“I doubt it very much, Your Grace,” Paxton said before White Haven could respond. Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged again. “Janacek has made his attitude towards Grayson abundantly and unfortunately clear. He doesn’t like us, he doesn’t trust us, and he finds the very thought of asking us for help humiliating and demeaning. I’m sure he’ll find some other justification for turning the offer down. He’ll probably convince himself that moving Grayson warships into the disputed area would constitute a provocative escalation. But if that’s not his reason, he’ll find another one.”

“Even if he wouldn’t,” Matthews said with a troubled expression, “I’m not certain how much exposure we could accept here at home, Your Grace. With the Protector’s Own away, we’re already short sixteen SD(P)s and six carriers. That’s a sizable chunk of the entire Navy. Allowing for units down for repair or overhaul, we’ve got approximately sixty available modern ships of the wall and only eleven carriers. That’s enough for me to feel completely confident about holding Grayson against anything our intelligence people estimate the Republic could throw at us. But with every ship we divert to someplace like Trevor’s Star, our margin of security drops. And if I were the Republic of Haven and I intended to go back to war against the Manticoran Alliance, then I’d certainly make taking out Grayson a high early priority.”

“He’s right there,” White Haven said unhappily.

“I don’t doubt he is,” Benjamin acknowledged. “But at the same time, I don’t really expect an early attack on us here.”

“Why not, Your Grace?” Matthews asked. It wasn’t a challenge, only a question.

“Because they’ve been trolling diplomatic bait in front of us for the last six months in an effort to get us to withdraw from the Alliance,” Benjamin said.

White Haven jerked upright in his chair, and even Matthews looked astonished, but Paxton only sat there looking inscrutable.

“Their efforts haven’t succeeded, Hamish,” Benjamin told the earl with just a hint of a smile. “And they certainly never suggested that military operations were imminent. But it’s fairly evident to me that they’ve been attempting to split the Alliance for some time, and I really couldn’t tell you how successful they may have been elsewhere. We’ve been politely noncommittal, but you may have noticed that we didn’t exactly blow the whistle on them to the rest of the Alliance and the galaxy at large, either. Hopefully, they think that’s because we’re covering our bets by keeping the door open for a possible future agreement. That there’s at least the possibility that we’re pissed off enough with High Ridge to cut our losses and sign up with them—or at least agree to stay out of their way—if the austen drops.

“That’s all problematical, of course. But what matters just now is that I read their diplomacy as implying that they’re very tightly focused on the Star Kingdom. Unless I’m very mistaken, they see Manticore’s defeat as the only means by which they’re going to be able to reclaim their occupied territory. They don’t want to fight anyone else. For that matter, I don’t think they want to fight the Star Kingdom; they just don’t think they have any other option.