by David Weber
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 t
o 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.