He hitched himself up in bed, ignoring the wave of blurred vision.
"My dear, please! I've admitted my father was wrong about you. I think you're marvelous."
"She said you'd flatter me."
Complex in that were the wish to be flattered, and the desire not to be fooled.
"I suppose I have, if praise is flattery. But, dear Aunt, I never knew anybody with enough nerve to get two Ryxi tailfeathers! How can I not flatter you?"
Auntie Q sniffed, and wiped her face with a lace-edged kerchief. "She keeps telling me that's a vulgar triumph, that I should be ashamed."
"Poppycock!" The word, out of some forgotten old novel, surprised him. It amused his aunt, who smiled through her tears. "My dear, she's jealous of you, that's all, and it's obvious even to me, a mere male. She doesn't like me because… Well, does she like any of the men who work for you?"
"Not really." Now his aunt looked thoughtful. "She says… she says it's indecent for an old lady to travel with so many male crew, and only one female maid. You know, I used to have a male valet who left my ex-husband's service when we separated. Madame Flaubert was so scathing about it I simply had to dismiss him."
"And then she found you the maid who turned out to be a thief," Ford said. He let that work into her mind. When comprehension brightened those old eyes, he grinned at her.
"That… that contemptible creature!" Auntie Q angry was as enchanting now as she must have been sixty years back. "Raddled old harridan. And I took her into my bosom!" Metaphorically only, Ford was sure. "Brought her among my friends, and this is how she repays me!"
It sounded like a quote from some particularly bad Victorian novel and not entirely sincere. He watched his aunt's face, which had flushed, paled, and then flushed again.
"Still, you know, Ford, she really does have powers. Amazing things, she's been able to tell me, and others. She knows all our secrets, it seems. I… I have to confess I'm just a little afraid of her." She tried a giggle at her own foolishness, but it didn't come off.
"You really are frightened," he said and reached out a hand. She clutched it, and he felt the tremor in her fingers.
"Oh, not really! How silly!" But she would not meet his eye, and the whites of hers showed like those of a frightened animal.
"Auntie Q, forgive my asking, but… but do your friends ever come visit? Travel with you? From what my father said, I'd had the idea you traveled in a great bevy, this whole yacht full to bursting."
"Well, I used to. But you know how it is. Or I suppose you don't. In the Navy you can't choose your companions. But there were quarrels, and upsets, and some didn't like this, and others didn't like that…"
"And some didn't like Madame Flaubert," Ford said very quietly. "And Madame Flaubert didn't like anyone who got between you."
She sat perfectly still, holding his hand, the color on her cheeks coming and going. Then she leaned close and barely whispered in his ear.
"I can't… I can't tell you how horrible it's been. That woman! But I can't do anything. I… I don't know why. I c-c-can't… say… anything she doesn't… want me to." Her breathing had roughened; her face was almost purple. "Or I'll die!" She sat back up, and would have drawn her hands away but Ford kept his grasp on them.
"Please send Sam to help me to the… uh… facilities," he said in the most neutral voice he could manage.
His aunt nodded, not looking at him, and stood. Ford felt his strength returning on a wave of mingled rage and pity. Granted, his aunt Quesada was a rich, (foolish, ok) lady, but even foolish old ladies had a right to have friends, to suffer their own follies, and not those of others. Sam, when he appeared, eyed Ford with scant respect.
"You going to live? Or make us all trouble by dying aboard?"
"I intend to live out my normal span and die a long way from here," Ford said.
With Sam's help, he could just make it up and into the bath suite. The face he saw in the mirror looked ghastly, and he shook his head at it.
"Looks don't loll," he said.
Sam gave an approving nod. "You might be getting ttnse. You tell Madam yet the real reason you came to
"I've hardly had a chance." He glared at Sam, without effect. "For people who can't believe in my idle curiosity, you're all curious enough yourselves."
"Practice," said Sam, helping him into clean pajamas. "Madame Flaubert keeps us on our toes."
Ford snorted. "I'll bet she does. How long has she been around?"
"Since about six months after Madam and her Paraden husband had the final court ruling on their separation. The one that gave Madam some major blocks of shares in Paraden family holdings," Sam said. At Ford's stare, he winked. "Significant, eh?"
"She's a…?" Ford mouthed the word Paraden without saying it.
Sam shook his head. "Not of the blood royal, so to speak. Maybe not even on the wrong side of the blanket. But in her heart, she does what she's paid to."
"Does my aunt know?"
Sam frowned and pursed his lips. "I've never been sure. She's got some hold on your aunt, but that particular thing, I don't know."
"They want her quiet and out of their way. No noise, no scandals. I'm surprised she's survived this long."
"It's been close a few times." Sam shook his head, as he helped Ford brush his teeth, and handed him a bottle of mouthwash. "It's funny. Your aunt's real cautious about some things but she won't do anything, if you follow me."
Scared to do anything, Ford interpreted. Scared altogether, as her friends dropped away year by year, alienated by Madame Flaubert. He smiled at Sam in the mirror, heartened to find that he could smile, that he looked marginally less like death warmed over.
"I think it's about time," he drawled, "that my dear aunt got free of Madame Flaubert."
Sam's peaked eyebrows went up. "Any reason why I should trust you, sir?"
Ford grimaced. "If I'm not preferable to Madame Flaubert, then I deserved that, but I thought you had more sense."
"More sense than to challenge where I can't win. Your aunt trusts me as a servant but no more than that.
"She should know better." Ford looked carefully at Sam, reminded again of the better NCOs he'd known in his time. "Are you sure you didn't start off in Fleet?"
A Sicker in the eyes that quickly dropped before his. "Perhaps, sir, you're unaware how similar some of the situations are."
That was both equivocal, and the only answer he was going to get. Unaccountably, Ford felt better.
"Perhaps I am," he said absently, thinking ahead to what he could do about Madame Flaubert. His own survival, and Auntie Q's, both depended on that.
"Just don't let her touch you," Sam said. "Don't eat anything she's touched. Don't let her put anything on you."
"Do you know what it is, what she's using?" Sam shook his head, refusing to say more, and left the cabin silently. Ford stared moodily into the mirror, trying to think it through. If the Paradens were that angry with his aunt, why not just fall her? Were her social and commercial connections that powerful? Did she have some kind of hold on them, something they thought to keep at bay, but dared not directly attack? He knew little about the commercial side of politics, and nothing of society except what any experienced Fleet officer of his rank had had to meet in official circles. It didn't seem quite real to him. And that, he knew, was his worst danger.
The confrontation came sooner than he'd expected. He was hardly back in his bed, thinking hard, when Madame Flaubert oozed in, her lapdog panting behind her. She had a net bag of paraphernalia which she began to set up without so much as a word to him. A candlestick with a fat green candle, a handful of different colored stones in a crystal bowl and geometric figures of some shiny stuff. He couldn't tell if they were plastic or metal or painted wood. Gauzy scarves to hang from the light fixtures, and drape across the door.