Renall spoke again. “Clara, I could still—you could become my mistress. I would care for you until the end of your days. You would want for nothing.”
Clara blinked. Had she heard him right? “I beg your pardon?”
He looked uneasy. “I could place you on the planet nearest the one I shall live on. I could not have you on that one, of course, out of respect to my wedded. But…but I could still…”
She shouted, “You want to keep me but not wed me! You want it all! How selfish of you! How dare you?”
She was not just angry. She was pissed off and indignant. That indignation grew when Renall said, “It is the most logical course to take.”
“Fuck your logic,” she snarled at him. “You are asking me to accept a life where I would be alone most of the time. Where I would be unable to wed because I would be obligated to you. A life that would be nothing but endless waiting for you to arrive and wondering if I had fallen out of your favors. No thank you. You find that logical? It is. For you. Because you get the best of all of it.”
Renall pondered that. “I see I have upset you.”
“Oh, you think?” She tugged at her hair. Her anger deflated fast, leaving her tired and saddened. “Renall, let’s just pretend this never happened. Let’s just act as if we never made love and that you never suggested that. Okay?”
He left. Clara climbed out of the bed and began to dress slowly. She was restless and upset, but she was not in the mood to spend a lot of credits just to go outside. She stood at the window, staring at the vistas of greenbelt and sun. When she had lived below, the risk in going above to see the sunlight, the sunlight that could kill if not properly filtered, had been one she had had to take several times a year. Her body cried out for that light, and for the sight of greenery and streets that opened up to long avenues where houses sat on lawns that had grass, precious and rare as the fruit that the occasional rich gambler would bring below for a table’s ante.
How many credits would she need to have to go to back? To get a genetic lift that would fool her government into not knowing who she had been? To get a home above and stay there in the light?
Too many. But if she had the opportunity to do so, she would. She would, and she would not think twice about it either. With her mother there and then her father and brother, she could earn plenty. Orbitary would provide them with credits, and then they could go back and live above.
And she would forget all about Renall and Brian too.
Brian. A spike of pain hit again, but it had nothing to do with the skull scraping.
Betrayal was what males seemed to be the most adept at.
And there was another problem. If she and her family went back, no amount of credits could protect them from betrayal. She would never be able to fall in love with any man, not really, because to do so she would have to trust him, and how could she trust anyone given what Brian had done?
And now to complicate things, she seemed to have tied her emotions and her heart into a being who could not ever be hers. Renall was quickly winning her heart, but it was clear that he did not want it.
