Married to Krampus - Marina Simcoe Page 0,36
and the Colonel of the Army to boot,” I said, not without a hint of schadenfreude.
“Shula is happy with Drustan,” he replied firmly. “As his wife, she is the highest-placed woman in Voran. He has given her everything she’s ever wanted and more.”
“If you say so.”
Why would she eye someone else’s husband with so much longing, then? If she got everything she’d ever wanted from her own?
I didn’t tell that to him, of course. Instead, I searched for something else to say to him, something that would preferably make him forget all about that woman. Only, there was no forgetting her. She was the mother of his children, who had refused to be his wife.
“I’m sorry, Colonel.”
“Don’t be. It’s absolutely normal in Voran,” he said calmly. “Shula got eleven marriage proposals that year, including Drustan’s and mine. No matter whom she chose, ten men had to be rejected. An average Voranian man proposes many times during his lifetime and is still likely to remain single at the end.”
“How many times have you proposed?”
He glanced out the window again.
“Once was enough for me.”
Not sure what else to say to cheer him up at this point, I silently reached over and took his hand in mine. His holding my hand earlier had been nice and comforting. I hoped he’d feel my support for him now, too.
THE COMMITTEE MEETING turned out to be more boring and less stressful than I’d anticipated.
The Colonel held my hand as a doting husband would. I batted my eyelashes at him, convincing both humans and Voranians that we had been getting along splendidly.
I tried not to overdo it, though, since merely three weeks from now, the Colonel and I would be coming to the very same building to petition the same group of people to dissolve our marriage and take me back to Earth. With the Colonel’s support, however, I believed it would be possible to make it happen.
The rest of the week went fairly smoothly. The Colonel and I had fallen into a routine that seemed to work for both of us. He left for work while I was still in bed. I spent the day exploring Omni’s entertainment library—updated and much expanded through the efforts of Lievoa, who’d send me copious amounts of interesting pictures, fun shows, and useful documentaries on Voranian life. I also learned from Omni the Aldraian technique of taking care of plants. The dwellers of the nearby planet, Aldrai, were considered the top experts in horticulture in this part of the Galaxy. I’d learned that Aldraians literally lived in their gardens—they built no houses.
Whenever I could, I also continued experimenting with baking in the kitchen. The Colonel was still refusing to let me leave the house on my own, which irked me immensely. I couldn’t order all the ingredients through Omni. It was impossible to determine what I needed without me being able to touch, taste, and smell things to figure out what I could substitute with them in my recipes.
He stubbornly refused to understand that, which resulted in a few more blow-outs between us. This man could get my blood boiling by hardly saying anything at all.
Thankfully, he had been making visible efforts to control his temper, which I appreciated, and I tried to watch my own moods in return. That had made our arguments shorter, less explosive, and less upsetting for both of us.
The upcoming weekend, the Colonel was going to be off work, so he arranged to spend one entire day at the Military Academy with the twins.
The day before that, the two of us had dinner in his gorgeous dining room.
“What is this?” I stared at the deep bowl Omni had placed in front of me as soon as I’d taken my seat.
About a dozen gray leech-like worms swarmed in the black water inside the bowl, making my stomach roil.
“They are called recols, Madam Kyradus.”
“I felt like celebrating tonight,” the Colonel smiled brightly across the table, an identical bowl stood in front of him.
“Celebrating? With these?” I tried hard not to look at the slimy things stretching and coiling in my bowl. “How? What do you do with them?”
Flush them down the toilet, what I would do.
“You eat them.” The Colonel’s smile grew wider.
“Recols are a rare delicacy from the underwater caves of Aldrai,” Omni declared. I could have sworn I heard a note of delight in his mechanical voice, too. “Extremely difficult to catch and astronomically expensive.”
“The expense is worth it.” The Colonel appeared to be in