War Of Honor

off the seriousness of your alleged offense, but any move in that direction would have been tantamount to admitting that the charges were justified. Yet even though you've issued your denials with dignity and as calmly and effectively as you possibly could have, they haven't been enough. So I believe it's time to move to the next level of counterattack.'

'Counterattack?' Honor asked.

'Precisely.' Emily nodded firmly. 'As you may know, I virtually never leave White Haven these days. I doubt that I've been off the grounds more than three times in the last T-year, because I love it here. And, frankly, because I find the rest of the world entirely too fatiguing.

'But that's about to change. The Government hacks who have been so busily raping you and Hamish in their columns have used me to do it. So I've already informed Willie that I'll be in Landing next week. I'll be staying at our house in the capital for a month or two, and I shall be entertaining for the first time in decades, albeit on a small scale. And I will make it my personal business to be certain everyone knows that I know there isn't a shred of truth to the allegations that you and Hamish have ever slept together. I'll also make it my business to inform anyone who asks—and, for that matter, anyone who doesn't ask—that I consider you a personal friend in my own right and a close political colleague of my husband. I imagine it will become at least a little more difficult for those assassins to spread their poison if the 'wronged woman' announces to the entire galaxy that she isn't wronged and never has been.'

Honor stared at her, heart rising in the first true hope she'd felt in weeks. She was neither so naive nor so foolish as to believe Emily could wave some sort of magic wand and make all of it go away. But Emily was certainly correct about one aspect of it. The portion of the Government press which had been shedding such huge crocodile tears over how dreadfully Lady White Haven had been betrayed, and how terribly her husband's infidelity must have hurt her, could hardly continue to weep for her if she were busy publicly laughing at the absurdity of their allegations.

'I think . . . I think that would help enormously, Emily,' she said after a moment, and the slight quaver around the edges of her voice surprised her.

'No doubt it will,' Emily replied, but Honor felt a fresh tremor of anxiety at the taste of the other woman's emotions. The countess wasn't done yet. There was something more—and worse—to come, and she watched the older woman draw a deep breath.

'No doubt it will,' she repeated, 'but there's one other point I think we must discuss, Honor.'

'Another point?' Honor asked tautly.

'Yes. I said that I know you and Hamish aren't lovers, and I do. I know because, frankly, I've known that he has had lovers. Not many of them, of course, but a few.'

She looked away from her guest, at something only she could see, and the deep, bittersweet longing at her center pricked Honor's eyes with tears. It wasn't anger, or a sense of betrayal. It was regret. It was loss. It was sorrow for the one thing she and the man who loved her—and whom she loved, with all her heart—could never share again. She didn't blame him for seeking that one thing with others; but she bled inside with the knowledge that she could never give it to him herself.

'All of them, with one single exception he deeply regrets, have been registered courtesans,' she went on softly, 'but he's also respected and liked them. If he hadn't, he would never have taken them to bed. He isn't the sort of man to have casual affairs, or to 'sleep around.' He has too much integrity for that.' She smiled sadly. 'I suppose it must sound odd for a wife to speak about her husband's integrity when he chooses his lovers, but it's really the only word that fits. If he'd asked me, I would've told him that, yes, it hurts, but not because he's being 'unfaithful' to me. It hurts because I can no longer give him the one thing they can . . . and that he can no longer give it to me. Which is why he's never asked me, because he already knows what I'd say. And that's also why he's been so utterly discreet. He knows that no one in our circles would have faulted him for patronizing an RC under the circumstances, and that most other Manticorans would understand, as well. But he's always been determined to avoid putting that to the test. Not to shield his own reputation, but to protect me, to avoid underscoring the fact that I'll never again leave this chair. He doesn't want to humiliate me by even suggesting that I might be somehow . . . inadequate. A cripple.

'And he refuses to do that,' she went on, turning to look at Honor once more, 'because he loves me. I truly believe that he loves me as much today as he did the day he proposed to me. The day we married. The day they pulled me from that air car and told him I would never walk or breathe again unassisted.'

She drew another deep breath, the muscles of her diaphragm controlled by the life support chair interfaces because she could no longer directly control them herself.

'And that's been the difference between me and all of his lovers, Honor. He cared about them, and he respected them, but he didn't love them. Not the way he loves me.

'Or the way he loves you.'

Honor jerked back on the bench, as if Emily had just thrust a dagger into her heart. Her eyes flew to meet Emily's, and saw the brimming tears, the knowledge . . . and the compassion.

'He hasn't told me he does,' the countess said quietly. 'But he hasn't had to. I know him too well, you see. If he didn't, he would have had you out here to meet me years ago, given how closely the two of you have worked together in the Lords. And he would have turned to me the instant this whole affair hit, instead of trying so desperately to keep me out of it. To protect me. I'm his chief analyst and adviser, though very few people realize it, and there's no way he would have failed to introduce us to one another, especially after High Ridge's cronies launched these attacks on the two of you . . . unless there were some reason he couldn't. And that reason—the reason he was willing to see his own name and reputation ruined by false charges and the Opposition's ability to fight High Ridge effectively undermined rather than enlist my aid to defeat them—is that he was afraid I'd see the truth and be wounded by his 'betrayal.' And just as it's the reason he's kept me from meeting you, it's the fact that he loves you which has prevented him from even trying to become anything more than your friend and colleague. You're not a professional, and even if you were, he knows it wouldn't be a brief affair. Not this time. And deep inside, he's afraid that for the first time he might truly betray me.'

'I—How did—?'

Honor tried desperately to get a grip on herself, but she couldn't. Emily Alexander had just given her the final clue she'd needed, the final puzzle piece. Everything she'd ever felt from Hamish snapped suddenly into place, and she wondered how Emily, without her own link to Nimitz, had been able to grasp the core truth so completely.

'Honor, I've been married to Hamish for over seventy T-years. I know him, and I love him, and I see how this is tearing him apart. It was already there before this smear campaign was launched, but it wasn't destroying him the way it is now. I think . . . I think that what happened is that the lies and the false accusations forced him to look closely at things he'd held at a distance, somehow. They made him admit the truth to himself on some deeper level, and the combination of how much he loves you—loves both of us—and his guilt at having discovered that he can love someone besides me is like a bleeding wound. Worse,' she looked directly into Honor's eyes, 'he's afraid he's going to tell you openly how he feels. That he is going to 'betray me' by taking a lover he truly loves.

'I don't know how I'd react if that happened,' she admitted frankly. 'I'm afraid to find out. But what I'm even more afraid of is that if the two of you did become lovers, the secret would be impossible to keep. There are too many ways to spy on anyone, and too many people with too much to lose who must want desperately to find proof of his infidelity with you. If they do, that proof will be made public, and any good I may accomplish by telling the world I was never wronged will be instantly undone. In fact, my protestation of his innocence will only make it even worse. And to be totally honest, I'm very much afraid that if the two of you continue to work so closely together, eventually he will act upon his feelings. I don't know what that would do to him, in the long run, any more than I know what it would do to me, but I'm afraid we may both find out. Unless . . .'

'Unless what?' Honor's voice was tight, and her hands tightened on Nimitz's softness, as well.

'Unless you do what he can't,' Emily said steadily. 'As long as both of you are on the same planet, you must work together as political partners. Because you two are—or were, before this all happened—our most effective political weapons, and because if you stop working together, it will be taken as proof of guilt. But for that to be possible, you must ensure that nothing else ever happens between you. It isn't fair. I know that. And I'm not telling you this as an anxious wife, fearful that her husband will find someone he loves more than her. I'm telling you because it would be political suicide, and not just for you and Hamish, if the two of