War Of Honor

The fact that he hadn't attended the session, however, hadn't prevented him from monitoring it from his office. Which meant he understood exactly why Descroix looked ready to strangle Opposition peers with her bare hands.

And, he thought mordantly, she'd probably just as soon throttle some of our peers, for that matter.

"Hello, Elaine," he said as she stalked across to her chair at the conference table.

She snarled something which might have been interpreted as a greeting, jerked out her chair, and flung herself into it.

"I regret that you've had such an unpleasant morning," High Ridge continued, "and I deeply appreciate your efforts on the Government's behalf. I mean that sincerely."

"You'd damned well better appreciate them!" Descroix half-snapped. "Jesus! And you'd damned well better have a long heart-to-heart talk with Green Vale, too!"

Jessica Burke, Countess of Green Vale, was the Government Whip in the Lords. That post was far from a sinecure in a coalition of such diverse ideologies as that of the current government, and everyone in the conference room knew it. Nonetheless, High Ridge reflected, it was undoubtedly fortunate that Green Vale wasn't present at the moment.

"I assure you that I'll be speaking with her," he said mildly after a moment. "In all fairness, however, I feel confident she did all that could have been done under the circumstances."

"Oh?" Descroix glowered at him. "And what sort of Whip doesn't even warn us when we're likely to lose a vote like that?"

"The margin was only eighteen votes," High Ridge pointed out. "That's barely two percent of the members actually present."

"But the total shift was sixty-three votes, counting the abstentions," she pointed out in venomous response. "And by my math, that's over eight percent. Which doesn't even count the thirty-seven members of the House who managed to not even be there in the first place." Her eyes would have sent daggers through the heart of anyone less stoutly armored by his own sense of who he was than High Ridge.

"Admittedly, it was a most unfortunate occurrence," the Prime Minister conceded. "All I meant to indicate was that the margin of votes actually cast was close enough that I believe it would be unfair to fault Jessica for failing to realize ahead of time that the House wouldn't vote to sustain."

"Then why the hell do we have a Whip in the first place?" she demanded.

He didn't respond to the obviously rhetorical question, and, after a moment, she shrugged in petulant acknowledgment of its pettiness.

"At any rate," she went on after a moment, "I don't see any way we can regard today's fiasco as anything but a potentially serious setback, Michael."

"A setback, certainly," he agreed. "Precisely how serious it may prove is another question, however."

"Don't fool yourself," she said flatly. "Alexander and White Haven were both out for blood . . . and New Dijon wasn't any damned help, either. Goddamned Liberal hypocrite!"

High Ridge didn't manage to conceal his wince this time. Fortunately, the Chancellor of the Exchequer wasn't present. It had taken a little creative scheduling on his part to ensure that she would be otherwise occupied meeting with the Chairman of the Bank of Manticore and the Board of the Royal Interstellar Development Fund at the exact time he was "forced" to schedule this meeting. He strongly suspected that New Kiev knew exactly why he'd done it, and the fact that she hadn't protested even mildly suggested even more to him. On the other hand, she'd undoubtedly managed to assuage her own conscience by reflecting that her good friend and fellow Liberal Sir Harrison MacIntosh would be present to deputize for her and see to it that their party's interests were represented. Which he was. And at the moment, he looked almost as unhappy with Descroix's characterization of the Earl of New Dijon as New Kiev would have looked.

Not that High Ridge had any personal quibble with Descroix on that particular point. New Dijon had always been careful to distance himself from the current government. That hadn't meant he was unaware of which side of his bread was buttered, however, and while he'd been careful to maintain his public stance of independent thought, his actual voting record had been another matter.

But today had been different. The fact that William Alexander and his brother would lead the attack had been as inevitable as the next sunrise, and no one had been surprised when a dozen other Opposition peers piled on with their own pointed questions. But three of the Independent peers who had routinely supported the Government had joined the Opposition in indicating serious concern over the Republic's new, more aggressive negotiating stance . . . and so had New Dijon.

"Actually," the Prime Minister said after a moment, "New Dijon's position may work out in our favor."

"Excuse me?" Descroix looked at him incredulously, and he shrugged.

"I don't say that's what he had in mind, but the fact that he publicly 'took us to the woodshed,' as my grandfather used to put it, could actually help us out down the road. As far as the newsfaxes are concerned, he's indicated his independence of thought and willingness to speak his mind. And the questions he asked were actually on the mild side, you know. So he's positioned himself to act as a sort of buffer without doing us any real additional harm. Which means that if he later expresses himself as moderately concerned and yet confident in Her Majesty's Government's handling of the negotiations, his statement will carry even more weight because of his earlier doubts."

"Do you honestly believe that's what he had in mind?" Descroix demanded in obvious disbelief, and High Ridge shrugged again.

"Personally, I doubt it," he conceded. "His support, however indirect, has always been shakiest where our foreign policy was concerned, you know. I think, however, that he's clearly indicated his awareness of the consequences for the authority of the House of Lords if this Government should fall. So I wouldn't be surprised if his own party leadership was able to convince him of the necessity of supporting us against this particular attack. Wouldn't you agree, Harrison?"

He looked at MacIntosh, and the Home Secretary scowled. But then, obviously against his will, he nodded slowly.

"I'm sure," the Secretary of Trade put in, "that the Earl will be . . . open-minded if we approach him properly."

Everyone at the table glanced in the direction of the Earl of North Hollow with varying degrees of ope

"However that may work out in the end," Descroix went on after a moment, her voice slightly less acid, "we got hurt today. There's no point pretending otherwise."

"I wish you were wrong," High Ridge said. She wasn't, of course. Alexander had hammered away at the exact nature of the Pritchart "proposals" with merciless energy. Descroix had managed to avoid simply handing over the note from Secretary of State Giancola, which had at least allowed her to paraphrase the taut, uncompromising way in which some of those proposals had been phrased. But nothing she'd been able to do had been sufficient to conceal the fact that the Republic of Haven had, indeed, taken a much harder line. It was painfully obvious that Eloise Pritchart was done responding to Manticoran proposals. She clearly intended to put her own demands on the table and insist that Manticore respond to them, instead.

That had been quite bad enough, but then Alexander's insufferable brother had dived into the fray. What, he had asked, was the Government's view of the effect the Republican Navy's newly revealed combat capabilities was likely to have on the future course of the negotiations?