At that point Lan’ara lost the battle with her stomach and threw up all over him.
“Ugh!” The Senator jumped back, much more quickly than Lan’ara would have believed a man of his age could move.
“Sorry!” she exclaimed, wiping frantically at her mouth. “Oh my Lord Senator, I’m so sorry!”
“You should have told me if you felt sick, girl!” he snapped, looking down at himself. “Now just look! My favorite breeding robe—ruined!” He glared at her. “Why did you not tell me you were unwell? Or better yet, you should have told my secretary before he let me come to you. I’m a very busy man and I don’t have time to waste with sick concubines.”
“I’m so sorry,” Lan’ara exclaimed again. “It’s just, I wasn’t feeling sick until you…I mean, until a moment ago.” She bit her lip. She had almost blurted out that it was his touch that had made her sick—that wouldn’t have been good.
But the Senator’s eyes were narrowed as he studied her.
“Tell me something, my dear,” he said to Lan’ara as he took off the puke-stained robe. “Exactly how close did you get to that big Kindred before he sold you to me?”
“My…my Lord?” Lan’ara stammered. “I don’t understand what you mean. You…you know that I passed your virgin verification process,” she pointed out.
“Yes, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t form a bond with someone else—with that Kindred, perhaps? Hmm?” He raised one busy eyebrow at her accusingly. “Do you think I was born yesterday, my dear? You are not the first concubine I have purchased through Twyleth Tigg Academy, you know. I’m very familiar with the way a Twyleth Tigg bride is unable to stomach being with another male once the first male has put his stamp upon her.”
Lan’ara’s heart sank.
“Oh no, my Lord!” she protested. “I assure you that—”
Before she could finish, Senator Pouncenblast reached over and grabbed her by the arm.
The minute his liver-spotted hand came in contact with her bare flesh, Lan’ara began to gag. She had nothing left in her stomach, but her gag reflex was triggered anyway, as surely as though she had put a finger down her throat. She couldn’t stop until the Senator withdrew his hand. Then, suddenly and mercifully, the awful gagging and nausea dissipated at once.
The Senator frowned like a thundercloud, his bushy gray brows drawing low in disapproval.
“It is as I thought—you are tainted! I should have known it was too good to be true when that scoundrel of a Kindred called and told my secretary he had found you!”
“But, my Lord—”
The Senator held up one hand for silence.
“Enough. Do not perjure yourself further, girl. I will have my secretary call that Kindred’s ship at once. You will have to be returned.”
Fifty-One
Lan’ara sat in miserable silence as the Senator yelled for his secretary—who apologized again and again for bringing him a “defective bride”—and gave orders for her to be cleaned up and removed.
As she showered and rinsed her mouth and changed back into the green and gold silk dress she’d worn the day before at her arrival, her mind was a tumult of uneasy questions. Was The Dark Star even still in orbit around Genu Six? And if so, would Need agree to take her back?
Lan’ara doubted it. For of course the Senator would expect to have his forty thousand credits returned. And Need was so angry with her, there was no way he would part with the money twice. So what was to become of her? Would she be thrown out of the Senator’s palace and have to live homeless on the streets?
Maybe I can beg him to let me be a chambermaid or work in the kitchens where he can’t see me, she thought desperately. It would take my whole life but that way I could pay him back the forty thousand myself.
But would Senator Pouncenblast agree to such an arrangement? He, too, was angry with her for being “tainted” and he might want nothing more to do with her.
Oh, if only Need hadn’t gotten so angry with her! What in the world had Drung said to him that made him so mad? He seemed to feel like she was manipulating him in some way, just because she’d been following her training. But how else was she supposed to act when faced with a strange and frightening situation where her very life was in his hands? How—?
“All right, they’re coming.”
The secretary’s words cut through her incessant inner monologue of anxiety and fear and Lan’ara’s head yanked up in surprise.
“What…what did you say?” she quavered.
“I said that someone from the crew of The Dark Star is coming to get you, girl,” the fish-faced man sneered at her. “They even agreed to pay back the forty thousand credits and then some for the inconvenience which was caused to the Senator.”