White Haven hadn’t. It had grown much larger over the years, yet it was what it was. It refused to be anything else, and if at first glance it might seem that newer, more modern estates—like Harrington House—were grander and more magnificent, that was only at first glance. Because White Haven had what those new and splendid homes’ owners simply couldn’t buy, however hard they tried. It had history. It had lawns of ankle-deep sod, pampered by generations of gardeners, and Old Terran oak trees a meter and a half through at the base, which had made the journey from Old Earth herself aboard the sublight colony ship Jason four centuries earlier. It had thick, soft Terran moss and immensely dense hedges and thickets of crown blossom and flame seed that draped around stone picnic tables, gazebos, and half-hidden, stone-flagged patios, and it sat there, whispering that it had always been here and always would be.

There were places on Grayson, like Protector’s Palace, which were even older and possessed that same sense of ancientness. But Protector’s Palace, like every other Grayson building, was a fortress against its world. Part of that world, and yet forever separate from it. Like Honor’s own parents’ house on Sphinx, though on a far larger scale, White Haven wore its age like a comfortable garment. That made it something she understood, and if White Haven was a fortress in its own way, its defenses were raised against the maddening pressure of human affairs, and not against its planet.

Despite all that had happened to finally drive her to this place, Honor sensed the living, welcoming presence of Hamish Alexander’s home, and a part of her reached out to it. Yet even as she yearned towards its shelter, she knew it could never be hers, and a fresher, bleaker wave of resignation washed through her as Simon Mattingly landed the limo gently on the pad.

Hamish climbed out of his seat, cradling Samantha in his arms, and his slightly strained smile invited her to follow him from the limo. She was grateful to him for sparing her pleasantries which neither of them needed, and she managed to return his smile with one of her own.

Like him, she carried Nimitz in her arms, not in his usual place on her shoulder. She needed that extra contact, that sense of additional connection, and she clung to it as she walked towards a side door with White Haven while LaFollet, Mattingly, and Hawke followed at her heels.

The door opened at their approach, and a man who radiated a subtle kinship to James MacGuiness looked out with a small bow of greeting.

“Welcome home, My Lord,” he said to White Haven.

“Thank you, Nico.” White Haven acknowledged his greeting with a smile. “This is Duchess Harrington. Is Lady Emily in the atrium?”

“She is, My Lord,” Nico replied, and bestowed another, more formal bow on Honor. His emotions were complex, compounded of his deep loyalty to the Alexander family, and to Hamish and Emily Alexander in particular, and an awareness that there was no truth to the vicious stories about Hamish and Honor. She tasted his sympathy for her, but there was also a sharp edge of resentment. Not for anything she’d done, but for the pain others had brought to people for whom he cared, using her as the weapon.