“There’s a reason I’ve always relied on you for the necessary political miracles, Emily,” Hamish told her with a smile. “Give me a fleet problem, or a naval battle to fight, and I know exactly what to do. But dealing with scum like High Ridge and Descroix—?” He shook his head. “I just can’t wrap my mind around how to handle them.”

“Be honest, dear,” Emily corrected him gently. “It’s not that you really can’t do it, and you know it. It’s that you get so furious with them that you wind up climbing onto your high moral horse so you can ride them under the hooves of your righteous fury. But when you close your knight errant’s helmet, the visibility through that visor is just a little limited, isn’t it?”

Her smile took most of the bite from her words, but he winced anyway, and that wince was at least partly genuine.

“I realize any good political analyst has to know when and how to be brutally honest, Emily, but somehow that particular metaphor doesn’t do an enormous amount for my self image,” he said so dryly Honor chuckled despite herself, and Emily looked at her with a twinkle.

“He does the affronted-but-too-polite-to-admit-it, stiff-necked, aristocratic naval officer quite well, doesn’t he?” she remarked.

“I don’t think I’ll answer that question,” Honor replied. “On the other hand, there’s something to be said for the… directness of a Don Quixote. As long as the windmills don’t hit back too hard, at least.”

“Granted, granted,” Emily conceded. She was eating one-handed with the grace of decades of practice, but now she paused to set down her fork so that she could point with one finger for emphasis. “I’ll even grant that the political process needs people willing to shatter themselves on the rocks of conviction rather than countenance deception or deceit. We’d be better off if we had more of them, and the ones we do have have a responsibility to serve as the conscience of our partisan bloodletting. But they can do that effectively in isolation, maintaining our concepts of morality by serving as examples of it whether they ever accomplish anything else or not. But to be effective in the political process requires more than personal rectitude, however admirable that may be. You don’t have to become the enemy, but you do have to understand her, and that means understanding not simply her motives but her tactics. Because when you understand those two things you can design counter tactics. You don’t have to descend to the same level; you simply have to recognize what the opposition is up to and allow for it.”

“Willie understands that a lot better than I do,” Hamish admitted after a moment.

“Yes, he does, and that’s why someday he’ll be Prime Minister and you won’t. Which is probably just as well,” Emily said with another, wider smile. “On the other hand, much as I love Willie, he’d make a terrible admiral!”

All three of them laughed, but then Emily cocked her head and looked thoughtfully at Honor.