"How could it have happened?"
It was the first coherent sentence Hamish Alexander had strung together in almost ten minutes. He cradled the wildly purring treecat in his arms, as if she were the most precious thing in the universe, and his blue eyes glowed with disbelief and soaring welcome as he stared down at her. He knew what had happened. No one could have spent as much time as he had with Honor and Nimitz—and Samantha—or, for that matter, with Elizabeth and Ariel, and not recognize an adoption bonding when he saw it. But knowing what had happened and understanding it were two different things.
Honor stared at him while the echoes of her own shocked disbelief rippled back and forth within her. Unlike White Haven, she was one of the greatest living human authorities on treecats. More members of the Harrington clan had been adopted over the centuries than any other single Sphinxian family, and she'd spent much of her childhood, especially after her own adoption, reading the private journals of those earlier adopted Harringtons. Some of them had contained speculations and theories which had never been publicly discussed, not to mention an absolutely unrivaled store of first-hand observations. On top of that, Nimitz and Samantha had been the very first treecats ever to learn to sign, and she'd spent endless hours since then "listening" to their fascinating explanations of the treecat society and customs even her ancestors had been able to observe only from the outside.
And that was one reason—of all too many—for her shock. To the best of her knowledge, nothing like this had ever happened before. Except in very special cases, like that of Prince Consort Justin and Monroe, the 'cat who had previously adopted Elizabeth's father, treecats recognized "their" people within seconds, minutes at the outside, of first meeting. Monroe had been all but comatose, shattered and almost totally destroyed by King Roger's death, the first time Justin entered his proximity after the assassination. He'd been truly aware of nothing, not even the grieving family of his murdered person, until the traitor responsible for the King's death came foolishly within his reach, intent on murdering Justin, as well. The intense emotional shock he and the future Prince Consort had shared in fighting off the killer's attack had dragged Monroe back from the brink of extinction and forged the adoption bond between them.
But unless the 'cat half of a bond was literally at death's door, he always recognized the unfulfilled . . . polarity of the human meant to become his other half. Only Samantha hadn't. She'd met Hamish scores of times, without so much as twitching a whisker in any sort of recognition.
"I don't know how," Honor told Hamish, and realized it was the first thing she'd said since that initial paralyzing moment of shock.
The earl raised his eyes from Samantha at last, and even without her ability to taste his emotions, Honor would have recognized the consternation woven through the texture of his joy.
"Honor, I—"
He broke off, his expression mingling chagrin and apology, joy and dismay and a dark understanding of at least some of the frightening implications. It was obvious that the words he wanted hovered just out of reach, eluding his ability to explain his emotional whirlwind to her. But he didn't have to, and she shook her head, hoping her own expression concealed the depths of her astonishment . . . and dread.
"I know it wasn't your idea," she told him. "It wasn't Sam's either, but . . ."
She looked down at Nimitz. He was staring at his mate, his long, sinuous body stiff with a shock as deep as Honor's own, but he turned his head and looked up at her when he felt her gaze.
She wanted to scream at him, and at Samantha. If someone had given her ten years to think about it, she couldn't possibly have come up with something better calculated to make everything immeasurably worse. When the newsies heard about this, any trace of momentum the attacks upon her and White Haven might have lost would return tenfold.
Even now, after the 'cats had been "talking" for almost four T-years, much of the Manticoran public continued to regard them as little more than pets, or, at most, very young children. The notion that they were a fully sentient species with an ancient, sophisticated society, might have been accepted intellectually, but it would be decades yet before that acceptance replaced the earlier general view of treecats as adorable, fluffy animals.
Which meant it would be all too easy for the character assassins to convince people that the only reason Samantha was with White Haven was because Honor had given her to him. Efforts to explain what had really happened would be dismissed with a knowing, leering wink as nothing more than a clumsy pretext, a maneuver the seductress Harrington had concocted as a cover to let her stay close to the object of her adulterous affair.
Yet bad as that was, there was worse. Nimitz and Samantha were mates, even more deeply fused in many ways than Nimitz and Honor. They could be parted for a time by things like military necessity, as wedded human warriors had been over the millennia, but they couldn't be separated permanently. It would have been cruel even to try, and it would also have been wrong—wrong on the deepest level of morality. Which meant there was no way Honor could justify even asking them not to be together when they were on the same planet. But they could no more be separated from their adopted humans than they could from each other, and so they couldn't be together, either . . . unless Honor and Hamish were.
And that was the one thing, above all, which she and White Haven dared not be.
It was insane. There was no way High Ridge and North Hollow could have begun to conceive all the ramifications of the sleazy political maneuver they'd embraced. But even if they'd been able to, it wouldn't have stopped them, because aside from the potential to complete the rupture between Grayson and the Star Kingdom, it was working perfectly for them. And if they ever spared a single thought for the Alliance, which Honor doubted, they undoubtedly continued to think of Manticore as the dominant benefactress and Grayson as the grateful suppliant. Whatever infantile tantrums the Graysons might pitch, they would return to the fold like obedient little children when Manticore spoke firmly to them.
They truly didn't have a clue, not a suspicion of how severely they'd wounded the special relationship Elizabeth and Benjamin had created with one another, or how deeply they'd offended the common steaders of Grayson. And so they would gleefully exploit this latest disastrous turn, completely oblivious to its consequences beyond the narrow confines of the domestic arena.
Which meant that the adoption of a single human by a silken-furred being who weighed barely eight kilos could topple an alliance which had cost literally trillions of dollars and thousands of lives to forge.
"I don't know how it happened," she repeated, "and I don't have any idea at all where we go from here."
Where they went was White Haven, the seat of the Earls of White Haven for four hundred and forty-seven T-years. It was the last place in the universe Honor Harrington wanted to go, but she was too exhausted to fight any longer.
She stared without speaking out the window of the air limo at the stingships flying escort, and White Haven was wise enough to leave her to her silence. There was nothing more either of them could have said, anyway, and even though he shared her dismay at what had happened, he couldn't damp the bright sparkles of joy still flickering through him as he contemplated the warm, silken weight in his lap. Honor understood that perfectly, but it didn't make things any easier on her, and so she sat at the eye of a magic circle of stillness, feeling White Haven beside her and Andrew LaFollet and Armsman 1/c Spencer Hawke behind her, and watched the stingships.
On Grayson they would have been Harrington Steading aircraft. Here on Manticore, they wore the blue and silver colors of the House of Winton, and Colonel Ellen Shemais, second in command of the Queen's Own Regiment and Elizabeth's personal bodyguard, had personally explained to the pilots of those escorts that both of them had better already be fireballs on the ground before anyone got into range to shoot at Duchess Harrington.
Usually, Honor's mouth quirked in a wry smile at that thought, but not today. Today, all she could do was gaze out the window at the cobalt blue sky, watching the stingships glow in the reddening light of late, barely substratospheric afternoon, while she hugged Nimitz to her breasts and tried very hard not to think at all.
She failed, of course.
She knew she shouldn't be doing this, that White Haven was the one place she must not go, yet the knowledge was useless. The maelstrom of emotions which had battered her in the gymnasium had joined with the exhaustion of months under bitter attack and her growing grief and sense of utter helplessness as she watched herself being used as the wedge to drive two star nations she loved apart. She'd given all she had to the struggle, held her head up publicly in defiance of her enemies, spent her strength and her political capital like a wastrel, and nothing she or any of her allies could do had changed a single thing.
She was tired. Not physically, but with a soul-deep heart sickness that had driven her spirit to its knees, and she could no longer fight the inevitable. Not when Hamish wanted her to make this trip so badly. And not when some tiny inner part of her needed to face the woman she had wronged in her heart even if she'd never committed a single overt act of betrayal.
The limo sped on into the north while the sun sank lower and lower in the west, and Honor Harrington sat silently in her seat, empty as the thin, icy air beyond the crystoplast, and waited.
White Haven was much smaller than she'd expected.
Oh, it covered more ground than Harrington House did on Grayson, but that was because it had been built on a planet friendly to humans, not one where humanity's most deadly enemy was the planetary environment itself. It could afford to sprawl comfortably over the gently rolling slopes of its grounds, and its low wings, none of them more than two stories tall, seemed to invite visitors to join it. It was made of native stone, with the immensely thick walls the first-wave colonists had used as insulation against the harsh winter climate of these northern latitudes, and it possessed a certain imposing presence, despite the fact that its oldest, central block had obviously been designed and built before its owners realized they were about to become nobles. It was only a little more ostentatious than an extremely large and rambling, extended farmhouse, but it didn't really need to be anything more impressive than that, and subsequent generations had been wise enough to insist that their architects coordinate the centuries of expansion with the original, simple structure. Other noble families had possessed less wisdom, and all too many of their family seats had become hodgepodges of architectural cacophony as a result.
White Haven hadn't. It had grown much larger over the years, yet it was what it was. It refused to be anything else, and if at first glance it might seem that newer, more modern estates—like Harrington House—were grander and more magnificent, that was only at first glance. Because White Haven had what those new and splendid homes' owners simply couldn't buy, however hard they tried. It had history. It had lawns of ankle-deep sod, pampered by generations of gardeners, and Old Terran oak trees a meter and a half through at the base, which had made the journey from Old Earth herself aboard the sublight colony ship Jason four centuries earlier. It had thick, soft Terran moss and immensely dense hedges and thickets of crown blossom and flame seed that draped around stone picnic tables, gazebos, and half-hidden, stone-flagged patios, and it sat there, whispering that it had always been here and always would be.
There were places on Grayson, like Protector's Palace, which were even older and possessed that same sense of ancientness. But Protector's Palace, like every other Grayson building, was a fortress against its world. Part of that world, and yet forever separate from it. Like Honor's own parents' house on Sphinx, though on a far larger scale, White Haven wore its age like a comfortable garment. That made it something she understood, and if White Haven was a fortress in its own way, its defenses were raised against the maddening pressure of human affairs, and not against its planet.
Despite all that had happened to finally drive her to this place, Honor sensed the living, welcoming presence of Hamish Alexander's home, and a part of her reached out to it. Yet even as she yearned towards its shelter, she knew it could never be hers, and a fresher, bleaker wave of resignation washed through her as Simon Mattingly landed the limo gently on the pad.
Hamish climbed out of his seat, cradling Samantha in his arms, and his slightly strained smile invited her to follow him from the limo. She was grateful to him for sparing her pleasantries which neither of them needed, and she managed to return his smile with one of her own.
Like him, she carried Nimitz in her arms, not in his usual place on her shoulder. She needed that extra contact, that sense of additional connection, and she clung to it as she walked towards a side door with White Haven while LaFollet, Mattingly, and Hawke followed at her heels.
The door opened at their approach, and a man who radiated a subtle kinship to James MacGuiness looked out with a small bow of greeting.
"Welcome home, My Lord," he said to White Haven.
"Thank you, Nico." White Haven acknowledged his greeting with a smile. "This is Duchess Harrington. Is Lady Emily in the atrium?"
"She is, My Lord," Nico replied, and bestowed another, more formal bow on Honor. His emotions were complex, compounded of his deep loyalty to the Alexander family, and to Hamish and Emily Alexander in particular, and an awareness that there was no truth to the vicious stories about Hamish and Honor. She tasted his sympathy for her, but there was also a sharp edge of resentment. Not for anything she'd done, but for the pain others had brought to people for whom he cared, using her as the weapon.
"Welcome to White Haven, Your Grace," he said, and to his credit, not a trace of his ambivalence at seeing her there colored his voice or his manner.
"Thank you," she said, smiling at him as warmly as her emotionally battered state allowed.
"Should I announce you to Her Ladyship, My Lord?" Nico asked the earl.
"No, thank you. She's . . . expecting us. We'll find our own way, but ask Cook to put together a light supper for three, please. No, make that for five," he corrected, nodding at the two treecats. "And make sure there's plenty of celery."
"Of course, My Lord."
"And see to it that Her Grace's armsmen get fed, as well."
"Of course," Nico repeated as he stood aside, then closed the door behind them, and Honor turned to LaFollet.
"I think Earl White Haven, Lady White Haven, and I need to discuss things in private, Andrew," she said quietly. "You and Simon and Spencer stay here."
"I—" LaFollet began an immediate protest, then clamped his jaws tight.
He should be used to this by now, he told himself. The Steadholder had made great strides in accepting that it was his job to keep her alive whether she liked it or not, but the old stubbornness still reasserted itself at times. At least if it had to do it right now, White Haven was probably about as safe a place as she could be. And even if it hadn't been, he thought, looking at her exhausted face, he wasn't about to argue with her. Not now.
"Of course, My Lady," he said.
"Thank you," Honor said softly, and looked at Nico.
"Take care of them for me, please," she asked, and the retainer bowed more deeply still.
"I'd be honored to, Your Grace," he assured her, and she smiled one last time at her armsmen and then turned to follow White Haven down a wide, stone-floored hallway.
She had a vague impression of deeply bayed windows set in the immensely thick walls—of tasteful paintings, bright area rugs and throws, and furniture which managed to merge expense and age with comfort and utility—but none of it really registered. And then White Haven opened another door, and ushered her through it into a crystoplast-roofed atrium which must have been twenty or thirty meters on a side. That wasn't very large for Grayson, where the need to seal "outdoor gardens" against the local environment created enormous greenhouse domes, but it was the largest atrium she'd ever seen in a private home in the Star Kingdom.
It also seemed younger than much of the rest of the estate, and she looked sharply at White Haven as a spike in his emotions told her why that was so.
He'd built it for Emily. This was her place, and Honor felt a sudden, wrenching sense of wrongness. She was an intruder, an invader. She had no business in this peaceful, plant-smelling space. But she was here, now, and it was too late to run, and so she followed White Haven across the atrium to the splashing fountain and koi pond at its heart.
A woman sat waiting there. Her life support chair hovered a half-meter off the atrium floor, and it turned smoothly and silently on its counter grav to face them.
Honor felt her spine stiffen and her shoulders straighten. Not in hostility or defensiveness, but in acknowledgment and . . . respect. Her chin rose, and she returned Lady Emily Alexander's regard levelly.
Lady Emily was taller than Honor had expected, or would have been, if she'd ever stood on her two feet again. She was also frail, the antithesis of Honor's slimly solid, broad shouldered, well muscled physique. Where Honor was dark haired and dark eyed, Lady Emily's hair was as golden blond as Alice Truman's, and her eyes were a deep and brilliant green. She looked as if a kiss of breeze would lift her out of her chair and carry her away, for she could not have weighed over forty kilos, and her long-fingered hands were thin and fragile looking.
And she was still one of the most beautiful women in the entire Star Kingdom.
It wasn't just her face, or her eyes, or her hair or bone structure. Anyone with her wealth could have had those things, in these days of biosculpt and cosmetic gene therapy. It was something else. Some inner quality she'd been able to transmit to the camera during her actress days, yet one which was infinitely stronger in person than it could have been through any electronic medium. It reached out to anyone who came near her, and as Honor felt it, magnified and multiplied through her link to Nimitz, she understood precisely why Nico was so devoted to his Countess.
"Emily," White Haven's deep voice was deeper even than usual, "allow me to introduce Duchess Harrington."
"Welcome to White Haven, Your Grace." The voice was a husky shadow of the warm, almost purring contralto which had reached out to so many HD viewers, but it retained more than a ghost of its old power. The countess held out one delicate hand—the only one she could move, Honor realized, and stepped forward to take it.
"Thank you, Lady White Haven," she said softly, and her thanks were deep-felt and genuine, for there was no anger, no hatred in Lady Emily's greeting. Sadness, yes—a vast, bottomless sorrow, and a weariness which almost matched Honor's own. But not anger. Not at Honor. There was anger, a deep, seething rage, but it was directed at another target. At the men and women who had callously used her, just as surely as they'd used Honor or Hamish, for political advantage.
"You're not as tall as I expected from the talk show circuit and news reports," Lady Emily observed, with a faint smile. "I expected you to be at least three meters tall, and here you are, scarcely two and a half."
"I think we all look taller on HD, Your Grace."
"So we do." Lady Emily's smile grew broader. "I always did, at any rate," she went on, and her tone and emotions alike were barren of any self-pity for those vanished days. She cocked her head—the only thing, besides her right arm, that she could move—and gazed up at Honor thoughtfully.
"You look as if this has been even uglier for you than I was afraid it had," she said calmly. "I regret that, just as I regret that you and I must meet under these circumstances. But the more I've thought about it, the more it's become clear to me that it's essential for the three of us to decide how we will all respond to these . . . people."
Honor looked down into those brilliantly green, understanding eyes, and felt something deep within her begin to yield as she tasted the genuine compassion at Emily Alexander's core. There was resentment, as well. There had to be, for however special Lady Emily might be, she remained a human being, and no mere mortal confined forever to a life support chair could look at Honor, standing beside her husband, and not resent the younger woman's physical health and vitality. Yet that resentment was only a part of what she felt when she looked at Honor, and her understanding, her refusal to prejudge or to condemn, reached out to her guest like a comforting embrace.
Lady Emily's eyes narrowed slightly, and she pursed her lips. Then she glanced at Hamish, and one graceful eyebrow rose as she saw the treecat in his arms. She started to speak, then paused and visibly changed what she'd been about to say.
"I see we have even more to talk about than I'd expected," she said instead, gazing speculatively at Samantha. "But that should probably wait. Hamish, I think Her Grace and I need to get to know one another. Go find something to do."
A whimsical smile took the possible sting from the final sentence, and Honor surprised herself by smiling back. It was a fragile, weary smile, but genuine, and White Haven actually chuckled.
"I will," he agreed. "But I've already told Nico to ask Cook to put together something for dinner, so don't take too long."
"If we take too long, it won't be the first time dinner's gotten cold," his wife replied serenely. "Now go away."
He chuckled again, swept a deep bow to both women, and then, suddenly, they were alone.
"Please, Your Grace," Lady Emily said. "Have a seat."
She waved her mobile arm once more, indicating a bench of natural stone with a thick, woven seat cushion built into a natural rock wall beside the splashing fountain. A miniature Old Earth willow's drooping branches framed it welcomingly, and built-in stone planters spilled Manticoran cloud flowers to either side of it. It was as if the plants surrounded the bench in a protective, earthy-smelling shield of brilliant blue and red and yellow petals, and Lady Emily's life support chair turned silently in a half-circle until she faced it, as well. She'd maneuvered the chair without manipulating a single control with her good hand, Honor realized. Obviously, the doctors had managed to provide at least limited neural interfacing, despite the catastrophic damage to her motor centers, and Honor was glad.
"Thank you, Lady White Haven," she replied, and crossed to the bench and seated herself. She settled Nimitz into her lap, where he lay alert and watchful but without the quivering tension he might have exhibited under other circumstances.
Lady Emily's lips quirked in another wry smile, and she shook her head.
"Your Grace, I think that whatever else happens, the two of us are going to come to know one another much too well to continue with all these formalities. Unless you object, I shall call you Honor, and you shall call me Emily."
"Of course . . . Emily," Honor agreed. It was odd, she thought. Emily was older than her own mother, and a tiny part of Honor recognized that seniority and responded to it. But only a tiny part. And that, she realized, was because although she could taste Emily's awareness of her own relative youth, the countess radiated no sense of superiority. She was aware of her own age and experience, but she was also aware of Honor's, and her sense of sureness, of being the one who knew how to proceed in this painful instance, arose from the fact that her experience was different from Honor's, not greater.
"Thank you," Emily said, and her chair tilted slightly backwards in mid-air while she gazed thoughtfully at her guest.
"You realize that Hamish asked you here at my suggestion," she said after a moment, more as someone observing an unexpected truth than as if she were asking a question or making a statement, and Honor nodded.
"I'd hoped you would, just as I'd hoped you'd come," Emily continued. "I meant it when I said I regret meeting under these circumstances, but I've been curious about you for years now. So in a way, I'm happy to finally meet you, although I could certainly wish it hadn't come about this way."
She paused for a moment, then gave her head a small toss and continued more briskly.
"You and Hamish—and I—have been made the victims of a concerted, vicious attack. One that depends for success on innuendo and hypocrisy in the service of the belief that the end justifies any means whatsoever. And ugly as it may be, and for all the potential for public opinion to recoil on the accusers in disgust, it's unfortunately effective. Because it relies on the knife in the back rather than open confrontation, it can never be answered by reasoned argument or proof of innocence, however genuine and however convincingly presented. Even if you and Hamish were having an affair, which I don't for a moment believe you are, it ought to be your business. And mine, perhaps, but no one else's. Yet even though almost anyone in the Star Kingdom would agree with that statement in the abstract, by now it's completely useless as a defense. You realize that, don't you?"
"Yes." Honor nodded again, stroking Nimitz's silky pelt.
"I don't know that there is a defense, really," Emily said frankly. "It's always harder to prove a negative, and the more you two or your surrogates deny the lies being told about you, the more a certain portion of the electorate will believe them. Worse, all of the Government newsfaxes and commentators are beginning to take it as a given that you're guilty as charged. Very soon now, they won't even bother to argue the case any longer. The assumption of guilt will simply be there, in everything they write or say, and the taint will cling despite anything you can do."
Honor felt her shoulders hunching once more as Emily calmly spelled out what she'd already realized for herself.
"The most damning point of their 'indictment'—and the one I find the most personally infuriating—is the allegation that you and Hamish have betrayed me," Emily continued, and although her voice remained as level and thoughtful as before, she couldn't hide her own seething anger. It was an anger Honor understood only too well, the fury of someone who knew she had been cynically used as a weapon against all she believed in and stood for.
"If they choose to involve me in their games and machinations," Emily told her, "then I think it's only fitting that I respond. I realize neither you nor Hamish have asked me to become involved. I even understand why."
She looked very steadily into Honor's eyes for a moment, her own eyes very dark and still, and Honor felt the fusion of fury and compassion at her core.
"To an extent, Honor, I was willing to stay out of the fray if that was what the two of you wished. In part, I'm ashamed to admit, because I was . . . afraid to do otherwise. Or perhaps not afraid. Perhaps I was simply too tired. My health has been particularly poor for the past year or so, which is undoubtedly one reason Hamish has tried so hard to keep me out of this. And that ill-health may also explain why something inside me quailed every time I thought about becoming involved, anyway. And there may have been . . . other reasons."
Again, their eyes met, and again Honor felt the complex freight of emotions hanging between them.
"But that was cowardice on my part," Lady Emily continued quietly. "An abandonment of my own responsibility to stand and fight against anyone who wants to destroy my life. And certainly of my responsibility to prevent moral pygmies with the ideology and ethics of back-alley rats from raping the political processes of the Star Kingdom."
She paused for a moment, jaw clamped, and this time Honor tasted something else in her emotions. A scathing self-condemnation. Anger at herself for having evaded her obligations. And not, Honor realized, solely because of weariness or ill health—or even Hamish's desire to shield her. This was a woman who had looked into her mirror and faced her own resentment, her sense of hurt and shame, and her perfectly natural anger at the younger woman whose name had been so publicly linked with her husband's. She'd faced those things and overcome them, yet a part of her could not forgive herself for taking so long to do it.
"One reason I asked Hamish to invite you here," Lady Emily told her unflinchingly, "was to tell you that whatever he—or you—may wish, this is not simply your fight. It's also mine, and I intend to take the battle to the enemy. These . . . people have seen fit to drag me and people I care about into their tawdry, vicious games, and I won't have it."
There was, Honor reflected, something frightening about the complete calm with which Lady Emily delivered that final sentence.
"The only possible reply I can see," White Haven's wife continued "is to turn the hook for their entire attack against them. Not to mount a defense so much as to take the war to them, for a change."
Honor sat up straighter on the bench, leaning forward with the first faint flickers of hope as she tasted Emily's resolution.
"I don't wish to sound vain," the countess said, "but it would be foolish for me to pretend not to know that, like you and Hamish, although for different reasons, I enjoy a unique status with the Manticoran public. I've seen enough of you on HD, and heard enough about you from others, to know you sometimes find your public stature more than a little embarrassing and exaggerated. Mine often strikes me the same way, but it exists, and it's the reason High Ridge and his flunkies have been able to attack you and Hamish so effectively.
"But the key to their entire position is to portray me as a 'wronged woman' as the result of your alleged actions. The public's anger has been generated not because you and Hamish might have had an affair, but because Hamish and I married in the Church, in a sacrament we've never renounced or altered which pledged us to honor a monogamous marriage. And because you're a naval officer, not a registered courtesan. If you were an RC, the public might resent any relationship between you and Hamish on my behalf, but no one would consider that either of you had 'betrayed' me or our marriage. But you aren't an RC, and that lets them portray any affair between the two of you as a direct attack upon me. You and he have already issued statements of denial, and you were wise to let those initial statements stand without the sort of repeated denials which so many people would consider little more than sure proof of guilt. You were also wise to avoid the rather disgusting tactic of claiming that even if you'd been guilty, 'everyone' does it. I know some of your advisors must have suggested that approach as a way to brush off the seriousness of your alleged offense, but any move in that direction would have been tantamount to admitting that the charges were justified. Yet even though you've issued your denials with dignity and as calmly and effectively as you possibly could have, they haven't been enough. So I believe it's time to move to the next level of counterattack."
"Counterattack?" Honor asked.
"Precisely." Emily nodded firmly. "As you may know, I virtually never leave White Haven these days. I doubt that I've been off the grounds more than three times in the last T-year, because I love it here. And, frankly, because I find the rest of the world entirely too fatiguing.
"But that's about to change. The Government hacks who have been so busily raping you and Hamish in their columns have used me to do it. So I've already informed Willie that I'll be in Landing next week. I'll be staying at our house in the capital for a month or two, and I shall be entertaining for the first time in decades, albeit on a small scale. And I will make it my personal business to be certain everyone knows that I know there isn't a shred of truth to the allegations that you and Hamish have ever slept together. I'll also make it my business to inform anyone who asks—and, for that matter, anyone who doesn't ask—that I consider you a personal friend in my own right and a close political colleague of my husband. I imagine it will become at least a little more difficult for those assassins to spread their poison if the 'wronged woman' announces to the entire galaxy that she isn't wronged and never has been."
Honor stared at her, heart rising in the first true hope she'd felt in weeks. She was neither so naive nor so foolish as to believe Emily could wave some sort of magic wand and make all of it go away. But Emily was certainly correct about one aspect of it. The portion of the Government press which had been shedding such huge crocodile tears over how dreadfully Lady White Haven had been betrayed, and how terribly her husband's infidelity must have hurt her, could hardly continue to weep for her if she were busy publicly laughing at the absurdity of their allegations.
"I think . . . I think that would help enormously, Emily," she said after a moment, and the slight quaver around the edges of her voice surprised her.
"No doubt it will," Emily replied, but Honor felt a fresh tremor of anxiety at the taste of the other woman's emotions. The countess wasn't done yet. There was something more—and worse—to come, and she watched the older woman draw a deep breath.
"No doubt it will," she repeated, "but there's one other point I think we must discuss, Honor."
"Another point?" Honor asked tautly.
"Yes. I said that I know you and Hamish aren't lovers, and I do. I know because, frankly, I've known that he has had lovers. Not many of them, of course, but a few."
She looked away from her guest, at something only she could see, and the deep, bittersweet longing at her center pricked Honor's eyes with tears. It wasn't anger, or a sense of betrayal. It was regret. It was loss. It was sorrow for the one thing she and the man who loved her—and whom she loved, with all her heart—could never share again. She didn't blame him for seeking that one thing with others; but she bled inside with the knowledge that she could never give it to him herself.
"All of them, with one single exception he deeply regrets, have been registered courtesans," she went on softly, "but he's also respected and liked them. If he hadn't, he would never have taken them to bed. He isn't the sort of man to have casual affairs, or to 'sleep around.' He has too much integrity for that." She smiled sadly. "I suppose it must sound odd for a wife to speak about her husband's integrity when he chooses his lovers, but it's really the only word that fits. If he'd asked me, I would've told him that, yes, it hurts, but not because he's being 'unfaithful' to me. It hurts because I can no longer give him the one thing they can . . . and that he can no longer give it to me. Which is why he's never asked me, because he already knows what I'd say. And that's also why he's been so utterly discreet. He knows that no one in our circles would have faulted him for patronizing an RC under the circumstances, and that most other Manticorans would understand, as well. But he's always been determined to avoid putting that to the test. Not to shield his own reputation, but to protect me, to avoid underscoring the fact that I'll never again leave this chair. He doesn't want to humiliate me by even suggesting that I might be somehow . . . inadequate. A cripple.
"And he refuses to do that," she went on, turning to look at Honor once more, "because he loves me. I truly believe that he loves me as much today as he did the day he proposed to me. The day we married. The day they pulled me from that air car and told him I would never walk or breathe again unassisted."
She drew another deep breath, the muscles of her diaphragm controlled by the life support chair interfaces because she could no longer directly control them herself.
"And that's been the difference between me and all of his lovers, Honor. He cared about them, and he respected them, but he didn't love them. Not the way he loves me.
"Or the way he loves you."
Honor jerked back on the bench, as if Emily had just thrust a dagger into her heart. Her eyes flew to meet Emily's, and saw the brimming tears, the knowledge . . . and the compassion.
"He hasn't told me he does," the countess said quietly. "But he hasn't had to. I know him too well, you see. If he didn't, he would have had you out here to meet me years ago, given how closely the two of you have worked together in the Lords. And he would have turned to me the instant this whole affair hit, instead of trying so desperately to keep me out of it. To protect me. I'm his chief analyst and adviser, though very few people realize it, and there's no way he would have failed to introduce us to one another, especially after High Ridge's cronies launched these attacks on the two of you . . . unless there were some reason he couldn't. And that reason—the reason he was willing to see his own name and reputation ruined by false charges and the Opposition's ability to fight High Ridge effectively undermined rather than enlist my aid to defeat them—is that he was afraid I'd see the truth and be wounded by his 'betrayal.' And just as it's the reason he's kept me from meeting you, it's the fact that he loves you which has prevented him from even trying to become anything more than your friend and colleague. You're not a professional, and even if you were, he knows it wouldn't be a brief affair. Not this time. And deep inside, he's afraid that for the first time he might truly betray me."
"I—How did—?"
Honor tried desperately to get a grip on herself, but she couldn't. Emily Alexander had just given her the final clue she'd needed, the final puzzle piece. Everything she'd ever felt from Hamish snapped suddenly into place, and she wondered how Emily, without her own link to Nimitz, had been able to grasp the core truth so completely.
"Honor, I've been married to Hamish for over seventy T-years. I know him, and I love him, and I see how this is tearing him apart. It was already there before this smear campaign was launched, but it wasn't destroying him the way it is now. I think . . . I think that what happened is that the lies and the false accusations forced him to look closely at things he'd held at a distance, somehow. They made him admit the truth to himself on some deeper level, and the combination of how much he loves you—loves both of us—and his guilt at having discovered that he can love someone besides me is like a bleeding wound. Worse," she looked directly into Honor's eyes, "he's afraid he's going to tell you openly how he feels. That he is going to 'betray me' by taking a lover he truly loves.
"I don't know how I'd react if that happened," she admitted frankly. "I'm afraid to find out. But what I'm even more afraid of is that if the two of you did become lovers, the secret would be impossible to keep. There are too many ways to spy on anyone, and too many people with too much to lose who must want desperately to find proof of his infidelity with you. If they do, that proof will be made public, and any good I may accomplish by telling the world I was never wronged will be instantly undone. In fact, my protestation of his innocence will only make it even worse. And to be totally honest, I'm very much afraid that if the two of you continue to work so closely together, eventually he will act upon his feelings. I don't know what that would do to him, in the long run, any more than I know what it would do to me, but I'm afraid we may both find out. Unless . . ."
"Unless what?" Honor's voice was tight, and her hands tightened on Nimitz's softness, as well.
"Unless you do what he can't," Emily said steadily. "As long as both of you are on the same planet, you must work together as political partners. Because you two are—or were, before this all happened—our most effective political weapons, and because if you stop working together, it will be taken as proof of guilt. But for that to be possible, you must ensure that nothing else ever happens between you. It isn't fair. I know that. And I'm not telling you this as an anxious wife, fearful that her husband will find someone he loves more than her. I'm telling you because it would be political suicide, and not just for you and Hamish, if the two of you ever became lovers, especially after I come forward and assure the entire Star Kingdom that you never have.
"For more than fifty T-years, my husband has been absolutely faithful to me in every way that truly matters, despite my confinement to this chair. But this time, Honor—this time, I don't think he's strong enough. Or not that, so much, as that I think this time he's up against something too strong for him. So you have to be his strength. Fair or not, you have to be the one to maintain the distance and the separation between you."
"I know that," Honor said softly. "I know that. I've known it for years now, Emily. I have to maintain the separation, never let him love me. Never let myself love him."
She looked at her hostess, her face tight with pain.
"I know that . . . and I can't," she whispered, and Lady Emily White Haven stared at her in horror as Admiral Lady Dame Honor Harrington, Duchess and Steadholder Harrington, burst into tears.