War Of Honor

Unfortunately, Manticoran slander and libel laws, while harder hitting than many, had their own loopholes. The most important one was that the law recognized a journalist's right to maintain the confidentiality of her sources and set a very high hurdle for plaintiff demands that those sources' identities be revealed. As long as Hayes restricted himself to reporting that his "sources" suggested that Honor and Hamish were lovers and never once said that he himself claimed they were, he stayed one thin millimeter on the safe side of the libel laws. Honor had done her dead level best to goad him into making that fatal assertion, but he'd refused to be drawn into that error. She could still sue for slander and, probably, win, but the trial would stretch out for years (at least), and however monumental the damages awarded might be in the end, it would have no impact on the current political situation . . . except to convince people that she was desperate to shut his mouth any way she could.

Fortunately, perhaps, the Code Duello also specifically exempted journalists from being challenged on the basis of published reporting or commentary. It would have been possible to contrive some other basis for a duel, perhaps, but she had to agree with William; in the end, it would only make the damage even worse. Besides, Hayes had obviously taken careful note of what had happened to Pavel Young. There was no way in the universe he was going to place himself in any position where Honor might possibly challenge him.

So there was simply no practical way to staunch the flow of rumors which fueled the corrosive speculation of the Government commentators and their supporters.

The Centrist columnists, many of them just as fiercely partisan as any Liberal or Conservative, fired back desperately. But the assaults came from too many directions, were conducted with too much skill, and here and there individual defenders began to fall silent. One or two who'd been expected to defend her and White Haven never really seemed to make a serious attempt, and she knew William was noting who those silent voices belonged to. Not simply to punish them for their lack of support later, but because he wondered why they were silent. Over the decades, there had been persistent rumors about the Earls of North Hollow and their ability to manipulate allies and opponents alike by judicious use of the secrets contained within their files. Which was why Alexander wondered if perhaps there was something he should know about those who were silent so conveniently to Stefan Young's advantage.

Yet in the end, all of the Centrist efforts, and even the direct support of the Queen herself, had proved insufficient. The crippling darts had been placed too skillfully. Honor knew she and White Haven continued to enjoy a solid core of support among Manticoran voters, but she also knew that support had eroded heavily. It couldn't affect their seats in the Lords, but the storm of public criticism over their alleged infidelities was reflected in a significant drop in voter support for their party allies in the Commons. They had been transformed from assets in both houses into liabilities in the house where it really mattered, the one High Ridge and his allies didn't already control.

Bad as it was for White Haven, it was even worse for Honor. For all his continuing vigor, Hamish Alexander was one hundred and three T-years old, almost fifty T-years older than she was. In a society with prolong, where life spans would be as much as three T-centuries, that gap meant very little. But Hamish was from the very first generation of Manticoran prolong recipients. Most first— and second-generation prolong recipients had grown to at least young adulthood surrounded by pre-prolong parents and grandparents, uncles and aunts. Their fundamental attitudes towards what age meant, and particularly towards the significance of differences in age, had been formed in a society which had not yet developed a true acceptance for how long people, themselves included, were now likely to live.

Worse, perhaps, the earlier, less advanced generations of the prolong therapies stopped the physical aging process at a later stage, cosmetically, at least. So, as a first-generation recipient, Hamish's black hair was liberally threaded with silver, his face more deeply graven by character lines and crows feet. In a pre-prolong society, he might have been taken for a vigorous man in his mid-forties or very early fifties. But Honor was a third-generation recipient. Physically, she was no more than into her late twenties, and so for many of those following the story, she was the "younger woman." The Jezebel. In their eyes, his "betrayal" of Lady White Haven after so many years of unwavering fidelity could only have resulted from the way she had tempted and systematically pursued him.

The one thing for which she was truly grateful at the moment was that she'd managed to convince both her parents to stay safely on Grayson. It would have been bad enough if her father had been in the Star Kingdom, because as gentle and compassionate a man as Alfred Harrington was, Honor knew perfectly well from whom she had inherited her own temper. Very few people had ever seen her father actually lose his temper; of those who had, not all had survived the experience, although that had been in his own days of naval service, and he seldom discussed it even with her.

But her mother would have been worse. Far worse. On Allison Chou Harrington's birth world of Beowulf, public opinion would have laughed itself silly at the hysterical thought that matters of the heart were the business of anyone except the individuals actually involved. The nature of the Alexanders' marriage vows would have weighed heavily in the scale of Beowulf opinion, but the Beowulfers would have concluded, with healthy rationality, that if the individuals in question—all the individuals in question—were prepared to modify those vows, that was their own affair. In any case, the notion that any of it could have any impact on Honor's public responsibilities would have been ludicrous.

Allison Harrington, despite almost a T-century as a citizen of the Star Kingdom, remained very much a Beowulfer in that respect. And Honor's mother. Her recent letters to Honor radiated a bare-clawed ferocity which was almost frightening, and Honor shuddered every time she thought of Allison loose on something like "Into the Fire." Or, even worse, in the same room as Regina Clausel. Her mother might be tiny, but so were treecats.

That thought brought her back to the present, and she looked up at her Queen and sighed.

"I don't know, Elizabeth," she said, and her own voice sounded flat and defeated to her. Her shoulders sagged, and she scrubbed her eyes wearily with her right hand. "I just don't know what might help anymore. Maybe going to Grayson would be a mistake, but all I know for certain is that every day I stay here and appear in the House of Lords seems to make it worse."

"It's my fault," Elizabeth told her sadly. "I should have managed this whole thing better. Willie tried to tell me, but I was too angry, too badly hurt to listen. I needed Allen Summervale to shake some sense into me, and he was dead."

"Elizabeth—" Honor began, but the Queen shook her head.

"I should have held onto my temper," she said. "Should have tried sweet reason until I could find the issue to split them up instead of declaring war against them and driving them together!"

"Whatever you should or shouldn't have done is beside the point now," Honor said gently. "Personally, I don't think there ever was any 'wedge issue' you could have used to break them up. Not with the threat of the San Martino peers hanging over them."

"Then I should have gone the whole nine meters," Elizabeth said bitterly. "I should have said damn the constitutional crisis and refused to accept High Ridge as my Prime Minister. Let them try to govern without the Crown's support!"