He hesitated, then asked coldly, “And what will you do in exchange for my promise?”
“I’ll go to bed with you,” Amanda said. “That’s what you want, isn’t it?”
“No!” he blurted. Almost pleading, he said, “I want to marry you, Amanda. I love you! I want to give you…everything you’ve ever wanted.”
She waited a heartbeat, then said, “All I want is Lars’s safety.”
“And not me?”
“I owe it to Lars. All this has happened because of me, hasn’t it?”
He wanted to he, wanted to tell her that everything he had done he had done for her and for her alone. But he couldn’t. Facing her, so close to her, he could not he.
“You were a part of it, Amanda. But only a part. Something like this would have happened anyway.”
“But Lars wouldn’t have been caught in the middle of it, would he?”
“Probably not,” Humphries agreed.
“Then I’ll marry you, if that’s what you want. In exchange for your promise to leave Lars alone.”
Humphries’s throat felt dry, parched. He nodded mutely.
“Now you have everything you want, don’t you?” Amanda said. There was no rancor in it. No trace of anger or bitterness. At last Humphries understood what was different about her, what had changed. She’s not the innocent, naive girl she once was. Those blue eyes are unsmiling now, calculating.
He couldn’t find words. He wanted to make her feel better about this, wanted to make her smile. But he couldn’t find any words.
“That is what you want, isn’t it?” Amanda insisted.
“Not like this,” he said, finding his voice. And it was the truth. “Not as part of a…an arrangement.”
Amanda shrugged slightly. “This is the way it is, Martin. There’s nothing either one of us can do to change it. I’ll marry you if you swear that you won’t harm Lars.”
He licked his lips. “He’ll still have to face trial on Ceres. I can’t stop that.”
“I know,” she said. “I accept that.”
“All right, then.”
“I want to hear you say it, Martin. I want your promise, here and now.”
Drawing himself up to his full height, Humphries said, “Very well. I promise you, Amanda, that I will do nothing to harm Lars Fuchs in any way.”
“You won’t give anyone orders to hurt him.”
“I swear to you, Amanda.”
The breath seemed to sag out of her. “All right, then. I’ll marry you as soon as a divorce can be arranged.”
Or as soon as you become a widow, Humphries thought. Aloud, he said, “Now it’s your turn to make a promise, Amanda.”
Alarm flashed in her eyes momentarily. Then she understood. “I see. Yes, I promise that I will be your loving wife, Martin. This won’t be merely a marriage of appearances.”
Before he could take her hands in his, she turned and walked out of the conference room, leaving him standing alone. For a few moments he felt rejected, wronged, almost angry. But slowly it dawned on him that Amanda had agreed to marry him, to love him. It wasn’t the romantic perfection he had fantasized about over all the years, but she had promised to marry him! All right, she’s upset about it now. I’ve forced her into it and she doesn’t like that. She feels an obligation to Fuchs. But that will change. In time, she’ll accept it. She’ll accept me. She’ll love me. I know she will.
Suddenly Humphries was laughing out loud, dancing around the conference table like a manic teenager. “I’ve got her!” he shouted to the ceiling. “I’ve got everything I’ve ever wanted! The whole miserable solar system is in my grasp!”
Big George thought they were lucky to snag a ride aboard an HSS ship heading for Ceres on a high-energy trajectory.
“We’ll be there in four days,” he said to Kris Cardenas as they picked meal packages from the galley’s freezer.
Cardenas was more skeptical about their luck. “Why is Humphries sending this ship to Ceres on a high-g burn? It’s practically empty. We’re the only passengers and there isn’t any cargo, far as I can tell.”
Sliding his dinner into the microwave, George said, “From what the crew’s buzzin’, they’re goin’ out to pick up the bloke who captured Lars.”