Cordelia begged off. "I think I'd like to rest a bit. You can go, Drou. Sergeant Bothari will stay with me." In fact, Cordelia was worried about Bothari. He hadn't eaten a single bite of lunch, nor said a word for over an hour.

Doubtful, but madly interested in the horses, Drou allowed herself to be persuaded. The three trudged off up the hill. Cordelia watched them away, then turned her face back to catch Bothari watching her again. He gave her a strange approving nod.

"Thank you, Milady."

"Ahem. Yes. I wondered if you felt ill."

"No . . . yes. I don't know. I wanted . . . I've wanted to talk to you, Milady. For—for some weeks. But there never seemed to be a good time. Lately it's been getting worse. I can't wait anymore. I'd hoped today . . ."

"Seize the moment." The housekeeper was rattling about in Piotr's kitchen. "Would you care to take a walk, or something?"

"Please, Milady."

They walked together, around the old stone house. The pavilion on the crest of the hill, overlooking the lake, would be a great place to sit and talk, but Cordelia felt too full and pregnant to make the climb. She led left, instead, on the path parallel to the slope, till they came to what appeared to be a little walled garden.

The Vorkosigan family plot was crowded with an odd assortment of graves, of core family, distant relatives, retainers of special merit. The cemetery had originally been part of the ruined fort complex, the oldest graves of guards and officers going back centuries. The Vorkosigan intrusion dated only from the atomic destruction of the old district capital of Vorkosigan Vashnoi during the Cetagandan invasion. The dead had been melted down with the living there, then›eight generations of family history obliterated. It was interesting to note the clusters of more recent dates, and key them to their current events: the Cetagandan invasion, Mad Yuri's War. Aral's mother's grave dated exactly to the start of Yuri's War. A space was reserved beside her for Piotr, and had been for thirty-three years. She waited patiently for her husband. And men accuse us women of being slow. Her eldest son, Aral's brother, lay buried at her other hand.

"Let's sit over there." She nodded toward a stone bench set round with small orange flowers, and shaded by an Earth-import oak at least a century old. "These people are all good listeners, now. And they don't pass on gossip."

Cordelia sat on the warm stone, and studied Bothari. He sat as far from her as the bench permitted. The lines on his face were deep-cut today, harsh despite the muting of the afternoon light by the warm autumn haze. One hand, wrapped around the rough stone edge of the bench, flexed arrhythmically. His breathing was too careful.

Cordelia softened her voice. "So, what's the trouble, Sergeant? You seem a little . . . stretched, today. Is it something about Elena?"