War Of Honor

'My own belief is that at least part of it was that she was still too young to have developed enough self-confidence to believe her charges would be believed. But it's also highly probable that she believed any scandal would hurt the Navy, and she wasn't prepared to put what had happened to her personally above the good of the Service. That's certainly been the sort of attitude she's displayed repeatedly since, at any rate. If she can find a way to remove herself from a situation in which what she needs conflicts with her duty or with what someone else needs without transgressing her personal code, she'll take it. She did that before the First Battle of Yeltsin, when she pulled her squadron out of Yeltsin's Star because she thought her presence was undermining Courvoisier's efforts to bring Grayson into the Alliance.'

Her tone remained conversational, her expression bland, as she ignored Houseman's sudden grimace. The Second Lord's ugly look of remembered hatred (leavened with more than a little fear) was probably so involuntary he didn't even realize he'd let it show, High Ridge reflected.

'If the bigots who'd been giving her grief had done the same thing to anyone else under her command,' the countess continued, 'she would have come down on them like the wrath of God. She isn't exactly noted for moderation, you know. But their bigotry and resentment were directed at her, and she wasn't prepared to risk blowing Courvoisier's mission by insisting they treat her with the same respect she would have demanded for someone else. So instead, she backed away and took herself out of the equation.'

'It sounds almost as if you admire her, Georgia,' Descroix observed, and the countess shrugged.

'Admiration doesn't really come into it. But belittling an opponent out of spite when you're trying to formulate a strategy against her is stupid.'

This time Houseman actually stirred physically beside her, like a man on the brink of bursting out in protest, but she ignored that, too, and went on speaking directly to Descroix.

'Besides, if you want to look at it from the right angle, what she did in Grayson was to run away from a problem rather than confront it squarely, which is arguably a sign of weakness, not strength. And apparently she did the same thing the first time she realized she and White Haven were straying into forbidden territory. She ran away from the situation—and him—by assuming her squadron command early, which was how the Peeps came to capture her, of course. And she quite clearly did it again on Hades, when she refused to send a courier ship back to the Alliance as soon as she captured one.'

'Excuse me?' Janacek blinked at her in surprise. 'You're saying she 'ran away' from Hades?'

'Not from Hades, Edward,' the countess said patiently. 'Away from a profoundly painful personal choice she wasn't prepared to make. As Steadholder Harrington, it was clearly and unambiguously her responsibility to return to Grayson and her duties there as soon as humanly possible. What's more, she had to have realized that whether or not the Admiralty could have scraped up the shipping for a mass prisoner evacuation from the Cerberus System, the Graysons damned well would have sent at least one ship. For that matter, they would have dragged her aboard it at gunpoint, if necessary, if they'd known she was alive and where to find her! But if they'd done that, her public duty as Steadholder Harrington would have pulled her away from a personal duty to all of the prisoners on the planet. She was not only unprepared to turn her back on that responsibility but literally couldn't force herself to 'abandon' them, whatever she knew she ought to have done. So whether she realized it or not, her decision not to inform anyone in the Alliance of what was happening on Hades while she tried to somehow capture or steal enough personnel lift to pull everyone out was a deliberate evasion of something which was too painful for her even to contemplate.'

'I never thought of it that way,' Janacek said slowly, and Lady North Hollow shrugged.

'I'm not surprised, Edward. For that matter, I doubt very much that Harrington ever thought of it that way. If she had, she probably wouldn't have been able to do it. Which is the reason she didn't think about it. But the reason this particular character flaw is important to us at this particular moment is that it gives us a possible handle to maneuver her in the way we want.'

'How?' High Ridge asked, frowning intensely.

'The key here is that she won't evade anything unless there's an 'honorable' way to do it,' the countess said. 'She may be able to rationalize her way into choosing a way out from among several possible courses of action, but not simply to save herself. There has to be a reason. There has to be something that needs doing, and that she can be convinced—or that she can convince herself—is also her responsibility. Give her an honorable task, a responsibility, especially one that's likely to demand some sacrifice on her part, and the odds are considerably better than even that she'll take it.'

'What sort of 'responsibility' did you have in mind?' Descroix arched an eyebrow. 'Personally, I can't think of a single thing Harrington would feel compelled to do for any of us—except, perhaps, to pump a little more hydrogen into the furnaces in Hell while we roasted over them!'

'Actually,' Reginald Houseman said, speaking up for the first time, 'I believe we may have just the job for her. In fact, it's rather like one she was offered once before. She accepted that one, and it almost killed her.'

He smiled with an ugly vengefulness he would never have allowed any other audience, and especially not his fellow Liberals, to see.

'Who knows? Maybe this time we'll be luckier.'

Chapter Fifteen

'I can't believe you're serious!'

Hamish Alexander shook his head sharply and glared at Honor. They sat in the study of his Landing mansion, with Samantha stretched across the back of his chair, resting her chin on the backs of her true-hands. Nimitz lay across Honor's chair back, and she could taste the cats' unhappiness, their grief at the prospect of a lengthy separation. But she also tasted their acceptance.

There was no trace of that emotion in the Earl of White Haven.

'I'm completely serious, Hamish,' she said, far more calmly than she felt. 'And before you say it, of course I realize that at the very least this is a political Trojan Horse from High Ridge's perspective. But you and Willie have the situation as well in hand in Parliament as anyone could expect to, under the circumstances, and whatever we may think of Janacek, this is a job that needs doing. And given Sidemore's involvement in it, I feel a certain personal responsibility to do whatever I can to keep Marsh from getting run over in the scrimmage.'

'Damn it, Honor, of course you do! And they know exactly how your head works when somebody punches the responsibility button. They're manipulating you into taking this on, and you know it as well as I do!'

'Maybe they are,' she agreed evenly. 'And certainly I can see a lot of advantages for them in getting me out of the Star Kingdom. But let's be honest, Hamish. There could be some advantages for us in getting me off of Manticore, as well.'

'Somehow I don't expect Willie to think that,' White Haven said tartly. 'And even if he did, I—'

'Willie might surprise you,' Honor interrupted. 'And I asked you to be honest. When I said 'advantages for us' I wasn't thinking about Parliament.'

He closed his mouth abruptly, biting off whatever he'd been about to say, and something inside her flinched from the sudden pain, almost betrayal, that flickered in his ice-blue eyes. But she couldn't afford to show that, and so she made herself return his gaze levelly. Silence crackled between them for several seconds, and then she smiled sadly.

'We need some space between us, Hamish,' she said gently. He started to speak again, but her raised hand stopped him. 'No. Don't say anything. I didn't come here to argue with you, or even to debate my decision. I came because I've already decided to accept the command, and I needed to tell you that myself. It wasn't an easy decision, and I'm fully aware that Janacek didn't offer it to me out of the goodness of his heart. But that doesn't keep it from being a godsend.'

'But—'

'No, I said,' she cut him off quietly. 'Hamish, we've danced around this for years now, and it's killing both of us. You know it, Nimitz and Samantha know it. So do I . . . and so does Emily.'

His face went bone-white, and she felt his instant need to deny her words, to back away, to somehow pretend it wasn't so. But his own honesty was too deep for that, and so he said nothing, and she tasted his shame