by David Weber
Not that she'd exactly gone out of the way to make that fact public. The mere fact that she was from, gasp!, Beowulf had been enough to earn her sidelong glances from the more puritanical of Sphinx's populace, and her mischievous streak had been totally unable to overlook the possibilities that offered. After almost seventy years honing her skills, she could play a prude like a Stradivarius, and she took a devilish delight in doing so. It was so much fun to play to their prejudices and stereotypes and come as close as she possibly could to the edge without ever quite stepping over it. Besides, as a physician, she owed it to her critics. A little apoplexy from time to time elevated the pulse and improved the circulatory system.
Of course, she wouldn't dream of doing anything to embarrass Honor, well, not seriously, anyway. A little embarrassment would probably be good for her. Following Paul's death and Honor's duel with Pavel Young, Allison had finally found out about the episode at the Academy which had done Honors self-image such crippling damage. She understood a lot of things which her own upbringing, and Honors reticence, had prevented her from seeing at the time, but her daughter still seemed far too serious and emotionally detached. Paul had been dead for over five T-years after all, and deeply as he and Honor had loved one another, it was time she got on with her life. So if she needed something to shake her up a little, well, it was a mothers duty to look out for her daughter, wasn't it?
And if Sphinx had looked at her askance for being from Beowulf, she could just imagine how Honor's Graysons were going to approach her! She was pleased that Miranda, at least, seemed comfortable around her, because she'd already realized how critical Miranda was, despite her official title of "maid", to the functioning of Harrington House and the entire steading. If someone that important to Honor hadn't been comfortable with her, Allison would have expended however much effort it took to put her at ease. As it was, she rather suspected she would find it easy to enlist Miranda as an ally and an accomplice when she began her assault on the rest of Grayson.
And, she thought almost dreamily, with Honor back in space, just think of all the time she'd have to do it right.
But that brought another point back to her mind, and she seated herself in the comfortable chair behind the desk and waved Miranda into the one facing her across the coffee table. Farragut flowed up into the Grayson woman's lap as soon as she was seated, and Allison smiled wryly.
"I remember when Honor first brought Nimitz home," she said. "You might not believe it to look at her now, but her growth spurt came late, and third-generation prolong slows things down even more. She was, oh, sixteen, I think, before she started shooting up, and when Nimitz first adopted her, he was almost as long as she was. But she insisted on carrying him everywhere. For a while, I thought his legs were going to atrophy completely!"
"Farragut isn't quite that bad, My Lady," Miranda said with a smile, rubbing his ears while he purred loudly.
"No, he isn't," Allison agreed. "Or not yet, anyway. Treecats are a shamelessly hedonistic lot, though, so watch yourself."
"I will, My Lady," Miranda promised with a smile, and Allison tipped her chair back.
"I'd like you to do me a favor, Miranda," she said. "Well, two of them, actually."
"Of course, My Lady. What are they?"
"The first is to cut back on the 'My Ladies,'" Allison said, and grinned impishly at Miranda’s expression. "Oh, I'm not offended or anything. It's just that I've spent all my life as a commoner. I realize Honors gone and changed all that as far as you folks here on Grayson are concerned, but I keep wondering who you're actually talking to!"
Miranda gazed at her for a moment, then leaned back in her own chair and crossed her legs, cradling Farragut against her chest.
"That's may be harder than you think, M— Doctor," she said finally. "Your daughter is a steadholder, the first female steadholder ever, and the modes of address for steadholders and their families are part of the bedrock of Grayson's formal etiquette. Of course, we've had to make some adaptations. Before Lady Harrington, the only proper address for a steadholder was 'My Lord,' so that had to change, but getting people to change the rest of it..." She shook her head. "Let's just say that Graysons can be a little stubborn, Doctor."
"If it won't sprain your tongue, you might try 'Allison' or even 'Alley,' at least when there's just the two of us and we're off-duty," Allison pointed out. Miranda colored slightly at her astringent tone, but then she smiled and Allison smiled back. "And I do believe I've heard a little something about Grayson stubbornness from Honor. Which," she added with some asperity, "is a case of the pot calling the kettle black! But I figure if you're not any stubborner than she is, and if we start gradually and work at it steadily, we should have even Graysons properly reprogrammed in, oh, a century or so."
Miranda surprised herself with a laugh, and Allison grinned at her. But then her grin faded, and she let her chair come upright to lean forward and rest her elbows on her new desk while she looked at Miranda intently.
"As for the second favor," she said in a much more serious voice, "I wonder if you could tell me why Honor left so much sooner than planned."
"I beg your pardon, M— Allison?"
"You did that very well," Allison complimented her.
"Did what?" Miranda asked.
"Sounded totally surprised by the question," Allison explained, and this time Mirandas blush was dark. "Aha! There was something, wasn't there?"
"Not really," Miranda said. "Or, at least, not anything she discussed with me."
"'Discussed'?" Allison repeated, and in that moment she sounded very like her daughter. They both had that habit of pouncing on the most important parts of any sentence, Miranda thought, and wondered exactly what she could, or, for that matter, should, say without violating her Steadholder's confidence. The fact that Lady Harrington had never actually said a word to her about it only made the decision harder, and she bent to press her cheek against Farragut's head while she considered it.
"My Lady," she said finally, in a formal tone, "I'm your daughters personal maid. As much as Lord Clinkscales, or my brother Andrew, I have an obligation to respect and guard her confidence from anyone, even her mother."
The seriousness of her response widened Allison’s eyes. It confirmed her already high opinion of Miranda’s integrity, but it also suggested that there had, indeed, been a reason for Honors sudden departure. She'd suspected there must have, for she knew how much Honor had looked forward to welcoming her to Grayson and personally showing her around the clinic. The fact that Honor hadn't written to warn her that she would be away was only another sign that whatever had happened must have come up suddenly, but as she gazed at Miranda’s face, she realized that she wasn't going to discover what it had been from her daughter's maid.
"All right, Miranda," she said after several seconds. "I won't press you about it, and thank you for your loyalty to Honor." Miranda nodded slightly, the gesture thanks more for the promise not to push her than for the implicit compliment, and Allison nodded back, then stood.
"In the meantime, however," she said briskly, "I understand we're supposed to join Lord Clinkscales and his wives for dinner this evening?"
"Yes, M— Allison. And I hope you won't be offended, but I simply wouldn't dare address you by name in front of Lord Clinkscales." Miranda feigned a shiver of terror, and Allison laughed.
"Oh, don't worry about that, dear! I had something else in mind."
"Oh?" Miranda cocked her head as her guests tone rang warning bells, and Allison smiled wickedly.
"Certainly. You see, I haven't had time to as much as try on a Grayson gown, so I'm going to have to choose something to wear from my Manticoran wardrobe, and I need advice." A sort of wary consternation crept into Miranda’s expression, and Allison's smile grew broader and still more wicked. "I'm afraid styles are just a bit different back home," she went on in an artfully worried voice, "but I did manage to find a few formal gowns before I left. Do you think I should wear the backless one with the V
-neckline, or the one slit to the hip?"
Chapter Twelve
"Oh, stop moping, Mac! It's not like I'm abandoning you."
"Of course not, Milady." Senior Master Chief Steward James MacGuiness spoke with a most unusual lack of expression, and his formal choice of title was not lost upon his commodore.
Honor sighed mentally, eyeing herself in the bulkhead mirror as she adjusted her black beret. Nimitz sat on her desk, watching her preparations, and she felt his silent chuckle. He and MacGuiness were old and close friends, but the free-spirited treecat found the steward's periodic obsession with what he considered proper protocol hilarious. Neither Nimitz nor his person could ever doubt the depth of MacGuiness' attachment to Honor, but there was an undeniable edge of outraged professional jealousy in the steward’s emotions at the moment. The real reason for his formality, the equivalent, for him, of a screaming tantrum, was his indignation over the notion that someone else’s steward would be in charge of a dinner party his commodore was throwing. And, of course, the 'cat's link to Honor meant that she knew that as well as Nimitz did.
It'd be nice, sometimes, she reflected, if Mac could just figure out that I'm not a child he has to keep an eye on all the time. I got along without him for forty years, after all, and I really can take care of myself! She felt a stir, small but stubborn, of guilt at the thought and grimaced at her mirrored image. All right, so I wouldn't want to take care of myself, but honestly! There are times I could cheerfully strangle him.
"Look," she said finally, turning to face him. "There are two reasons you're not coming. First, seating's too limited on the flight over to fit you in. Second, and more to the point, we'll be going aboard Prince Adrian as Captain McKeon’s guests, and if I tried to bring you in to supervise, his steward would be just as ticked off as you'd be in his place. And I might point out that I'm only going to be gone for about eighteen hours. Whether you believe it or not, Mac, I am capable of looking after myself for that long!"
Her dark brown eyes held his, touched with a twinkle but stern, until his gaze dropped. He looked down at his toes for a moment, then cleared his throat.
"Yes, Ma'am. I, um, didn't mean to suggest you weren't."
"Oh yes you did," Honor retorted, the twinkle in her eyes more pronounced, and he grinned sheepishly. "That's better!" She punched him lightly on the shoulder, then scooped up Nimitz. "Now, having just informed you that I can manage on my own, am I presentable enough to avoid embarrassing you in public?"
"You look just fine, Ma'am," MacGuiness assured her, but he also reached out to twitch her tunic collar a bit more perfectly into position and brushed an imaginary speck of lint from her 'catless shoulder. It was Honors turn to grin, and she shook her head as he stepped back. Then she led the way into her day cabin and ran a critical eye over the trio of armsmen who would accompany her aboard Prince Adrian.
As expected, they were perfectly turned out. Andrew LaFollet and James Candless had been with Honor ever since her formal investiture as Steadholder Harrington, and although Robert Whitman had become the third man of her regular security detail little more than a year and a half ago, following Eddy Howard's death in HMS Wayfarer's final battle, LaFollet had hand-picked him for the slot. Whitman was well aware of that fact, and, if possible, he was even more brightly shined and sharply creased than either of his seniors, but all three of them would sooner be gnawed to death by Grayson neorats than let their appearance embarrass their Steadholder, and she nodded in satisfaction.
"Very nice, gentlemen," she complimented them. "Even you, Jamie. I don't think I'd be ashamed to be seen in public with any of you."
"Thank you, My Lady. We did try," LaFollet replied with straight-faced, exquisite politeness, and she chuckled.
"I'm sure you did. Got the package, Bob?"
"Yes, My Lady." Whitman held up a small, brightly wrapped box, and she nodded once more.
"In that case, gentlemen, let's be about it," she said.
The other pinnace passengers were waiting in Boat Bay Two when she arrived. At Honor's request, Alvarez was skipping formal honors, so there was no official side party, but Captain Greentree had come down to see them off.
"We won't be gone all that long, Thomas," she told him, shaking his hand.
"Of course not," he replied. "Anyway, I imagine I can mind the store for a few hours without you, My Lady."
"I imagine you can," she agreed. "Even if I am stealing your exec."
"That may make it a little harder, but I'm sure I'll survive," Greentree said dryly, and Commander Marchant smiled. He'd become much more comfortable with Honor in the last five T-weeks, as he and Greentree worked with her and her staff. Greentree’s role as Honor's tactical deputy placed an even larger than usual share of the responsibility for managing Alvarez on Marchant's shoulders, and with Honors strong approval, the flag captain had deliberately involved him in as many staff meetings as possible, as well. If anything happened to Greentree, Marchant would inherit his squadron responsibilities along with command of the flagship, and it was highly unlikely that there would be time for Honor to explain her policies or operational postures to her new flag captain if that happened. She'd been pleased by Greentree's determination to keep Marchant clearly in the picture in order to minimize the chance for confusion in such a catastrophic event, and Marchant's enforced contact with her had also given her the opportunity to evaluate his skills. She was pleased by what she'd seen... and also by the opportunity it had given her to make it clear that she didn't hold his distant relatives treason against him. He'd responded by developing not only a sure grasp of the squadron's operations but a strong personal sense of loyalty to her, as well.
"I'll try to have him home before he turns into a pumpkin," she promised Greentree now, and released his hand. Then she turned to the personnel tube and reached for the grab bar. LaFollet and her other armsmen followed immediately behind her, and were trailed in turn by Andreas Venizelos and the other members of her party, in descending order of seniority.
She swam down the tube, then swung herself gracefully into the pinnace’s internal gravity and nodded to the burly, battered-looking flight engineer.
"Good morning, Senior Chief," she greeted him.
"Morning, Ma'am," Senior Chief Harkness rumbled back. "Welcome aboard."
"Thank you," she said, and twitched the hem of her tunic straight as she headed down the aisle to her seat. Horace Harkness was more than a little senior for his present duty, but she'd known he'd be here, given who was on the flight deck.
She set Nimitz in the seat beside her and strapped herself in, then looked back over her shoulder at the rest of her party. There were quite a few of them, and Honor allowed herself a rare, lazy smile which not even Nimitz could have bettered. Poor Alistair, she gloated. If I've managed even half as well as I think I have, he doesn't have a clue what's really coming! But then her smile faded a bit. There was a downside to her arrangements, after all, for the news she had for McKeon was going to make things harder for her down the road. She knew it, yet that inconvenience paled beside her anticipation of his expression when she told him. Besides, he had it coming.
She chuckled at the thought while she watched the others settle into the truncated passenger compartment. As she'd told MacGuiness, seating was limited, for the pinnace was heavily loaded with cargo, in this case, consigned to Prince Adrian's engineer. One of the cruisers air scrubbers had failed, reducing her life-support capacity by ten percent, and although McKeon's ship had enough spares to rebuild the scrubber from scratch, if necessary, the job would take over a week without yard support. No one looked forward to the amount of sheer grunt work involved, but that was a relatively minor concern beside the lost capacity the scrubber represented. Taking it off-line had reduced Prince Adrian's environmental safety margin by thirty-three percent, and no starship skipper wanted to operate with that little reserve for an entire week if it could be helped.
And as it happened, this time it could be helped. Prince Adr
ian carried sufficient spare parts to repair the scrubber, but the newer, bigger Alvarez turned out to have three complete backup scrubbers tucked away in her capacious Engineering spaces. Exactly where Alvarez's chief engineer had acquired the third one (which put her above establishment) was something of a mystery, and Lieutenant Commander Sinkowitz had been a bit vague when discussing the subject, but Honor was used to the way odds and ends of extra equipment had a habit of turning up aboard ship. Alvarez's higher-volume scrubbers weren't exact matches for Prince Adrian's, but they were close enough that one of them could be adapted to replace the failed unit. Swapping them out would save at least eight days and a lot of sweat, and Greentree had offered to trade McKeon the complete scrubber for the spare parts the Manticoran ship would have used for repairs.
McKeon had been grateful for Greentree’s offer, and local hyper-space conditions had made the transfer practical, although the transport window would be brief. They were just over five days out from Clairmont, and they happened to be under impeller drive at the moment, transiting between two grav waves, which made small craft traffic practical. But the transition to the grav wave which would carry the convoy the rest of the way to its current destination would take only another two hours, after which the ships would be required to reconfigure their drives from impeller mode to Warshawski sails. Since nothing smaller than a starship mounted Warshawski sails, no small craft would be able to move between ships again after that until the convoy reentered n-space.
The Grayson and Manticoran navies shared Edward Saganami's dictum that time, as the single absolutely irreplaceable commodity any fleet possessed, was never to be wasted. Greentree and McKeon had set briskly to work to transship their engineering stores within the window they'd been offered, and when Honor had heard about it, she'd taken the opportunity to transship herself and several members of her staff, as well. Discussions with her staffers over the past two days had led her to approve a few small but significant alterations to the squadrons tactical planning, and she wanted to sit down with her second-in-command to discuss them in person. Even if she hadn't been a firm believer in face-to-face discussion, the com lag imposed by Prince Adrian's lead position would have made any sort of electronic conference impractical. And while she supposed she could have waited until they reached Adler, she had her own ulterior motive for paying a visit to Prince Adrian right now, instead. Besides, as much as she and Greentree had grown to like one another, she suspected her flag captain would feel a certain relief to have her out from underfoot for a few hours.
