He closed his eyes, his face tight, and she felt how passionately he longed to find some way to disagree with her. But he couldn’t. And so, after an endless moment of silence, he opened his eyes and looked at her once more.

“I don’t like it,” he told her. “I’ll never like it. But that doesn’t mean I have any better answer than you do. But for God’s sake, be careful, Honor! Don’t go jumping into any more furnaces, because God help us all, but you’re right. I do love you. Put space between us if you have to, but every time you go out and pull one of those ‘Salamander’ death-rides of yours, something dies inside me. There are limits in all things, love. Including the number of times you can dance on the razor and still come back to me.”

She couldn’t quite stop the tears now. Not after he’d finally admitted what they both knew. She started to speak, but this time it was his turn to raise one hand and stop her.

“I know you’re right,” he said. “We can’t be together—not really. But I can’t lose you, either. I thought I had once, when the Peeps told everyone they’d hanged you, and I can’t do that again. So you come back, Honor Harrington. You come back from Silesia, and you come back alive. We’ll find some answer, somehow, and you’d damned well better be here when we do!”

· · • · ·

“I’m dreadfully sorry, Your Grace, but it simply won’t be possible.”

Honor leaned back in her chair and crossed her legs, and her chocolate-brown eyes were on the cold side of cool as she gazed at the woman on the other side of the desk. Admiral of the Red Josette Draskovic was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, slender woman about thirty-five T-years older than Honor. She possessed an overabundant supply of nervous energy, and often gave the impression of fidgeting even when she sat completely still. She was also the woman who had replaced Sir Lucien Cortez as Fifth Space Lord, in charge of the Royal Navy’s personnel and manpower management, and though she hadn’t let a muscle in her face move even a millimeter, Honor felt her smiling in triumph deep down inside.

“Then I suggest that you make it possible,” Honor recommended in an even tone.

“I beg your pardon?” Draskovic stiffened, bristling almost visibly, and Honor allowed herself to smile very slightly as she tasted the other woman’s emotions. Nimitz was curled neatly in her lap, and the ’cat looked totally relaxed, almost sleepy. But Honor knew better than that; she could feel his seething anger as clearly as she could feel Draskovic’s petty sense of power.

Honor and Admiral Draskovic had never met before Sir Edward Janacek returned as First Lord of Admiralty. Since then, they’d crossed swords twice, and Draskovic had not enjoyed either of her appearances before the House of Lords’ Naval Affairs Committee one bit. She owed most of that lack of enjoyment to one Duchess Harrington, who’d turned up for the first one armed with her own analysis of the personnel figures included in the current naval estimates. The bare numbers Draskovic had reported to Parliament hadn’t exactly been a lie, but the way she’d presented them had been. And Honor had not only caught her in the act but given the admiral enough rope to hang herself before she produced the actual breakdown between active duty and half-pay personnel.