“That seems a bit drastic,” Emily observed mildly. “Perhaps there’s more of Doña Quixote in you than I’d realized.”

Her green eyes flickered for just a moment, and Honor felt her brief flare of regret over her choice of words, but the countess brushed it off quickly.

“No, just more sanity,” Hamish observed, oblivious to the quick glances the two women exchanged. He wasn’t looking at them, anyway. His attention had strayed back to Samantha, as it had done periodically all evening, and he took another celery stalk from the bowl on the table and offered it to her.

“You’re going to make her sick, Hamish,” Emily scolded, and he looked up quickly, his expression so much like that of a guilty schoolboy caught in the act that Honor chuckled.

“Not without a lot more celery than that, he’s not, Emily,” she reassured her hostess. “Mind you,” she went on more sternly, transferring her attention to Hamish, “too much celery really is bad for her. She can’t digest it, and if she gets too much of it, she’ll get constipated.”

Samantha turned to give her a dignified look of reproval, and Honor was relieved to feel the female ’cat’s amusement. Despite the transcendent joy of having bonded with Hamish, Samantha had been almost instantly aware of the dismay and consternation which had afflicted both Honor and her new person, and that awareness had sent its echoes reverberating through her, as well.

From the feel of her emotions, she still wasn’t entirely certain why they were so upset. Which, Honor thought, only served to emphasize that despite all of their centuries of association with humans, treecats remained an alien species. For Nimitz and Samantha—as probably for all of their kind, given their ability to sense one another’s emotions—there was absolutely no point in trying to conceal what one felt. Nimitz had accepted over the years that there were times when it was inappropriate, among humans, at least, to show his emotions, especially when they consisted of anger directed at someone senior to Honor in the Navy. But even for him, that was more a matter of good manners (and of making concessions to an inexplicable human code of behavior because it was important to his person) than because he saw any real sense in it. And neither he nor Samantha would have dreamed of attempting to deny how they truly felt about something—especially about something important.

Which explained the growing frustration Honor had received from both of them as the pain of suppressing and denying her feelings for Hamish grew within her. They knew how much she loved him, they knew how much he loved her, and by treecat standards, it was willfully insane for the two of them to subject themselves—and one another—to so much hurt. Which, to make things still worse, was also a hurt the ’cats had no choice but to endure with them.

Intellectually, both Nimitz and Samantha realized that all humans, with the notable exception of Honor herself, were what their own species called “mind-blind.” They could even understand that because of that mind-blindness, human society had different imperatives from those of their own. But what they understood intellectually hadn’t affected what they felt, and what they’d felt was not only frustration but anger at the inexplicable human willfulness which prevented Honor and Hamish from simply admitting the truth which was self-evident to any treecat and getting on with their lives without all this pain and suffering.