War Of Honor

"From my wife," he said very, very softly.

Honor never moved, yet in that instant it was as if he could feel her emotions, sense the way she flinched inside as if from an unexpected blow. She stared at him, and he wanted to reach out and take her in his arms. But he couldn't, of course.

"I know it sounds bizarre," he went on, instead, "but I promise I haven't lost my mind. In fact, the invitation was Emily's idea. Very few people realize it, but the truth is that she's probably even better at picking political problems apart and finding answers than Willie is. And right this minute, Honor, you and I need all the help we can get. She knows that . . . and she wants to offer it."

Honor couldn't take her eyes from his face. She felt as if the training remote had just punched her in the belly all over again. The totally unexpected "invitation" had hit her like a pulser dart, and behind the shock was another emotion: fear. No, not fear—panic. He couldn't be serious! Surely he must realize by now why she'd so persistently avoided ever meeting his wife, and that had been before the Government 'faxes began their systematic demolition of her life. How could he even ask her to face Emily Alexander now? When his own emotions shouted at her that he knew exactly how she felt about him? And that she knew exactly how he felt about her? The countless layers of betrayal inherent in their love and all the pain and devastation the press accounts had heaped upon them wrapped themselves about her, clinging to her like some strangling shroud, and yet underneath it all she could taste his need for her to accept his "invitation."

She was drowning, crushed under the intensity radiating from them both, and she closed her eyes and fought for some fragile semblance of calm. It was impossible. This time, she couldn't step away, couldn't throttle back her sensitivity and awareness, couldn't close the circuit down. The uncontrolled cataract of their emotions crashed back and forth, doubling and redoubling, almost like some bizarre feedback effect, and her thoughts were coated in ceramacrete. She felt Nimitz, swept along with her like some ancient whaler from Old Earth, careening on a "Nantucket sleigh ride" as her emotional turmoil dragged him after her like a sounding whale, seeking escape from the harpoon's anguish in the depths, and there was nothing she could do about that, either.

And at the bottom of that tide race, there was Hamish. There was always Hamish, the source of so much pain because of what should have been so wonderful. The man who'd finally accepted the knowledge that she could feel exactly what he felt, know precisely how deeply he loved her. And who knew she also knew precisely how deeply he still loved his wife, how exquisitely his own sense of having betrayed both Honor and Emily by letting himself love them both tormented him. And how desperately he wanted her to accept his impossible suggestion.

She wavered, unable to reach out to him—too terrified by what he proposed to accept it, yet equally unable to refuse. And as she hung there, she suddenly felt something else. Something she'd never felt before.

Her eyes snapped open, and her head turned as they locked on Samantha. Nimitz's mate crouched beside her, and now the 'cat's emotions came roaring through her like yet another hurricane. She'd felt Samantha's presence—the "mind-glow," the 'cats had called it after they learned to sign—countless times before, but never like this. Never so intensely and powerfully. It crashed and roared with Samantha's own sense of shock and discovery . . . and a terrible, singing joy and astonished recognition.

There was too much going on, too many pressures and impossible demands, for Honor to sort out what was happening, but she felt Samantha reaching out. Stretching. There was no word in any human language for what the 'cat was doing in that instant, and Honor knew she would never be able to truly explain it even to herself, yet she had an instant of warning, a brief flash of awareness. Just long enough for her to cry out, although she would never know whether it was in protesting horror or in shared joy.

It didn't really matter which it was. She could no more have stopped what was happening than she could have halted Manticore in its orbit. Nothing could have stopped it, and she watched through three sets of eyes—hers, Nimitz's, and above all, Samantha's—as Hamish Alexander's head turned towards the 'cat. As astonishment and disbelief flared in those ice-blue eyes and he reached out a hand just as Samantha hurled herself from the floor into his arms with a high, ringing bleek of joy.

Chapter Twelve

"How could it have happened?"

It was the first coherent sentence Hamish Alexander had strung together in almost ten minutes. He cradled the wildly purring treecat in his arms, as if she were the most precious thing in the universe, and his blue eyes glowed with disbelief and soaring welcome as he stared down at her. He knew what had happened. No one could have spent as much time as he had with Honor and Nimitz—and Samantha—or, for that matter, with Elizabeth and Ariel, and not recognize an adoption bonding when he saw it. But knowing what had happened and understanding it were two different things.

Honor stared at him while the echoes of her own shocked disbelief rippled back and forth within her. Unlike White Haven, she was one of the greatest living human authorities on treecats. More members of the Harrington clan had been adopted over the centuries than any other single Sphinxian family, and she'd spent much of her childhood, especially after her own adoption, reading the private journals of those earlier adopted Harringtons. Some of them had contained speculations and theories which had never been publicly discussed, not to mention an absolutely unrivaled store of first-hand observations. On top of that, Nimitz and Samantha had been the very first treecats ever to learn to sign, and she'd spent endless hours since then "listening" to their fascinating explanations of the treecat society and customs even her ancestors had been able to observe only from the outside.

And that was one reason—of all too many—for her shock. To the best of her knowledge, nothing like this had ever happened before. Except in very special cases, like that of Prince Consort Justin and Monroe, the 'cat who had previously adopted Elizabeth's father, treecats recognized "their" people within seconds, minutes at the outside, of first meeting. Monroe had been all but comatose, shattered and almost totally destroyed by King Roger's death, the first time Justin entered his proximity after the assassination. He'd been truly aware of nothing, not even the grieving family of his murdered person, until the traitor responsible for the King's death came foolishly within his reach, intent on murdering Justin, as well. The intense emotional shock he and the future Prince Consort had shared in fighting off the killer's attack had dragged Monroe back from the brink of extinction and forged the adoption bond between them.

But unless the 'cat half of a bond was literally at death's door, he always recognized the unfulfilled . . . polarity of the human meant to become his other half. Only Samantha hadn't. She'd met Hamish scores of times, without so much as twitching a whisker in any sort of recognition.

"I don't know how," Honor told Hamish, and realized it was the first thing she'd said since that initial paralyzing moment of shock.

The earl raised his eyes from Samantha at last, and even without her ability to taste his emotions, Honor would have recognized the consternation woven through the texture of his joy.

"Honor, I—"

He broke off, his expression mingling chagrin and apology, joy and dismay and a dark understanding of at least some of the frightening implications. It was obvious that the words he wanted hovered just out of reach, eluding his ability to explain his emotional whirlwind to her. But he didn't have to, and she shook her head, hoping her own expression concealed the depths of her astonishment . . . and dread.