War Of Honor

whether they had four limbs or six. It was a treat all of the 'cats looked forward to, and Nimitz often went with the others even when Honor couldn't. But not when something like today's meeting was on his person's schedule.

She looked past the 'cat and caught a glimpse of LaFollet, outside the study door standing his post even here, before it closed behind MacGuiness. Then she pushed herself up out of her chair and crossed to stand in the enlarged bay window that overhung her mansion's landscaped grounds like a sort of hanging turret. The window's outer, floor-to-ceiling crystoplast wall looked out over the bright blue beauty of Jason Bay, and she allowed herself a moment to enjoy the view afresh, then turned back to face the door once more and twitched her Grayson-style gown and vest straight.

Over the years, she'd become completely accustomed to the traditional Grayson garments. She still considered them thoroughly useless for anything except looking ornamental, but she'd been forced to admit that looking ornamental wasn't necessarily a bad thing. And there was another reason to wear them almost constantly here in the Star Kingdom, when she wasn't in uniform, at least. They helped remind everyone, including herself, of who else she was ... and of how much the Star Kingdom and the entire Manticoran Alliance owed the people of her adoptive planet.

Yet another point that ass High Ridge seems able to effortlessly ignore ... or worse, she thought bitterly, then brushed the familiar surge of anger aside. This wasn't the time for her to be storing up still more mental reasons to go for the Prime Minister's throat.

MacGuiness returned a very few moments later with Hamish and William Alexander.

'Earl White Haven and Lord Alexander, Your Grace,' Honor's steward and majordomo murmured, and withdrew, closing the polished wooden doors quietly behind him.

'Hamish. Willie.'

Honor crossed the room to them, holding out her hand in welcome, and it no longer seemed odd to her to greet them so informally. Every once in a while she experienced a sudden sense of unreality when she heard herself addressing her Queen or Benjamin Mayhew by their given names, but even those moments were becoming fewer and further between. In an odd sort of way, she remained fully aware of who she was and where she'd come from even as she found herself moving more and more naturally at the very pinnacle of political power in two separate star nations. She seldom thought consciously about it, but when the realization crossed her awareness, she recognized the way in which her belated admission to the innermost councils of her two nations shaped her perspective.

She was an outsider who'd been elevated to the status of one of the most powerful of all insiders. Because of that, she saw things through different eyes, from what she knew her allies sometimes regarded as an almost ingenuous viewpoint. The degree of sophisticated, vicious, endlessly polite (outwardly, at least) political infighting they took so much for granted, even when they deplored it, was alien to her both by nature and by experience. In some ways, her Grayson and Manticoran friends understood one another far better than she understood either of them, yet she'd come to realize that her very sense of detachment from the partisan bloodletting about her was a sort of armor. Her adversaries and allies alike regarded her as deplorably unsophisticated and direct, unwilling—or unable—to 'play the game' by the rules they all understood so well. And that made her an unknown, unpredictable quantity, especially for her opponents. They knew all about the subtle shadings of position, of advantage and opportunity, which guided their own decisions and tactical maneuvers, but they found the simplicity and directness of her positions curiously baffling. It was as if they couldn't quite believe she was exactly who she said she was, that she truly believed exactly the things she said she did, because they were so unlike that themselves. So they persisted in regarding her with nervous wariness, perpetually waiting for the instant in which she finally revealed her 'true' nature.

That could be a useful thing where enemies were concerned, but it had its downside, as well. Even her closest allies—particularly the aristocratic ones, she reflected, tasting the emotions of her guests—sometimes failed to realize there was nothing to reveal. They might have come to recognize that intellectually, but the Star Kingdom's peers were too much a part of the world to which they'd been born to be able to truly divorce themselves from it, even if they'd wanted to. They didn't, of course, and why should they? It was their world, and Honor was honest enough to admit that it had at least as many positive aspects as negative ones. But even the best of them—even a man like Hamish Alexander, who'd spent seven or eight decades as a Queen's officer—could never quite free themselves from the dance whose measures they'd trod since childhood.

She brushed the thought aside as she shook hands with each of the Alexanders in turn, and then waved them towards their customary chairs with a smile. It was a warm, welcoming smile, and she was no longer aware of how much warmer it became when her eyes met White Haven's.

William Alexander, on the other hand, certainly was aware of it. He'd been aware of the habitual warmth with which she greeted his brother for quite some time, actually, although he hadn't realized he was. Just as he hadn't noticed all the private, intimate little conversations, or the way Hamish inevitably seemed to find some reason to remain behind for some last-minute private discussion of the details with her after one of their three- cornered strategy sessions. Now he uneasily watched her smile, and his uneasiness grew as Hamish returned it.

'Thank you for inviting us over, Honor,' White Haven said, holding onto her hand for perhaps a heartbeat longer than simple courtesy required.

'As if I haven't been inviting both of you over before each of High Ridge's little soirees for years now,' Honor replied with a snort.

'Yes, you have,' White Haven agreed. 'But I wouldn't want you to think we were starting to take you for granted, Your Grace,' he added with a lurking smile.

'Hardly,' Honor said dryly. 'The three of us have made ourselves sufficiently unpopular with the Government for me to doubt that any of us is likely to take either of the other two 'for granted.' '

'Not unless we want to prove the validity of that fellow from Old Earth,' William put in. 'You know, what's his name. Hancock? Arnold?' He shook his head. 'One of those ancient American guys.' He looked at his brother. 'You're the historian of the family, Hamish. Who am I thinking of?'

'Unless I'm very much mistaken,' White Haven replied, 'the man whose name you're fumbling so ineptly for was Benjamin Franklin. He was the one who advised his fellow rebels that they must all hang together unless they wanted to be hanged separately, although it astonishes me that a historical illiterate like yourself could even dredge up the reference.'

'Given the number of years that have flowed under the bridge since your precious Franklin, I think anyone who doesn't have more than a trace of anal retentiveness in his nature is doing remarkably well to remember him at all,' William told him. 'Of course, I was quite confident that you'd be able to give me chapter and verse on him.'

'Before you pursue that thought any further, Willie,' Honor warned him, 'I should probably mention that I'm fairly familiar with Franklin and his period myself.'

'Oh. Well, in that case, of course, my exquisite natural courtesy precludes any further consideration of— Well, you know.'

'I do, indeed,' Honor told him ominously, and they both chuckled.

A soft knock sounded from the direction of the study door, and then it opened once again to readmit MacGuiness. He wheeled in a cart of refreshments prepared by Mistress Thorne, Honor's Grayson cook, and parked it at the end of her desk. It was no longer necessary for him to ask her guests what they preferred, and he poured a stein of Old Tillman for White Haven before he drew the cork from a bottle of Sphinx burgundy and offered it for Lord Alexander's inspection. Honor and Hamish grinned at one another as William carefully examined the cork and sniffed delicately before nodding his gracious approval of the offering. Then MacGuiness poured a second Old Tillman for Honor. She took it and smiled at him as he withdrew, and then she and Hamish raised their foamy, condensation- dewed steins to one another in a beer-drinkers' salute, pointedly excluding the hopelessly effete wine-snob in their midst.

'I must say, Honor,' Hamish said with a sigh of pleasure as he lowered his stein once more, 'that I'm much more partial to your taste in refreshments than I ever was to the sorts of things you encounter at most of Willie's political get-togethers.'

'That's because you're attending the wrong sorts of get-togethers,' Honor suggested with a twinkle. 'Far be it from me to suggest that blue-blooded, natural born aristocrats like your honorable brother are a bit isolated