“And he refuses to do that,” she went on, turning to look at Honor once more, “because he loves me. I truly believe that he loves me as much today as he did the day he proposed to me. The day we married. The day they pulled me from that air car and told him I would never walk or breathe again unassisted.”

She drew another deep breath, the muscles of her diaphragm controlled by the life support chair interfaces because she could no longer directly control them herself.

“And that’s been the difference between me and all of his lovers, Honor. He cared about them, and he respected them, but he didn’t love them. Not the way he loves me.”

“Or the way he loves you.”

Honor jerked back on the bench, as if Emily had just thrust a dagger into her heart. Her eyes flew to meet Emily’s, and saw the brimming tears, the knowledge… and the compassion.

“He hasn’t told me he does,” the countess said quietly. “But he hasn’t had to. I know him too well, you see. If he didn’t, he would have had you out here to meet me years ago, given how closely the two of you have worked together in the Lords. And he would have turned to me the instant this whole affair hit, instead of trying so desperately to keep me out of it. To protect me. I’m his chief analyst and adviser, though very few people realize it, and there’s no way he would have failed to introduce us to one another, especially after High Ridge’s cronies launched these attacks on the two of you… unless there were some reason he couldn’t. And that reason—the reason he was willing to see his own name and reputation ruined by false charges and the Opposition’s ability to fight High Ridge effectively undermined rather than enlist my aid to defeat them—is that he was afraid I’d see the truth and be wounded by his ‘betrayal.’ And just as it’s the reason he’s kept me from meeting you, it’s the fact that he loves you which has prevented him from even trying to become anything more than your friend and colleague. You’re not a professional, and even if you were, he knows it wouldn’t be a brief affair. Not this time. And deep inside, he’s afraid that for the first time he might truly betray me.”

“I—How did—?”

Honor tried desperately to get a grip on herself, but she couldn’t. Emily Alexander had just given her the final clue she’d needed, the final puzzle piece. Everything she’d ever felt from Hamish snapped suddenly into place, and she wondered how Emily, without her own link to Nimitz, had been able to grasp the core truth so completely.

“Honor, I’ve been married to Hamish for over seventy T-years. I know him, and I love him, and I see how this is tearing him apart. It was already there before this smear campaign was launched, but it wasn’t destroying him the way it is now. I think… I think that what happened is that the lies and the false accusations forced him to look closely at things he’d held at a distance, somehow. They made him admit the truth to himself on some deeper level, and the combination of how much he loves you—loves both of us—and his guilt at having discovered that he can love someone besides me is like a bleeding wound. Worse,” she looked directly into Honor’s eyes, “he’s afraid he’s going to tell you openly how he feels. That he is going to ‘betray me’ by taking a lover he truly loves.