No

prevented it. And don't you dare tell me that he couldn't have, or suggest that I should put his high and noble anti-slavery principles above the debt I owe my own dead!"
Du Havel opened his mouth, then paused and cocked his head. He considered her thoughtfully for a moment, and a part of his mind noted her anger and decided it was probably a much healthier reaction than her despair had been. But that wasn't why he paused. No, he paused because she was right, he realized.
"Why didn't you oppose him from the beginning, then?" he asked after a moment, instead of what he'd been about to say, and Ruth sighed.
"Because I couldn't," she said, in a tone which mingled bitterness