“I believe you,” he said with quiet sincerity. “But the problem is proving it.”

“Proving it!” White Haven snarled.

“I know. I know!” William shook his head again, his expression almost as angry as his brother’s. “You shouldn’t have to prove a damned thing, either of you! But you know as well as I do that that isn’t how it works against character assassination like this, and there isn’t any way to prove a negative. Particularly not when the two of you have worked so closely together. We—all of us—have overspent the political capital your accomplishments have generated. We’ve deliberately thrown you together, focused the public’s perception on the two of you as a team. That’s the way the voters think of you now, and that’s actually going to make it easier for them to believe this crap. Especially when someone starts talking about how much time you’ve spent alone with each other.”

“Alone?” Both Alexanders turned back to Honor at her one-word question. “I’m a steadholder, Willie. I never go anywhere without my armsmen—I can’t, under Grayson law! When have the two of us ever really had a chance to be ‘alone’ together?”

“You know better than that, Honor,” William said almost compassionately. “First, no one would believe you couldn’t have slipped away, even from Andrew, if you truly wanted to. And they wouldn’t believe it because you know as well as I do that they’d be right; you could have. And second, even if that weren’t true, do you think anyone would doubt for a moment that every one of your armsmen would lie the Devil out of Hell if you asked him to?”

It was her turn to glare back at him, but then she felt her shoulders sag, because he was right. Of course he was, and she’d known it before she even opened her mouth. It was only a drowning woman searching frantically for any straw to grasp.

“So what do we do now?” she asked bitterly. “Can they really get away with reducing the fight for political control of the entire Star Kingdom to something as petty and poisonous as an invented rumor of infidelity?”

“No,” William replied. “They can’t reduce the entire fight to something like that, Honor. But that isn’t really what you were asking, and the truth is that you and Hamish have been two of our most potent weapons… and they can destroy our ability to use either of you against them effectively. It’s stupid and vicious and small minded, but that doesn’t mean it won’t work. At the very least, it’s almost certain to cripple you two while they drive through the naval cuts and the budget, but I’m sure they’re hoping for a much longer-term effect, as well. And the beauty of it, from their perspective, is that the more vehemently you or any of your friends and allies deny it, the more surely a certain percentage of the electorate will believe it must be true.”

Honor stared at him, then looked back at Hamish and saw the matching anguish in his eyes. His emotions were too painful for her to endure, and so she closed her empathic sense down until she felt only Nimitz, only his love and concern… and his helpless inability to fight this foe for her. She pulled her eyes away from Hamish, returning them to William, and fought to keep her shoulders from sagging still further.