“Mother, I wouldn’t change you even if I could,” Honor said then. “Which, thank God, nobody in the universe would be capable of, in the first place.”

  Nimitz bleeked in amusement and nodded his head in emphatic agreement with that statement.

  “Well, I certainly hope not,” Allison said serenely, tucking her daughter’s hand into her elbow and leading the way towards the private family section of Harrington House. Their bodyguards fell in astern, like escorting destroyers.

  “And thank you for letting us use the house tonight,” Allison continued as they started up the magnificent winding staircase. “We really appreciate it.”

  “Mother, this is your and Dad’s house now, a lot more than it’s mine. I believe I’ve told you that no more than, oh, five or six thousand times. It’s got more rooms than most hotels, and as long as Hamish, Emily, and I have a modest little six or seven-room suite in which to hang our berets, I think we can consider our housing needs adequately met whenever two or three of us happen to be in Landing at the same time. Which, unfortunately, isn’t happening all that often just now.”

  “I understand that. No, really—I do!” Allison waved her free hand as Honor bent a skeptical eye upon her. “But it’s also Steadholder Harrington’s official residence and Harrington Steading’s embassy in the Star Empire. Under the circumstances, I don’t think we should be throwing any drunken orgies without clearing it with you first.”

  “Your very own drunken orgy? How exciting! Are Hamish and I invited?”

  Something very like a smothered chuckle escaped one of the Graysons behind her.

  “No, dear.” Allison patted her hand. “The drunken orgy is private, after the party. I was only using it as an example.”

  “Darn. And I was so looking forward to it.”

  “I see Hamish and Emily have been good for the Beowulf side of you,” Allison said, and Nimitz laughed again, then raised his right hand—fingers closed to spell the letter “S”—and nodded it up and down in agreement.

  “I’ll admit they’ve helped me face my inner Beowulf,” Honor acknowledged. “It’s even possible the rest of the universe will forgive them for that…someday.”

  Music drifted from the quintet of live musicians in the corner of the ballroom. The night was warm and clear, so the crystoplast wall had been retracted, extending the ballroom out across the terrace and increasing its normal six hundred square meters of floor space by a third. For the present, that additional floorspace was unavailable for dancing, however. Instead, spotless white tablecloths fluttered on the land breeze blowing outward across Jason Bay while the Harrington House staff, augmented for the evening, prepared to serve supper.

  Nor was anyone dancing in the ballroom itself, despite its size, the splendor of its brilliantly polished marble floor, and the invitation of the music. Possibly because the music in question was a bit odd by Manticoran standards. Allison and Alfred Harrington had fallen in love with classical Grayson music during their time on Grayson, but the planet’s ancient dancing traditions, which centered on something called the “square dance,” weren’t familiar to most Manticorans. The lack of dancers was subject to change, however, and Honor suspected that it would after dinner.

  At the moment, she stood between Hamish and Emily Alexander-Harrington’s life support chair, gazing out across the bay.

  “Honor, I’d like you to meet someone,” a voice said, and she turned as her father—one of the few people present who was actually taller than she was—walked up behind her.

  Since Harrington House was technically Grayson soil, and Honor tended to dress in her persona as Steadholder Harrington whenever she was officially “home,” she wasn’t in uniform tonight. But her father, for the first time since her childhood, was. Rather than the four golden pips of his preretirement rank, however, his collar bore two gold planets. A single broad gold band had been added to the three bands of a commander, and the unit patch on his left shoulder showed the Rod of Asclepius under the word “Bassingford.” In the newly reactivated Commodore Harrington’s case, both the staff itself and the single serpent were embroidered in gold rather than the silver of other Bassingford Medical Center shoulder flashes.

  Which was rather the point of this evening’s festivities, she reflected. Her father hadn’t simply gone back onto active duty. Effective tomorrow, he was Bassingford’s one hundred and third commanding officer. Officially, that was because he’d been recalled by the Navy, and that was fair enough, because the Navy had wanted him back at Bassingford virtually from the day he retired and resigned his post as Head of Neurosurgery. In reality, though, it was the Yawata Strike which had returned him to active duty. He’d needed a few months to make up his mind. The process had begun shortly after the strike, but it had taken the Battle of Spindle and—especially—“Operation Raging Justice” to complete it. One thing was sadly obvious; if the Mandarins persisted in their current policies, Bassingford would need far more beds…most of which would be filled by Solarians. Alfred Harrington needed to be part of dealing with all those broken bodies and lives. That was what had finally pushed him back into uniform.

  That and the need to do something healing rather than succumb to the part of him which had once been Sergeant Harrington, Royal Manticoran Marine Corps.

  Now he smiled at his daughter, indicating the much shorter woman—no more than fifteen or sixteen centimeters taller than Allison Harrington—at his side. She had dark hair, ten or twelve centimeters longer than Honor had once worn her own, dark eyes, and a lively, mobile face. She, too, was in uniform with the Bassingford shoulder flash, although in her case, only the staff of the rod was in gold.

  “Honor, this is Captain Sara Kate Lessem,” Alfred said. “Sara Kate, my daughter, Duchess Harrington. She’s—”

  “Sara Kate!” Honor smiled broadly and enveloped the shorter woman in a hug.

  “Ah, should I assume my introduction was a bit…superfluous?” her father asked after a moment while Hamish and Emily chuckled.

  “Daddy, I’ve known Sara Kate for—what? Thirty T-years, Sara Kate?”

  “I’m afraid it really has been about that long,” Captain Lessem replied with a smile. “It’s good to see you again, though. It’s been too long!”

  “I’m sorry I missed the wedding,” Honor said, shaking her head. “I was…occupied at the time.”

  “You mean you were off blowing things up again,” Captain Lessem observed.

  “Well, yes, I suppose.” Honor smiled. “And how do you like being a respectable married woman?”

  “Honor, it’s been three T-years now. How do you expect me to remember what it was like before? And speaking of respectable married women—?” Captain Lessem raised her eyebrows in Hamish and Emily’s direction, and Honor chuckled.

  “Mom and Dad really did teach me better manners than that,” she said. “Sara Kate, this is my husband, Hamish Alexander-Harrington, and this is my wife, Emily Alexander-Harrington. Both of them have long, tiresome lists of titles we’ll leave to one side right now. Hamish, Emily, this is Sara Kate Lessem. I first met her when she was Sara Kate Tillman.”

  “They have long tiresome lists of titles?” Captain Lessem shook her head, then shook hands with both of Honor’s spouses.

  “At least half of which come from our association with her,” Emily told her with a smile. “May I ask how you and Honor come to know one another?”

  “Uncle Jacques introduced us,” Honor replied before Lessem could, and it was her father’s eyebrows turn to rise.

  “Jacques introduced you?” he said. “Wait a minute. Would this have anything to do with those anachronisms of his?”

  “Of course it does. Sara Kate’s another member of the Society. Her particular interest is in what they called ballroom dancing from the last couple of centuries Ante Diaspora. It’s not what most people do today. Actually, I like it a lot better. So, Sara Kate, you’re at Bassingford these days?”

  “I am,” Lessem confirmed.

  “She means she’s the Assistant Director and Head of Nursing and Physical Therapy,” Commodore Harrington put in.

  “And I’ve had a lot more patients than I’d like since that business with Filareta.” Lessem’s expression was much less cheerful than it had been. “They may all be Sollies, but a broken body’s still a broken body.”

  “I know,” Honor sighed. “And I hate it. If I could’ve avoided it—”

  “If you could have avoided it, we’d be calling you God and lighting candles to you,” Lessem interrupted. “And if it had occurred to me that you were going to go off on a guilt trip, I never would’ve opened my mouth about it, either.”

  “Oh, I like you, Captain Lessem!” Emily said enthusiastically. “Please! Kick her again!”

  Lessem gave her a startled glance, then snorted in sudden understanding.

  “Been brooding about it, has she?”

  “Only sometimes,” Emily replied in the judicious tone of someone trying to be scrupulously fair. “Not more than every other time I see her.”

  “Then consider her kicked,” Lessem promised.

  “Oh, thank you both so much.” Honor rolled her eyes while Hamish and her father chuckled. “And you two aren’t helping this, you know,” she told the male component of the conversation severely.

  “Not my responsibility to help when Captain Lessem and Emily are doing such a splendid job,” Hamish informed her. “Not that either of them’s likely to tell you anything I haven’t.”

  “Acknowledged.” Honor nodded. “And I’ll try.”

  “Good.” Lessem reached out to squeeze her upper arm gently. “That’s good, Honor.”

  “I see Mistress Thorn’s minions are about ready to serve,” Hamish observed, looking back towards the ballroom. “Will you join us, Captain?”

  “I’d be honored, My Lord.”

  “On social occasions, it’s ‘Hamish,’ Captain.”

  “Only if it’s also Sara Kate, My Lord,” Lessem replied a bit pointedly.

  “Then would you join us…Sara Kate?”

  “Thank you…Hamish.”

  He smiled and offered her his arm while Honor took Emily’s hand and the four of them headed for the head table. Alfred looked around until he located Allison. As usual, she was at the center of a cluster of admirers—most of them male—and he headed across to rescue her and escort her to the same table.

  She smiled happily as he swooped down upon her, ruthlessly exploiting his position as both husband and guest of honor, since the evening was the official announcement of his return to duty, and she tucked her hand into his elbow and squeezed gratefully as he led her away.

  “I don’t know what you were thinking to leave me exposed that way.” Her tone was teasing, but there was an edge of seriousness to it. “My God, Alfred! You didn’t tell me we were inviting George Brockman!” She shuddered. “That man doesn’t have the faintest concept of what ‘monogamy’ means.”

  “And if I’d thought for a moment that you weren’t perfectly capable of cutting him off at the knees—or at any other appropriate point on his anatomy—I’d have been there in an instant,” her husband assured her, and looked down at her with a faint twinkle. “Tell me with a straight face that you didn’t enjoy doing exactly that when—as I’m sure happened—he gave you the chance?”

  “You may be able to throw me heartlessly to the wolves, but you can’t make me lie!” She lifted her nose with an audible sniff, then smiled wickedly. “I’m pretty sure the bleeding will stop in another hour or so.”

  “Good for you!” Alfred laughed. “And while we’re talking about social lapses, were you aware Honor and Sara Kate Lessem—and Jacques, now that I think about it—all know one another?”

  “Of course I was.” She looked up at him again with a devilish smile. “Dear me. Did I forget to mention that to you?”

  “Out of consideration for your delicate condition, I will defer the proper response to that.”

  “Oh, no, you won’t!” she told him pertly. “I’ve already had the peach preserves sent to our room.”

  “You’re incorrigible,” he said, smothering a laugh.

  “I don’t know why you and Honor keep saying that. I’m the most encouragable person I know!”

  “It’s good to see him laughing again,” Emily Alexander-Harrington said quietly as her mother- and father-in-law headed towards the table.

  “Agreed,” Honor said, equally quietly. “And I think—”

  She paused for a moment, then shook her head.

  “You think what?” Emily pressed.

  “Oh, it was just a passing thought.” Honor shook her head again, her expression sobering. “We’re all having a few of those at the moment, I think.”

  “Yes, we are,” Emily agreed, but she gazed at Honor speculatively, and Honor made herself look back with tranquil eyes as she tasted the curiosity in Emily’s mind-glow. She also didn’t mention what had spawned that “passing thought.”

  “Tell me, have you given any more thought to a brother or sister for Katherine and Raoul?” she asked instead.

  “I have.” Emily nodded, although the question seemed to have sharpened the focus of that speculation Honor had tasted. “In fact, I have an appointment to discuss it with Dr. Illescue at Briarwood tomorrow afternoon, before I go back to White Haven.”

  “Oh, good!” Honor beamed at her, bending over her chair to envelop her in a gentle hug. “I’m thinking about doing the same thing. Maybe this time we can time it even closer!”

  “There’s only a month or so between the two we have, dear,” Emily pointed out drily. “What? You want to synchronize the deliveries to the same minute?”

  “Well, if neither one of us is going to be in a position to do it the old fashioned way, we might as well take advantage of the opportunities we do have. Besides—” she straightened with a devilish smile “—twins do run in Mom’s family, you know!”

  Emily laughed, and Honor’s smile turned more gentle. But then she straightened and looked at Hamish across Emily’s head. She swiveled her eyes to one side, to where Sandra Thurston, Emily’s nurse and constant companion, stood chatting with James MacGuiness while he kept an eagle eye on the evening’s festivities. Her gaze came back to Hamish, and he shrugged ever so slightly, letting an edge of worry show in his own blue eyes.

  Her mouth tightened as she put that together with the undertone she’d tasted in Emily’s mind-glow, but then she drew a deep breath. She wasn’t going to borrow any trouble, she told herself firmly. Not tonight. And not when all three of them had so much to be grateful for, including—

  “You’re right about how good it is to see Daddy laughing again,” she said, looking back down at Emily and squeezing her good hand gently, then looked at Captain Lessem. “I think it’s going to be good for him to get back to work, too.”

  “Well, I can tell you the entire staff’s damned glad we’ve gotten him back to work,” Lessem said frankly. “Lord knows we need him as a surgeon, but we need him even more on the administrative side.” She shook her head. “I wasn’t joking about how many patients we’re going to have, Honor. It’s bad already, and if those idiots in Old Chicago don’t get their heads out of—” She paused, then grimaced. “Out of the sand, it’s going to get a lot worse.”

  “I know. And we’re trying to hold it to a minimum,” Honor said, easing Nimitz off her shoulder to join Samantha in the double highchair between her and Hamish. “And speaking of trying to keep things to minimums, where’s Martin right now?”

  “I suppose, given your august connections I can tell you,” Lessem said, smiling crookedly at Hamish. “At the moment, he’s got a task group with Vice Admiral Correia. I don’t know exactly where they were headed, but I know it’s part of Lacoön Two.”

  “If he’s with Correia, he’s probably in Ajay or Prime about now,” Hamish said.

  “And just between you and me, I’m a lot happier with the thought of his facing off with Sollies instead of Havenites,” the captain observed.

  “So am I, for now, at least,” Honor said. “I just wish we had a clue about some way to convince the Mandarins to at least pretend they have a single functional brain amongst them.”

  “I seem to sense just a little acerbity?” Lessem teased.

  “Just a bit, perhaps,” Honor admitted.

  “Tell me, Doctor—Sara Kate, I mean,” Emily said. “Honor mentioned something about ‘ancient’ ballroom dancing. How did you ever get involved with that?”

  “Blame it on my misspent youth,” Lessem replied with a chuckle. “That and the fact that my mother knew Honor’s Uncle Jacques when they were college students. He got her involved with the Society for Creative Anachronism, and she’s a physical therapist, too. Dance is sort of a natural connection for therapists. Or it can be, anyway.”

  “Fascinating.” Emily shook her head. “I’ve had quite a bit of experience with therapists myself, over the years, but for fairly obvious reasons, no one ever suggested dance to me. I can see its applicability, though, now that you’ve mentioned it.”

  “Oh, I do it much more for pleasure than professionally,” Lessem said. “I even got Martin to take it up, and he’s remarkably good at it. To be honest, I’m looking for a new challenge for him.”

  “You are, are you?” Honor smiled. “Well, in that case, you’ve come to the right place.”

  “I have?” Lessem’s eyebrows arched, and Honor’s smile grew broader.

  “Oh, yes. Tell me, are you familiar with the phrase ‘dosey doe’?”

  George Benton Tower

  City of Old Chicago

  Old Earth

  Sol System

  “Sorry I’m late,” Permanent Senior Undersecretary for Foreign Affairs Innokentiy Kolokoltsov told his colleagues as he stepped through the conference room’s doors and they slid silently shut behind him. “I was ready to walk out of my office when one of my analysts—Stephanos Nye, I think I’ve mentioned him to you before—asked for an urgent appointment. He was right about the urgency, and one thing led to another. I had to make some immediate decisions, and it took a little while to get all the technical information I needed.”