“She will be gone in a few days.”
“And then a birthday party! When are you to get any work done?”
He sighed, heaving upward on one elbow with Jago’s hand on his ribs. “I shall manage, Jago-ji. And by the day of the event, we shall be back in the capital, one is quite sure. There are far worse things. Farworse things. Toby and I spoke quietly and one believes we have settled some matters between us that were far more troublesome for the future.”
Jago rose up on an elbow. “Should your staff know these things?”
“Old matters. Things you do know, Jago-ji. I left on our voyage at a very unfortunate time for Toby and his household, with my mother ill. This was a potential cause of great resentment. We spoke. That was why I sent Barb to the village—to have the chance to speak to him privately. The feeling is very much better between us now. The situation with Barb—well, Barb is Barb.”
Jago said not a thing. He moved his hand on Jago’s bare shoulder.
“The tension will be better in the morning,” he said, “on the boat. Everybody will be busy, and there will be ample distraction. You may even see Toby happy. And if he is happy, one believes Barb will behave better.”
Barb and the youngsters alike would be surrounded by un-crossable water, he was thinking. Both Barb and the youngsters would be in a very good mood—the latter all bright-eyed and earnestly well-behaved. And confined to the deck.
“Come here,” he said, gathering her close. “Forget about it, Jago-ji. Tomorrow we sail out of reach of shops.”
Morning came at a leisurely pace. Jago got up, he did, Jago dressed herself and Koharu and Supani came to dress him after Jago had gone wherever Jago intended to go. None of the rest of the household was awake, except staff. And it was safe here, safe as the Bujavid never was, so he asked for his coat and walked out into the brown, dead garden to take a turn out there, watching the sun come up. The maidservant trailed him: he sent her for tea, and enjoyed a cup. Steam from it curled up into the light of dawn.
Then the rest of the house began to stir—so the servant advised him, and he came back in, invigorated and ready for breakfast—which he shared with Toby and Barb alone until the youngsters came racketing into the dining room, all bright-eyed and anxious.
They settled rapidly and were served their breakfasts. Cajeiri was being so, so good, not asking when they would go to the boat, not asking a thing, and being very elegant with his table manners: Cajeiri and the two Taibeni youngsters wore clearly second-best coats, their roughest clothes probably cleaned by now, for the trip, after their riding the whole way here on boxes of canned goods.
“What willbe our schedule?” Toby asked him finally, prompting Cajeiri’s immediate attention. “Shall we be out and away directly after breakfast?”
“I think so,” Bren was in the process of saying when a servant slipped up to him and said, quietly. “There is a call from Mospheira, nandi. Your staff cannot make out the name, but it seems to regard nand’ Toby. And the caller is a woman who seems distressed and who asks for you.”
“A woman.” He was a little bemusedc until Barb threw down her napkin and left the table without an excuse, and Toby leapt up and went after her.
Thatnarrowed the field of possible guesses.
He got up, bowed to the distressed staffer, and to the youngsters, who had also risen in some degree of concern. “Please finish your breakfast, young lord, you and your household, and please excuse me for a moment. One suspects this is a social matter.”
Nothing to do with politics, Cajeiri’s father, or armed disaster, at least. He left the dining room at a sedate pace, heard from the servant that the phone call might be received in the study, and walked there, also at a sedate pace.
There a servant waited to offer him the phone, which he took.
“This is Bren Cameron.”
“Bren!” He knew that voice. “Bren, I’m so sorry to interrupt your morning. Is my husband there?”
Jill.
“Yes, Toby’s here.” He was quite careful not to refer to Toby as her husband, which, to his recollection, Toby was not. At least—Toby had said it was final. “But he’s not in the room with me. Is there something wrong?”
“Julie’s been in an accident.” Tears broke through. “She’s in the hospital.”
Toby’s daughter. Bren’s pulse rate ticked up. “Serious?”
Sobs. “Bren, she’s hurt. She’s really hurt, broken arm, broken legc”
“My God, what was she doing?”
“It’s not my fault!” Jill cried. “It’s not my fault! She was cycling down Velroski and it was raining and she had an accident.”
“Her head?”
“She had a helmet. But she hit a pothole and the cycle’s a wreck and they don’t know how badly she’s hurt, Bren. Bren, I can’t deal with this by myself. I’ve gotto talk to Toby.”
How in hell had Jill known Toby was here? Had Toby been in contact? Had she gotten it out of State, via Sonja Podesta’s office?
“I’ll go tell him. Can you stay on the line?”
“Yes!” Jill said, so he laid the phone down, told a servant not to hang it up, and headed down the hall to Barb and Toby’s suite.
He knocked once. Pushed the door open. Toby was standing in front of a closed bedroom door, and looked toward him in some distress.
“Toby,” he began.
“I don’t know how she tracked me. Dammit, Bren. It’s Jill, isn’t it?”
“Toby, Julie’s had a cycle wreck.”
The anger drained from Toby’s face. So did the color. “Oh, my God. How bad?”
“Broken arm, broken leg, hit a pothole in the rain. Jill’s still on the line. She wants to talk to you.”
“Damn it!” Toby said. “Damn it! Where’s the phone?”
“My study,” Bren said, and stood aside as Toby left out the door, at a near run.
He was still standing there a heartbeat or two later, wondering whether he ought to go to the study and risk interrupting what those two had to say to each other, and delaying what Toby needed to learn about little Julia—hell, little Julia was a young woman now. It had just been that long sincec
The bedroom doors flew open. Barb stood there, red-eyed. “Where’s Toby?”
“Barb,” he began to say.
“ Where’s Toby?”
“He’ll be on the phone. His daughter’s been in a wreck, Barb. Ease up.”
“Oh, in a wreck! How bad is it?”
“Broken leg, broken arm.”
“Then she’ll live,” Barb said shortly. “How in hell did Jill call here?”
That was a real question. “Probably she phoned Statec Toby works for them, doesn’t he? Or is it Defense?”
Barb scowled at him and started for the door.
“Damn it, Barb, calm down. The kid’s in the hospital. Jill wants advice.”
“Oh, sure, she’s in the hospital. That’s the magic word. And he’ll come running.”
He was appalled. The hell of it was—it echoed Jill herself, when Toby would drop everything for their mother’s every minor crisis. And the last, that hadn’t been minor. It echoed the whole situation that had driven Jill to leave Toby. His warnings to Toby hadn’t mattered then. Wouldn’t matter now. This time he tried logic with Barb. He snapped, “Well, where did youmeet him?”
At the hospital, that was to say, when they’d both, she and Toby, sat up with Mum and started an affair that had led here.
But maybe it wasn’t the smartest thing to have said, after all. Barb’s eyes widened and she looked at him as if she’d like to hit him.
So he added, “It’s also where you’ll lose him if you don’t use your head about this.”
She did hit him, right across the face. Fortunately for her, Jago wasn’t there, nor were any of his aishid. He simply absorbed it and looked at her quite, quite coldly.
“You only wish I would break up with him,” she shot back.