War Of Honor

"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 perso

"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 that it had been left to her to finally openly face the truth for them both.

"I love you," she said very, very softly. "And you love me, and you love Emily. I know that. But I also know that especially after what High Ridge and his cronies tried to do to us, we don't dare do anything about the way we feel. We can't, Hamish, whatever we want, or however desperately we want it. Only I'm not strong enough to stop wanting it." Tears prickled at the backs of her eyes, but she refused to let them spill over. "I don't think I'll ever be that strong. But that doesn't change anything, so I have to find another way. And this is the only one I see that doesn't carry an unacceptable political cost for everyone."

"But they're only offering you the job in the hope that it will blow up in your face," he said.

"I don't know if I'd put it exactly that way myself," she replied. "They've got a genuine problem. They need someone to solve it for them, and whoever that someone is, a solution short of total disaster still has to be their ultimate objective. But you're right that they also need someone to scapegoat if it does turn into a disaster, of course. And to be honest, I'm pretty sure that they wouldn't be thinking that way if they didn't expect it to do just that. They may be right about that, too. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a job someone has to do . . . and that it will let me put some space between us. Please, Hamish. It's important to me for you to understand. I can't be this close to you, not knowing exactly what you feel, and not knowing what I feel. I just can't. It's not your fault; it's not my fault. It's just the way it is."