Then, as if by the result of some telepathic communication, the three of them drifted aside as one.
"Thank you," Hawke said courteously, and looked at Honor. "My Lady?"
"Thank you, Spencer," she said with admirable gravity, and the entire cavalcade resumed its interrupted passage to the waiting air limos and escorting sting ships.
Spencer Hawke looked studiously out the limo window as Hamish Alexander-Harrington wrapped one arm about his wife in a crushing hug.
"God, I'm glad to see you!" he said quietly as Honor sat beside him in the limousine seat, her head on his shoulder. She pressed the top of her head against his cheek, and the treecats on their shoulders reached out to rub their cheeks together, as well.
"And you," she murmured into his ear. She let herself relax totally for a moment, then straightened and sat more upright, still in the circle of his arm, but far enough back to see his face.
"Emily?" she asked. "Katherine?"
"Fine, both of them fine," he reassured her quickly. "Emily wanted to come, but Sandra wouldn't hear of it. For that matter, Jefferson was ready to put his foot down if she'd tried." He shook his head and glanced at Hawke with a wry grin. "How the hell have you managed to retain any tattered illusion that you run your own life after having had Grayson armsmen looking after you for so long?"
"Jefferson's only doing his job, love," Honor told him primly, also watching Hawke from the corner of her eye. Her personal armsman seemed to have become remarkably hard of hearing, however.
"And Sandra was probably just exercising simple sanity, given the madhouse out there!" Honor continued.
She jabbed her head at the spaceport buildings, dwindling rapidly behind them, and he snorted.
"Better get used to it," he advised her. "The news broke yesterday. Coupled with what Terekhov did at Monica, Lovat has public morale and enthusiasm soaring to new heights. It's actually rebounded harder because of the contrast to what happened at Zanzibar before the cease-fire. Not to mention the fact that Her Majesty's subjects are in the most murderous mood I've seen since your 'execution' over what happened to Jim and almost happened to Berry and Ruth. And since Terekhov won't be back from Talbott for another month or so, all of it's going to be focusing on you, Madam Salamander."
"God, I hate this kind of stuff," she muttered.
"I know you do. Sometimes I wish you were the sort who ate it up with a spoon, instead. But then you wouldn't be you, I suppose."
"Then Nimitz would cut my throat in my sleep, you mean!" Honor laughed. "You have no idea how a ravening mob of newsies affects a treecat's empathic sense!"
"No, but I've been basking in the reflected glow of your glory enough lately for Samantha to give me a shrewd notion the effect isn't good."
"To put it mildly."
The limo banked, and she frowned, looking out the window.
"Where are we going?"
"I'm afraid we're going to Admiralty House," Hamish told her.
"No!" Honor said sharply. "I want to see Emily and Katherine!"
"I know you do. But Elizabeth wants-"
"I don't give a damn what Elizabeth wants!" Honor snapped. Hamish blinked, sitting back and looking at her in astonishment. "Not this time, Hamish!" she continued angrily. "I want to see my wife and daughter. The Queen of Manticore, the Protector of Grayson, and the Emperor of the Known Universe can all get in line and wait behind the two of them!"
"Honor," he began carefully, "she wants to congratulate you, and she arranged to do it at Admiralty House, not Mount Royal Palace, because she wants all the rest of the Navy to be part of it. And she scheduled it originally to give you at least five hours at Jason Bay before the ceremony."
"I don't care." Honor sat back and crossed her arms. "Not this time. I'm going to hug our daughter before I do one more thing. Elizabeth's hung all these honors and rewards and presents on me, but I've never asked her for a thing. Well, today I'm asking. And if she doesn't want to give it to me, then I'm telling, instead of asking."
"I see."
Hamish gazed at her for a moment, remembering the diffident, focused, professionally fearless yet personally unassertive young captain he'd first met in Yeltsin so many years before. That Honor Harrington would never have dreamed of telling the Queen of Manticore to get in line behind her infant daughter. This one, however....
He pulled out his personal communicator and activated it.
"Willie?" he said. "Hamish. I told you not rescheduling was a bad idea. She's really, really pissed, and I don't blame her."
He listened for a moment, then shrugged.
"You're the Prime Minister of Manticore. I think dealing with situations like this is part of the job. So you trot into your office, screen Elizabeth, and suggest, ever so respectfully, that we reschedule. Personally, I think she'll see the wisdom of the suggestion. I hope she does, anyway."
He paused, listening again, and Honor could taste his amusement. She could also actually hear Baron Grantville's raised voice rattling the receiver pressed to Hamish's ear.
"Well, that's your problem, brother dear," he said with a grin. "Personally, I'm not stupid enough to argue with my wife-either of my wives-over something like this. So, we're going home. Have a nice day."
He deactivated the com and dropped its back into his pocket, then rapped on the partition between them and the pilot's compartment. It opened, and Tobias Stimson looked back at him.
"Yes, My Lord?"
"Jefferson Bay, Tobias."
"Very good, My Lord," Stimson said with obvious approval, and Hamish smiled at Honor as the air limo banked again.
"Better?"
"Yes," she said, just a bit darkly. "And the fact that you came around so quickly means you'll live to see another day despite the fact that you were going to drag me off to Admiralty House in the first place."
"Um." He rubbed the side of his head for a moment, then nodded. "Fair enough. In my defense, I'll only plead that the schedule was set yesterday, before you ran late. I'd gotten the timing into my head then."
"Hmph." She looked at him, then gave her head a little toss. "Fair enough, I suppose," she agreed grudgingly. "Just... don't let it happen again."
Katherine Allison Miranda Alexander-Harrington was a red-faced, scowling, beautiful baby, Honor thought. And her opinion was, of course, completely unbiased. After all, Raoul Alfred Andrew was at least equally beautiful, even if he was an older man.
She sat with Katherine in her arms, parked in her favorite lounger on the terrace, overlooking Jason Bay. Umbrellas kept the direct sunlight off the babies, and Emily's life-support chair was parked beside her.
They weren't exactly alone. Sandra Thurston and Lindsey Phillips had been waiting with Emily when Honor arrived. Sandra had been cuddling Katherine until Honor and Hamish got there, and Lindsey still had Raoul in her arms, with his sleeping face pillowed on her shoulder. Nimitz and Samantha had draped themselves across the umbrella-shielded table, basking in the children's mind-glows, and Andrew LaFollet and Jefferson McClure had been keeping an eye on Emily and the babies. Tobias Stimson and Honor's three-man personal detail had joined them, and now the six of them stood along the outer edge of the terrace, not exactly unobtrusively but giving them a protected bubble of privacy.
"We do good work," Honor said, smiling as she sampled the still uninformed mind-glow of the blanket-wrapped infant in her arms. She reached out, stroking the impossibly soft cheek with the tip of her right index finger, then looked up at Emily.
"Well, Dr. Illescue and his people had a little something to do with the mechanics," Emily replied with a huge smile of her own. "And your mother's willingness to kick me in the posterior played a part, too. Still," she continued judiciously, "I'd have to say, on balance-and only after due and careful consideration, you understand-that you have a point."