Roic looked back at Taura, then wished he hadn't. Her face froze, appalled, then crumpled in distress; she seemed about to burst into tears, but caught herself with a long indrawn breath, held for a moment.

Tensed to spring—where?—Roic instead eased back helplessly in his chair. Hadn't m'lord specifically detailed him to prevent this sort of thing?

With a gulp, Taura brought her breathing back under control. She looked as wan as though wounded by a knife thrust. Yet what could he have done? He couldn't very well draw his stunner and pot some Vor lady's terrified kid...

Lady Alys, taking in the incident, returned quickly. With a special frown at Roic, she slid back into her seat. She smoothed over the moment with some light comment, but the outing did not recover its cheerful tone; Taura kept trying to shrink down and sit smaller, a futile exercise, and whenever she began to smile, stopped and tried to hold her hand over her mouth.

Roic wished he were back patrolling Hassadar alleys.

He arrived with his charges back at Vorkosigan House feeling as though he'd been run through a wringer. Backwards. Several times. He peered around the tower of garment boxes he carried—the rest, Madame Estelle had assured Taura, would be delivered—and managed not to drop them getting through the carved doors. Under Lady Vorpatril's direction, he handed off the boxes to a pair of maidservants, who whisked them away.

M'lord's voice wafted from the antechamber to the library. "Is that you, Aunt Alys? We're in here."

Roic trod belatedly after the two disparate women just in time to see m'lord introduce Sergeant Taura to his fiancée, Madame Ekaterin Vorsoisson. Like, it seemed, everyone but Roic, she had apparently been warned in advance; she didn't even blink, holding out one hand to the huge galactic woman and offering her an impeccably polite welcome. M'lady-to-be looked fatigued this evening, although that might be partially the effect of the drab gray half-mourning she still wore, her dark hair drawn back in a severe knot. The garb went with the gray civilian suits m'lord favored, though, giving the effect of two players on the same team.