by Sharon Shinn
“Eight weeks of aimlessness,” he retorted. “For just so long have you been gone.”
“I know for a fact you have not been without occupation for many of those weeks,” I said in a low voice. “For Mrs. Farraday has told me of your efforts for Janet Ayerson.”
He moved one hand from the door frame to pass it over his face, but I caught its expression before he hid it. He looked sad, shamed, weary unto death. “I have not done enough for her even so,” he said. “But I cannot think of what to do next. They have eluded me—they have left Corbramb and moved elsewhere, and I cannot track them. I know neither how to find them nor how to contact her.”
“Are they yet together?”
“As far as I can determine.”
“Then perhaps he will not abandon her. Perhaps we do him a disservice in assigning the role of villain to him.”
He dropped his hand and stared at me a moment. “Am I to understand,” he asked at last, “that you condone this runaway act? That you believe love is stronger than disgrace and that a few hours of happiness, however tainted, are worth whatever price an individual might have to pay? For let me tell you, if so, out of my hovercraft at once. This is not the Jenna Starborn I know—this is an imposter, arrived on my lawn at night to trick me.”
I smiled faintly. “You must not be surprised to learn that I believe love transcends class, at any rate,” I said mildly. “If Mr. Luxton and Janet Ayerson truly loved each other, if that love was equal on both sides, if she did not love him for his money and he did not love her for her dependency-why, then, yes, I would say I would condone their act, I would bless their union. But I am very much afraid this is not so. I am afraid he will abandon her, and society will scorn her, and she will be utterly lost, and I am as afraid for her as I have ever been for anyone.”
He was still watching me with intent, serious eyes. “You would not make such a mistake, would you, Jenna?” he asked gravely. “You would not run off with an attractive scoundrel, believing his protestations of affection, if he did not offer you his name as well as his heart?”
“I would not like to say what I would have done had I been Janet Ayerson,” I said, dropping my eyes because the look in his troubled me. “I don’t believe any of us knows what we would do if we were living another’s life. I only know that I try to do good and try to be strong. The rest is chance and mischance.”
“Well, we shall hope your mischances are few,” he said, and abruptly lifted his hands from the door. In a few moments, he had circled the car and hopped in beside me, though he did not immediately start up the vehicle again.
“The house has been very quiet while you were gone, Jenna,” he remarked now. “All our houseguests left a few days after you did, and of course we were grieving for Janet as well. There has been very little to help pass the long quiet evenings. I have missed you.”
“And perhaps missed your guests as well?” I could not help asking. “One or two in particular?”
He smiled at me oddly. “Do you mean Bianca Ingersoll? Rumor has it she will be returning to Thorrastone very soon.”
“Indeed? In what capacity? Guest again, or something more substantial—more nearly related to the organization of the household?”
His smile grew wider. “You must ask the servants. I believe they talk of nothing else. It was from them that I first heard the rumor of my impending marriage—or, more precisely, from Mrs. Farraday, who told me that Mary and Rinda and Genevieve expect to be invited to the ceremony, for they consider themselves part of my family and want to be included in any event that deeply touches my life.”
“I understand exactly how they feel,” I said quite calmly, though my heart was cracking in two like a brittle stone.
“You do? You would want to be present at my wedding?”
“Indeed, yes, and I will keep you company the night beforehand, or do you not remember my promise? I have brought you back the wine you requested, so that we may share it on just such an evening. So if I can celebrate with you the night before, surely I can bear witness for you at the actual event. In fact, I insist upon it.”
He smiled again, even more oddly, and finally touched the button that started the motor. “You will be present at my wedding, Jenna. I will not be wed if you are not there, and that is a promise I will not break. So stay near me until that great day arrives, or I will remain a solitary man until I die.”
It was tempting, I must admit, to lay plans to run off the very next morning in secret, for if my presence was required to consummate Mr. Ravenbeck’s marriage to Bianca Ingersoll, I was willing to remove my person from the vicinity immediately. But that was cowardly and foolish—and fanciful beside. He would marry whomever he would marry, no matter where in the universe I might be stationed.
“It is a promise, Mr. Ravenbeck,” I said. We rode thereafter in silence until we arrived at the manor door.
Oh, how small and sad and desolate that house seemed to me tonight! The day I had left, the walls had been crammed with life and laughter—somewhat empty-headed life and careless laughter, to be sure, but still invested with an animal vitality and restlessness that caused the bricks to thrum with a random energy. Now the manor seemed uninhabited, ransacked, visited by tragedy. The foyer and stairway echoed with the consciousness of loneliness. There were not enough souls within the entire building to reasonably tenant the rooms, and the dark doorways seemed to suck greedily at me as I passed, hoping to draw me in. I felt watched by hollowness, and the scrutiny rendered me hollow in turn.
Mr. Ravenbeck paced wordlessly beside me, seeming as oppressed by the silence as I was. He carried all of my bags, though I had offered to shoulder one of them myself, so I was very conscious of my hands and my relative weightlessness as we made our way up two flights of stairs. He had never, since I had taken possession of it, stepped inside my room, and I felt oddly nervous as we approached my door. But he was not a man to overstep boundaries; no doubt he would deposit my luggage on the floor, speak a simple good-bye, and dash from the room.
A few steps—we were there—the handle turned—and sudden turmoil ! A cry, a small sobbing body hurtling my way, a confusion of voices and words, and Ameletta weeping against my stomach. Distantly I heard a voice—Mrs. Farraday’s—explaining that Ameletta had missed me so much that she had slept in my room every night since I had been gone, hoping by that method to make sure I did not spend one minute under this roof without her knowledge. Mrs. Farraday hoped I did not mind, it had seemed the only thing that would soothe the child, and she herself was so glad to see me she almost could not get the words out.
“Oh, Jenna, we have missed you so much,” she said, coming closer as she spoke, until she too was embracing me in a hold less fervent but just as sincere as Ameletta’s. “I have never in my life been so glad to see someone again.”
I returned her hug, then bent down to scoop Ameletta into my arms and cover her wet face with kisses. “And I have missed all of you just as much—even more,” I said into the tousled blonde hair. “You will sleep in my room again tonight, won’t you, Ameletta? I should like to wake up tomorrow morning and see your pretty face the very first thing. It will remind me that my travels are now over and that I am finally home.”
“I am glad to hear you think of this as home,” Mr. Ravenbeck said, surprising me, for I had almost forgotten he was in the room. I turned quickly, Ameletta still in my arms, and saw him smiling at the domestic picture we made. He added, “We are all glad to have you back. I look forward to seeing you again in the morning.”
And with that, he left. Mrs. Farraday stayed rather longer, fussing over me, helping me unpack, whispering additional details about Janet’s ill-fated flight. She need not have whispered; Ameletta was already fast asleep on my bed, where I could not wait to lay my own tired head. Mrs. Farraday did realize this, for soon enough she kissed my cheek, repeated her thanks that I was back at last, and bustled out the door. In a few minutes, I had climbed into bed beside the sleeping child and curl
ed myself protectively around her.
Home. Oh, that I wished it were. But if Mr. Ravenbeck was to marry Bianca Ingersoll in the near future, how long would Thorrastone Park be a true home to me? He might wish to keep me on, performing my technical duties and acting as sometime watcher for Ameletta, but could I bear to live in the same house with the man I loved and his smug new bride? Yes, the man I loved—I knew it, I acknowledged it, I dreaded it, but the reckoning would have to come, and soon.
Chapter 11
The next few days passed quietly., in something like contentment, though it was more like the suspended silence between an infant’s first intimation of injury and its subsequent howl of outrage. I felt as if events were about to break, courses were to be set or altered, and no few hours of peace and calm would convince me otherwise.
During those days, I divided my time between my assigned duties and my assumed ones, when I could not combine them. That is, I spent part of my time watching over my machines and part of my time guarding Ameletta, and sometimes doing both. To the extent that I could, I took over Ameletta’s education during this week. Janet had been following a computerized series of courses which I was able to call up and analyze, and once I determined what Ameletta’s skill level was, I was able to assign her lessons. In the mornings I set her at this task down in the library, where she would not be totally alone, for Rinda and Mary and Mrs. Farraday wandered in and out of the room once or twice an hour.
After lunch, I would quiz her on what she’d learned, and then I would take her with me on a long walk around the grounds. I would use these occasions to cover the topics that I knew best—specifically, math and science—and I would set her to working arithmetic problems in her head or explaining to me some of the concepts by which we lived on Fieldstar. Thus we covered, in their most basic form, the principles of gravity, sunlight, interstellar travel, and nuclear physics. She did not particularly have a head for the hard sciences, but she preferred this method of learning to laboring over a computer monitor all day, and she did her best to listen, understand, and please me.
In the evenings, she and Mrs. Farraday and I had quiet dinners in which we all tried very hard to be cheerful, though the effort was as visible as the lace in the tablecloth. Sometimes Rinda, Genevieve, and Mary ate with us, just for the comfort we drew from expanded companionship, though Rinda was not much of a talker and Mary’s conversation was limited. Still, the goodwill we felt toward one another brightened the dinner hour and lessened some of the loneliness we all felt.
After the meal, Ameletta and Mrs. Farraday and I joined Mr. Ravenbeck in his study. He had begun to teach Ameletta a rather complicated computer game, and every night they sat together while he gave her further instruction. It seemed clear to me from his repeated explanations that she had no real grasp of the game, but that she wanted to learn it from him was obvious; she glowed with the delight of achieving his undivided attention, and she tried very hard to sit still and pay attention. Frequently Mrs. Farraday and I would exchange looks of indulgent satisfaction to see them sitting so close, dark head bent over blonde, as the patient lecture went on.
Those were quiet days, as I said, but happy in a strange, desperate way. Later I would look back at them and marvel, and sigh, and wish I could return to them for only an hour.
A week after my return, I was putting Ameletta to bed when she suddenly sat up under the covers with a stricken look on her face.
“Oh, Miss Starborn! Oh, no! I have forgotten! I have left my pretty ribbons under the tree and they will be out all night and eaten by wild animals! Oh, please, can I go for them now? I will run ever so fast and be back before you even notice I am gone.”
It took a few minutes for me to sort out what had happened, and when I did, I confess I did not think it the tragedy that Ameletta did. She had been carrying around the packet of ribbons I’d given her as if they were some sort of unformed doll; she had not braided them together, or knotted them into any sort of figure, but she liked to have them with her to toy with the dangling edges when she concentrated on some problem I had set her. I am sure she also liked to carry them because I had given them to her, for she was a child who reveled in tangible proofs of affection. At any rate, this day she had accidentally left them under the oxenheart tree, where we had paused during our daily walk around the lawn.
“Ameletta, chiya, they will come to no harm there. There are no wild animals here in the compound—no one will take them.”
“But the birds! And the little squirrels—they will steal my ribbons to line their nests. I will go out tomorrow and they will be gone!”
It was true that Thorrastone Park, through some odd quirk of evolution, harbored a few small creatures that looked like armored squirrels and birds, though Mr. Ravenbeck had told me once that when the forcefield was first erected, no such animals lived inside its walls. They seemed to exist equally well inside the compound or outside in the toxic air, so they could tunnel under the walls to freedom or sneak in and out when the airlock opened. I am sure their wandering across the face of the planet was one of the contributing factors to the cross-pollination of imported and native plant species.
In any case, Ameletta was right. One of these little animals could very easily be attracted to her row of ribbons, and run off with the treasure.
“Very well, Ameletta, I will go after the ribbons. You, in any case, are not to climb from this bed, not to watch me out the window nor to sneak down to my room tonight and make sure I have recovered your prize. I will go for them now, and you can believe me, but you must go to sleep now.”
I had never reneged on a promise, so she believed me and instantly snuggled back down into her covers. “Thank you very much, Miss Starborn,” she said, so sweetly that I bent and kissed her cheek, though I had already kissed her good night. “You are so good to me!”
I patted her blonde hair and rose to my feet. “It is easy to be good to you, for you are a lovable girl,” I said. “Now do as I say, and sleep.”
I left her room and went straight downstairs, having no great desire to walk half a mile to the oxenheart tree under the ghostly artificial lighting. But a promise was a promise, and I did not hesitate as I opened the door and stepped determinedly out into the falsely lit night.
As I made my way toward the tree—large, ugly, hunkering down under the arched forcefield—I noticed a strange quality in the air itself, as if the very molecules of the atmosphere were bunching together in angry clusters. So did air feel on a natural world when the currents were coalescing for a storm, but I could not imagine what the sensation presaged in a closed environment surrounded by a windless void.
I glanced up at the distant stars, just now bleached out by a run of that frequent nighttime aurora caused by the sun’s constant flaring. The streaks of light seemed hotter and more vibrant tonight. Perhaps that solar wind was causing a faint disturbance in the magnetic forcefields that surrounded and sheltered us. Nothing more sinister than that.
I had almost made it to the dark shelter of the tree, and was congratulating myself on my coolness and fortitude, when a shadow detached itself from the main bulk of the trunk and stepped in my direction. I emitted a small scream and would have dashed back toward the house had my feet not inexplicably frozen themselves to the ground. My terror, though intense, was short-lived, for in seconds the shadow stepped closer and resolved itself into the master of Thorrastone Park.
“Great Goddess! Mr. Ravenbeck, how you startled me!” I exclaimed, pressing a hand against my racing heart and hearing the tremolo in my voice. “I did not realize anyone else was abroad at this hour, let alone lurking in darkness at my very destination.”
“Did I frighten you, Jenna?” he asked, his voice mild but amused. “Did you think I was a dryad stepping forth to utter a proclamation?”
“No, I thought you were a murderer given a lucky chance to strike me dead,” I retorted.
“But there are no killers in Thorrastone Park,” he objected. “No one here
bears you any ill will—you or any other inhabitant.”
“The name Gilda Parenon springs to mind,” I said somewhat grimly. “And if not her, whatever mysterious agent wreaked havoc in my generator room and savaged poor Mr. Merrick.”
“Unfortunate incidents, not to be repeated,” he said dismissively. “But you, Jenna! If not to be murdered, why did you steal out here in the dead of night?”
“Ameletta left some lengths of ribbon behind this afternoon, and would not be consoled until I promised to fetch them, keeping them safe from rodents and birds and other hazards.” As I spoke, I moved forward and bent toward the ground, seeking the packet. The strange light reduced everything to a graduated scale of gray; I would not be able to discern the ribbons by their bright colors. Indeed, in the long grass coiled under the tree, I might not be able to find them at all.
“Ah! Well, that is a quest well worth undertaking,” he said, moving back under the spreading branches of the tree and starting to search beside me. “Making a little girl happy.”
At first, however, we did not look like we would have much luck in our endeavor, for the grail eluded us for nearly fifteen minutes. Finally I came to my knees and let my fingers go searching through the grass, hoping to discover by texture what was invisible to the sight. “Victory!” I cried, when I finally felt the smooth, slim lengths of satin glide under my fingertips, and I held up the swatch of ribbons in a triumphant gesture.
“Bravo, Jenna! Glorious deed well-done! Now go home and write ballads about your prowess,” Mr. Ravenbeck said. He came a step closer and held out a hand. I laid my fingers in his and allowed him to pull me to my feet—just as a low, ominous, grumbling noise gathered momentum at the walls around us.
I dropped Mr. Ravenbeck’s hand and glanced apprehensively over my shoulder. “What was that? It sounds like nothing so much as thunder.”
“That’s just what it is, or something very like. This time of year, we tilt into the solar winds and there’s no end of trouble. The by-products we release mingle with what thin layer of atmosphere Fieldstar can muster on its own, and we get these incredible rushes of energy and friction. They’re not really dangerous, or haven’t been yet, but at Sollbrook Manor one year, they had a fireball ride the whole length of the forcefield and shut down the complex for a day. Everyone had to be outfitted with oxygen masks and evacuated. Which is one of the reasons,” he added, “most of the landowners here have installed backup systems on their forcefields. The whole property could have been ruined, and many lives could have been lost, if Bianca had not reacted as quickly as she did and gotten everyone safely out.”
