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Ivan agrees to smuggle a teenaged girl onto Jackson's Whole, for totally moral purposes. Naturally, this is the entire Vorrutyer family's fault.
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a_t_rain
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“Right. So, about Justina. I’m afraid this may not be welcome news after all these years, but she comes from you and me. She’s our daughter.”
Ivan froze, and then began calculating furiously. Justina’s age was about right, but ... “That’s impossible. You had a contraceptive implant.”
“Ivan, dear, women have been known to lie about having contraceptive implants. I’m sure you’ve heard of the phenomenon before.”
“Not you,” said Ivan. “You’re not that kind.”
Dono looked levelly at him. “Maybe not, but I was very desperate,” he said. “I’d been married and divorced twice, without a child to show for it, and with the sort of reputation that would make most men think twice before proposing. My brother had been engaged multiple times, but never got as far as the wedding, and he was already in poor health. Richars was the next heir, unless I offered Pierre an alternative. A bastard would do, as long as he was indisputably Pierre’s nephew. Unfortunately, she turned out to be a girl bastard, so she was useless for my purposes. I found a nice married couple in the District who couldn’t have children of their own and offered to raise her, and I managed to keep the whole thing quiet so that it wouldn’t interfere with my ability to marry again. As far as I knew, Justina was well-looked-after and perfectly happy, until she turned up on the doorstep of the District house last week. The people she’s living with don’t believe in higher education for girls, and she wants a university degree, so she came to me.”
“And where do I come into this?”
“I would like you to take some responsibility for your daughter. I’ve been looking at the legalities, and I think I count as a witness for the acknowledged-bastard oath. I’m male, whatever I may have been in the past, and Vor-caste. You can take the oath in front of me today, get Justina a galactic passport by applying as her parent, and take her with you when you leave for Jackson’s Whole – which ought to happen as soon as you can get away, I think, since her foster-parents have been threatening to track her down and marry her off. I need hardly say that it is against her will.”
“These were the people you left her with? And you’re accusing me of not taking responsibility?”
“I didn’t feel that I had much of a choice at the time. Not if I hoped to have any chance at another marriage, and another child.”
It was typical of the crazy-ass Vorrutyer notion of honor, Ivan thought, that they always tried to make you think they were worse people than they actually were. “Interesting story. But I don’t believe a word of it. Shall I tell you what I think is really going on?”
“By all means. I’m curious to know what you think is really going on.”
“Justina isn’t your daughter, and she definitely isn’t mine. She is a Vorrutyer, though.” Ivan considered, very briefly, the possibility that she might be Byerly’s daughter, and decided that he couldn’t really see By abandoning his own child any more than he could see Dono doing it. Besides, that didn’t explain why the girl was calling herself Lady Justina. “She’s ... I think she’s Richars’s daughter, and she believes her father is rightfully the Count, and you felt guilty enough that you thought you ought to do something for her.”
“Oh, very good, Ivan! But you’d better be careful – if you keep that up, people will stop believing you’re the dumb one.”