I kapitel 2 i Minne kämpar Miles med Elli om att han förfalskade sin rapport till ImpSec. (Han säger bland annat: "Var inte så en fördömd gjutjärnsticka!") När hon frågar vem han ska ta som livvakt på sin returresa till Barrayar, säger han:
"I'll...take Sergeant Taura. That ought to be enough bodyguard to
satisfy the most paranoid ImpSec boss. And she's certainly earned a
vacation."
"Oh! You!" It was seldom indeed that Quinn ran out of invective. She turned on her heel, and stalked to the door, where she turned back and snapped him a salute, forcing him to return it. The automatic door, alas, was impossible to slam, but it seemed to shut with a snake-like hiss.
Detta föreslår att Elli misstänker förhållandet och betydelsen av att han tar Taura på "en semester".
I kapitel 3:
Miles had long thought that she [Taura] was one of the most beautiful women he had ever seen in her own way....Miles could enumerate every rare occasion they had ever made love, from their very first encounter, six, seven years ago now? From before he and Quinn had ever become a couple, in point of fact. Taura was some kind of very special first for him, as he had been for her, and that secret bond had never faded.
Oh, they'd tried to be good. Dendarii regs against cross-rank fraternization were for the benefit of all, to protect the rankers from exploitation and the officers from losing control of discipline, or worse. And Miles had been quite determined, as the young and earnest Admiral Naismith, to set a good example for his troops, a virtual resolve that had slipped away...somewhere. After the umpteenth we've-lost-count-again time he had been almost killed, perhaps.
Well, if you couldn't be good, at least you could be discreet.
När han lät henne av tjänst och de har sex, musas han:
He thought a bit guiltily of Admiral Naismith's other lover, the public and acknowledged Quinn. Nobody had to explain or execute being in love with the beautiful Quinn. She was self-evidently his match.
He was not, exactly, being unfaithful to Elli Quinn. Technically, Taura predated her. And he and Quinn had exchanged no vows, no oaths, no promises. Not for lack of asking; he'd asked her a painful number of times. But she too was in love with Admiral Naismith. Not Lord Vorkosigan. The thought of becoming Lady Vorkosigan, grounded downside forever on a planet she herself had stigmatized as a "backwater dirtball," had been enough to send space-bred Quinn screaming in the opposite direction, or at least, excusing herself uneasily.