Jenna Starborn (13 page)

“I admit to some curiosity about her origin—and her place here.”

He nodded. “Shall we stroll, Miss Starborn? I have been sitting in meetings all day, and I think a little exercise would clear the cobwebs from my head. We need not go far—I believe we were strictly adjured not to move an inch.”

I nodded and fell in step beside him. “Ameletta?” I prompted as we began a leisurely pacing in a grand circle around the tree.

“Ameletta,” he said. “My ward. There was a time in my life, Miss Starborn, when I was not quite the sober and upstanding level-one citizen you see before you now.”

I glanced at him sideways, and he smiled. “Ah, and you are wondering just how ‘sober and upstanding' I can claim to be now, but you feel your acquaintanceship with me is too short to allow you to judge,” he said, almost gaily. I felt a flush come to my cheeks, for that was exactly the thought in my mind. “Nevertheless,” he resumed, “I am a far more diligent, responsible, and solemn man than I once was, and that I was ever a dilettante and ne‘er-do-well I blame entirely on my family. I was the youngest of several sons, born late to a mother who died shortly after my arrival. My father's estates were vast enough that he could have happily supported twice the number of sons he in fact produced, and yet this was a man for whom the word ‘greed' had the ring of virtue, and he did not like the thought of breaking up his property even after he was dead.”

We walked on slowly another few yards. Mr. Ravenbeck had clasped his hands behind him, and he gazed down at the ground as he walked. The result was to give the appearance of a squarish, solid man tilted forward in a posture that might eventually make him tumble over. By contrast, I held myself with my usual erectness, my face angled toward the distant sun.

“Thus I was told, when I was a young man, that I had two choices. I could accept a small inheritance which would enable me to retain my status as citizen until the money ran out, or I could perform a service for my family which would bring in enough wealth to render me a profitable asset. The service did not seem so disagreeable—and it was not, as I see by your shocked face, technically illegal—and so I saw no reason not to comply with my family's wishes.”

“You did the deed, sir?”

“Oh, I most certainly did the deed. Thought the matter over perhaps two weeks, performed it in less than two hours—and regretted it for the next eighteen years. For there were conditions attached to this action that were not revealed to me until it was far too late—conditions which I would have thought would have turned even a greedy man into a philanthropist, so repulsive were they. And yet, as you say, the deed was done. There was no undoing it. I kept my temper, I bowed—metaphorically speaking—to my family, and I left the estates, for what I vowed would be the rest of my life.”

“To embark upon a course of dissolution,” I said.

He gave me another sideways glance, amused again. “Now, why would that be the first thought to leap to your mind?”

“It is the natural course for many people who have been violently disappointed,” I said.

“For many people,” he said. “Not you? You need not reply, for the answer is written clearly in every line and hollow of your face. You are not a woman who would ever give over to debauchery.”

“I have not ever been living in circumstances in which debauchery seemed plausible,” I remarked. “But I must say the options that I know about have never appealed much to me. Including, as I suppose they do, drinking, gambling, experimenting with hallucinogenics, and consorting with—well, with all sorts of unsavory characters.”

“Yes, especially the consorting,” he said, his face now brimming over with laughter. “But you mean to tell me that, even in your darkest days at Lora—and those unspeakable early days that were so dreadful you will not even discuss them—you were not attracted to some method of dulling your pain and forgetting your sorrows?”

“If I wanted to make myself feel better, I think I would do a good deed and not a bad one,” I said. “I would extend a kind hand to someone in more distress than I. This would make me feel better than all the whiskey and all the hallucinogens you could produce.”

“Hmpph. Well. You are almost unique in that attitude, but I must say it does you some credit. You will not be surprised to learn that was not the course I followed—doing good, I mean. I traveled to Corbramb, that place of such luxury that even you have heard of it, and I spent a hedonistic decade. I had funds, so I had friends, and I had no responsibilities, so I had unlimited time. You can imagine what my activities were. I wish that you could not—I would like to have been more creative in my vices, but I was lethargic as well as depraved. For a time, I was involved with a woman who operated what they call ‘a pleasure palace,' a virtual reality emporium where you can experience all the gratifications of the flesh without actually exposing yourself to risk. In fact, there was some talk between us of opening our own palace, me to finance it and she to manage it. She had very grand ideas about entertainments—I' m sure it would have been a popular destination.”

“But you never did found such a place, did you, sir?”

“No.”

“I am glad to hear it.”

“Why? Because it allows you to have a higher opinion of me than you would otherwise have?” he said, a strong note of derision in his voice. “I assure you, your opinion of me can be quite as low as you like, despite my not having become a purveyor of electronic fantasies. I have done nothing to earn any special regard.”

“Finish your tale, and let me judge for myself afterward,” I said quietly.

“As I say, we had our plans, but they were derailed in the most commonplace manner imaginable. I discovered she had a second—shall we say—business partner who was eager to fill each of my several roles in her life. Naturally, I had to sever the connection immediately. I must say, to do so gave me a profound relief on many fronts, and I resolved to be a little more wary before I pledged my heart—or my bank account—to anyone in the future.”

“A wise decision,” I said, for the pause in his speech seemed to require a comment from me. “But none of this comes any closer to explaining Ameletta's presence in your life.”

“I must first explain Coletta before I can explain Ameletta.”

“Coletta?”

“The name of my erstwhile companion. Shortly after she and I parted ways, she sent me a message telling me she was pregnant with my child. This was not something she had wanted, mind you, and it was not something she expected to grant her a further hold over my heart. It was merely something she passed along in the way of information.”

“And you replied?”

“Well, first I asked her what she intended to do about it. On Corbramb, while there are millions of doctors who will perform an abortion for an insignificant fee, there are also hundreds of institutions where a woman can take her unborn fetus and submit herself to operations of a different sort. And those institutions will pay you, instead of the other way around. And Coletta, in case you had not guessed, was a very avaricious woman.”

“She took her baby in to be harvested,” I said calmly, though I did not feel calm at all. I felt hot, and flushed with rage, and covered in prickles of hatred.

“Exactly. In case I might have some interest in the child's well-being, she told me where she had deposited her little burden. To her credit, she had chosen one of the institutions that will grow a baby to full term and then sell it to an individual desperate for a child. She did not go the less ethical route and leave the fetus with one of the organizations that merely is interested in blood cells and tissues.”

He spoke dispassionately, but it was hard to believe he could feel no emotion. As for myself, I was almost faint with it. “What did you do then?” I asked. It was an effort to raise my voice above a whisper.

“I went to the clinic, paid an exorbitant fee to claim the child as mine—though I was not positive, not by any means, that I was the biological father—and I waited until she was harvested. Then I engaged a nurse, installed the two of them in a small home, and went on about my life for the next few years as if I had no daughter or ward or any claim at all upon my life.”

I swallowed twice before I was able to choke down the lump that had formed inside my throat. “But—you could have easily had that checked, you know,” I said. “Her DNA against your own—”

He nodded. “I know. And that was my original thought, when I went to the clinic to investigate. Why should I support some other man's mistress's child if she had not the smallest claim on my time, resources, or affection? And yet, as I stood in that sterile, unfriendly room, surrounded by indifferent personnel, I could not help but sympathize with that tiny, still almost invisible life. I knew what it was like to be pushed to the brink of abandonment by someone who ought to have had your best interests at heart. I knew what it was like to be rejected by
family,
turned away because you did not fit in with a social or financial scheme. I had never done a good thing in my life, not that I could think of at that moment. But this would be a good thing. I would claim that tiny life, give it my name, accord it status of citizen, and keep it as safe as a negligent nature could do. So I determined, and so I have done, in my careless way. Eventually, when this property came into my hands, I moved her here, as being a less corrupt environment for a child. But I am still reconsidering that. It is a moral place, but a lonely one.”

“It would not be so lonely for her if you were around more,” I ventured. “She is very fond of you.”

“Yes, but I am not so fond of young girls and mindless chatter! I do my best, but I have a finite patience with constant exclamations and artless questions.”

He shuddered elaborately and I smiled. “That makes me hesitate to ask my own questions,” I said.

“Ask away! Your conversation, whatever else I might call it, is hardly artless. What would you like to know?”

“First, is she in fact your daughter?”

He gave me a crooked smile. “I never had the tests done. She is my ward, and in some sense my heir, and because of me she will always be a full citizen of the Allegiance—but I do not know if she is flesh of my weak flesh and bone of my wretched bone. By your own standards, that should not matter at all. By your way of thinking, we are related whether we are the same bloodline or merely the same species.”

Very true; that was what I believed; and yet it made his actions in adopting her just the slightest bit chivalrous. “Second, does she know her own history?”

“No, and Mrs. Farraday and Miss Ayerson know very little. Merely that I had a connection with her mother at one time and in that way came into possession of the daughter. Unlike you, they do not like to interrogate me, and my demeanor can be forbidding when I choose.”

So saying, he turned a most unnerving scowl on me, which would have quite cowed me to silence had we not already had this most revealing of conversations. As it was, I could not hold back a smile, and his own grin returned.

“And is that your final question, Miss Starborn? For I believe I see a small white dot emerging from the manor door, and I am certain it signals the return of my ward dressed in her best finery. All confidences will perforce come to a sudden end.”

“One more question,” I said, “though this I suppose I could learn from Mrs. Farraday, if she were more inclined to gossip. How did you come into possession of your family's property? For this was once your father's holding, was it not?”

The grim look was back on his face. “Indeed it was. My father's holding, this one and various others on scattered worlds, and destined to be split between my two brothers upon my father's death. But greed, as I mentioned, runs in the Ravenbeck family. As my father lay quite ill, during the last months of his life, my oldest brother began reviewing the advantages to being sole heir to the several holdings. I am not sure whether or not he hastened my father's death, but he secretly arranged for my other brother's murder. And, being not nearly as clever as he was covetous, he was almost instantly found out. Accused, tried, convicted, and incarcerated. And, by the way, stripped of his citizenship. With my father expired, my one brother murdered, and my other brother dead to society, I became the single inheritor. For all property reverted to me in the unlikely event that I was the only family member to survive.” He threw his hands wide, figuratively embracing the whole vast expanse of Thorrastone Park. “And see how happy such a fortune has made me! What a place to call my own!”

Before I could demur at his irony, the tumbling little ball of ivory and gold that had grown gradually larger in the past five minutes resolved itself into the panting, glowing figure of Ameletta. “Mr. Ravenbeck! See, I am all ready now! Don't you like this dress? Doesn't it make me look pretty?”

“You always look pretty,
chiya,”
he said, chucking her under the chin with an easy affection that made her squeal. “Are you ready? Shall we be on our way?”

“Yes, please, I
am
very ready. Miss Starborn, are you sure you will not accompany us?”

I came to her side and gave her a very tight hug, for the story of her life had filled me with a fierce desire to protect and love her. She looked up at me in astonishment but willingly returned the embrace. “Yes, Ameletta, I am sure. I have the two new Arkady maintenance supplements to read, and I would like to get to them before the day ends. Besides, I want you to have a special day with your guardian. You can come to my room when you get home and tell me all about it. Will that be good enough?”

“Yes, that will make me very happy,” she said, disentangling herself with no more ado. “Shall we go, Mr. Ravenbeck? Shall we go?”