She was an outsider who’d been elevated to the status of one of the most powerful of all insiders. Because of that, she saw things through different eyes, from what she knew her allies sometimes regarded as an almost ingenuous viewpoint. The degree of sophisticated, vicious, endlessly polite (outwardly, at least) political infighting they took so much for granted, even when they deplored it, was alien to her both by nature and by experience. In some ways, her Grayson and Manticoran friends understood one another far better than she understood either of them, yet she’d come to realize that her very sense of detachment from the partisan bloodletting about her was a sort of armor. Her adversaries and allies alike regarded her as deplorably unsophisticated and direct, unwilling—or unable—to “play the game” by the rules they all understood so well. And that made her an unknown, unpredictable quantity, especially for her opponents. They knew all about the subtle shadings of position, of advantage and opportunity, which guided their own decisions and tactical maneuvers, but they found the simplicity and directness of her positions curiously baffling. It was as if they couldn’t quite believe she was exactly who she said she was, that she truly believed exactly the things she said she did, because they were so unlike that themselves. So they persisted in regarding her with nervous wariness, perpetually waiting for the instant in which she finally revealed her “true” nature.

That could be a useful thing where enemies were concerned, but it had its downside, as well. Even her closest allies—particularly the aristocratic ones, she reflected, tasting the emotions of her guests—sometimes failed to realize there was nothing to reveal. They might have come to recognize that intellectually, but the Star Kingdom’s peers were too much a part of the world to which they’d been born to be able to truly divorce themselves from it, even if they’d wanted to. They didn’t, of course, and why should they? It was their world, and Honor was honest enough to admit that it had at least as many positive aspects as negative ones. But even the best of them—even a man like Hamish Alexander, who’d spent seven or eight decades as a Queen’s officer—could never quite free themselves from the dance whose measures they’d trod since childhood.

She brushed the thought aside as she shook hands with each of the Alexanders in turn, and then waved them towards their customary chairs with a smile. It was a warm, welcoming smile, and she was no longer aware of how much warmer it became when her eyes met White Haven’s.

William Alexander, on the other hand, certainly was aware of it. He’d been aware of the habitual warmth with which she greeted his brother for quite some time, actually, although he hadn’t realized he was. Just as he hadn’t noticed all the private, intimate little conversations, or the way Hamish inevitably seemed to find some reason to remain behind for some last-minute private discussion of the details with her after one of their three-cornered strategy sessions. Now he uneasily watched her smile, and his uneasiness grew as Hamish returned it.