In Enemy Hands

other hand, you may have noticed that Graysons can be a little stubborn?' She turned her head to smile up over her shoulder at Andrew LaFollet, then quirked a roguish eyebrow at his sister, and the two of them chuckled as White Haven gave a wry nod. 'Well, this is one of the things they simply made up their minds that they would not lose. I suspect the recipe's changed a little... but I wouldn't be willing to bet any money on it.'

This time White Haven joined the LaFollet’s laughter. The inhabitants of Grayson were nothing if not determined. Among other things, theirs was the only planet in the explored galaxy which had retained the ancient Gregorian calendar, despite the fact that it was totally unsuited to their planetary day or year. If anyone was likely to have preserved a traditional breakfast food in the midst of colonizing a disastrously hostile planet with a pathetically crippled tech base, they were certainly the people to do it.

He sniffed again as he slid into the chair facing Harrington's and ran his eyes over her oddly assorted breakfast party. Her treecat sat in a highchair to her right, wrinkling his whiskers at the earl in unmistakable greeting. White Haven gave him a courteous nod, then nodded in turn to Samantha, who sat in a matching chair to Nimitz's right. Miranda LaFollet sat to Harrington's left, and a third highchair sat to her left for Farragut. White Haven had rather more experience with 'cats than most Manticorans, given his family's long-standing alliance with the House of Winton. Enough monarchs and crown princes and princesses had been adopted over the past eight or nine generations for breakfast at Mount Royal Palace to seem somehow wrong if there weren't any treecats present, but it was unusual, to say the least, for the 'cats' numbers to equal those of the human diners.

Of course, he reminded himself, there were eleven more of them somewhere around Harrington House this morning. He wondered who was watching Samantha’s kittens and wished whoever it was luck. From what he'd seen of her offspring yesterday, their nursemaids were going to need all the breaks they could get, and he was heartily glad that he wasn't one of them.

He smiled inside at the thought and returned his attention to the fascinating odors wafting in from the open door at the end of the dining room. They really did smell delicious... and the lush, buttery undertones warned him the 'waffles' would be just as rich as Harrington had intimated. He cocked his head to look at her, noting the full cocoa mug beside her plate, and wondered how she could possibly stay so slender in the face of what was clearly a monumental sweet tooth. There had to be more to it than exercise alone, however many calories she burned up in her physical training program.

Honor felt his attention and sensed the speculation at its heart. She couldn't tell precisely what he was speculating upon, but it was very different from the sudden burst of almost visceral awareness she'd picked up from him last night. She wondered if she was glad for the difference, then gave herself a sharp mental shake. Of course she was glad! A goodly part of her had dreaded breakfast, for her night had not been restful. She'd gone back over those last few minutes in the library again and again, picking at them as she might have scratched at some maddening physical itch. And, as she'd told herself at the time, her spiraling afterthoughts had concluded that it was nothing to worry about. That it had been only a momentary thing, a flash of awareness which White Haven had no way of knowing she'd shared with him. Something he would put away in a back corner of his brain where it could not affect their professional relationship.

Unfortunately, a deep, inner part of her had refused to accept that comforting logic.

It had been ridiculous. She was over fifty T-years old, not a schoolgirl! She'd had no business lying awake speculating on what a man who'd never before shown the least awareness of her as a woman might be thinking about her. Especially not this man. Yet that was precisely what she'd done, and taking herself to task for it had done no good at all. She dropped her eyes to her own plate, looking at the butter and syrup-drenched wreckage of her second stack of waffles, and gave herself yet another mental kick.

What was wrong with her? She should be relieved that he wasn't thinking about her that way, and she was. But a part of her didn't share that relief. Oh, no. Part of her felt almost petulant, angry with him because he had put his awareness of her attractiveness away somewhere... exactly as she'd half-prayed that he would. And as if to make her absurd dithering worse, there was an undertone of guilt, as if the petulance of that irrational part of her were somehow a betrayal of Paul Tankersley.

Her expression showed no trace of it, but Nimitz cocked his ears inquisitively as he felt her frustration with her own ridiculous fixation on someone else's momentary preoccupation, and she gritted mental teeth as she sensed his rousing interest. There was an undeniable edge of wicked delight in his emotions, and the laughter in his grass-green eyes would have been a dead giveaway even if their emotions hadn't been linked. It wasn't often she did something he found ridiculous to the point of hilarity, but it appeared that his empathic abilities gave him a rather different perspective. Well, that was fine for him, she thought moodily. Maybe his species was so accustomed to feeling others' emotions that they could take it in stride, however inappropriate the circumstances, but that was no reason he should be so indecently amused by her difficulties!

She concentrated on radiating an aggrieved sense of rebuke at him, but he only bared his fangs in a lazy, unmistakable laugh. And, just to make things worse, he sent her another strong pulse of that approval for White Haven.

She heard a quiet sound behind her and turned with a sense of relief for the distraction as MacGuiness stepped out of the pantry, his pantry, as every member of the Harrington House staff had been made thoroughly aware. The entire staff deferred to MacGuiness, and he was perfectly willing to delegate most tasks, but he was in charge of serving his captains meals, and he gave White Haven a small half-bow.

'Good morning, My Lord. May I bring you coffee?'

'You may,' White Haven said with a smile, 'but I think I'd prefer to start with a glass of juice and save the coffee to follow the waffles. I suspect I'll need something to chase the syrup through my system.'

'Of course, My Lord,' MacGuiness replied, and looked at Honor. 'Are you ready for another serving, My Lady?' he asked.

'Um, yes. Yes, I am, Mac,' she replied, and he smiled and turned back to his pantry.

His intervention, brief as it was, had been enough to redirect Honors wandering thoughts, and she looked up at White Haven with a smile as something quite different from last nights admiration colored his emotions. His surprise was something she'd felt before, and while she generally didn't comment on it, it felt so normal compared to the other things she'd been worrying about that she found herself explaining.

'You're wondering why I don't look like a pre-space blimp, aren't you, My Lord?' she teased gently.

'I, That is...' White Haven blushed. Her direct, smiling question had caught him without a graceful response, and his blush deepened at her soft laugh.

'Don't worry, My Lord. Mike Henke teases me about it all the time, and the explanation's simple enough. I'm a genie.'

The earl blinked briefly, his expression totally blank, then nodded in sudden understanding. It was considered extremely impolite to use the term 'genie' to describe someone, but given Harrington's neurosurgeon father and, especially, geneticist mother, she was probably more comfortable with the label than many. For that matter, the prejudice against genetically engineered humans was slowly dying out as the last memories of Old Earth’s Final War faded from the racial forebrain. But there had been no such prejudice in the early days of the Diaspora, and quite a few colonies had been established by genies specifically designed for their new environments.

'I wasn't aware of that, Milady,' he said after a moment.

'We don't talk about it much, but I'd guess the majority of Sphinxians are genies by now,' she replied. He raised a polite eyebrow, and she shrugged. 'Think about it,' she suggested. 'Heavy-grav planets are one of the most common 'hostile' environments. You know that even today most heavy-worlders have shorter than average life expectancies?' She looked at White Haven again, and he nodded. 'That's because even with modern medicine you can't put a body designed for a single gravity onto a one-point-three or one-point-five-gravity planet and expect it to function properly. I, on the other hand...'

She made a graceful gesture with one hand, and he nodded slowly. 'I knew about the modifications for Quelhollow, but those are much more readily apparent than what you seem to be talking about,' he observed.