-by-blow account of your dinner party. With editorials. She was particularly insistent that I tell you she trusts ," Miles could hear his aunt's cadences mimicked in his father's voice, "you would not have fled the scene of any other losing battle the way you deserted last night."

Ah. Yes. His parents had been left with the mopping up, hadn't they. "But there was no hope of being shot dead in the dining room if I stayed with the rear guard."

His father flicked up an eyebrow. "And so avoid the subsequent court martial?"

"Thus conscience doth make cowards of us all," Miles intoned.

"I am sufficiently your partisan," said the Countess, "that the sight of a pretty woman running screaming, or at least swearing, into the night from your marriage proposal rather disturbs me. Though your Aunt Alys says you scarcely left the young lady any other choice. It's hard to say what else she could have done but walk out. Except squash you like a bug, I suppose."

Miles cringed at the word bug .

"Just how bad—" the Countess began.

"Did I offend her? Badly enough, it seems."

"Actually, I was about to ask, just how bad was Madame Vorsoisson's prior marriage?"

Miles shrugged. "I only saw a little of it. I gather from the pattern of her flinches that the late unlamented Tien Vorsoisson was one of those subtle feral parasites who leave their mates scratching their heads and asking, Am I crazy? Am Icrazy? " She wouldn't have those doubts if she married him , ha.

"Aah," said his mother, in a tone of much enlightenment. "One of those . Yes. I know the type of old. They come in all gender-flavors, by the way. It can take years to fight your way out of the mental mess they leave in their wake."

"I don't have years," Miles protested. "I've never had years." And then pressed his lips shut at the little flicker of pain in his father's eyes. Well, who knew what Miles's second life expectancy was, anyway. Maybe he'd started his clock all over, after the cryorevival. Miles slumped lower. "The hell of it is, I knew better. I'd had way too much to drink, I panicked when Simon . . . I never meant to ambush Ekaterin like that. It was friendly fire . . ."

He went on after a little, "I had this great plan, see. I thought it could solve everything in one brilliant swoop. She has this real passion for gardens, and her husband had left her effectively destitute. So I figured, I could help her jump-start the career of her dreams, slip her some financial support, and get an excuse to see her nearly every day,and get in ahead of the competition. I had to practically wade through the fellows panting after her in the Vorthys's parlor, the times I went over there—"