Heris stood smoothly. "You're quite right. I regret that I didn't recognize him in his disguise, but he is only the junior environmental tech, and I've never seen him in anything but a shipsuit. I take full responsibility. Petris—" Petris stood, as well. "We'll make sure this—individual—" She could not think of a name to give him. Mr. Smith was too dangerous now. "—doesn't intrude again, and I daresay his working papers will be cancelled permanently."
"But I am—and this was all I could find—"
"Silence." Bunny had found his voice at last; when he chose to be loud, he could be heard across an open field in a blowing wind. Here it silenced everyone, even the furtive whisperers in the corners. "I insist that my militia escort this individual to the shuttleport, and all the way into the custody of your yacht, Lady Cecelia. I believe I am correct in saying there may be charges beyond my jurisdiction, involving impersonation of a member of the Royal Family—?" He inclined his head to Kevil Mahoney, who nodded. "Then I would not have him on this planet one hour longer than necessary. Captain Serrano, if you will inform your standing watch?"
"With pleasure."
Still protesting, but uselessly, Mr. Smith found himself overpowered and dragged away by militia, while Heris called the yacht and arranged for his confinement. Ronnie still stood at the end of the table, and when the room quieted, he looked to Bunny for permission to speak. Bunny nodded.
Ronnie rubbed his nose a moment, until he had everyone's attention. "Most of you know that I was exiled for a year after the prince and I had a dispute. Some of you know more. But what you may not know is how I could be so sure the prince had not come here in some disguise or other. When I knew where my aunt was bringing me, I worried about that myself, and looked it up. The prince was posted to the Royal Aero-Space Service depot on Naverrn—" Ronnie was looking at the Crown Minister, who, Heris noted, suddenly looked very alert. "I'm sure any of you can check that posting, and confirm it. And this man—I don't even know his name—caught my eye on the yacht because he did somewhat resemble the prince, and he was sneaking around Raffaele."
"But are you sure it wasn't the prince pretending to be an environmental tech?" asked a woman near one corner.
"Of course it wasn't," Ronnie said. "We had both sworn an oath to duel if we saw each other within the next year—do you think both of us would be coward enough to ignore that? That—that person didn't even know how to use a sword." He looked angry; Raffa patted his hand, and he sat down again.
Heris could almost hear the collective lurch with which everyone tried to return to the mood of a Hunt Dinner and Ball and ignore the interruption, as Bunny signalled and the servants brought in another course.
* * *
George leaned against the mirrored wall of the ballroom feeling sulky again. Ronnie and Raffa hardly seemed to notice the music, but flowed with it like leaves on a stream. Captain Serrano and Petris . . . he would like to have made a jest of them, but could not. They had gone through so much; they deserved their obvious happiness. If only Bubbles had not turned against him . . . they could have made another good match, he was sure. He liked her well enough, now that Raffa had turned to Ronnie. Blondes set off his own dark handsomeness.
It was unfair. He and the prince alone, out of all that crowd, could not enjoy the party. And while he was luckier than the prince, in being here and not under guard somewhere, he had no one to share his evening. He watched the whirling dancers idly for awhile, then stared. His father. His father and Ronnie's aunt. Talking, laughing, obviously enjoying each other. . . . They danced by, and Lady Cecelia winked at him. His father, and that old . . . although she wasn't all that bad, really. She danced remarkably well, in fact. He just didn't want her as a stepmother, or aunt, or whatever she and his father might have in mind. The two of them together were definitely too smart for him; he and Ronnie would never enjoy more pranks. He turned away, ready to take a long walk somewhere, and almost fell over the girl coming his way. Her eyes widened. "You're—you're George Starbridge Mahoney, aren't you? Kevil Mahoney's son?" He knew what to do with that kind of look, and drew himself up.
"Yes," he said. "I am."
"Somebody told me your nickname was Odious, but I don't believe it. I think you're nice." She had hazel eyes and fluffy hair of a red-brown shade he couldn't have put a name to. Something about her made him feel protective, something more than the slender wrists and hands, he was sure, or the somewhat pointy face. "You don't know me," she said, almost timidly. "I'm just one of the cousins; you've seen me out hunting, but usually covered with mud."
"I should have seen beneath it," he said gallantly. He liked being gallant. "Would you care to dance?" He led her onto the floor.
"I love Hunt Balls," the girl said. They whirled around; she danced as lightly as a fox over a fence on its way to take a chicken from the coop. George drew back a moment, wondering. Was he the hunter, or was she? It didn't matter, he decided; she couldn't be that certain herself.
"So do I," he said, and took her past his father and Ronnie's aunt, enjoying their reaction. "So do I."
Sporting Chance
Chapter One
"Of course there is a minor problem," Lady Cecelia said, as she turned to allow her maid to take her stole. A brisk wind tossed cold rain at the windows; it hissed and rattled alternately.
"Yes?" Heris Serrano eyed her employer with some suspicion. The words "minor problem" had become an all too frequent catch-phrase between them. She resented the niggling delays that prevented their departure; they should have been in space already, two days out on the voyage back to Rockhouse Major. She had begun to long for the ship, and space. Besides, the sooner they got to Rockhouse, the sooner that young troublemaker, the prince, would be off her hands, someone else's responsibility.
"It's our numbers again." Lady Cecelia waved her maid away, and settled herself into a comfortable chair drawn up before a fireplace. A small fire of real wood crackled on the hearth behind an ornate fire screen. Heris settled in the chair opposite and raised her brows. "I thought we'd be fine," Lady Cecelia went on, "since Bunny's children wouldn't be coming, nor Buttons's fiancée. George is still in the hospital, mostly for legal reasons, and I thought I could leave Raffaele and Ronnie here for the rest of the season, under the circumstances." Heris said nothing; her mind busily subtracted the volume and resources needed for those six young people and their servants, and the crew and staff she knew were quitting, and added the same for new crew and the one passenger she knew of. "But that won't work," Lady Cecelia said. She ran one long hand through her short hair, and left it standing up in peaks.
"Why not?" asked Heris, since it seemed called for.
"Reasons of State, so I was told. I nearly cancelled my invitation, but that might be embarrassing too, so . . . the Crown Minister insists that if I have the young—er—Mr. Smith aboard, I must have an adequate bodyguard, a cabinet-level minister, and of course the servants. And . . . Ronnie."
"Ronnie! Why?" Someone had made a serious mistake. She wondered how that had happened. The whole point of bringing Cecelia's nephew Ronnie here in the first place had been to keep him away from the prince.
"I'm not sure, but it was one of the points made, very firmly. When I added the numbers, it came to fifty-six. That's over our limit, right?"
"Yes—but how many 'bodyguards' are we supposed to have, and who are they?"
"They want to send Royal Security—"
"Blast." Heris suppressed the expletives she'd have liked to use.
"—And they want us to wait until they get here. On the ship, with the prince." That went without saying, since he could not be trusted to stay out of trouble anywhere else.
"And you planned to go where?"
"Well . . . we have to go back to Rockhouse, to take him home, but after that I'd planned on Zenebra. The Wherrin Horse Trials—"
By now Heris knew enough to recognize that name. Of course her horse-crazy employer would want to be there; she had won Wherrin more times than anyone
else. "Umm. And waiting for the Royal Security bodyguard would make us late for that, I'll bet. Silly. We've got former Regular Space Service combat troops, and suitable arms now: we can take care of him."
"Are you sure?"
"With Petris and Oblo? We could keep him safe in a small war."
Cecelia shivered. "Don't say that. It's like saying your horse can't possibly miss a fence."
"Still. We'd be safer to leave now. I haven't forgotten that smugglers were using your ship. Somewhere there's a very unhappy criminal waiting for delivery of whatever was in the scrubber. And I'd expect the smugglers to come looking for us, eventually. It's not as if we'd be hard to find; everyone knew where you were going from Takomin Roads, and we've filed the trip to Rockhouse in Bunny's computer—and with the Crown Minister."
"Good point. I'll mention that to the Crown Minister, and of course he already has the names of your crew. I assume that until the courts-martial, they were all considered loyal servants of the Crown?"
"As far as I know. If they weren't, they could have lost us some battles."
"Fine, then. You set up our departure as you wish; I'll deal with the political end later."
Heris looked after her employer and shook her head. She had not expected Cecelia—who had seemed to have a one-track mind firmly aimed at horses—to be so effective politically. Of course, she came from a political family, but every family had its black sheep. Heris shivered suddenly. She was, in her own way, the black sheep of her family. Two black sheep don't make a white, she thought, and shivered again.
In the flurry of preparation, it was hard to remember the last few days with Petris. He was now aboard, supervising the resupply, and (at Heris's suggestion) tucking away the new weaponry before Cecelia decided they didn't need it.
"Nothing for the ship, I notice," he'd said to her over a secure comlink.
"No. Not stocked locally. I know; I've already talked to Lady Cecelia about it."
"Um. Crew rotations?"
"Well . . . you'll all be on your secondary specialties. We'll have to reorganize quite a bit. Civilian regulations divide the responsibilities a bit differently. There's a manual on it—"
"I found that one," Petris said. She wished she could see him face-to-face, but she needed to be downside just a few hours longer. "But I haven't had the returning crew list from Hospitality Bay yet. Sirkin's the only one staying from the shift up here. You were right, by the way; she's a nice girl and very competent."
"Glad you agree," said Heris. "About that crew list—it was supposed to have been there yesterday. I wonder what's going on? I'll find out."
When she tried calling the crew hostel at Hospitality Bay, none of her crew answered. That seemed odd; she had sent word several days before that they would be leaving Sirialis shortly. Someone should have been there, ready to take any messages from her. She wished she could dump the whole lot of them and replace them with qualified people. She left an urgent message, and asked the hostel clerk when they were expected back.
"Sometime tonight, I 'spect, ma'am," the clerk said. "They rented a cat and took it out to Shell Island."
"Without a comunit aboard?" Heris asked.
"Well, there is one, but the charge to relay is pretty high. That Mr. Gavin said you might call, and to say they'd be back tonight." Heris grimaced, but it wouldn't help to yell at the hostel clerk.
"Tell Mr. Gavin to call here at once when he gets in, whatever the hour," she said. Should she threaten? No. Wait and see what was really going on, she reminded herself.
Gavin's call, relayed to her in the drawing room the green hunt favored, revealed a plot as spiritless as he himself. On the tiny screen of the drawing-room communications niche, he looked sunburnt and nervous.
"I'm not coming back, Captain," he said. "You'll have to find another chief engineer." It sounded almost smug, but she ignored that. She didn't need him.
"And the others?" she asked.
"They don't want to . . . they're not coming either. Not without Lady Cecelia changing . . . I mean, they're not coming." Now his expression was defiant. Heris took a long breath, conscious of the need to control her expression in a roomful of curious and intelligent observers. They couldn't hear what was said, but they could certainly see her reactions.
"Would you care to explain, Mr. Gavin?" she asked. The edge of steel in her voice cut through his flabby resistance.
"Well, it's just . . . we . . . they . . . we don't want you for our captain." That last phrase came out all in a rush. "We're not coming back. You don't have a crew. We want to talk to Lady Cecelia. She has to find someone else, or we won't come back to her." When Heris said nothing, momentarily silenced by fury, he blundered on. "It's—you're not fair, that's what it is. You got poor Iklind killed, and you're so rigid and all you do is criticize and you don't—you don't respect us." It was so outrageous, so ridiculous, that Heris found herself fighting back a sudden incongruous laugh as well as a tirade. The unborn laugh moderated her tone.
"I see you don't know the situation," she said without even a hint of anger. That seemed to make Gavin even more nervous.
"I don't— It doesn't matter," he said, almost stammering. "It doesn't matter what happened—what you say; we're not coming back as long as you're the captain."
"I see," Heris said. "Perhaps I'd better let you speak to Lady Cecelia." She waved her employer over, and stepped away from the comunit, out of its pickup range, for a moment. In brief phrases, she explained Gavin's message, and watched almost amused as Lady Cecelia went white with fury and then red.
"Damn them!"
"No . . . think a moment. They're incompetent, lazy, and we wanted to get rid of them anyway. Now they're also in legal jeopardy—and you have the reins. They don't know what's happened over here—none of it. They don't know you have a crew already. Have fun, milady!" Heris grinned, and after a last glower, Lady Cecelia grinned, too. She beckoned Heris to join her at the comunit niche.
Gavin's self-pitying whine had scarcely begun when Lady Cecelia cut him off with a terse and almost certainly inaccurate description of his ancestry, his progeny, his intellect, and his probable destination. Heris decided that foxhunting offered unique opportunities for invective, and found her own anger draining away as Cecelia continued her tirade.
"And I shall certainly file suits for breach of contract," she wound down, "and I daresay Lord Thornbuckle will be investigating you to see if you're involved in this other affair."
"But Lady Cecelia," whined Gavin. "What other affair? And why—I mean, we've served you—" She cut him off, and turned to face Heris, breathing heavily.
"How was that?"
"Fine. And since we know you had one smuggler in the group, I would carry through on that threat to have them investigated."
"I certainly will," Cecelia said. She stalked off, her tall angularity expressing indignation with every twitch of her formal skirt. Heris excused herself early and went upstairs to contact Petris again.
"So we're going out short-crewed," Heris said. She was not unhappy about it. "By civilian standards, that is. And over-crewed on the house-staff side, considering Lady Cecelia's guests this round." The prince had his own set of servants, and Cecelia insisted on adding another cook.
"Looks adequate to me, Captain," Petris said. He had worked up a crew rotation. "We could use two or three more, but—"
"But you're right, this is adequate. If we don't run into trouble, and if everyone works at Fleet efficiency. Which I expect you will. Something to consider is that we can hire replacements to fill out the list at Rockhouse Major. And we might think of hiring ex-Fleet personnel, while we're about it."
"Are you looking for trouble, Captain?" Petris's dark eyes twinkled.
"No. But I expect it anyway." A tap at her door interrupted. "Oh—that'll be Bunny's daughter Bubbles, I expect." She had forgotten, thanks to Gavin, that she'd agreed to talk to Bubbles after she went up to her room. "She's insisted on talking to me." Petris grinned at her
expression.
"What—do you think she wants to come along?"
"Yes, and I can't let her. And I don't like the role she's casting me in."
"You'll do her no harm," Petris said.
"That's what her father told me," Heris said, shaking her head. "I'll get back to you shortly." She closed the uplink, and turned to the door of her suite. The blonde girl she'd first seen passed out drunk on a couch in the yacht had changed beyond recognition, and although being in mortal danger changed most people, this was exceptional.
"Captain Serrano," the young woman said. She stood stiffly, as if in a parody of military formality.
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