House of Steel The Honorverse Companion - By David Weber Page 0,80

needed to make it work, and that ‘someone else’ was Marvin Seltman and Baroness Stallman, along with the Earl of Howell and Jean Marrou.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Jonas shook himself, trying to understand. Those four names read like a Who’s Who of the inner power circles of the Liberal and Progressive Parties! And Howell? The man was a Crown Loyalist! He’d been one of the leading candidates to serve as Elizabeth’s regent before she chose her aunt!

“There’s no question,” Elizabeth said flatly. “Marrou’s turned Crown’s Evidence—she was . . . unaware of all of the ramifications of the plot—and when she realized how she’d been used, she brought us recordings of Stallman and Seltman admitting their guilt, and their motivations, which would be admissible in any court. No, Uncle Jonas. We have absolute, conclusive evidence of their guilt.

“And I can’t do a thing about it.”

“What?” Jonas stared at her. “But . . . but—” He sucked in a deep breath, feeling the sudden burn of tears in his eyes. “Damn it, Bethie—they killed Roger! They killed your father—my friend and my King! What do you mean you can’t do anything about it?” He shook his head savagely, vaguely stunned by the fury he felt—fury directed at the grieving young woman in front of him because there was no one else to direct it at—and showed his teeth. “Maybe you can’t, but I sure as hell can! I’ll kill the bastards with my own two hands!”

“No, you won’t,” she told him in that same, flat voice of hammered iron. “And you won’t for the same reasons Aunt Caitrin and Jacob convinced me I couldn’t challenge them to duels and shoot them. There are . . . factors involved that you don’t know about yet. Reasons we can’t take any official cognizance of Marrou’s evidence, whatever we want.”

“‘Official cognizance’?” He pounced on the qualifier like a wounded hexapuma, and she nodded.

“They won’t get off scot-free, I promise,” she told him. “They know I know exactly what happened, and all of them are going ‘into retirement’ starting tomorrow. They can give whatever reasons they damn well want, but if they ever so much as give another speech, far less ever try to enter politics again, it’ll be the last mistake they ever make. I may not be able to move officially against them at this moment, but that won’t be true forever, and they know it. If they ever give me the slightest excuse I’ll have them crushed, and they know that, too. But the reason I can’t take any open action against any of them now, Uncle Jonas, is because the whole thing was set up by the Peeps. Marrou and Howell didn’t know that, but Seltman and Stallman most certainly did know they were being paid off by Peep agents. Finding that out was what pushed Marrou into turning the others in, and we’ve got times, dates, and amounts on their payments. Chu and the Ministry of Justice got complete copies of their bank records. I’ve ordered them sealed under the Defense of the Realm Act, but those bastards know I’ll unseal them and use them to hang the lot of them if they push me.

“But we can’t do it yet. We just can’t go public, not when I know exactly how Parliament and public opinion would react. We don’t have all the details even now, but it’s obvious what the Peeps wanted, and they got it. Admiral Big Sky told me this morning that the Peoples Navy will be moving against Trevor’s Star sometime within the next two weeks, and we’re not in a position to do anything about it. Worse, if I make public accusations against the PRH, if the Star Kingdom’s people find out who murdered their King, they won’t leave the government any choice. We’d find ourselves at war with the Peoples Republic tomorrow . . . and we’d have to fight without the advantages of a forward position in Trevor’s Star.

“I can’t do that.” Her eyes gleamed with tears over a core of frozen steel. “Much as I want to, much as everything inside me screams to accuse them, to rip out their black hearts for murdering my father, I can’t. I can’t commit my entire Star Kingdom to a war we’ll probably lose, no matter how much I want to. So they’re going to get away with it. They’ve already gotten away with it, and I can’t stop them.”

“Oh, Bethie,” he whispered, reaching out to fold