Then there was Samantha.
The Sphinx Forestry Service had checked its files at Honor's request, and the SFS report confirmed what she'd suspected. There wasn't a single recorded instance of a mated pair of 'cats who had both adopted humans...before Nimitz and Samantha. There'd been mated pairs in which one 'cat had adopted and the other hadn't, although even that had been vanishingly rare, but in those cases, at least only one human had been involved. There'd been no need to choose between two-legs who were not or could not be together, and so there'd been no reason for them to face the possibility of permanent separation from either mate or person. The fact that the situation was unique meant there was no precedent to guide any of them, yet in this, as in so much else, Nimitz and Samantha had set their own precedents, with no regard at all for history or tradition.
She wondered sometimes what might have happened if Harold Tschu hadn't been killed in Silesia before Hamish's awareness of her had shifted so radically. Would she and Harry have been drawn inexorably together? It was certainly possible, but even so, she doubted that it would have happened. He'd been a fine man, and she'd respected him, but he'd also been one of her subordinates. Theirs had been a professional relationship, and so far as Honor could tell, the bonds between each of them and their 'cats hadn't carried over to their attitudes toward one another in any way. Certainly the thought that he might ever have been anything more than a friend, the human partner of Nimitz's wife and the human "uncle" of any of the 'cats' children, had never so much as crossed her mind before his death had erased any possibility of it.
Which had absolutely no bearing on her present intolerable position. As Emily had pointed out, she and Hamish had no choice but to continue to work together, cooperating as closely and as...intimately as before the attack. And just as political considerations made it impossible for her to avoid Hamish, so did the personal consideration that Nimitz's mate was bonded to him. There was no way she could possibly separate her beloved friend from his wife, yet the very intensity of their bond with one another only made Honor even more exquisitely sensitive to all of the points of resonance between her and Hamish.
No wonder empaths thought it was insane for anyone to attempt to deny what she truly felt!
The lecture hall's seats were almost full, and she glanced at the time display on the wall. Another ninety seconds. Just long enough for one last self-indulgent wallow in her self-pitying misery, she told herself bitingly.
Yet self-pity or not, there was no escape from the grim reality behind it. Emily had bought her a reprieve, nothing more. Friends and allies could defend her from external attack, but they couldn't protect her from her own inner weakness and vulnerability. No one could defend her from that. The only possible answer she could see was to find some way to separate herself from the source of her pain. She might not be able to do that permanently, but perhaps she could do it long enough to at least learn to cope with it better than she could now. And even if she couldn't learn how to do that, she desperately needed some respite, some break in the pressure to let her pause, catch her breath, and regather her strength.
But recognizing that answer did her no good at all when there was no way she could separate herself from Hamish and the Star Kingdom's political fray. Not without convincing everyone, friend and foe alike, that she was running away. Perhaps they wouldn't know all of the reasons for her flight, but that wouldn't really matter. The damage would be done, especially on Grayson.
So how, she wondered despairingly, did she find the sheltered haven she needed so desperately without looking as if she had allowed herself to be hounded out of town?
Her wrist chrono beeped softly, and she drew a deep breath and reached forward to rest her hands on the traditional polished wood of the lectern while she gazed out at her respectfully assembled students.
"Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen." Lady Dame Honor Harrington's soprano voice was calm and clear, carrying effortlessly to every listening ear. "This is the last lecture of the term, and before we begin our review for the course final, I want to take this opportunity to tell you all how much I've enjoyed teaching this class. It's been a privilege and a pleasure, as well as a high honor, and the way in which you've responded, the fashion in which you've risen to every challenge, only reaffirms the strength and integrity of our Service and its future. You are that future, Ladies and Gentlemen, and it gives me enormous satisfaction to see what good hands the Queen's Navy and all of our allied navies are in."
Silence hovered behind her words, deep and profound, and the wounded corners of her soul relaxed ever so slightly as the answering emotions of her students rolled back through her like an ocean tide. She clung to that sensation from the depths of her battered exhaustion, with the greedy longing of a frozen, starveling waif crouching outside the window of a warm and welcoming kitchen, but no sign of that crossed her serene expression as she gazed back out at them.
"And now," she went on more briskly, "we have a great deal to review and only two hours to review it in. So let's be about it, Ladies and Gentlemen."
"She's like some damned vampire!" Baron High Ridge growled as he slapped the hardcopy of the latest poll numbers down on his blotter.
"Who?" Elaine Descroix asked with an irritatingly winsome little-girl smile. "Emily Alexander or Harrington?"
"Botheither!" the Prime Minister snarled. "Damn it! I thought we'd finally put Harrington and White Haven out of our misery, and then along comes White Haven's wifehis wife, of all people!and resurrects both of them. What do we have to do? Cut off their heads and drive stakes through their hearts?"
"Maybe that's exactly what we have to do," Sir Edward Janacek muttered, and Descroix chuckled. Despite her smile, it was not a pleasant sound.
"It might not be a bad idea to wash them both down with holy water and bury them by moonlight, as well," she said, and High Ridge snorted harshly. Then he looked at the other two people present.
"Your suggestion worked even better than I'd hoped it would... in the short term," he told Georgia Young, abandoning any pretense that the idea had ever been her husband's. "It took Harrington and White Haven completely out of the equation while we fought through the new budget. But it's beginning to look as if our short term victory is going to prove a long term defeat. Unless you've managed to come up with some answer to the rebound in their popularity with the proles, that is."
Almost everyone else in the Prime Minister's paneled office turned to look at Lady North Hollow, but she returned their half-accusing glares with calm composure. Then she waved one graceful hand at the Second Lord of Admiralty, the single person who wasn't glowering at her at the moment, and smiled at High Ridge.
"As a matter of fact, Prime Minister, I believe Reginald and I may actually have come up with a solution of sorts. It's not a perfect one, but then so few things in this world are truly perfect."
"Solution? What kind of solution?" Janacek demanded. He got the questions in before anyone else could ask, but it was a close run thing.
"I've been doing some additional...research on Harrington and White Haven," the countess replied. "It hasn't been easy. In fact, it's been impossible to get anyone inside Harrington's household or inner circle. Her security is provided entirely by her Steadholder's Guard, with backup from the Palace Guard Service, and it's the next best thing to impenetrable. Not to mention the fact that she herself seems to have a damnable ability to 'read' the people around her. I've never seen anything like it.