War Of Honor

Not that technical questions of legality would make any significant difference to what would happen to him if his maneuver failed. Pritchart's fury would know no bounds, and his betrayal of his responsibility to her—and he was too self-honest to use any word besides 'betrayal,' even in the privacy of his own thoughts—would raise a firestorm of congressional support for her decision to fire him. Even those who would have agreed with his objectives would turn on him like starving wolves.

Yet even as he thought that, he knew he wasn't going to allow any doubts, any uncertainty, to deflect him. Not now. He'd come too far, risked too much. Besides, whatever Pritchart might think, it was obvious to him that the High Ridge Government would never agree to negotiate in good faith. He was in the process of educating the rest of the Cabinet to recognize that. In fact, he thought with grim amusement, he was actually educating Pritchart. But the truth hadn't gone fully home.

No. He needed one more lesson. One more Manticoran provocation. Hanriot, LePic, Gregory, and Theisman remained committed to the idea that somehow, some way, there had to be an accommodation which could be reached if only the Republic looked hard enough, waited long enough, possessed its soul in sufficient patience. The rest of the Cabinet was coming steadily around to Giancola's own position . . . and so, for that matter, was Eloise Pritchart, unless he missed his guess. But her present frustration was no substitute for the strength of will to look the Royal Manticoran Navy in the eye with the defiance that would make High Ridge recoil. She would still flinch if that happened, still fumble the chance to achieve her own goals. All he needed was one more push to generate the proper sense of crisis, reveal her weakness, and consolidate the Cabinet behind his solution to it.

He took one more look at the text of the note, inhaled deeply, and pressed the key authorizing its dispatch to Ambassador Grosclaude.

Chapter Forty Eight

"Excuse me, Sir."

Sir Edward Janacek looked up with an expression of intense irritation. His personal yeoman stood in the open door of his office, and the First Lord's irate expression headed rapidly towards thunderous. The man had been with him long enough to know better than to physically intrude into his office una

"What?" he barked harshly enough to make the yeoman flinch. But it wasn't enough to send him scurrying in retreat, and Janacek's brows knit in a cumulonimbus frown.

"I'm very sorry to intrude, Sir," the yeoman said quickly, "but . . . That is, you . . . I mean, you have a visitor, Sir!"

"What in God's name are you babbling about?" Janacek demanded furiously. There was no one on his schedule this afternoon until his meeting at four o'clock with Simon Chakrabarti, and the yeoman knew it. He was the fumble-fingered idiot responsible for maintaining the First Lord's schedule!

"Sir," the yeoman said almost desperately, "Earl White Haven is here!"

Janacek's jaw dropped in disbelief as the yeoman vanished back out of the door like a Sphinxian chipmunk, darting into its burrow with a treecat in hot pursuit. The First Lord had just put his hands on his desk to shove himself up out of his chair when the office door opened again, and a tall, blue-eyed man in dress uniform, tunic ablaze with medal ribbons, stepped through it.

Janacek's dropped jaw closed with a beartrap-click, and the disbelief in his eyes turned into something much hotter as he took in the newcomer's appearance. White Haven had every right to appear at Admiralty House in uniform, and Janacek had no doubt at all that the sight of the four gold stars on the earl's collar and that glittering galaxy of ribbons explained his yeoman's failure to simply send the intruder about his business. Much as he wanted to, the First Lord really couldn't fault the man for that, and his jaw clenched even tighter as that same uniform's impact washed over him. It was a somewhat different emotion in his own case, because had they both been in uniform, his collar would have borne only three stars. And when last he'd been on active duty, it would have borne only two.

But that didn't matter in this office, he reminded himself, and instead of pushing himself fully to his feet, he dropped back into his chair. It was a deliberate refusal to give White Haven the courtesy of standing to greet him, and felt a stir of satisfaction as anger flickered in those ice-blue eyes.

"What do you want?" he half-snapped.

"Still wasting no courtesy on visitors, I see," White Haven observed.

"Visitors who want courtesy should know enough to go through my appointments yeoman," Janacek replied in that same, harsh voice.

"Who undoubtedly would have found all ma

"Maybe he would have," Janacek growled. "But if you think I would deliberately have refused to see you, maybe that should have suggested that you stay the hell away."

Hamish Alexander started to snap back, then made himself pause and draw a deep breath, instead. He wondered if Janacek even began to suspect what a childish, petulant appearance he presented. But it had always been that way where the two of them were concerned, so he could hardly pretend the First Lord's attitude was unexpected. And if he was going to be honest, Janacek had always brought out the very worst in him, as well. It was as if simply walking into the other man's presence was enough to transport them both back to a confrontation on a grammar school playground somewhere.

But at least White Haven was aware of that. That gave him a certain responsibility to at least try to act like an adult. And even though he felt deep in his bones that any sort of rational discussion of what brought him here was unlikely—to say the very least—it was also far too important for him to allow Janacek's temper to provoke his own.

"Look," he said after a moment in a reasonable tone, "we don't like each other. We never have, and we never will. I don't see any point in pretending otherwise, especially when there aren't any witnesses." He smiled thinly. "But I assure you, I wouldn't be here unless I thought it was sufficiently important to justify the sort of scene you and I usually seem to end up a part of whenever we meet."

"I'm sure a man of your well-known brilliance and intellect must have all sorts of things that need doing," and Janacek replied sarcastically. "What could possibly make me important enough for you to waste time in my office?"

Again, White Haven began a hot retort, only to bite it off.

"I do have any number of things I could be doing instead," he agreed. "None of them, however, are quite as important as the reason I'm here. If you'll give me ten minutes of your time without the two of us snarling at each other like a pair of playground bullies, perhaps we can deal with that particular concern and I can be on my way."

"I'm certainly in favor of anything which would produce that effect," Janacek snorted. He cocked back his chair, deliberately drawing attention to his failure to invite his "guest" to be seated. "What seems to be on your mind, My Lord?"

"Silesia," White Haven said shortly, eyes hard as Janacek kept him standing in front of his desk like some junior officer who'd been called on the carpet. The earl considered sitting down anyway and daring Janacek to respond, but instead he reminded himself yet again that one of them had to at least pretend to be an adult.

"Ah, yes, Silesia." Janacek smiled nastily. "Admiral Harrington's command."

His implication was crystal clear, and White Haven felt a fresh, white-hot spurt of anger. It was harder to strangle this one at birth, but he managed—barely—and simply stood there, cold eyes boring into the First Lord.