“But even though giving up the title wouldn’t exactly consign you to poverty and leave you living in the gutter,” he continued, “it wouldn’t be a purely symbolic sacrifice, either. People would recognize that. And it would let you turn what High Ridge and his kind have made a liability—your exclusion from the Lords—into an asset.”

“Do you actually think I’d be able to accomplish more as a very junior MP than I can from where I am right now?”

“Yes,” he said simply.

“But I wouldn’t have any seniority, wouldn’t qualify for any of the choice committee chairmanships.”

“And precisely which committees in the Lords are you sitting on at this moment?” he asked sardonically, and chuckled when she made a face at him. “Seriously, Cathy,” he went on more earnestly, “you could scarcely accomplish less politically sitting in the Commons than you can as a peer who’s been denied her seat in the Lords. And the house you sit in won’t have any effect one way or the other on the types of influence you have outside official government channels. Besides, the Commons’ seniority rules are a lot less ironclad. You might be surprised at the access to useful committee assignments which could be open to you. Especially if the Centrists decide to look for common ground with you.”

“And they probably would, wouldn’t they?” she mused aloud, her expression thoughtful. “If nothing else, they’d see me as a potential wedge to split New Kiev and the party leadership further away from the malcontents like me.”

“At the very least,” he agreed. “And let’s be honest here. One reason that they’d see you as a potential wedge is because that’s precisely what you would be. In fact, it’s the reason you’d be there in the first place.”

She glanced at him sharply, and he chuckled without humor.

“Come on, Cathy! We both know Jeremy taught you to be honest with yourself where your objectives and tactics are concerned. Don’t you want to remove New Kiev and her cronies from control of the party?”

“And aren’t you a Crown Loyalist who’d love to see the Liberals cripple themselves in internecine internal warfare?” she shot back.

“It wouldn’t exactly break my heart,” he acknowledged cheerfully enough. “But by the same token, since I’ve come to know you, I’ve actually been forced to admit that not all Liberals are goddamned idiots. Which, I might add, was not an easy thing for me to accept. I suppose present company is responsible for seducing me—you should pardon the expression—into recognizing the possibility that not all of them have overaged oatmeal for brains.

“However that may be,” he went on with a slight smile as she stuck out her tongue at him, “I’ve come to the conclusion that I can live with a lot of the sorts of things you and Liberals like you believe in. We’ll probably never agree on everything, but there’s a lot to be said for a society where merit trumps bloodlines. I don’t have a lot of use for most of the social-interventionist, lack-of-reality economic crap that comes along as part of the package with most Liberals, but then, neither do you, do you?”