David Weber - At All Costs

Personally, she was rather looking forward to watching her fellow steadholders work their way through the problems. It would do their residually patriarchal little hearts good, she thought as she counted noses in her travel party. Then she frowned, as she came up a nose short.

"Wasn't Tim supposed to hop back up with us?" she asked MacGuiness.

"Yes, he was, My Lady." MacGuiness shook his head with an irritated expression. "But he screened last night, and I forgot to tell you. He'll be catching the next shuttle flight back. Something about his younger sister's birthday, I believe. Technically, he's got another thirty-six hours before he's due to report back aboard, so I told him I didn't think there'd be any problem."

"Oh." Honor rubbed the tip of her nose for a moment, then shrugged. "You were right, of course. And goodness knows a birthday party's more important-and probably a lot more fun-than riding back to the flagship with a stodgy old flag officer."

"Nonsense, My Lady," MacGuiness said with an absolutely straight face. "I'm sure he doesn't think of you as old."

"And you, Mac, may not get a lot older," she told him with a smile.

"I'm terrified, Your Grace," he said sedately.

"You did what?" Michelle Henke asked, staring at Honor.

"I said that while I was back on Manticore and didn't have anything better to do, I went ahead and got married," Honor repeated with a huge smile. "It... seemed like the thing to do."

She shrugged, and Nimitz bleeked with laughter on her shoulder as the two of them enjoyed Henke's poleaxed mind-glow.

"But... but... but-"

"Mike, you sound like one of those antique motorboats Uncle Jacques and his SCA buddies play with."

Henke closed her mouth, and her stunned expression began to transform itself into one of outrage.

"You married Hamish Alexander-and his wife-and you didn't even invite me?!"

"Mike, I almost didn't get invited," Honor said. "Reverend Sullivan, Archbishop Telmachi, my mother, Hamish and Emily-I think about thirty percent of the entire population of Manticore!-knew about it before anybody bothered to tell me. And when the Reverend suggests you get married right now instead of-how did he put it? Oh, yes-instead of continuing to 'cavort in sin' with your intended groom, it takes more intestinal fortitude than I just discovered I have to say no."

"Yeah, sure you don't." Henke eyed her narrowly. "I've known treecats-hell, I've known boulders-less stubborn then you are, Honor Harrington. No way in the world did anyone hold a pulser to your head and make you do this!"

"Well, that's true," Honor admitted. "In fact, I'm a more than a little ticked off with myself for not having thought of this and proposed it myself months ago. It's just, after the High Ridge smear campaign, it never occurred to me."

"Even if it had," Henke said shrewdly, "you wouldn't have suggested it. You'd have just sat on it and hoped the idea occurred to Emily."

"You might be right," Honor said, after a moment. "I hadn't really thought about that while I was busy kicking myself for being so slow."

"Honor, you're my best friend in the universe, but I've got to tell you, you've got one blind spot about two kilometers wide. It's funny, given that you're also the only functional two-foot empath I know, but it's true. You are constitutionally incapable of suggesting anything that will get you what you want if it might step on someone else. And you're so incapable of it, that you go into some sort of immediate internal denial where the very possibility of suggesting it is concerned."

"I do not!"

"You do so." Henke looked at Nimitz. "Doesn't she, Stinker?"

Nimitz looked down at Henke from Honor's shoulder for a moment, and then nodded firmly.

"See? Even your furry minion knows it. Which is one reason this marriage of yours is going to be so good for you. Somehow, I don't see Hamish and Emily Alexander-or Hamish and Emily Alexander-Harrington, I suppose now-letting you get away with that anymore."

Honor considered protesting further, but she didn't. And one reason she didn't, she admitted to herself, was that she wasn't positive she could, and be honest. The notion certainly bore thinking on, at any rate.

"Whatever," she said, instead, smiling at Henke. "But the main thing is that, aside from Mac and my armsmen, you're the only one in the Fleet who knows. I'm going to tell Alice and Alistair, as well, but no one else. Not for a while."

"Marriage licenses and wedding certificates are public records, Honor," Henke pointed out. "You can't keep this one quiet for long."

"Longer than you might think," Honor replied with an urchin-like grin. "Since I'm Steadholder Harrington, and a steadholder outranks a duchess or an earl, the license and certificate are both being filed on Steadholder Harrington's planet of residence. In the Public Records Office of Harrington Steading, as a matter of fact. Reverend Sullivan offered to take care of it for me."

"Well, wasn't that nice of him," Henke said with a matching grin. "I don't suppose they're likely to get temporarily misfiled, are they?"

"No, they aren't," Honor said, more seriously. "They're important official documents, so we're not going to be playing any games with them. But we're also not going to mention to anyone that they're there, and while the records are public, they have to be requested, so we'll know if anyone accesses them." She shrugged. "We couldn't keep it secret forever, even if we wanted to, which we don't. This will just buy a little more time."

"But why buy it in the first place?" Henke frowned. "Like Emily said, this solves all your problems. Except, of course, for the people who're going to suggest that the fact that you're marrying them now probably proves Hayes was right with his original rumors about you and Hamish."

"The main reason is my command and Hamish's position at the Admiralty," Honor admitted. "Hamish's theory is that since the First Lord, unlike the First Space Lord, is a civilian without any authority to issue orders to uniformed personnel, he's not in my direct chain of command, and so there's been no official prohibition against our... involvement from the start. Unfortunately, that's currently just his opinion. Before we go public, we want to be certain the courts are going to agree with him."

"And if they don't?" Henke frowned again. Rules-lawyering was very unlike the Honor Harrington she'd always known.

"And if they don't, the solution's relatively simple. I resign my Manticoran commission, and High Admiral Matthews makes Admiral Steadholder Harrington available to the Alliance to command Eighth Fleet. That we know would be legal, since there's no similar prohibition in Grayson service. But it would be complicated and an obvious case of finding a way to technically comply with the law, and we'd all prefer to simply find out that what we're doing is legal in the first place under the Star Kingdom's Articles of War."

"And how long will it take for you to determine whether or not it is?"

"Not too long, I hope. I've got Richard Maxwell working on it now, and he feels confident he can have a definitive opinion for us within a month or so. Which is actually moving at light-speed for the legal system, you know. In the meantime, we've got to get Cutworm III organized and launched, and no one at Admiralty House or here in the Fleet needs to be worrying about something like this while we're planning an op."

"I don't suppose I can argue about that," Henke said. "Personally, given who you and Hamish are-not to mention Emily-I figure you could probably get away with just about anything short of murder!"

"Maybe we could," Honor said with a frown of her own, "but that's one game I really don't want to start playing."

"Honor, you've earned a little slack, a little special consideration," Henke told her quietly.