Sporting Chance

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“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 fiancée. 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.

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