It was odd, especially for someone with the supportive, loving parents she’d had, not to mention her link to Nimitz, and even more her ability to sense the emotions of those about her. Odd, yet true.

There remained one thing in the universe which could absolutely terrify her: her own heart.

She couldn’t understand it—had never been able to understand it. Physical danger, duty, moral responsibility… those she could face. Not without fear, but without the crippling sense that somehow her fear would betray her into failure. But not this. This was a different sort of minefield, one she had no idea how to navigate, and one she had no confidence in her ability to face. Yes, she could taste and share the emotions of both Hamish and Emily, but simply knowing what they felt was no magic spell to suddenly make all right.

She knew Hamish Alexander loved her. She knew she loved Hamish Alexander. And she knew Hamish and Emily loved each other, and that all three of them were determined not to hurt the others.

And none of it did a bit of good, because whatever they did, whatever happened, someone was going to be hurt. And looming over that deep immediate and personal dread of pain to come was the chilling knowledge of how many other people would be affected by what ought to be their deeply personal decisions.

Perhaps it would have been different if she’d had more self-confidence, she thought, sipping her wine as she sat across the table from Emily and Hamish. She envied Emily’s serenity, especially because she’d felt exactly how dismayed and shaken Emily had been by her own admission in the atrium. The older woman had already known what Hamish felt; the sudden confirmation that Honor returned his love had hit her like a blow. There’d been anger in her reaction. Not a lot, but a sharp, knife-like flicker of fury that Honor should dare to love her husband, an automatic response that was built of raw instinct and her awareness of how much more danger Honor’s emotions threw all of them into. She’d made herself accept that Hamish’s struggle against his feelings was a losing battle; now she’d discovered that the person she’d hoped would be her ally had already lost the same fight. There was enormous potential for jealousy and resentment alike in that moment of realization, and the fact that she’d put her rage aside so quickly and so completely astonished Honor.

But there were a lot of things about Emily Alexander that astonished Honor. She was totally unlike Honor’s mother, except in one way: both of them radiated that calm sense of knowing exactly who they were, not just in matters of duty, but in those of the heart, as well. Honor had always envied that in her mother, almost as much as she’d envied—and resented—Allison Harrington’s beauty and unabashed sensuality when she herself had been an ugly-duckling, raw-boned, too-tall, gawky adolescent. She’d known even at her most resentful that she was being foolish. Her mother couldn’t help her beauty any more than she could help being who she was, and even if she could have been someone else just to make her daughter feel less outclassed and homely, it would have been wrong for her to do so. Wrong for her to be anyone but herself.