"It's miracle grain, you know," Miles put in. "It multiplies. By tomorrow—or later tonight—people will be selling little bags of supposedly-wedding groats to the gullible all over Vorbarr Sultana. Tons and tons."
"Really." Mark considered this. "You know, you could actually do that legitimately, with a little ingenuity. Take your handful of wedding groats, mix 'em with a bushel of filler-groats, repackage 'em . . . the customer would still get genuine Imperial wedding groats, in a sense, but they'd go a lot farther . . ."
"Kareen," said Miles, "do me a favor. Check his pockets before he gets out of here tonight, and confiscate any groats you find."
"I wasn't saying I was going to!" said Mark indignantly. Miles grinned at him, and he realized he'd just been Scored On. He smiled back sheepishly, too elated by it all tonight to sustain any emotion downwards of mellow.
Kareen glanced up, and Mark followed her gaze to see the Commodore in his parade red-and-blues, and Madame Koudelka in something green and flowing like the Queen of Summer, making their way toward them. The Commodore swung his swordstick jauntily enough, but he had a curiously introspective look on his face. Kareen broke away to cadge more ambrosia samples to press on them.
"How are you two holding up?" Miles greeted the couple.
The Commodore replied abstractedly, "I'm a little, um. A little . . . um . . ."
Miles cocked an eyebrow. "A little um?"
"Olivia," said Madame Koudelka, "has just announced her engagement."
"I thought this was awfully contagious," said Miles, grinning slyly up at Ekaterin.
Ekaterin returned him a melting smile, then said to the Koudelkas, "Congratulations. Who's the lucky fellow?"
"That's . . . um . . . the part it's going to take some getting used to," the Commodore sighed.
Madame Koudelka said, "Count Dono Vorrutyer."
Kareen arrived back with an armload of ambrosia cups in time to hear this; she bounced and squealed delight. Mark glanced aside at Ivan, who merely shook his head and reached for another ambrosia. Of all the party, his was the one voice that didn't break into some murmur of surprise. He looked glum, yes. Surprised, no.
Miles, after a brief digestive pause, said, "I always did think one of your girls would catch a Count."
"Yes," said the Commodore, "but . . ."
"I'm quite certain Dono will know how to make her happy," Ekaterin offered.
"Um."
"She wants a big wedding," said Madame Koudelka.
"So does Delia," said the Commodore. "I left them arm wrestling over who gets the earlier date. And the first shot at my poor budget." He stared around at the Residence grounds, and all the increasingly happy revelers. As it was still early in the evening, they were almost all still vertical. "This is giving them both grandiose ideas."
In a rapt voice, Miles said, "Ooh. I must talk to Duv."
Commodore Koudelka edged closer to Mark, and lowered his voice. "Mark, I, ah . . . feel I owe you an apology. Didn't mean to be so stiff-necked about it all."
"That's all right, sir," said Mark, surprised and touched.
The Commodore added, "So, you're going back to Beta in the fall—good. No need to be in a rush to settle things at your age, after all."
"That's what we thought, sir." Mark hesitated. "I know I'm not very good at family yet. But I mean to learn how."
The Commodore gave him a little nod, and a crooked smile. "You're doing fine, son. Just keep on."
Kareen's hand squeezed his. Mark cleared his suddenly inexplicably tight throat, and considered the novel thought that not only could you have a family, you might even have more than one. A wealth of relations . . . "Thank you, sir. I'll try."
Olivia and Dono themselves rounded the corner of the Residence then, arm in arm, Olivia in her favorite primrose yellow, Dono soberly splendid in his Vorrutyer House blue and gray. The dark-haired Dono was actually a little shorter than his intended bride, Mark noticed for the first time. All the Koudelka girls ran to tall. But the force of Dono's personality was such that one hardly noticed the height differential.
They arrived at the group, explaining that they'd been told by five separate people to go try the maple ambrosia before it was gone. They lingered, while Kareen collected another armload of samples, to accept congratulations from all assembled. Even Ivan rose to this social duty.
When Kareen returned, Olivia told her, "I was just talking to Tatya Vorbretten. She was so happy—she and Ren? have started their little boy! The blastocyst just got transferred to the uterine replicator this morning. All healthy so far."
Kareen, her mother, Olivia, and Dono all put their heads together, and that end of the conversation became appallingly obstetrical for a short time. Ivan backed away.
"It's getting worse and worse," he confided to Mark in a hollow voice. "I used to only lose old girlfriends to matrimony one at a time. Now they're going in pairs ."
Mark shrugged. "Can't help you, old fellow. But if you want my advice—"
"You're giving me advice on how to run my love life?" Ivan interjected indignantly.
"You get what you give. Even I figured that one out, eventually." Mark grinned up at him.
Ivan growled, and made to slope off, but then paused to stare, startled, as Count Dono hailed his cousin Byerly Vorrutyer, just passing by on the walk leading to the Residence. "What's he doing here?" Ivan muttered.
Dono and Olivia excused themselves and left, presumably to share their announcement with this new quarry. Ivan, after a short silence, handed his empty cup to Kareen and trailed after them.
The Commodore, scraping the last of his ambrosia out of his cup with the little spoon provided, stared glumly after Olivia clinging joyfully to her new fianc?. "Countess Olivia Vorrutyer," he muttered under his breath, obviously trying to get both his mouth and his mind around the novel concept. "My son-in-law, the Count . . . dammit, the fellow's almost old enough to be Olivia's father himself."
"Mother, surely," murmured Mark.
The Commodore gave him an acerbic look. "You understand," he added after a moment, "just on principles of propinquity, I always figured my girls would go for the bright young officers. I expected I'd end up owning the general staff, in my old age. Though there is Duv, I suppose, for consolation. Not young either, but bright enough to be downright scary. Well, maybe Martya will find us a future general."