Honor stared at her, heart rising in the first true hope she’d felt in weeks. She was neither so naive nor so foolish as to believe Emily could wave some sort of magic wand and make all of it go away. But Emily was certainly correct about one aspect of it. The portion of the Government press which had been shedding such huge crocodile tears over how dreadfully Lady White Haven had been betrayed, and how terribly her husband’s infidelity must have hurt her, could hardly continue to weep for her if she were busy publicly laughing at the absurdity of their allegations.

“I think… I think that would help enormously, Emily,” she said after a moment, and the slight quaver around the edges of her voice surprised her.

“No doubt it will,” Emily replied, but Honor felt a fresh tremor of anxiety at the taste of the other woman’s emotions. The countess wasn’t done yet. There was something more—and worse—to come, and she watched the older woman draw a deep breath.

“No doubt it will,” she repeated, “but there’s one other point I think we must discuss, Honor.”

“Another point?” Honor asked tautly.

“Yes. I said that I know you and Hamish aren’t lovers, and I do. I know because, frankly, I’ve known that he has had lovers. Not many of them, of course, but a few.”

She looked away from her guest, at something only she could see, and the deep, bittersweet longing at her center pricked Honor’s eyes with tears. It wasn’t anger, or a sense of betrayal. It was regret. It was loss. It was sorrow for the one thing she and the man who loved her—and whom she loved, with all her heart—could never share again. She didn’t blame him for seeking that one thing with others; but she bled inside with the knowledge that she could never give it to him herself.

“All of them, with one single exception he deeply regrets, have been registered courtesans,” she went on softly, “but he’s also respected and liked them. If he hadn’t, he would never have taken them to bed. He isn’t the sort of man to have casual affairs, or to ‘sleep around.’ He has too much integrity for that.” She smiled sadly. “I suppose it must sound odd for a wife to speak about her husband’s integrity when he chooses his lovers, but it’s really the only word that fits. If he’d asked me, I would’ve told him that, yes, it hurts, but not because he’s being ‘unfaithful’ to me. It hurts because I can no longer give him the one thing they can… and that he can no longer give it to me. Which is why he’s never asked me, because he already knows what I’d say. And that’s also why he’s been so utterly discreet. He knows that no one in our circles would have faulted him for patronizing an RC under the circumstances, and that most other Manticorans would understand, as well. But he’s always been determined to avoid putting that to the test. Not to shield his own reputation, but to protect me, to avoid underscoring the fact that I’ll never again leave this chair. He doesn’t want to humiliate me by even suggesting that I might be somehow… inadequate. A cripple.”