And the baseborn bitch had turned him down. She'd snubbed himsnubbed him!in front of his friends. She'd tried to make it seem she didn't know what she was doing, but she had, and when he'd started to put her in her place with a few well-chosen words, that bastard MacDougal had appeared out of nowhere and put him on report for "harassing" her!
No one had turned him down, not since his father's yacht pilot when he was sixteen T-years old, and he'd fixed her ass the next time he caught her alone. Yes, and his father had seen to it she kept her mouth shut about it, too. It should have been the same with Harrington, but it hadn't. Oh, no, not with Harrington.
A low, harsh, hating sound quivered deep in his throat as he remembered his humiliation. He'd planned it so carefully. He'd spent days timing her schedule, until he learned about those private late-night exercise sessions of hers. She liked to turn the grav plates up, and she could have the gym to herself that late, and he'd smiled as he realized he could catch her alone in the showers. He'd even taken the precaution of slipping cotanine into the celery one of her friends kept feeding to her damned treecat. He hadn't got enough into it to kill the little monster, damn it, but it had made him so sleepy she'd left him in her dorm room.
It had been perfect. He'd caught her actually in the shower, naked, and seen the shock and shame in her eyes. He'd savored her panic as he stalked her through the spray, watching her back away while her hands tried ridiculously to cover herself, already tasting his revenge... but then something changed. The panic in her eyes had turned into something else when he reached for her to throw her up against the shower wall, and her slippery-wet skin had twisted out of his grasp.
He'd been surprised by her strength as she broke his grip. That was his first thought. And then he'd whooped in anguish as the heel of her right hand slammed into his belly. He'd doubled up, retching with hurt, and her knee had driven up into his crotch like a battering ram.
He'd screamed. Sweat beaded his forehead as he remembered the shame of that moment, the searing agony in his groin and, behind it, the sick, terrible humiliation of defeat. But just stopping him hadn't been enough for the bitch. Her savage, unfair blow had surprised and paralyzed him, and she'd followed through with brutal efficiency.
An elbow had smashed his lips to paste. The edge of a chopping hand had broken his nose. Another crushing blow snapped his collarbone, and her knee ripped up againthis time into his faceas he went down. She'd snapped off two incisors at the gum-line, broken six of his ribs, and left him sobbing in bloody-mouthed agony and terror under the pounding shower as she snatched up her clothing and fled.
God only knew how he'd gotten to the infirmary. He couldn't even remember staggering out of the gym or how he'd run into Reardon and Cavendish, but they'd put some sort of story together. Not enough for anyone to believe, but enough, coupled with his name, to deflect official retribution. Or most of it, anyway. That sanctimonious prig Hartley had still dragged him into his office and made him apologizeapologize!to the bitch in front of him and the Adjutant.
They'd had to settle for reprimanding him for the "harassment" episode. Young didn't doubt the slut had spilled her guts, but no one had dared do anything about it. Not with no more than her word against that of the Earl of North Hollow's son. But he'd still had to "apologize" to her. And infinitely worse, he'd been afraid of her. He'd tasted his own terror that she might hurt him again, and he'd hated her for that even more than for the beating itself.
He bared his teeth viciously at his reflection. He'd done his best to get her after that, used all his family's influence to destroy her career the way she deserved. But the bitch always had too many friends, like that asshole Courvosier. Of course, Young had always understood that relationship. He'd never been able to prove it, despite the time and money he'd invested in the effort, but he'd known she was spreading for Courvosier. It was the only explanation for the way the old bastard had watched over her career, andhis smile turned ugly with triumphat least Courvosier had finally gotten his. Too bad the Masadans hadn't gotten their hands on Harrington, too!
He shook himself free of that sweet daydream and back to the drear reality of his repeated failures to deal with her once and for all. He and his father had managed to throw out enough roadblocks to slow her promotions, but the slut had a way of being there whenever the shit hit the fan, and somehow she always got the credit. Like the power room disaster when she'd been tac officer on Manticore. She'd gotten the CGM and Monarch's Thanks for pulling three worthless ratings out of that one, then gotten herself mentioned in dispatches for rescuing assholes too stupid to get out of the way when the Attica Avalanche hit Gryphon in 275. Every goddamned time he turned around, there was Harrington, with everyone telling him how wonderful she was.
He'd thought he finally had her in Basilisk, but then she stumbled over the Peep attempt to seize the system. Blind fucking luck again, but did it matter? Hell, no! She got all the kudos, and he got officially censured for "failing to properly assess the threat to his assigned station"! And while she went off to fresh glory in Yeltsin, those motherless bastards at the Admiralty had shuffled him off into oblivion escorting convoys to the Silesian Confederacy, running routine grav wave surveys to update BuAstro's chartsevery scut job they could think of. In fact, he'd been due to take still another convoy to Silesia when the growing crisis forced the Admiralty to pull Warlock at the last minute to reinforce Hancock.
And now this. She was flag captain. He was going to have to take the conniving bitch's orders, and he couldn't even use his superior birth to put her in her place. She actually took social precedence, as well! He might be heir to one of the Kingdom's oldest earldoms, but she was a "countess" in her own right. The newest parvenu in the peerage, perhaps, but a countess.
The flicker of the location display slowed as the tube capsule neared its destination, and he managedsomehowto get the snarl off his face. Four years. Four long, endless T-years he'd endured his shame, the humiliating smirks of his inferiors as he toiled under the Admiralty's displeasure over Basilisk. He owed the bitch for that, too, and someday, somehow, he'd see to it that she paid in full. But for now, he had to endure one more humiliation and pretend nothing had ever happened between them.
The doors slid open, and he drew a deep breath as he stepped out into the spacedock gallery. Fresh, bitter hatred glittered briefly in his eyes as he saw the magnificent ship floating in the dock. HMS Nike, pride of the Fleet. She should have been his, not Harrington's, but the bitch had taken that away from him, as well.
He settled his sword on his hip and walked stiffly towards the Marine sentries at Nike's boarding tube.
Honor stood with the side party in the entry port, waiting while Young swam the tube, and her palms were damp. Sick loathing boiled in her belly, and she wanted to dry her hands. But she didn't. She simply stood there, face calm, shoulder feeling unnaturally light and oddly vulnerable without Nimitz's warm weight. She hadn't even considered bringing the 'cat to this meeting.
Young appeared around the final bend, sliding through the tube's zero-gee, and her mouth tightened almost imperceptibly as she saw his mess uniform. Just like him to overdress, she thought scornfully. He always had to impress lesser beings with his family's power and wealth.
He reached the scarlet warning line and grasped the grab bar to swing across the interface into Nike's internal gravity, and the scabbard of his sword caught between his legs. He stumbled awkwardly, almost falling, even as the bosuns pipe's shrilled and the wooden-faced side party snapped to attention, and Honor's eyes glowed with brief, vicious pleasure as his face went scarlet in humiliation. But he got himself back on balance, and she'd banished satisfaction from her expression, if not her emotions, by the time he'd settled the sword properly back into place.