He was dreaming, and it was obviously a good dream. Honor had been surprised, although she realized she shouldn't have been, when she discovered she could taste a sleeper's emotions as well as those of someone who was awake. She couldn't actually tell what Hamish was dreaming about, the way a treecat could have done with another 'cat, but the way he stirred slightly, fingers of his left hand tightening, suggested at least the subject.
Nimitz bleeked at her softly and leaned forward to touch her nose with his own. Then he sat up, and his right true-hand formed the sign for the letter "C" and touched his right shoulder, then tapped the back of his left true-hand's wrist with the first finger of his right true-hand.
Honor frowned, then twitched the muscles of her left eye socket in the pattern which brought up the time/date display in her artificial eye's field of view. The numbers obediently appeared, and she sat up abruptly.
"Hmmm? Whazzat?" Hamish mutter-grumbled as she slid out from under his arm and swung her feet onto the floor.
"Wake up!" she said, turning to bend back over him. His eyes opened, and she tweaked the tip of his nose gently. "We're late!" she continued.
"We can't be," Hamish protested, sitting up in bed himself. His eyes lit as he completed the waking up process, and as she tasted his emotions, she was abruptly reminded that she didn't have a stitch on.
"Oh, yes we can be," she told him, and swatted his right hand when he reached for her. "And despite all the lascivious things going through your head right now, we don't have time to do anything about them."
"Nico will get us up in plenty of time," Hamish objected.
"Unless, perhaps, somebody suggested to him that he shouldn't," Honor replied. His eyes widened suddenly, then narrowed, and she nodded. "The same thought had occurred to me," she said.
"She did seem rather insistent on our staying away from shoptalk," Hamish conceded, climbing out of bed on the other side. "On the other hand, she also knows we're both supposed to be seeing Elizabeth this morning."
"Who happens to be her cousin and probably won't have her beheaded if we happen to be late because she didn't happen to wake us up in time," Honor pointed out. "Unfortunately for that polite fiction all our henchmen are working so hard to maintain for us, however, Nimitz says Andrew's sense of duty is about to cause him to knock on your door. At which point it will be rather difficult to pretend I spent the night in the Blue Suite where I was supposed to be!"
"These contortions aren't really necessary, you know," Hamish said reasonably, watching her slip into the kimono which had somehow ended up on the floor. "As you just pointed out, all our people know what's really going on."
"Maybe. No, certainly. But it's going to make Andrew feel awkward the day he finally admits to both of us what he already knows."
"And what about you?" Hamish asked more gently, and she shrugged as she belted her sash.
"I don't really know," she admitted. She smiled. "Mind you, despite a few lingering spasms of guilt, I'm delighted with the way things are working out, so far, at least. And given the fact that I already know that he knows that I know that he knows-well, you get the picture. Given that, I really don't expect it to be particularly uncomfortable when the day finally comes. But I'm not quite sure." Her smile turned wry. "Like I told Emily, there's still a lot of Sphinx and Grayson in me, and the fact that my love-life's been remarkably similar to a nun's since Paul was killed doesn't really help."
"I can see that," he said, and she smiled again, pleased by the fact that neither of them felt awkward using Paul Tankersley's name. "Still," he continued, "you do realize that sooner or later this is going to come out?"
"At the moment," Honor scooped Nimitz up in her arms and held him, since her kimono lacked the specially padded shoulders built into her uniform tunics and Grayson-style civilian dress, "I'd prefer later, if you don't mind. I don't have any idea at all how Grayson is going to react when it finds out. And given what we all went through with the Opposition trying to insist we were already lovers when we weren't, I don't even want to think about what the political press would do if the word that now we are got out."
"Might be the best time," he suggested, climbing out of bed and pulling on his own robe as he escorted her to the bedroom door. "There's so much going on on the war front, and in Silesia and the Talbott Cluster, that it might even pass relatively unnoticed."
"And just what episode in our past suggests to you that anything about a relationship between you and me could 'pass relatively unnoticed'?" she inquired tartly.
"A point," he admitted, and drew her close to kiss her before she opened the door. "I tend to forget sometimes what good copy 'the Salamander' makes."
"That's one way to put it," she said, and poked him in the navel with two fingers, hard enough to make him "oof." Then she slipped through the door, with a cautious glance up and down the hall to assure herself LaFollet wasn't already on his way. "Now get yourself up and dressed," she told him sternly, and scurried down the hall to the discreet cross passage which connected the Blue Suite to the private family section of White Haven.
She let herself into the suite the back way, and Nimitz bleeked with laughter as the terminal on the table beside the bed which hadn't been slept in chimed gently.
"Shut up, Stinker!" she said, dumping him on the bed, and he laughed harder as she accepted the com call voice-only.
"Yes?" she said.
"We're running late, My Lady," Andrew LaFollet's voice said. He was too far away for her to actually taste his emotions, but she didn't need to in order to recognize the relief in his voice. "Ah, this is the third time I've screened you, My Lady," he added.
"Sorry," she replied. "I'll try to make up for the lost time."
"Of course, My Lady," he said, and she threw off her kimono once again and dashed for the shower.
"You look lovely this morning, Honor," Emily observed as Honor stepped into the sunlit dining room with LaFollet on her heels. She wore uniform today, complete with the Star of Grayson on its crimson ribbon, and "lovely" was not the precise adjective she would have chosen herself. "And so well rested," Emily continued with a certain gently malicious relish.
"Thank you," Honor said as LaFollet pulled her chair out for her and she seated herself. "Perhaps that's because I seem to have missed my wakeup call this morning."
"Goodness," Emily said placidly. "I wonder how that could have happened? Nico is usually so efficient about these things."
"Yes," Honor agreed affably. "For that matter, so is Mac... usually."
"Oh, well, don't feel too flustered," Emily told her. "I screened Mount Royal and spoke to Elizabeth. I told her you and Hamish both seemed to be running a bit late this morning, and she asked me to assure you that timing isn't that critical. She just requested we screen her again when you actually leave."
"I see." Honor regarded her across the table for a moment, then shook her head in surrender. "Why am I not surprised that you can snag even the Queen of Manticore in your nets?"
"You make me sound so devious, my dear," Emily reproved her gently.
"No, not devious-just... capable."
"I suppose I could accept that as a compliment, so I will," Emily said graciously. "Now eat."
Honor looked up as one of the White Haven servants entered the dining room with a tray of food. It was a fairly typical breakfast for someone with her enhanced metabolism-a thick stack of pancakes, eggs Benedict, tomato juice, croissants, melon, and a steaming carafe of hot chocolate-and her stomach rumbled happily at the sight. But then the tray was set before her, and she felt an abrupt stab of queasiness as the smell of the food hit her.
She grimaced, and Emily cocked an eyebrow at her.
"Are you all right, Honor?" she asked, with none of the teasing edge of banter of their earlier conversation.