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  “People usually don’t mention things like that unless they want to talk about them,” Laura persisted. “If you really didn’t want me to know, you wouldn’t have mentioned it at all. You would have just said that you had too many scruples, and I never would have been the wiser. So what is it that you wanted to tell me?”

  Marianne gave Laura her best Tolari stare and leaned back on her elbows to heave a sigh.

  “When I was twelve, I walked home alone from the summer fair late one night. A man followed me. Between the rapes and what he did to me with … with a barbecue skewer, I nearly died.”

  Laura’s eyes went wide with horror. “Oh my God. I’m so sorry. If you don’t want to talk about it—”

  Marianne licked her lips nervously. “You’re right, I guess deep down I wanted to tell you.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I put up walls that no one could get through after that. Not until the Sural.” She lay back in the ferny groundcover and watched the clouds drifting by overhead.

  “Oh you poor ... No wonder Addie kept saying there was no chance you’d ever get involved with ‘that handsome Sural.’ I wondered why everyone was so certain you’d be loyal to Earth.”

  “You think they picked me because I was so afraid of men?”

  “That has to be one reason why,” Laura said. “It has to be. But how did he manage to get through to you?”

  “All the time he spent with me, all the little things he did for me – I thought he was just trying to be a good friend because I was alone on his world. A planetary ruler? Interested in a farm girl like me? Not a chance. But after I changed … he wasn’t going to be able to hide his feelings forever, so he let me see what he felt.” She rolled onto her side and threw another little fern in the stream.

  “I was terrified, and that’s putting it mildly,” she continued. “But when the Detral shot him and he nearly died, I realized I didn’t want to live without him, much as the idea scared the stuffing out of me. As soon as he was recovered from his wound, we bonded.”

  “You put him off because you come from a farm? We humans pay too much attention to social class.”

  Marianne shrugged. “Social class never really affected me. Not in Casey, Iowa. A few semi-rich types lived in the area, but most of us were just working folk.”

  “Lucky.”

  “Eh? How do you figure that?”

  “Life is very restricted for a poor little rich girl.”

  “Right, how bad could it be?”

  “I was never allowed to be alone,” Laura said. “Do you know, I never climbed a tree? And the only boys I could accompany without a chaperone were my brothers. It took months to plan and scheme and find a way to elope with John.”

  “Good grief. Who treats their daughter like that?”

  “Steven Langley Johnson.”

  Marianne gaped. “The Steven Johnson? The richest man in the Six Planets?”

  “The one and only,” Laura replied with a wry grin.

  “Good God.”

  Laura made a sour face. “There’s nothing good about Papa – and he didn’t get where he is by being nice. Even the Chairman is careful of him. I wonder if he’s figured out yet it was Central Command that kidnapped me and not the Triads?”

  Marianne whistled through her teeth. “You don’t act like a society princess.”

  “Forty-one years in Earth Fleet beat that out of me,” Laura said with a laugh. “So now I’m curious – this bonding you keep mentioning, is that—”

  “Only part of it. It’s mostly emotional. When you’re bonding, you don’t even know where you are. It’s ecstatic. The physical part just happens, wherever you happen to be at the time, so you’re supposed to remain in seclusion. You eat a lot, you … bond … night and day. There are hormones flooding you that keep you awake, to make you bond every few hours, until the compulsion is gone and you finally fall asleep. For us it took four days.”

  “Oh, my.”

  “It was incredible, just incredible.” Marianne closed her eyes. “I can feel him wherever he is now. He can’t hide from me. He can camouflage and conceal himself from anyone, close himself up and shut anyone out – except me.”

  “I’m surprised you could still walk after four days of that.”

  “Laura!”

  They both blushed and laughed.

  “Is that when you got pregnant?”

  “No, that took a little longer, but when I found out I was pregnant, I started having nightmares about the attack.”

  Laura sobered. “Ouch. Are you okay now?”

  “More or less. I guess there’s a part of me that believes the— the man who attacked me would come back if I got pregnant, like he threatened to. But that’s fading. I haven’t had a nightmare in a few weeks.”

  They fell silent, watching the clouds drift overhead.

  “I think I would like to live in your world,” Laura said. “But I’m not sure I want to be a widow for 300 years.”

  “Maybe you’ll find someone.”

  She peered at Marianne with narrowed eyes. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “Why would I be kidding? And maybe you wouldn’t be as lonely if you could feel the affection other people have for you.”

  “Marianne, look at me. I may be well-preserved, but I’m sixty years old. We’re surrounded by people who look half my age. I can understand how the Sural could fall in love with you, you’re young, but why in the world would any Tolari man be attracted to a middle-aged baggage like me?”

  Marianne heaved a sigh and said, in a quiet voice that was almost a whisper, “You don’t give yourself any credit.”

  * * *

  “In a way it’s not fair,” Marianne said later, as she and the Sural settled on her sleeping mat for the night. “She’s sensitive enough to have a glimpse of our world, but not sensitive enough to really be a part of it. She longs for it, too. And I think it would help her to cope with her loss.”

  She nestled into his shoulder. He reached over and brushed the hair away from her face. “You are so beautiful,” he said, drawing her more tightly against him. “Always thinking of others.” Radiance grew around her as he touched their bond.

  “And you are insatiable. Always thinking of bonding.”

  His smile went crooked. “A trait of my bloodline.”

  “Will you allow Laura to take the Jorann’s blessing?”

  “Yes, beloved, if she requests it.”

  “My gratitude,” she said, beginning to nibble along his chin.

  “Now who is insatiable?”

  “Not me,” she replied around a mouthful of earlobe.

  * * *

  Laura woke in a cold sweat, her heart pounding from a nightmare of captivity and helplessness. Breathing hard, she sat up. God, talk about bad dreams and you have one. She staggered to her feet and pulled on a robe. Maybe a walk in the garden would help calm her nerves.

  She headed out the sleeping room door into the moonlit garden. The moon, not quite full and very bright, hung high in the sky, shedding plenty of light to see. Some kind of creature, perhaps an insect, clicked softly in the trees, but it was otherwise quiet. She drew in a deep breath of warm air full of unfamiliar smells and tilted her face upward.

  The Milky Way lay spread across the stars. She searched the sky, but she had no idea which star was Sol, or Tau Ceti, or Epsilon Indi – the places her children and grandchildren lived. Her eyes stung. They probably thought she was dead.

  A muffled sound came from a nearby gazebo. She turned and peered into the shadows. A small, dark figure sat on the top step, hugging the railing, head bowed. Her dark brown robe blended into the shadows. Thela.

  “What are you doing out here so late at night?” Laura asked. “You should be asleep in bed.”

  Thela looked up and said something liquid and musical.

  No English, Laura thought. She climbed the steps and sat down on the top step with the little girl. She couldn’t be more than ten or eleven, and she looked so sad, th
ough she wasn’t crying. On impulse, Laura reached over to rub her back. Thela responded by scooting over and putting her arms around Laura’s waist.

  “I’m so sorry for your loss.” She knew Thela wouldn’t understand the words, but maybe she would understand the feelings.

  Thela uttered some more words and pointed to a spot at the bottom of the steps. Laura felt a chill. Was that where her father had died?

  “Oh Thela,” she whispered. “You shouldn’t be here.” She looked up at the stars again. “Neither should I. But I don’t have anywhere else to go.” A sigh escaped her. “Do you have anywhere else to go? Anyone else who would have taken care of you? Though I guess the Sural is your father now.”

  “Sural?” Thela looked up from where she’d buried her face in Laura’s shoulder.

  Laura reached a hand as high over her head as she could. “Sural.”

  The girl ventured a small smile. “Harst,” she said.

  Laura smiled back, wondering what that meant, and gave her a squeeze. “Come on,” she said, getting to her feet. “This isn’t a good place for you to be.” She took Thela’s hand and tugged at it until the girl stood up and came with her. “That’s right. Let’s go sit by the brook over there.”

  Thela followed willingly enough. Laura sat under a tree near one of the brooks that ran through the garden and patted the grassy vegetation beside her, inviting the child to sit. “I wish I could show you which star I come from, but I don’t know which one it is.” She lay back and pointed at the moon. “Moon,” she said.

  Thela lay down beside her. “Moon-n-n,” she repeated.

  Laura put her hands up to frame it with her fingers. “It’s different than the moon I grew up with. A little smaller, I think.”

  Thela yawned and curled up against Laura’s side.

  The ferny grass was soft. “We should go back in and go to bed.” Thela uttered a little sigh. Laura smiled. She’d try to find an English-speaking guard to carry the girl back to her own bed. In a minute.

  Chapter Twelve

  Laura strolled through the gardens with Marianne and Cena in the late afternoon. By her reckoning, a couple of months had passed since her arrival on Tolar, but it was hard to tell, since Tolari had no inclination to keep track of time, and the twenty-five hour days threw her off.

  Marianne looked about six months or so along, to Laura’s experienced eye. Cena definitely exhibited the happy glow of pregnancy – Tolari and humans seemed to have that much in common. She didn’t show yet, but she made no secret of it, nor did she make a secret of her continuing affair with the old tutor whose child it was. Who fathered it, she corrected herself. Who fathered him, she corrected again, since the baby was a boy. She shook her head.

  “What’s the matter?” Marianne asked.

  “Oh, nothing,” Laura replied with a sheepish grin. “Just lost in thought. You know, the usual things.”

  “You are still finding us a puzzle?” Cena asked.

  “Oh, yes. You’re so proud of yourself for getting Storaas to get you pregnant.”

  Marianne chuckled.

  Cena smiled. “No one has captured him in over a hundred years,” she said, allowing a little smugness into her voice. Then a shadow crept into her eyes.

  Laura laid a hand on her arm. “He’s just waiting to die, isn’t he?” she asked.

  Cena nodded sadly. “He has not many years left.”

  “I understand,” Laura said in a soft voice. “He lost someone, didn’t he?”

  Cena started and gave her a long look, but said nothing.

  “Well, anyway,” Laura continued, “I understand.”

  Marianne made an uncomfortable noise. “Let’s go into this gazebo. I need to sit.”

  The other two women followed and arranged themselves on the benches in the graceful wood pavilion. Laura shrugged to herself, chagrined at turning the mood sad. She hadn’t meant to, but she did it all too often. Living in the home of the man who killed her husband – even if the keep and the grounds together were the size of a small town – wasn’t helping, but there was nothing to be done about that. She had to stay on Tolar. She wasn’t safe in human space, and as far as she knew, she wasn’t welcome anywhere else.

  Confined to one planet. It was ironic for a woman who had spent the last forty-one years living on Earth Fleet ships.

  Marianne let out a long sigh of apparent relief and stretched her legs in front of her. “I’ve been thinking about names for my daughter,” she said.

  Laura grinned. “I named my daughters Sarah and Elizabeth.”

  “My mother named me for her mother. I’ve been thinking about following suit and naming my daughter after my mother: Rose.”

  “Mm, that’s a nice name.”

  “The Sural suggested Kazry.”

  “That would be a feminine form of his father’s name,” Cena said.

  Marianne turned toward her in surprise. “He said it was a traditional name in his family, but he didn’t mention that.”

  “Kazryn was, by all accounts, a sensitive and passionate man, and an accomplished poet.”

  “I knew he was a poet,” Marianne said, blushing for some reason Laura could only wonder about. Then her eyes narrowed. “You’re using his name?”

  “Kazryn never ruled.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t,” said Laura.

  “The Sural’s father and the Suralia his grandmother were assassinated on the same day,” Cena explained. “Kazryn never ruled, so the Jorann never took his name from him.”

  “Oh-h-h.”

  “From what I understand,” Marianne added, “that was the last direct attack on Suralia. Everyone in the stronghold died.”

  Laura cringed. “Oh my.”

  “Must have been an ugly day.”

  Cena nodded, her face solemn. “I was conceived within a few days of that sad event.”

  Laura’s face grew hot.

  “It was the morning after the people of Suralia pledged their lives to the Sural,” Cena continued. “My mother went to him for an heir and stayed on as his head apothecary and concubine.”

  “Concubine?” Marianne blurted.

  Cena cocked her head. “Did I not use the correct word? An individual kept to relieve sexual tension?”

  Laura choked and started to cough.

  Cena looked from Laura to Marianne and back. “I am clearly trespassing on human taboos.”

  Marianne began to cackle, then to laugh, then to guffaw. She couldn’t seem to stop.

  “Uh oh,” Laura said. “She’s got a good case of the giggles now.”

  As Marianne kept alternating between chortles and belly laughs, the Sural burst into view nearby, a small smile playing around his lips, his eyebrows slightly raised. Marianne pointed at him and laughed harder.

  “The Marann seems to find it highly entertaining that you took my mother for a concubine as well as engaging her as your head apothecary,” Cena explained as the Sural took a seat next to Marianne.

  Marianne continued giggling. He put an arm around her, a broad smile on his face.

  “Ah yes,” he said. “Your mother was very helpful. She had made a study of the needs of the Jorann’s grandchildren.”

  Laura blinked a few times and met his eyes, confused. “People keep calling you that. There’s a Suralia who was your grandmother – and the Jorann is the other?”

  Marianne sniggered.

  “Not in the sense you mean,” he answered. “Every few hundreds of our years, on average, one like me is born in the ruling caste. The Jorann claims us as her grandchildren. We have heightened speed and strength, but using these abilities comes at a cost. First comes a ravenous hunger for food. Then comes a burning hunger for sex.”

  Laura flushed, wondering if she was red from head to toe. Of course, the Sural then burst into a delighted smile.

  “I am what I am,” he finished, shrugging a shoulder. “Forgive us if our ways offend you. I was very young when I took power, and I was struggling w
ith my appetites. Being triggered into my full potential heightened them past what I was able to control without assistance.”

  Her face grew even hotter than it already was.

  The Sural chuckled. “Laura still struggles with our frankness about intimate matters, I see.”

  Marianne finally seemed to get herself under control. “Not all humans have so much trouble with it,” she said, wiping tears of mirth from her eyes. “But Laura comes from Boston’s aristocracy, where it’s not mentioned at all.”

  “And what do you take for your excuse?” he asked, with a crooked grin.

  She shoved him sideways. He laughed and crushed her against him with a thorough kiss. Then he stood and bowed to them all. “I must go,” he said. “I have another meeting before the evening meal.” He popped out of sight, and something in Laura clenched.

  “Like a Latin lover ...” she said, feeling wistful.

  Marianne giggled. Then she gave Laura a sharp look.

  Cena did as well. “Are you struggling with your own appetites, Laura?”

  She frowned. “I’m too old for that.”

  “No, you’re not,” Marianne muttered under her breath.

  “Marianne!”

  “You’re not.”

  “Marianne is correct, Laura,” Cena said. “Age does not take away the need. Even Storaas took a lover from time to time, and he has allowed himself to grow very old.”

  “I’m a widow!” Laura sputtered.

  “That just makes it worse,” Marianne said. “You went from full speed ahead to full stop.”

  Laura opened and closed her mouth several times, blinking furiously, but she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  Marianne leaned toward her. “It’s all right, Laura,” she said, her face and voice gentle. “Just remember that no one here will blame you if you need to take a lover, even so soon after losing your husband. Especially with all the randy goings-on that you can’t avoid hearing about.”

  She stiffened and looked away. “I never would have believed,” she said, fixing her gaze on a nearby tree, “that the Tolari were such a – an energetic people.”

  Marianne had the temerity to catch her eye before grinning mischievously. “Not all are. You just have the misfortune of living among some of the most ... um ... energetic. The Sural’s bloodline is already known for its passion, and the Jorann’s grandchildren are infamous for their appetites. Cena is the Sural’s natural daughter and inherited his passion. And me—” She grinned again. “I’ve got years of repression to make up for, and on top of that, what he feels, I feel. Poor Laura. You don’t stand a chance of withstanding all the rampaging romance going on around here.”