"Elizabeth Moon - Serrano 2 - Sporting Chance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Moon Elizabeth)

Sporting Chance




Chapter One
"Of course there is a minor problem," Lady Cecelia said, as
she turned to allow her maid to take her stole. A brisk wind
tossed cold rain at the windows; it hissed and rattled alternately.
"Yes?" Heris Serrano eyed her employer with some suspicion.
The words "minor problem" had become an all too frequent
catch-phrase between them. She resented the niggling delays
that prevented their departure; they should have been in space
already, two days out on the voyage back to Rockhouse Major.
She had begun to long for the ship, and space. Besides, the
sooner they got to Rockhouse, the sooner that young
troublemaker, the prince, would be off her hands, someone
else's responsibility.
"It's our numbers again." Lady Cecelia waved her maid away,
and settled herself into a comfortable chair drawn up before a
fireplace. A small fire of real wood crackled on the hearth behind
an ornate fire screen. Heris settled in the chair opposite and
raised her brows. "I thought we'd be fine," Lady Cecelia went on,
"since Bunny's children wouldn't be coming, nor Buttons's
fianc├йe. George is still in the hospital, mostly for legal reasons,
and I thought I could leave Raffaele and Ronnie here for the rest
of the season, under the circumstances." Heris said nothing; her
mind busily subtracted the volume and resources needed for
those six young people and their servants, and the crew and
staff she knew were quitting, and added the same for new crew
and the one passenger she knew of. "But that won't work," Lady
Cecelia said. She ran one long hand through her short hair, and
left it standing up in peaks.
"Why not?" asked Heris, since it seemed called for.
 "Reasons of State, so I was told. I nearly cancelled my
invitation, but that might be embarrassing too, so . . . the Crown
Minister insists that if I have the young-er-Mr. Smith aboard, I
must have an adequate bodyguard, a cabinet-level minister, and
of course the servants. And . . . Ronnie."
"Ronnie! Why?" Someone had made a serious mistake. She
wondered how that had happened. The whole point of bringing
Cecelia's nephew Ronnie here in the first place had been to keep
him away from the prince.
"I'm not sure, but it was one of the points made, very firmly.
When I added the numbers, it came to fifty-six. That's over our
limit, right?"
"Yes-but how many 'bodyguards' are we supposed to have,
and who are they?"
"They want to send Royal Security-"
"Blast." Heris suppressed the expletives she'd have liked to