Lady Donna. She was no pubescent prole. Any husband who dared to trumpet in her presence risked being sliced off at the knees. Elegant, sophisticated, assured . . . a woman who knew what she wanted, and how to ask for it. A woman of his own class, who understood the game. A little older, yes, but with lifespans extending so much these days, what of that? Look at the Betans; Miles's Betan grandmother, who must be ninety if she was a day, was reported to have a gentleman-friend of eighty. Why hadn't he thought of Donna earlier?

Donna. Donna, Donna, Donna. Mmm. This was one meeting he wouldn't miss for worlds.

* * *

"I set her to wait in the antechamber to the library, m'lord," Pym's familiar rumble came to Kareen's ears. "Would you like me to bring you anything, or ah, anything?"

"No. Thank you," came Lord Mark's lighter voice in reply from the front hall. "Nothing, that will be all, thank you."

Mark's footsteps echoed off the stone paving: three rapid strides, two skips, a slight hesitation, and a more measured footfall to the archway into the antechamber. Skips? Mark? Kareen bounced to her feet as he rounded the corner. Oh, my, surely it could not have been good for him to lose that much weight that quickly—instead of the familiar excessively round solidity, he looked all saggy , except for his grin, and his blazing eyes—

"Ah! Stand right there!" he ordered her, seized a footstool, placed it before her knees, climbed up, and flung his arms around her. She wrapped her arms around him in turn, and the conversation was buried for a moment in frantic kisses given and received and returned redoubled.

He came up for air long enough to inquire, "How did you get here?" then didn't let her answer for another minute.

"Walked," she said breathlessly.

"Walked! It must be a kilometer and a half!"

She put her hands on his shoulders, and backed off far enough to focus her eyes on his face. He was too pale, she thought disapprovingly, almost pasty. Worse, his buried resemblance to Miles was edging toward the surface with his bones, an observation she knew would horrify him. She kept it to herself. "So? My father used to walk to work here every day in good weather, stick and all, when he was the Lord Regent's aide."

"If you'd called, I would have sent Pym with the car—hell, better, I'd have come myself. Miles says I can use his lightflyer whenever I want."

"A lightflyer, for six blocks?" she cried indignantly, between a couple more kisses. "On a beautiful spring morning like this?"

"Well, they don't have slidewalks here . . . mmm. . . . Oh, that's good . . ." He nuzzled her ear, inhaled her tickling curls, and planted a spiral line of kisses from her earlobe to her collarbone. She hugged him tight. The kisses seemed to burn across her skin like little fiery footprints. "Missed you, missed you, missed you . . ."

"Missed you missed you missed you too." Though they could have traveled home together, if he hadn't insisted on his Escobaran detour.

"At least the walk made you all warm . . . you could come up to my room, and take off all those hot clothes . . . can Grunt come out to play, hmm . . . ?"

"Here ? In Vorkosigan House ? With all the Armsmen around?"

"It's where I live, presently." This time, he broke off and leaned back to eye-focusing distance. "And there's only three Armsmen, and one sleeps in the daytime." A worried frown started between his eyes. "Your house . . . ?" he ventured.

"Worse. It's full of parents. And sisters.Gossipy sisters."

"Rent a room?" he offered after a puzzled moment.

She shook her head, groping for an explanation of muddled feelings she hardly understood herself.

"We could borrow Miles's lightflyer . . ."

This brought an involuntary giggle to her lips. "There's really not enough room. Even if we both took your nasty meds."

"Yes, he can't have been thinking, when he purchased that thing. Better a huge aircar, with vast comfortable upholstered seats. That you can fold down. Like that armored groundcar he has, left over from the Regency—hey! We could crawl in the back, mirror the canopy . . ."

Kareen shook her head, helplessly.

"Anywhere on Barrayar?"

"That's the trouble," she said. "Barrayar."

"In orbit . . . ?" He pointed skyward in hope.

She laughed, painfully. "I don't know , I don't know . . ."

"Kareen, what's wrong?" He was looking very alarmed, now. "Is it something I've done? Something I said? What have I—are you still mad about the drugs? I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'll stop them. I'll, I'll gain the weight back. Whatever you want."

"It's not that ." She stepped back half a pace further, though neither let go of the other's hands. She cocked her head. "Though I don't understand why being a body narrower should make you suddenly look half a head shorter. What a bizarre optical illusion. Why should mass translate to height, psychologically? But no. It's not you. It's me."

He clutched her hands and stared in earnest dismay. "I don't understand."

"I've been thinking about it the whole ten days, waiting for you to get home here. About you, about us, about me. All week, I've been feeling stranger and stranger. On Beta Colony, it seemed so right, so logical. Open, official, approved. Here . . . I haven't been able to tell my parents about us. I tried to work up to it. I haven't even been able to tell my sisters. Maybe, if we'd come home together, I wouldn't have lost my nerve, but . . . but I did."

"Were . . . are you thinking about that Barrayaran folktale where the girl's lover ended up with his head in a pot of basil, when her relatives caught up with him?"

"Pot of basil? No!"

"I thought about it . . . I think your sisters could, y'know, if they teamed up. Hand me my head, I mean. And I know your mother could; she trained you all."

"How I wish Tante Cordelia were here!" Wait, that was perhaps an unfortunate remark, in the context. Pots of basil, good God. Mark was so paranoid . . . quite . Never mind. "I wasn't thinking of you, at all."

"Oh." His voice went rather flat.

"That's not what I mean! I was thinking of you day and night. Of us. But I've been so uncomfortable, since I got back. It's like I can just feel myself, folding back up into my old place in this Barrayaran culture-box. I can feel it, but I can't stop it. It's horrible."

"Protective coloration?" His tone suggested he could understand a desire for camouflage. His fingers noodled back along her collarbone, crept around her neck. One of his wonderful neck rubs would feel so good, just now . . . He'd worked so hard, to learn to touch and be touched, to overcome the panic and the flinching and the hyperventilation. He was breathing faster now.

"Something like that. But I hate secrets and lies."

"Can't you just . . . tell your family?"

"I tried. I just couldn't. Could you?"

He looked nonplused. "You want me to? It would be the basil for sure."

"No, no, I mean hypothetically."

"I could tell my mother."

"I could tell your mother. She's Betan. She's another world, the other world, the one where we were so right. It'smy mother I can't talk to. And I always could, before." She found she was trembling, a little. Mark could feel it through her hands; she could tell by the stricken look in his eyes as he raised his face to hers.

"I don't understand how it can feel so right there, and so wrong here," Kareen said. "It should be not wrong here. Or not right there. Or something."

"That makes no sense. Here or there, what's the difference?"

"If there's no difference, why did you go to so much trouble to lose all that weight before you would set foot on Barrayar again?"