Authors: Highland Fling
“He’ll leave.” Rothwell moved to the fireplace to gaze into the glass above the mantel. Ryder was correct in suggesting that he was not so obsessed by fashion as he pretended to be, but the pose amused him. It was a habit he had developed years before, to seem to focus his attention upon his appearance when he wanted to think. He paid no heed to his image in the glass now, for not only were his chiseled features, pale complexion, thin-lipped mouth, gray eyes, and the heavy dark brows that nearly met over his aquiline nose perfectly familiar to him but his well-powdered locks were perfectly in order, and since he scorned to use the aids to complexion that many of his fellows dabbed upon their faces, there was nothing to be altered. Instead he looked past his reflection to that of his friend’s lanky, relaxed form, and catching his eye, added, “MacKinnon’s a canny old devil and knows full well that your lot will keep a sharp eye on him. He’ll not jeopardize his colleagues’ safety by drawing undue attention to their activities, though he cannot have the slightest notion that you’ve got friends with Charlie now just as you did five years ago, keeping you apprised of his every move.”
“As a matter of fact,” Ryder said, “our best man’s back in England, and we’ve no one else with the prince who’s nearly as reliable. Seems Charlie’s thinking of paying London a secret visit, and our man thought he would do better to be in place here well beforehand.
He won’t be of much use to us in any event, I’m afraid, because his family spends much of the year in London, and he writes that he might have difficulty eluding them if he tries to go creeping about the city with Charles Stewart.”
“He writes? Have you not spoken with this paragon?”
“I don’t know who he is. He began writing us some time ago, and his accounts proved accurate, but he’s never given his name.”
“How very odd,” Rothwell said. “Still, I doubt that Charles and his Jacobites can outwit your people. In the past, they have proved to be rather foolish, though I confess I did underestimate MacKinnon. I’d no notion any Scotsman would prove to be so well educated or so sure of himself, but he’s clearly a gentleman.”
“I shouldn’t be surprised to learn that he’d done the grand tour with your father and mine,” Ryder said dryly. “Certainly, he’s a deep one. What possessed you to ask him about MacDrumin?” Before Rothwell could reply, he snapped his fingers and said, “Never mind, I have it. The MacDrumin land was your reward for your bits of gracious assistance during the late trouble, was it not? Were you hoping MacKinnon would give you information to help you collect your rents? I’m told that many of the new English landlords have had undue difficulty in that regard.”
“I haven’t.” Rothwell turned from the mirror. “My rents arrive with admirable regularity. In point of fact, I am told that my factor finds it necessary to visit only one of my tenants, the MacDrumin himself, in order to collect them.”
Ryder chuckled. “I’d call such exemplary behavior damned suspicious, Ned. Like as not, the old boy is smuggling Highland whisky, since I cannot think of anything else that would produce such a regular income in these troubled times. God knows, land in the Highlands is rarely fertile enough to raise anything but a few cows or sheep. Many English landlords cannot house or feed their Highland tenants, let alone collect their rents. Moreover, those remote glens have more than their share of smugglers. They know very well that they are supposed to pay duty on any whisky they produce, but to a man they refuse to do so. Perhaps I ought to order my lads to look into the goings-on in Glen Drumin.”
“Not unless you want some of your more imaginative exploits at school made public, dear boy,” Rothwell said with a direct look. “I need those rents. You’ve no notion how expensive Lydia has become, especially since my stepmama is determined to marry her off to a wealthy peer of the realm—and that in the face of Lydia’s latest and most absurd preference for a quite ineligible friend of her scapegrace brother. Moreover, I’ve had to order more satins and velvets for myself, so as not to forfeit my well-merited reputation for sartorial splendor during the upcoming Season. Would you beggar me, Ryder?”
“It would take much more than the loss of your Scottish rents to do that,” Ryder said, shaking his head, “but I am perfectly willing to leave it alone for now. No time to devote to it, in any case, till we’ve settled with the young Pretender. What is it about that man that wins him so many followers? I have never comprehended his attraction.”
Rothwell shrugged. “An aura of romance, I suppose, and a strong dose of wishful thinking. It certainly cannot be his beauty. He looks more Polish than English, poor lad.”
“That is scarcely surprising, since his mother is Polish, but it ain’t his looks that concern me. The reason he is said to be bound for London from Antwerp is that he is obsessed with this notion of his to restore the Stewarts to the throne, and ’tis said he’s already ordered twenty-six thousand muskets delivered to his followers here, so who is to say he will not succeed in taking the city this time around?”
Rothwell’s smile was weary. “Unless he has learned wisdom these past four years—and we’ve no reason to think he has—he is the same thoughtless upstart he was in forty-five, when he was so anxious to establish his authority that he constantly brushed aside the excellent advice of older, more experienced men.”
“I’ll grant you he cannot bear opposition,” Ryder said. “It’s that fact added to the fact that his only thought in life is to restore the Stewarts to the throne that concerns me. He is not alone in his objective, Ned. He has a host of followers.”
“True, but not all of them are in full agreement with the objective, my friend. Recollect MacKinnon’s attitude, if you will. That old man still thinks of England as a foreign country fifty years after unification, and has no interest in the English throne. He wants a Stewart, but on the throne of an independent Scotland. Charles Edward Stewart yearns to rule London.”
“But that is just what I fear. Don’t you remember what it was like before, with all London in a panic from the moment the Scots attacked in the north? The whole city quaked while our army advanced to meet them.”
“And it all came to naught,” Rothwell said easily, “just as it will this time. People were frightened then because they believed the uprising was instigated by the French king, with whom, as you will recall, we were still at odds.”
“Well, there was some truth to that.”
“There was indeed.” Rothwell picked up his gloves and began to put them on. “Will you come home with me? My stepmother is entertaining tonight, and I should be glad of your support.”
“Lady Rothwell wouldn’t,” Ryder retorted. “Not only does she not admire politicians on the best of days but my unexpected presence would upset her numbers at table.”
“It is still my table, I believe,” Rothwell said, his voice as soft as velvet. He reached for his tricorn and walking stick.
Though most men who knew him would have shifted ground hastily at hearing that tone, Ryder said calmly, “You need not twitch your temper at me, Ned, for it don’t impress me at all in such a case as this one. I know it is your table, and I do not doubt that you would insure my welcome there, but her ladyship wouldn’t like it, and I do not care to be at outs with her.”
“Angling for my sister, Ryder? She won’t have you.”
Ryder flushed. “I am far too old for Lady Lydia, and even if I were a fellow for the ladies—which I am not—I am amply aware that my suit would not be well received at Rothwell House.”
“Don’t be an ass. I’d accept it in a moment. Do you want the chit? By God, I shall make you a present of her, and welcome. Go and purchase a special license at once, I beg you, and we shall see to the matter before dinner.”
Ryder laughed and began to gather his things in preparation to depart. “You are absurd, Ned. I have far too much to do to burden myself with a wife and family. Moreover, did you not say a moment ago that Lydia is already enamored of someone?”
“A mere puppy, not yet dry behind the ears. Having no doubt reduced his sire to penury by enjoying a lengthy grand tour, upon which he appears to have learned nothing worth knowing, he now lives with James in that ridiculous house of his on the bridge.”
“Another artist?”
“No, a parasite. For all he’s the son of a marquess, I doubt he has tuppence to rub together, but he is handsome and possessed of excellent address. A Trinity man, I believe.”
“I see how it is,” Ryder said with a grin. “You agree with Horace Walpole that Trinity’s a nursery of nonsense and bigotry.”
“Do not speak to me of Walpoles. Even the most harmless amongst them sports a damned dangerous tongue. Now, blast your eyes, do you come home with me?”
“I shall walk with you, if you like, but I cannot linger at Rothwell House, for I am due in Whitehall within the hour. Indeed, the only reason I accompany you at all is that I hope you will be so generous as to lend me the use of your barge.”
“It will be at the stairs now, I believe.” He raised an eyebrow. “I wonder if my dignity will suffer if we walk so far as that. Perhaps I should send some fellow to summon a chair.”
Since the distance from the Parliament offices to Parliament Stairs was less than a hundred yards, Ryder chuckled. “You will survive the walking, my decrepit friend, more easily than the poor chairmen would survive carrying you. Just don’t topple off the heels of your pretty shoes.”
Rothwell extended a large foot, displaying a silver-buckled black shoe. “It is not the shoe you must admire, my dear, but the elegant clocked stockings that encase my noble legs.”
“Come along, Ned, before I forget that you are not the pompous Jack Straw you delight in pretending to be, and say something that will actually stir that damnable temper of yours.”
“Nonsense, I have no temper. I am but a simple, placid fellow, the gentlest of mortals.”
“And I am the King of England.”
“Dear, dear,” Rothwell complained, “not another one. We’ve had far too many spurious claimants to the throne already.”
Opening the door, Ryder bowed slightly and extended a hand in pointed invitation.
Amused, Rothwell stepped past him, then waited in the dimly lit corridor while he locked the door. The office they had used was on the upper floor of a converted chapel of St. Stephen’s Church, near the chamber that served as Britain’s House of Commons. The door to that room was open when they passed it, and Rothwell glanced inside, thinking, as he had so often before, that it was much too plain for its purpose, too much like a Dissenters’ chapel in some provincial town. Wooden wainscoting covered the frescoed walls, and the great tracery window at the far end, once embellished with the finest stained glass, had been replaced in the previous century with three round-headed windows. Iron props with disproportionately large Corinthian capitals supported the balconies, their blatant ugliness reminding him of the single occasion when his half-brother, James, had deigned to accompany him to view the buildings where the laws and destiny of Britain were debated.
James had been singularly disappointed, his artist’s soul cringing at their smallness and insignificance. Even the House of Lords, on the upper floor of an irregular-shaped building slightly to the south of St. Stephen’s, had failed to impress him. Rothwell, who spent much of his time there each year, particularly from January until June, personally thought the House of Lords regal by comparison to the Commons. But even the superb Flemish tapestries that lined the walls, illustrating the Armada and presented to England by Holland in the days of Queen Elizabeth, had failed to please James. The most he would say was that the gilded throne with its red velvet canopy, surmounted by the Royal Arms, was nicely set off against the tapestries’ delicate colors, and that, with the whole scene lighted by the hundreds of candles in their chased silver sconces, and the peers of the realm wearing their red velvet robes of state, the total effect would be impressive. He had never, however, expressed the slightest desire to reproduce that scene on canvas.
Rothwell and Ryder emerged into Old Palace Yard from St. Stephen’s by way of a dark and irregular passage much like the approach to a stage door, and made their way to a second passage leading from the top of Abingdon Street down to the Thames and Parliament Stairs, where Rothwell’s bargeman had insinuated his craft through a myriad of others to the nearest position.
Settling themselves on two of the barge’s four comfortable seats, the two men sat back, each silent for a time with his own thoughts. Once the barge drifted to the center of the river, Rothwell could see Westminster Hall with the Abbey towers behind it, and as they slipped beneath Westminster Bridge—nearly finished now and due to open in less than three months—his thoughts returned to MacKinnon of MacKinnon. Little did the old man realize the machinations that had been necessary to secure his release. One had to admire his pluck, however, for he had not lost a jot of his dignity in prison.
Shrill feminine laughter rising above the usual noises of the river drew Rothwell’s attention, and he saw several maids hanging out windows of the houses in Dorset Court, exchanging remarks with watermen near the shore. Ahead, beyond the timber and stone wharves that provided materials for the rapidly expanding City of Westminster, the low stone walls and semicircular bastions of old Whitehall Palace still survived along the riverside, though the magnificent palace to which they belonged had long since perished in flames. Between the wall and the beautiful old Privy Garden, in what was now the most fashionable residential spot in London, lay a medley of mansions of all shapes and sizes, built on the ruins of the palace and inhabited by noblemen and gentlemen of the first quality and the nicest tastes. Most were intimates of the king and held appointments at his court.
As the barge passed Todd’s Wharf and began angling nearer the shore, the first of these great houses loomed above them. Belonging to the recently deceased Duke of Richmond, it looked more like a series of houses, for its parts were connected like a staircase lying on its side. The whole assemblage was fronted by a huge iron-railed stone terrace that overlooked the river.