Jenna Starborn (29 page)

Could a letter ever have been so unwelcome? I read it with my heart climbing up in my throat, and my hand clenched over my mouth to keep that organ from escaping. Janet! Lost! For Mr. Ravenbeck's words were true. Without references, no half-cit girl could get a job, certainly not as tutor to a small child. If Mr. Luxton did not marry her, or make some sort of provision, she would starve to death on whatever city street he abandoned her. Unless she had relatives who would take her in, unless she was not too proud to return to Thorrastone Manor where—I was encouraged by Mr. Ravenbeck's behavior to hope—she would be received again with loving, forgiving arms.

I dropped to my knees on the floor, my hands resting on the edge of the computer desk, my eyes still directed at the monitor, though my gaze was unfocused. This, then, was the culmination of the sidelong looks and halting conversations I had witnessed between Janet and the handsome Joseph Luxton. This, then, was what Mr. Ravenbeck—in his guise as fortune-teller—had warned the tutor against, when he looked into her future and saw her following a course she would regret. She had met the man before, she had told me so herself. That must have been the beginning of their illicit relationship, though I could not guess how far it may have proceeded at that time. But from this point, there was no walking backward, no retracing of steps, no undoing of actions. Unless, against all odds and all personal history, Mr. Luxton truly loved Janet, she was as good as lost to us forever.

“Dear Goddess, great Mother, take her to your heart now and cradle her,” I whispered, the words barely forcing their way through my frozen lips. “She has committed no sin in your eyes, only the eyes of society. Now it is up to you to love her and protect her as mortal beings cannot. Give her courage, give her strength, give her hope, give her love. Let no harm come to her through anything she may have done.”

As I spoke, I knew I prayed not just for Janet, but for myself. For what one weak girl could do, might not another? Who was watching over me, caring for me, keeping my blistered feet on the steep and stony path of righteousness? Could not Jenna Starborn become just as easily Jenna Errant? Who would love me if I faltered or failed? Who would save me if I stumbled?

I dropped my hands from the desk, hung my head low over my chest, wrapped my arms around my body, and rocked where I knelt. “Watch over us all,” I whispered. “Amen.”

 

 

T
hree weeks later, I disembarked from the commercial shuttle into the small spaceport on Fieldstar. I had been gone barely eight weeks, yet it felt like eight years. I kept glancing up and down the crowded streets, noticing buildings I had not seen before and faces that were wholly unfamiliar, hoping against hope some favorite storefront would be found to be still standing, as though I feared that, during my absence, some physical or financial disaster had brought about its ruin. In short, I behaved like some kind of prodigal returned after a long separation, both glad to be home and dreading the consequences of my arrival.

I had missed the noon airbus, so I shopped a bit until it was time for the evening run. I had picked up a bottle of aprifresel wine for Mr. Ravenbeck on Baldus, and some seeds for Mrs. Farraday, who liked to grow her own spices for the kitchen, but I had not found anything I particularly thought Ameletta would like. She was not especially demanding; any trifle or toy would do, and I could as easily find something here in the spaceport as in any commercial venue across the universe. I bought her some hair ribbons in a little shop and considered my mission done.

I still had some time to pass, but less energy to waste, so I sat in the shuttle station for another hour and merely let my mind wander. As always these days, my thoughts turned swiftly to Janet Ayerson. Mrs. Farraday had sent me daily updates, but there was no real news. Mr. Ravenbeck had traced the runaways to Corbramb, but could not induce either of them to return his messages, and he was fairly certain if he traveled all that way to confront them, they would be gone before he arrived. He had contacted Mr. Luxton's family, who refused to discuss the situation with him; even so, he tried to make plain to them that he would bear Mr. Luxton no ill will if he would only pass along to Janet the information that she had a refuge, should she need one, at Thorrastone Manor. He also contacted Janet's family, giving this same information, but was coldly informed that they had no daughter, no sister, by the name of Janet, and they therefore could pass along to her no news at all.

I myself had tried to contact Janet via stel-route, for I had an old address for her that I believed was still active. I was encouraged in that my posts were not blindly returned to me, but if she received them, she did not reply. My messages were full of love and forgiveness and offers of charity, for I did not know what else to send, but I could not blame her for failing to answer. If she was still in love and happy, if Mr. Luxton had not yet cast her off, she would scorn to read such mail; she would laugh at us and think herself the luckiest girl alive. If she was already betrayed and solitary, she would be too mortified to reply; she would think herself so far below the notice of any moral person that she would not be able to accept the simplest expression of goodwill. And yet I wrote because there was nothing else I could do.

Finally, after what seemed like years of waiting, the sundown shuttle pulled into the station. The driver, a strongly built young man, threw my bags into the storage compartment with so much ease that I was tempted to ask him, when we arrived at the Thorrastone gate, to walk me all the way to the door. Naturally, I said nothing of the sort. I took a seat, glanced at my dozen or so fellow passengers, and endured the trip in silence.

I arrived at the Thorrastone airlock just as true dark was settling over the park and the artificial lights were coming on. I tried not to shiver, but something about that cold, unwavering illumination made the vista seem inhospitable and alien to me-seemed to throw the whole terraformed landscape into harsh and realistic relief so that I remembered, what was so easily forgotten, that we were grafted onto this place by sheer force of will, that we did not belong, that the smallest error could send us skating off into the black outer vacuum.

I shook my head to dispel the thoughts and determinedly shouldered my bags. I had not packed any more than I could carry, but even so, I was not looking forward to the mile-long hike back to the manor house. I might rest on my way halfway there, under the oxenheart branches.

I had not made it nearly so far when a slight noise and a sleek movement caught my attention, and I turned my head sharply to the left. Yes-a small hovercraft coming my way at a speed a little too great for our confined space. I dropped my bags and held my ground, for I was sure the driver had seen me, and I had a fairly good guess as to who the driver might be.

Soon enough the craft came to a halt directly before me-indeed, deliberately intersecting my course so that, had I been attempting to walk forward, my path would have been impeded. Mr. Ravenbeck sat very still in the driver's side, watching me seriously and making no move to step from the vehicle. I stared back at him, and refused to be the one to break the silence.

At last he said, in a fairly normal voice, “Did it not occur to you that, if you had sent word of your arrival, someone would have come to the spaceport to pick you up? One of the servants could have been spared-or even I, busy man that I am, could have taken the requisite hours to see you safely to the end of your long journey.”

I smiled under the peculiar light and felt the shadows play oddly across my skin. I was very sure that I looked gaunt or eerie or otherwise fey, but no matter how I tilted my face, I could still feel that unflattering light across my cheekbones. “I need expend very little effort to climb aboard a shuttle that will take me precisely to my destination. Why should someone else be inconvenienced when I face no hardship? Now, if it were a very difficult thing to make it from town to Thorrastone Manor, be sure I would have announced my arrival days ago and been imperiously demanding an escort from hangar to hall.”

He smiled at this, and I noticed his own features looked more natural than mine felt, or perhaps it was the smile that eased them back into familiarity. “I wish I believed that were so, but, Jenna, your idea of what would inconvenience you, and my idea, are so radically different that I do not believe you can be entirely trusted to decide.”

“Well, I am here now, and ready to be fussed over,” I said. “I will accept a ride to the manor, if you are willing to offer it.”

“I have come this way for that very purpose,” he said, climbing nimbly from the car.

“Oh? And how did you know I was to return this day?” I scoffed, clearly not believing him.

He had hoisted both bags into an open trunk in the back of the hovercraft while I climbed as daintily as I could into the passenger's seat. “I have come this way every night for the past two weeks,” he said, “timing my circuit for the arrival of the sundown shuttle.”

This news caused my face to run with a rapid heat, though I hoped the color was not so visible under the bleaching light. I hoped this even more passionately when Mr. Ravenbeck came around to my side of the car and laid his hands on the edge of the door.

“That was kind of you,” I said, as calmly as I could manage. “Had I known you would go to so much trouble, I would have given you the details of my arrival, and spared you two weeks of aimlessness.”

“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.”