Philip sucked in his breath at the sight of the two lovers.
“They make a pretty picture, don’t they?” said Vincent. His voice was tight.
Philip grimaced and did not respond. He glanced up and caught the waiter’s eye. “Bring me whatever he’s drinking,” he said, and turned back to watch silently through the window pane as Edward stowed Joanna’s bag in his vehicle’s trunk and then sped away.
“How well do you know Joanna Langley?” Vincent asked delicately.
“Not well.” Philip stopped speaking as the waiter silently placed a drink in front of him, then went on. “I met her only a few times in Academy. We took different classes.”
“Ah…” Vincent nodded as if Philip had said something profound. He sipped his drink and looked at Philip as if searching for something in his face. “You don’t like Edward Maret, do you?” he said at last.
Philip arched a brow. “Why do you say that?”
Vincent smiled fleetingly. “It’s not hard to see.” Philip sniffed, wrinkling his nose. “I won’t deny it.”
“Why is that?” Vincent asked.
Why indeed? Philip thought about it as he turned the solid weight of his glass in his fingers. Edward was the older of the two by a year. They had been born in the same house. They had been playmates as children. Their mothers, though totally unalike in temperament—Idris insistent, volatile and abrupt, Cecile measured and thoughtful—were nevertheless genuinely fond of each other and seemed, despite their frequent arguments, to live together in complete harmony. Why had their sons been so different? Philip thought of his father for an instant, a shadowy figure out of memory, composed of booming laughter and enormous, shining eyes. Edward’s father, so far as Philip could recall him, had been exactly the same. Really, Philip could no longer be sure which of his few memories from those years were of which brother. His father and his uncle had died together, their shuttle crashing in the sea near the port of Santorini, returning from a business trip to the naval base on Kolamites, the nearer moon. The curse of the Marets, people had whispered. So many of the men in his family had died violently and young.
Philip shook his head. Why did he hate Edward? “He’s rich and I’m not,” he said, and shrugged. That didn’t explain it, of course, not really. But it was the obvious explanation and it would do. Philip thought again of his childhood. Edward and he had played the same sort of childish pranks, had gotten into the same sorts of mischief, but somehow Edward had always gotten away with it. Philip, thought Philip, had never gotten away with anything. The golden hair, the charming, regretful smile, the sincere contrition until the next escapade…these had always done it for Edward. Edward had the touch, the secret of making people love him. It was a secret that Philip lacked. Then, as young men, it had always seemed to come so easily to Edward: friends, success, adoring young women. And Philip always in the background, brooding, while the World spun around a different axis.
Vincent was looking at him curiously. “You’re not exactly poor,” he said.
“Not compared to him. He’s the heir.”
Vincent’s eyebrows rose minutely and he shrugged, seeming to dismiss the question from his mind. “I knew you disliked him,” Vincent said. “I remember the way you looked at him in school. It was obvious.” He raised his drink to his lips and finished it off in a gulp, then set the glass back down on the table with a solid thunk. “How much do you dislike him?” Vincent asked.
“Why do you ask?”
Vincent examined Philip’s face carefully and seemed to come to a decision. “I dislike him as much as you do,” Vincent said. “I despise him, in fact.”
Philip’s brows rose. “You do? Why?”
Vincent shrugged. “I hate him for the exact same reason as you. He has something that I want.”
“And what’s that?”
Vincent leaned forward and spoke in a low, intense voice. “I want Joanna Langley.”
Philip sat back, carefully considering this information. Vincent looked at him levelly, giving him all the time he needed to mull it over. “What do you want from me?” Philip barely whispered it. Vincent suddenly grinned. He examined Philip’s face and knew that he had not misjudged his man. “I have a plan,” he said. He kept his voice deliberately noncommittal. “If it works, we’ll both get what we want. Are you interested?”
Philip slowly nodded. “I’m interested.”
Chapter 3
Joanna blinked rapidly and shook her head in confusion, peering through the fire-lit darkness of the room at the carved wood paneling. It all seemed so very hard for her to comprehend: the impending marriage, the huge, old house…everything. She shook her head and took in an enormous, deep breath. It wasn’t a bad feeling, though, she reflected—it was exciting. It was almost too exciting. She clasped her arms around herself and snuggled up in the soft, comfortable chair, wriggling her toes.
Outside the big picture window, the sun was setting over the green hills beyond the fields of yellow cilium. The sky was shot with purples and pinks and a few high, wispy clouds turned lazily overhead. Korinhos, the smaller moon, was a tiny, glowing marble in the sky, and Kolamites, the larger, hovered above like a ripe orange. The fireplace emitted a crackling glow and the room had a pleasant smell of old leather and burning pine.
“I knew you’d like it,” Edward said.
“It’s not the first time I’ve been here, you know.”
Edward grinned. “This time it’s different. This time, you won’t be leaving.”
“No,” Joanna said in a small voice. Even Edward appeared…different to her. Was this the face of the man she loved? The boy she had fallen in love with? She examined him with a puzzled frown and shook her head.
“Something wrong?” he asked.
“No.” She looked away, momentarily embarrassed, and gave a shaky laugh. “I’m having trouble believing it. That’s all.”
Edward nodded. “I understand.”
She wondered if he really did. “It all seems unreal to me somehow. Even you. Suddenly, you look like a stranger.”
“I understand,” he said again.
Edward could be so exasperating sometimes, Joanna thought. He had a quality of acceptance, almost an innocence where other people were concerned. He would focus those big, green eyes on your face and listen, really listen, unlike any other person she had ever known. You felt like you could trust him. You felt that he cared. People felt endlessly comfortable around Edward Maret. He was everybody’s confidant and everybody’s friend. Then she thought of a few exceptions to this situation and she frowned again. “Just let me look at you,” she said.
Edward smiled his golden smile and said nothing.
She thought back to the first time she had seen him, playing a game of football on the quad. Joanna had been walking down the pathway with two friends, Cynthia and Stephanie, on a break between classes, and had stopped to watch the boys play. One boy, tall, with golden hair, had the ball. He held it with one hand and raced down the field, dodging tackles, shaking and evading, feinting and changing direction with a sure, unconscious grace. “That’s Edward Maret,” Cynthia whispered.
“He runs nicely,” said Joanna.
Cynthia glanced at her with a wide smile. “Doesn’t he?” And she laughed, a rich, throaty laugh.
Joanna met him a week later. He came up to her as she sat after lunch, poring over a gene chart of Escherischia coli. “May I sit down?” he asked.
She frowned. There were plenty of empty tables and she really didn’t feel like being bothered at the moment, but then she recognized him and abruptly nodded.
He smiled and slid into the opposite seat. “Please don’t think me forward,” he said. “But I saw you watching me the other day and I knew immediately that I had to meet you.”
Joanna considered this for an instant, trying to figure out whether to be complimented or offended, and decided to withhold judgment. “Why?” she asked.
“I do
n’t exactly know,” he answered frankly. “There are a lot of beautiful girls around. But you intrigued me.”
“How?”
“It was the way you looked at me. Your friend Cynthia was undressing me with her eyes. You seemed more interested in the way I carried the ball.”
Joanna smiled. “I was more interested in the way you carried the ball.”
Edward nodded wisely. “You see? And so I knew I had to meet you.”
“But I do think that you’re…forward,” Joanna said.
“Shall I leave?” He made no move to get up, but he said it as if he were serious.
Joanna clicked her tongue against her teeth and thought about it. “No,” she said.
He didn’t mind being laughed at. That was part of it. He was the only boy she knew who was so certain of himself, or so uncaring of what others thought of him, that he never, ever tried to present himself as anything other than what he was. Edward Maret never pretended. He was as un-self-conscious as a cat.
Outside the picture window, the sun was a bare sliver of light against the line of the horizon, and the bright colors of a few minutes before had faded to a deep blue-black. Overhead, the stars were beginning to twinkle.
Joanna stared at him and felt the breath catch in her throat. Edward’s smile grew wider.
“Have you ever read L’Etranger, by Camus?” she asked.
“Twentieth-Century philosopher-writer.” He shrugged. “I read it in school, a long time ago. I don’t remember that much about it.”
“The hero reminds me of you sometimes,” she said, “as some sort of existential archetype.”
Edward’s eyebrows rose. “The self-actualized man? Am I supposed to be flattered? I wonder…I don’t think it’s true.”
“It doesn’t have to be true. It’s how I think of you.”
“You can think of me any way that you like,” he said. And the look that he gave her made her head spin. “Just so long as you think of me.”
Philip wiped his sweaty palms on his pants as he hurried down the hallway. He tried to control his breathing and failed. The back of his neck tingled and his legs were so unsteady they could barely carry him. His racing heart thumped so hard in his chest that he thought it would explode and he would drop dead in the hallway. Dead of guilt.
“Hide this in Edward’s rooms,” Vincent had said, and he handed the piece of paper over the table to Philip.
Philip looked at it. It was a list of names. Some of them he recognized. Most were unknown to him. Buried neatly in the center was that of Edward Maret.
“What is this?”
Vincent grimaced. “The war is almost over, Philip. Johnny’s come marching home, if you know what I mean.”
“No, actually,” said Philip, and warily shook his head. “I haven’t the faintest idea what you mean.”
“That is a list of Irredentist collaborators.”
Philip’s eyes flickered down to the paper in his hand and then back to Vincent’s complacent face. “I don’t understand,” he said frostily.
“The government has promised amnesty to those who give themselves up. This afternoon, I filled out the necessary papers.” And Vincent shook his head regretfully. “It’s really too bad, you know. The genetically superior should run things. The present system is absurd. It’s inefficient; it can’t respond to crises. The economy lurches from recession to recession. The defense forces need to be rebuilt and the Kliya are lurking on the frontier, licking their whiskers and waiting for us to fail.” He shook his head again. “So stupid.” Then he held his hands up in a gesture of resignation. “But we’ve lost. Nothing left to do but try to put the best face on it.” He grimaced and drained his glass in a gulp, still shaking his head.
Philip stared uncertainly at the list and swallowed. “And this…?”
“Well, the amnesty only applies to those who give themselves up. Anyone who doesn’t, will be presumed to still harbor traitorous feelings and to be planning further aggressive acts against society.
“And, of course, amnesty only applies to the little people. Like me. The ringleaders won’t be so easily forgiven.”
“The people on this list—how many have given themselves up?”
Vincent gave a nasty little laugh. “So far as I know, none of them. The government supposition is correct, you see. Many of the hold-outs still are planning traitorous acts.” Vincent laughed again and shook his head in amazement. “They’re crazy, but you have to admire their commitment.”
Philip looked again at the list and grimaced. “You say you were one of ‘the little people.’ How did you get this?”
“Oh, I’ve known for quite a while that the revolt was not going to make it. Anybody with a brain could see it—at least anybody on the inside could. These people—they mean what they say, but most of them are not exactly the practical sort, more philosophers than men of action.” Vincent shook his head. “I’ve been keeping names ever since I realized. You never know when you might need something like that.” He shrugged. “I never even met most of them. A lot of it is supposition…an overheard whisper, a snatch of conversation…but I’m pretty sure of every one.”
“I can’t believe Edward would be a party to this,” Philip said.
“He’s not.”
Philip cleared his throat and let his breath out in a sigh. ”I see,” he whispered, and then grinned.
“Can’t give yourself up if you have nothing to give yourself up for, now can you?” said Vincent. “Of course, the police won’t know that.”
“He’ll deny it.”
“Of course he’ll deny it. But that list is pretty explosive. Some of the people on it are very highly placed. One or two of them will cause serious problems for the government.
“Edward will have a hard time talking himself out of it. And even if he does”—Vincent shrugged fluidly—“the suspicion will hurt him. I know Joanna. She’s the serious type. She puts a lot of store in truth and justice. She may not be so fond of him after that.”
Philip shook his head in wonderment. “I like it,” he said. “I really like it.” And he smiled broadly.
So now it was done. The list of Irredentist names was hidden beneath a drawer in Edward’s desk: waiting to be found.
Airlie was constructed in three separate sections; the oldest section, massive and solid, was built almost five-hundred years before as a testament to the newly arrived power and wealth of the Maret clan. The most recent addition was added on by Edward’s grandfather barely a century ago; it had high, crenellated towers and fragile, gaily-colored bridges leading to observation decks and wisteria-covered walkways. This section made a very different statement—a statement that life was to be enjoyed and the Marets knew how to enjoy it.
The estate seemed tiny in the distance but was perfectly sharp to their eyes in the clear evening air. As the horses picked their way along the well-used trail, Edward smiled back, almost unconsciously, at the big house.
Joanna, seeing his smile, said: “You love the place, don’t you?” Edward frowned. “Love? I don’t know if that’s the right word exactly. I can’t imagine living anywhere else or doing anything different. It’s what I’ve been trained to do all my life.”
“But you never wanted to do anything else, have you?” Edward shook his head. “No.”
Joanna nodded gravely. “That’s unusual.”
“Is it?” Edward shrugged. “Then I guess you could say I’m lucky.”
They reined their horses to a stop at the top of the ridge and looked down. The winding shape of the Sohn River meandered slowly across the rich, alluvial plain, while the fields of cilium stretched as far as their eyes could see, blending together in a golden glow at the horizon.
“How much of it is yours?” asked Joanna.
“Twenty-thousand hectares. But it’s not mine exactly. It’s entailed, held by the Family in common.”
“That I know.” Joanna nodded thoughtfully as she stared
out at the mutated grain. “But it’s still a fortune.”
“Yes,” Edward agreed. “It is a fortune. It’s life itself, and people will pay nearly anything for life. Think how things must have been before cilium, when people grew old and died in less than a century, like mayflies.”
Joanna sighed and shook her head and did not answer.
The light wind stirred her auburn hair along her shoulders and the sun sent red highlights through it and Edward felt something inside himself twist at the sight. Tall, softly curved, and pale, with a dusting of freckles across the nose: that was Joanna Langley. Edward thought back to the first time he had seen her. Her blue eyes had been thoughtful and measured, cool and appraising. Her eyes had fascinated him on the instant. It was all he could do to keep his grip on the ball and run, with those huge eyes boring holes through his back. And then, almost before he had a chance to turn around, she was gone—until he saw her again a few days later, studying by herself in the cafeteria, and the rest, as they say, was history.
Joanna had been going out with a young man named Vincent. Vincent did not take his changed circumstances at all well. Edward felt a bit sorry for Vincent, but what else could he have done? The thought of giving her up was unthinkable. Edward had always been blessed with a well-ordered mind and the gift of certainty. He was Edward Maret, of Airlie, rich man’s son. He knew who he was and he knew what he wanted out of life. His feelings toward Joanna were new for him; he had never before passionately wanted anything that he did not already have. He tried sometimes to figure it out. What was it about her? There were others as beautiful as Joanna. There were others as intelligent and thoughtful and good-in-bed and kind. It was none of these things, or it was the sum total of them all, or…he didn’t know. All he knew was that he had to have her; he couldn’t get enough of her. Was it love? Or was it some sort of sick obsession? Edward didn’t know, and he didn’t really care.
Twenty years, he thought. Father Argos was right, of course; Twenty years was a long time. Edward’s was a conservative society—only natural where the average life-span was well over three-hundred. Conservative societies frowned on instability and divorce contributed to instability. Once married, a couple were stuck with each other for at least twenty years. After that the marriage vows were automatically dissolved unless they were voluntarily renewed. The thought should have been daunting, or at least sobering. It was a symptom of how far he had gone that Edward found it only exhilarating.
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