She pushed that thought aside, shook herself, and stood behind her desk. Clinkscales rose as well, and she smiled at him.

“I’ll think about it, My Lord,” she told him. “Alfred and I will have to discuss it, of course, and it may take us some time to decide. But we will think about it, I promise.”

She held out her hand, and Clinkscales bent over it to kiss it in the traditional Grayson fashion.

“Thank you, My Lady,” he said quietly. “That’s all we could ask of you and your husband. May the Tester help you reach your decision.”

“I don’t know, Alley.”

Alfred Harrington towered over his tiny wife. He was a good four centimeters taller than his daughter had been, and he had the solid muscle and bone of someone born and bred to a gravity ten percent heavier than Beowulf’s. Yet despite his impressive physical presence, he’d seemed much the more fragile of the two over the months since Honor’s capture, and her death had hit him with crushing force. He was coming back from it at last, and the nights when Allison awoke to his fierce embrace and the hot saltiness of his tears had grown blessedly less frequent, but progress had been agonizingly slow. Now he sank down on the couch beside her in their palatial suite in Harrington House and tucked his right arm around her.

“I told Clinkscales we’d have to think about it,” she told him, turning her face up to be kissed and then snuggling down against him.

Bigger may not always be better, but there’s definitely something to be said for it when it comes to handing out cuddling, she thought smugly, pressing her cheek luxuriously into his chest, and then smiled as two of the treecats—Nelson and Samantha—flowed up onto the couch to join them. Samantha had brought along Jason, still the most fearless explorer of her children, and the ’kitten came bumbling up to leap upon Allison’s free hand and wrestle it into submission. Samantha sat upright on her four rearmost limbs to watch him, tail wrapped around her hand-feet and true-feet while she groomed her whiskers with one true-hand, but Nelson sprawled out across Alfred’s lap in companionable, boneless luxury.

“Um.” Alfred leaned back, unfocused eyes on Jason while he pursed his lips in thought and rubbed Nelson’s ears. The older ’cat gave a deep, buzzing purr and oozed out even flatter in a shameless display of sensuality, but after several seconds, Alfred shook his head.

“You know, this is going to crop up whenever we have more children, Alley.” She looked up at him, and he shrugged. “They’re still going to be Honor’s brothers or sisters,” he managed to say his dead daughter’s name with only the smallest catch in his voice this time, “and that means the whole inheritance thing is going to pop out of the woodwork sooner or later, whatever we want.”

“I know,” she sighed. Jason had completely enveloped her hand now, wrapping himself around it in a fluffy ball while he fastened all six limbs—and a prehensile tail—about her wrist and forearm, and his own buzz of delight rose as she rolled him over on his back. “I hadn’t thought about it before… well, you know.” Alfred nodded, and she sighed again. “Dynastic inheritance isn’t something a good Beowulf girl needs to concern herself about,” she said plaintively.