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 unannounced, especially when he was grappling with something like the latest report from a lunatic like Harrington.

“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.