Conrad stared at her, unbelievingly. Then at the ring. “Who . . . ?” he croaked.
“Talbot Cartup,” she said coolly. “I’m sorry, Conrad. This is good-bye.”
Talbot Cartup. One of wealthiest men on HAR. An original settler, not, like Fitzhugh, the son of one. At least thirty years her senior. And recently widowed. Very recently.
The bentwood chair and cerise satin cushion went flying. “How long has this been going on?” Conrad demanded, leaning over the table, apparently unrelated events suddenly coming together in his mind.
She colored faintly. “That has absolutely nothing to do with you. Sit down and behave yourself. People are staring.”
“Let them stare. I want to know, damn you, Candice.”
“If you can’t conduct yourself decently, then I suggest you leave,” she said icily. “There was no future for us anyway. They’re going to raise the conscription age to twenty-six. You will be going into the army.”
He laughed humorlessly. “I was going to go anyway. And it’s just as well. If I saw that fat creep Cartup, I’d probably kill him. You’ve been cheating on me, Candice. And, seeing as you’d like me to, I’m leaving.”
Blundering blindly through close-set tables, and pushing aside the maître d’hôtel, he headed for the night air and his car. It was a fine reproduction of a mid-twentieth-century Aston Martin. It was his pride and joy.
It was also in the throes of being towed away. Parking over there had been a risk, but he’d been late, and reluctant to hand the keys of his darling to the doorman. Well. He could reclaim it from the pound in the morning. And it wasn’t as if he’d been going anywhere right now, except to drive too fast. He set out, walking. Walking nowhere in particular, but going there as rapidly as possible. He strode past the skeletal remains of the huge slowship that had brought the settlers here. The bulk of the twenty-first-century technical heart of the Colony remained here. Conrad did not. He continued on, past the security fence that surrounded the alien Korozhet’s crippled FTL starship. Onward without purpose or direction. Brooding. Furious—with himself and with her. Miserable.
It was well after midnight when he realized that his wandering feet had taken him far from the suburbs of George Bernard Shaw City. Far from a taxi to take him home.
And . . . relatively close to the airfield, and the hangar holding Van Klomp’s jump-plane. He knew from past experience that the hangar wouldn’t be locked.
Briefly he considered taking the little Fokker-Cessna up on a one-way flight. That would show her!
It would also ruin Bobby Van Klomp. The burly instructor had a solitary Share, and not much else besides that aircraft. Conrad knew that Van Klomp was coming in, in the morning, to do the final clearing and storage arrangements. He could scrounge a lift home then.
The clatter of the hangar doors woke him from an uncomfortable dream-chased sleep. And there, in the bright blue sunlight, stood Van Klomp, shaking his head at him. “You dumb bastard. They’re bound to think of looking here soon. Where is your car?”
“City pound. It was towed away from the no-parking zone outside Chez Henri-Pierre, where—”
“Where you had a fight with that bimbo, told the whole restaurant you wanted to kill Talbot Cartup, and then stormed out.” Van Klomp’s face was creased with a wry grin. “And left Candy with a bill to settle, and her with not a dollar in her purse, never mind her taxi fare.”
Fitz felt himself blush. “How do you know?”
“The cops told me, boeta. When they woke me up at three this morning, looking for you.”
“Looking for me at three in the morning? For not settling a restaurant bill?”
Van Klomp gave a snort of laughter. “The way I heard it, there were a couple of tables full of crockery, food and glassware—oh, and a skinny little maître d’ that got in your way too. But that’s minor, comparatively.”
“Comparatively?”
“Compared to being wanted for murder.”
“Murder?”
“Well, it is still attempted murder, at this stage. Talbot Cartup’s not dead yet.” Van Klomp’s face was deadpan. “But if he dies, which looks likely, you’re for the organ banks.”