Maxwell looked at her, wondering if she realized just how bitter (and exhausted) she sounded at that instant. Not that he was surprised to hear it.
The House of Lord's power to initiate finance bills was only part of its advantage in controlling the power of the purse in the Star Kingdom. In addition, any bill which actually passed had to pass in the final form approved by the Lords. That meant that, as Honor had just complained, the Lords could effectively strip out any Commons-sponsored amendment of which it disapproved and require a straight up-or-down vote on its own version of any financial bill. Under normal circumstances, the Commons still had quite a lot of say-so, since it could always refuse to approve the Lords' final version andespeciallyrefuse approval for any extraordinary funding measures required to support the Lords' budgets. But these circumstances weren't normal. The "extraordinary funding measures" were already in place, and the authority the Lords also enjoyed to pass special financial enabling authority for core government services on an emergency basis even without the Commons' approval in the event of a budgetary standoff was the icing on the cake.
Of course, prudent prime ministers were usually careful not to overstrain their weapons. For the Lords to ride roughshod over the Commons required a situation in which a sufficiently sizable piece of the electorate would be prepared to blame the Commons for failure to achieve compromise. Under those circumstances, the house which had to stand for reelection faced a fatal disadvantage, but if the Lords had been foolish enough to court situations in which they would be blamed for the ensuing shutdown of most government services, the long-term resentment might have allowed the Crown to strip the senior house of the power of the purse long ago.
That was precisely why the High Ridge Government had been so assiduously attempting to buy public support ... and what had made Duchess Harrington and Earl White Haven so valuable as the Opposition's spokespeople in the House of Lords. Where the naval budgets, in particular, were concerned, their voices carried a great deal of weight with the electorate.
And it was also why High Ridge and his allies wanted so desperately to reduce their effectiveness by any means possible,
The members of the Government themselves had to be extremely careful about seeming to pick personal quarrels with the two most famous heroes of the war against the Peeps. But that only required them to be more inventive and delegate attacks to suitably distanced henchmen. Nor did it do a thing to restrain the Government-sponsored "commentators" and 'faxes or the idiots who actually believed them, and Lady Harrington's cumulative exhaustion was beginning to show.
Of course, it wasn't as if she hadn't had more than her fair share of experience with partisan press coverage, both in the Star Kingdom and on Grayson, and she handled it with a degree of outward calm Maxwell was privately certain was mostly mask. He'd come to know her well enough over the past few T-years to recognize that for all her ability to project serenity and calm, her temper was probably at least as dangerous as that of the Queen herself. It seemed to be more difficult to make her lose it, but he would have been very hesitant to suggest that anything at all was beyond her once she did...as the ghosts of Pavel Young and Denver Summervale could have attested.
In a way, it was even worse for her than for either of the Alexander brothers, Maxwell reflected. At least High Ridge and his cronies regarded them as representing only a single dangerous opponent, whereas it was no secret at all that Lady Harrington's contributions to debates in the Lords represented the views of Protector Benjamin, as well as those of Elizabeth III.
Neither of whom gave a thimble of spit in a blast furnace for Baron High Ridge and his ministerial colleagues.
The attorney started to say something, then changed his mind. He could hardly tell her anything she didn't already know. And even if he could have, it really wasn't his place to offer her unsolicited political advice or confidences, whatever rumors he might have been picking up.
Besides, he reflected, there's a better way to do it...assuming I decide I have any business sticking my oar into her private life, that is. I won't have to tell her a thing; I'll just have to have a word with Miranda or Mac. Let them figure out how to bring it up with her.
"Lord Alexander and Earl White Haven have arrived, Your Grace."
"Thank you, Mac. Ask them to come straight in, would you please?"
"Of course, Your Grace."
Honor put her reader on hold, freezing it on the third page of Midshipwoman Zilwicki's analysis of the Battle of Cape St. Vincent, and looked up with a smile. James MacGuiness, the only steward in the entire Royal Manticoran Navy who wasn't actually in the Navy, smiled back at her, and then bent his head in an almost-bow before he withdrew from her study. She watched him go fondly, fully aware of how critical to the smooth functioning of her life he'd become over the past twenty T-years.
She glanced across at Nimitz, draped in splendid isolation across the double perch he normally shared with his mate. It was Thursday, and Samantha was absent, accompanying Miranda and Farragut to the Andreas Venizelos Academy, the orphanage and private school Honor had endowed for the children of war dead, Manticoran and Grayson alike. AVA had campuses in both the Star Kingdom and Yeltsin, and Miranda, as Honor's chief of staff, deputized for her regularly, since the press of other duties consumed more and more of her own time. The kids idolized Nimitz, Samantha, Farragut, and treecats in general, and all 'cats loved to spend time with children, whether they had four limbs or six. It was a treat all of the 'cats looked forward to, and Nimitz often went with the others even when Honor couldn't. But not when something like today's meeting was on his person's schedule.
She looked past the 'cat and caught a glimpse of LaFollet, outside the study door standing his post even here, before it closed behind MacGuiness. Then she pushed herself up out of her chair and crossed to stand in the enlarged bay window that overhung her mansion's landscaped grounds like a sort of hanging turret. The window's outer, floor-to-ceiling crystoplast wall looked out over the bright blue beauty of Jason Bay, and she allowed herself a moment to enjoy the view afresh, then turned back to face the door once more and twitched her Grayson-style gown and vest straight.
Over the years, she'd become completely accustomed to the traditional Grayson garments. She still considered them thoroughly useless for anything except looking ornamental, but she'd been forced to admit that looking ornamental wasn't necessarily a bad thing. And there was another reason to wear them almost constantly here in the Star Kingdom, when she wasn't in uniform, at least. They helped remind everyone, including herself, of who else she was...and of how much the Star Kingdom and the entire Manticoran Alliance owed the people of her adoptive planet.
Yet another point that ass High Ridge seems able to effortlessly ignore...or worse, she thought bitterly, then brushed the familiar surge of anger aside. This wasn't the time for her to be storing up still more mental reasons to go for the Prime Minister's throat.
MacGuiness returned a very few moments later with Hamish and William Alexander.
"Earl White Haven and Lord Alexander, Your Grace," Honor's steward and majordomo murmured, and withdrew, closing the polished wooden doors quietly behind him.
"Hamish. Willie."
Honor crossed the room to them, holding out her hand in welcome, and it no longer seemed odd to her to greet them so informally. Every once in a while she experienced a sudden sense of unreality when she heard herself addressing her Queen or Benjamin Mayhew by their given names, but even those moments were becoming fewer and further between. In an odd sort of way, she remained fully aware of who she was and where she'd come from even as she found herself moving more and more naturally at the very pinnacle of political power in two separate star nations. She seldom thought consciously about it, but when the realization crossed her awareness, she recognized the way in which her belated admission to the innermost councils of her two nations shaped her perspective.