Exile's Song (46 page)

It was an experience of kinship, like that she had found with Mikhail, but quite different in quality, she decided. There was no heart-tug at his touch, just the sense of strength and utter trustworthiness.

“How do you do? I am your kinsman, Jeff Kerwin—or Damon Ridenow, if you prefer. Welcome to Armida, Marguerida Alton.” He studied her closely, as if seeking some resemblance to her father. “You have that widow’s peak of Lew’s, but otherwise you do not much resemble him. And I never met your mother, so I do not know if you look very like her.”

“I try to look like myself,” Margaret said more tartly than she intended, still swamped with emotions. Then she gave Jeff a shy smile. “Lady Marilla thought I looked like my grandmother, Felicia Darriell, but I can’t be sure. I’ve never seen a likeness of my mother, and memory is not always reliable, is it?”

Jeff nodded and sighed. “No, it isn’t. People I remember as tall are often much shorter when I see them again!”
And Elorie grows more beautiful each year she is gone.
“Lew did not return with you, did he?”

Margaret was now heartily sick of people behaving as if she had her father stuffed into one of her bags. She almost wished he was—though the idea of her large father shoved into one of her duffles was absurd. But since she had heard his voice in her mind at Castle Ardais, she, too, had begun to anticipate his presence just a little. It was almost annoying that he was absent. Where the devil was he? He had seemed so near when he told her to come to Armida, and yet no one knew where he was. And she was damned if she was going to show anyone that it was important to her. “Oh, I had him in my pocket, but he fell out when we crossed the river, and I have no idea where he is now.”

The old man laughed, while Javanne, beside her, looked slightly scandalized. “You are a disrespectful minx,” he said in Terran, “and very much your father’s child.” Then he chucked her beneath her chin with a long finger.

Margaret liked the sound of his laughter and wished her father had been less sober and more playful. She would have liked to have had someone like Jeff for a father, she realized, and felt disloyal. She wondered why she felt as she did, and decided it was because Jeff seemed the sort of man she could talk to, as she had never been able to with the Senator.

She ignored the mild turmoil she sensed from Javanne, feeling Rafaella’s quiet steadiness instead. It was reassuring to have at least one person she felt she could trust. And, perhaps, in this new relative, another. Margaret was uneasy as she had not been at Ardais. There were undercurrents that she knew she did not understand, and all her training was frustrated by them. She was not only ignorant, she did not even know what the right questions were!

Yes, you can speak to me, if you wish to.
Aloud, Jeff said in Terran rather than
casta,
“Try not to be too hard on Lew. He never was any good at sharing counsel with others, and least of all with women.”
I am sure you are a good daughter—if any of my own had lived, I would have wished them to be as strong and independent-minded as I suspect you are.
There was sorrow in that thought, and great fondness as well. Margaret felt hot with embarrassment, uneasy with an affection she did not feel she had earned.

Then she heard Javanne clear her throat and realized that it was very rude to continue to speak in Terran, although she suspected her aunt could understand perfectly well. It was just that it was so good to talk in Terran again, where she didn’t have to worry about saying something impolite. Her
casta
was fluent enough now, but there were subtleties that eluded her, from time to time, and she wondered if she would ever be able to speak without also minding her tongue.

Margaret could feel her rising ambivalence again. Part of her wished to get off on the right foot with her new-found relatives, and another wished to be free of formalities, to be the woman who had arrived with Ivor weeks before. She knew that was impossible, but that did not prevent her from wanting the simplicity she had enjoyed with her mentor and friend.

“I know you are my kinsman, but are you an uncle or a cousin? Mikhail tried to untangle it for me, but it didn’t make a lot of sense, truthfully.” She could feel her aunt’s mood darken at the name of her youngest son, mingled with deep affection, so it was extremely confusing. What was wrong with Mikhail, that both of his parents bristled at the mention of him?

“Strictly speaking, I am your cousin.” He took her lead politely, and Margaret felt Javanne relax behind her. “We are both descended from Estaban Lanart, who was a great-great-grandfather to Lew. But we are almost two generations removed, which makes me more of an uncle.”

“Why is that?”

“Cousins on Darkover can marry; uncles and nieces generally do not.”

“And here I thought Arcturian kinship was complex!”

“Have you been there?” He appeared genuinely interested and quite unmoved by Javanne’s increasing restlessness.

“No, but I’ve read papers about them.”
I wonder why uncles and nieces don’t marry here?

In the past,
chiya,
any man old enough to be your father just might be!

This response was confusing, because Margaret had the idea that women on Darkover were carefully kept, that the obsession with bloodlines made the sexual license Jeff had just implied quite unthinkable. In the past, he had said. That must explain it. She remembered what Mikhail had told her about the Forbidden Tower, and saw that things were not quite as organized as she had imagined. Sex between the generations was taboo. Satisfied that she understood the problem, she now felt she knew why Mikhail had reacted so violently at her playful suggestion that she would solve the problem of the Domain by wedding the tall man before her. No, it was more than that. Mikhail found her attractive, and for some reason she did not understand, he did not want to feel that way. Why, he almost behaved as if he were jealous. Margaret did not have any first-hand experience with jealousy, so she was not sure. And there was nothing she could do about it anyhow.

She forced her thoughts away from Mikhail, from the puzzle of his seeming attraction and her own to him. It was not a good idea to have such musings in a room with telepaths in it. Javanne was already hostile, spoiling for some sort of fight. If she found Margaret thinking fondly of her youngest son, she would be displeased. And, Margaret realized, she had no real idea of how much of her thoughts were audible to others, although Istvana had said she did not broadcast very much.

She just had to hope that she was keeping her mind sufficiently opaque to preserve her own privacy. For once her lifelong habit of keeping to herself, that foul legacy of Ashara, now seemed an asset. And fussing over things was not going to help. Instead, she tried to enjoy the sense of security she found in the presence of Jeff. She felt as safe with him as she had with Ivor Davidson. “I must not monopolize you, Marguerida. Javanne wishes to see you settled.” He released her hand a little reluctantly.

I’ll just bet she does—settled with one of her sons!
Margaret was fairly certain that her aunt could hear that, but she was suddenly too tired to care. She was not going to be pushed around if she could help it. “Of course. There will plenty of time to talk later.”

Jeff bent forward and kissed her on the cheek, and she smelled his clean skin. “And, until your father arrives, I shall be as a father to you, and you may come to me with any questions. Are we agreed?” He spoke very quietly into her ear.

Margaret was so surprised by what he said that she could only nod mutely. She could feel Javanne’s annoyance and heard her think,
Interfering old man! Gabriel was a fool to have invited him! I could have managed things much better without him, for he will side with her.
“I should be pleased to have you stand in for the Senator. I am certain he would wish it, if he knew.”

Margaret turned and followed Javanne Hastur out of the big living room, toward the stairs. She did not need to be a telepath to know her hostess was seething inside. One look at the set of Javanne’s shoulders told her all she needed. As she climbed the stairs behind the older woman, she realized that by establishing a child/parent relationship with old Jeff, whose claim to the Alton Domain was as valid as her own, she had effectively put herself outside Gabriel Lanart’s control. This was not what Javanne had intended. Her new aunt was up to something—or was she? Margaret tried to tell herself she was being needlessly paranoid, and that her kinsmen must have her best interests at heart, but she did not entirely believe it.

By the time they reached the door of the bedroom, Javanne had calmed down enough to try to be gracious. “I hope you don’t mind sharing the room,” she began. “I know that Terranan are accustomed to living in little rooms all alone, which I think is extremely odd.”

Margaret glanced around the large chamber. There was a bed large enough for four, a wardrobe for clothes, and a washing stand. Two straight-backed chairs stood against the wall, and there were another pair, red wing chairs, close to the small fireplace. The red chairs did not go with the overall blueness of the room, and she wondered if they had come from another chamber.

The bed was hung with blue linen curtains, embroidered with a stylized figure that might mean mountains, and covered with several quilts and a figured spread of silvery leaves. There was a large window which overlooked the pastures in front of the house. In all it was a pleasant room, but Margaret was wondering if Rafaella was going to share her bed again. She was ambivalent about that prospect. She had not found sleeping with the Renunciate uncomfortable at Jerana’s house, and the bed was certainly large enough.

When Rafaella bent down and pulled a trundle bed from beneath the curtained one, and put Margaret’s bag of recording equipment on it, Margaret felt relieved. The Renunciate had become like a sister to her during the journey, a sister she had never had and always longed for. But she was still in a mind set which demanded privacy, and getting close to others, either physically or otherwise, remained uncomfortable. This, too, was part of her legacy from Ashara, as Istvana had explained to her, and while part of her resented it, there was still a strong impulse toward keeping herself distant from people, even people she loved and trusted.

“Rafaella and I have been sleeping in the same room for some time now, Lady Lanart, and we are used to each other’s habits. When I was on Relegan and several other planets with my mentor, Ivor Davidson, we often shared lodgings that were much less comfortable than these.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, Margaret knew she had said something shocking. Javanne colored under her fair skin, and Rafaella quickly busied herself with sorting out the rest of the luggage. The maid who had carried the bags upstairs, a fat woman in her sixties, looked very interested, and Margaret did not doubt she would be gossiped about in the servants quarters before the hour was out.

“What sort of lodgings, Marja?” Javanne mastered her outrage, and her curiosity overcame her sense of scandal. She was not actually interested in the details, but she clearly wanted to know more. Probably she wondered if Ivor had been her lover as well as her mentor. Under the circumstances, she realized, no one on Darkover would be able to understand a young woman dashing blamelessly around the Federation with a male.

Margaret was distracted by the use of her childhood name for a moment, then wondered whether she should tell the truth or dissemble. “Oh, single room huts made of grasses—that sort of thing,” she answered, deciding to be provoking. If she disgraced herself sufficiently, perhaps Javanne would abandon her plan to have Margaret marry one of her sons and the entire visit would be less unpleasant.

The maid gasped, and Javanne rounded on her in a fury. “Put down those things and go about your work! And don’t you go wagging your tongue either. I won’t have the
domna
gossiped about!” Then Javanne fixed Margaret with a steely gaze. “I don’t know how you behaved on other planets, but I expect you to remember your place and act like a lady while you are under my roof.”

“Ivor was an old man—in his nineties, and hardly . . .”

“Enough! I can excuse your manners because you do not yet know our ways, but that will change immediately. Do you understand me?”

Margaret was tired, and her frayed temper finally snapped. This order was more than she could bear. “Tell me, Aunt, is everyone on Darkover so filthy minded?”

Javanne turned red beneath her cosmetics, her cheeks and throat blushing furiously. She trembled all over and then left the room, banging the door as she went.
Damn the chit, coming here and acting like a common whore!

“I wonder there are any doors still on their hinges at Armida, with both
Dom
Gabriel and
Domna
Javanne given to slamming,” she commented, enjoying her foolish victory.

Rafaella roared with laughter, trying to muffle the sound in her sleeve and failing utterly. Small tears trickled from her eyes. “It was very naughty of you to provoke her,” the Renunciate said when she had recovered her breath.

“She puts me in here in a room with a bed large enough for an orgy, and expects me to not consider sex. That makes no sense at all.”

“She is very proper, Marguerida, and she does not want people to talk. And in the past . . .”

“Don’t do that! If you tell me it is something not to be discussed, I will scream. Why is she so sensitive?”

Rafaella gave a long sigh, then shrugged. “When the Forbidden Tower was here, at Armida, there were some things going on that were very shocking.”

“You mean like Damon Ridenow fathering a child on a woman not his wife? Mikhail told me all about it. What’s so dreadful about that—men have been having children by their mistresses since time immemorial, Rafaella. Even good men, decent men.”
Even my father,
she thought.