But recognizing that answer did her no good at all when there was no way she could separate herself from Hamish and the Star Kingdom’s political fray. Not without convincing everyone, friend and foe alike, that she was running away. Perhaps they wouldn’t know all of the reasons for her flight, but that wouldn’t really matter. The damage would be done, especially on Grayson.

So how, she wondered despairingly, did she find the sheltered haven she needed so desperately without looking as if she had allowed herself to be hounded out of town?

Her wrist chrono beeped softly, and she drew a deep breath and reached forward to rest her hands on the traditional polished wood of the lectern while she gazed out at her respectfully assembled students.

“Good afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen.” Lady Dame Honor Harrington’s soprano voice was calm and clear, carrying effortlessly to every listening ear. “This is the last lecture of the term, and before we begin our review for the course final, I want to take this opportunity to tell you all how much I’ve enjoyed teaching this class. It’s been a privilege and a pleasure, as well as a high honor, and the way in which you’ve responded, the fashion in which you’ve risen to every challenge, only reaffirms the strength and integrity of our Service and its future. You are that future, Ladies and Gentlemen, and it gives me enormous satisfaction to see what good hands the Queen’s Navy and all of our allied navies are in.”

Silence hovered behind her words, deep and profound, and the wounded corners of her soul relaxed ever so slightly as the answering emotions of her students rolled back through her like an ocean tide. She clung to that sensation from the depths of her battered exhaustion, with the greedy longing of a frozen, starveling waif crouching outside the window of a warm and welcoming kitchen, but no sign of that crossed her serene expression as she gazed back out at them.

“And now,” she went on more briskly, “we have a great deal to review and only two hours to review it in. So let’s be about it, Ladies and Gentlemen.”

· · • · ·

“She’s like some damned vampire!” Baron High Ridge growled as he slapped the hardcopy of the latest poll numbers down on his blotter.

“Who?” Elaine Descroix asked with an irritatingly winsome little-girl smile. “Emily Alexander or Harrington?”

“Both—either!” the Prime Minister snarled. “Damn it! I thought we’d finally put Harrington and White Haven out of our misery, and then along comes White Haven’s wife—his wife, of all people!—and resurrects both of them. What do we have to do? Cut off their heads and drive stakes through their hearts?”

“Maybe that’s exactly what we have to do,” Sir Edward Janacek muttered, and Descroix chuckled. Despite her smile, it was not a pleasant sound.

“It might not be a bad idea to wash them both down with holy water and bury them by moonlight, as well,” she said, and High Ridge snorted harshly. Then he looked at the other two people present.