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Two months after giving birth to the Emperor’s bastard, Lady Sofia Vorkeres approached the Imperial throne to make her official greeting at this biggest event of the year and paused.
The undercurrent of mingled salacious curiosity, outraged propriety and greed at this possible extra inroad to patronage, scandal or leverage was familiar by now. Thank goodness her father the Count had agreed that she wouldn’t be on the horse flesh market this year, that he wouldn't accept negotiations from a Baba for her hand which would have caused even more overt sly mocking at her position by the hostesses of Vorbarr Sultana.
Her family always looked as if they can never quite believe their beautiful, highly eligible fourth daughter is Barrayar’s best scandal this year, that at eighteen she hadn’t been suddenly whisked off to be bedded by Emperor Dorca, causing uproar at a ball just like this one. If only they knew. Her life had diverged months before they thought it had and she’d grown used to working a double life in bed, with the Emperor above her and in the strict rules of High Vor society she had followed to even more as she became more entrenched into her highly dangerous affair. They’ll call me Dorca’s Whore but they can’t pin anything else on me, I’m not an idiot. She preferred disapproval to the other response. Her mother’s brother had been utterly grasping in his thoughts “rise” to power through his hitherto unknown niece, as if the Empress’s family wouldn’t fight that tooth and nail.
The extended Vorrutyers always had sour faces, yet the two most affected care the least. Empress Charlotte appeared both sanguine and bored by her apparent rival’s appearance. Sofia knew how things stood for them, that she was both fiercely dedicated to the Emperor’s plans for Barrayar and the Emperor personally. “If my husband wants a mistress, he can damned well have a mistress. It’s always been an Imperial privilege, and for him it won’t be the only one, unlike his great Grandfather.” Tacit agreement for open love affairs with Vor ladies were a not substitute for the whole of Barrayar bending the knee in both word and deed. Whatever Dorca wants, Dorca gets. She’d never thought non marital, non heir producing relations as so political until then....
And the Empress was a consummate politician, waging war with women’s weapons. She could make use of someone who had spent so many events last year glued to the wall like an Armsman, making sure she was known as the Emperor’s mistress but not anybody’s for the asking, no heady masquerade ruining her further. Someone who needed to know the gossip before anyone else did in order to survive, to head off potential rivals before they became a threat, to fend off those who would use her for their own agendas. She had learned to fade quietly into the back ground and pass discreetly down corridors at night on the way to outrageous and secret assignations in dark rooms.
Her brother the Count cares even less about the Emperor’s domestic arrangements and was steadfastly disregarding any scandalous undercurrents in favour of plotting the total bloody surrender of half the people in the room, for this wasn't a gathering of friends celebrating a birthday. Dorca’s closest ally and soul mate cared about his eldest daughter, the Emperor, waging war for the Emperor and his wife in that order. He had been known to walk in on intimate moments and talk about battle plans until the Emperor started paying attention. She had realised last year that he never read his wife’s letters during the long campaigns, not liking to mix domesticity and war. This had resulted in him coming home to a house that was slightly damaged from a small siege. His indignant reply to his wife’s outrage – that a catapult damaged home was a domestic matter and thus her responsibility, had not been entirely well received.
It had all begun in a dark library with a cosy fire and an unexpected meeting. An unlikely discussion between a bored Emperor looking for Vodka and ready to find a distraction and a Vor maiden reading “The Castle of Vortranto”, when events had taken a sudden and irrevocable turn. Lord Pavel Vortaine and Madame Vorventa had burst in, oblivious to anyone else and collapsed onto the chaise together. What had followed had been eye opening as the Emperor had grabbed her to stop her creating a worse moment, drawing her to him, pressing up against her, his arms secure around her waist. She had realised they were still there after the couple had left as she began recover her bearings. He had then taken down a book from the top shelves and told her she might find it interesting, bade her good reading and left. She had spent the next two days with her eyes even wider, reading the book in secret. Afterwards she had known that he wanted to seduce her and she was going to let it happen.
The excited gossip had swirled about her since she had arrived back in Vorbarr Sultana, her ripe appearance making the truth of the matter obvious. Not helped by the Emperor over hearing and unexpectedly amusedly agreeing with his now abashed young lieutenants that his new mother mistress had “a nice arse” and the sly ditties that had started.
She’d never left Xav before in the two months since his birth, but mistresses can’t choose their children over their lovers if they want to protect their place, and there are always pretty faces and witty personalities throwing themselves at him now that every knows he’d rather have a Vor bud official mistress than a bored matron or merry widow. Well, it had made things easier when it came to claiming his son.
Lord Xav Aral Vorbarra. A statement of the Emperor exerting his hard campaigned for authority to bestow a Lord’s rank on his bastard, something her own father would never do. She was amused that unbeknownst to most people who gossiped about the biggest scandal of the year, the Emperor had named him after his favourite cats, nothing political, he had said and then that he had insisted on giving his son his own name, the most political of them all. And she would have to play the game well to keep them both alive and safe.
Curled up intimately with him on the bed as she recovered from birth, tucked discreetly away in a private house , gazing at their mercifully perfect son, nothing else mattered in the slightest.
She looked up at the Emperor and saw the fond look in his eyes. This too was a form of acknowledgement. She took a small breath and it began.