Authors: Highland Fling
Rothwell House, next door, was the most imposing house on the Whitehall front, for it was the only one built symmetrically. All the others, erected on the very odd-shaped lots granted their owners after the Great Fire of London had claimed the palace, looked as if they had been cramped and crunched into place merely to fit their unusual lots, which indeed had been the case.
The barge moved past the old Privy Garden stairs, closed and useless since the building of Richmond House, and glided silently to the foot of the wide private stone steps shared by the duke and Rothwell. As Rothwell stepped from the barge to the landing, he said to the brawny young bargeman, “Take Sir Dudley to Whitehall Stairs, Oliver, and then take your orders from him for the rest of the day. I shan’t require you again before morning.”
“Begging your pardon, my lord,” Oliver said diffidently, “but my Lady Lydia ordered the barge for three o’clock, and it be well past that hour now.”
Rothwell smiled wryly. “I will speak to her. I daresay she will decide that she does not need you now after all.”
Ryder raised a mocking eyebrow, but Rothwell chose not to acknowledge it and said only, “If you change your mind about dinner, my friend, I can promise you will be made welcome.”
“Thank you,” Ryder said. “I wish now that I could accept, for I believe the fireworks might well rival those his grace of Richmond provided last spring to celebrate the Peace.”
Still smiling, Rothwell shook his head, but as he turned to mount the steps, he heard Oliver say naively, “Be that true, Sir Dudley, sir? Will there be fireworks tonight? Last May, when his grace set the night afire, ’twere a splendid sight! Why, there was thousands gathered here to see it, and any number of folks fell right into the river, so excited did they get.”
Ryder’s reply was inaudible to the now grinning Rothwell, and by the time he had unlocked the tall wooden gate at the top of the stairs, the barge was moving swiftly away on the current and their voices had been lost among the other noises of the waterfront. Passing through the gate, Rothwell entered a high-walled passageway, at the end of which were two doors in the side walls facing each other. The one on the left led to Richmond House terrace, the one on the right to Rothwell House, and since these were the river entrances to two great houses, each was guarded by a liveried and powdered footman. The two young men, warned by the sound of his key in the lock, stood stiffly erect until the one on the right moved to open the door for him.
Straight ahead was another door, leading to the ground floor of the house. Had his stepmother not been in residence, Rothwell would have used it, since a service stair nearby led right to his bedchamber. But Lady Rothwell would not only have thought such an unceremonious entry to his own house unseemly; she would have commented upon it at tedious length. Therefore he mounted a second flight of stone steps to the terrace and entered the house through double French doors beneath an imposing portico. This entry took him straight into the grand saloon, a wide, elegantly furnished room with a high gilded and painted ceiling and twin marble chimney pieces at each end. Two maroon-and-gold-liveried footmen wearing formal, powdered tie-wigs stood ready to take his hat, stick, and gloves.
“Frederick, where will I find the Lady Lydia?” he asked the older of the two.
“In the long gallery, my lord, looking at pictures.”
Only a long habit of concealing his thoughts kept Rothwell from raising his eyebrows at this information. Not only had his bargeman’s words led him to think his flighty half-sister would be watching anxiously for the return of the barge, but her interest in the paintings and family portraits that lined the long gallery had hitherto been nonexistent.
Turning toward the central stair hall, he paused and added as an afterthought, “Is Lady Rothwell in her sitting room?”
“No, my lord. She has begun to dress for dinner. She said to remind you that your guests will begin to arrive before six.”
“Thank you,” Rothwell said, hoping his relief that he would not immediately encounter his stepmother could not be heard in his voice. Stray shafts of late afternoon sunlight glinted on the polished East Indian mahogany bannister of the stairs that swooped invitingly upward in a graceful spiral, lighted from above by windows encircling the high dome. Rothwell went straight on to the main entrance hall on the Privy Garden side of the house, then turned right and passed through his bookroom to the long gallery at the north end of the house.
Lady Lydia Carsley, a willowy young woman in her eighteenth year, her long curls as black and glistening as polished obsidian, stood by a window that provided an oblique view of the river but gazed toward a door at the far end of the room. She jumped when he spoke her name, and whirled in a rustle of panniers and petticoats to face him. Her dark brown eyes widened in her pretty, oval face.
“Ned, ’pon rep, how you startled me! I felt sure you would come to me through Mama’s sitting room.”
“You were wrong, my dear.”
“Lud, ’tis of no account. I’m excessively glad to see you.”
“Are you? I bring you bad news. You may not order up my barge whenever the fancy strikes you to do so.
In point of fact, I forbid you to use it at all without my express permission.”
She waved his words away with a gesture. “Oh, I knew when Oliver said he was to fetch you at Parliament Stairs that there was no use thinking I might have time to visit James today. For that is all I was going to do, you know. I give you my word.”
“Only James, Lyddy? Not his lamentable companion as well?”
She shrugged eloquently. “Well, of course, if Lord Thomas had chanced to be at home …” Encountering his hard gaze, she faltered, then added hastily, “I do not know why you must be so cruel. The poor man cannot help being in love with me, you know, and he has such affecting sensibilities. Why, he even tried to end his life when I failed to wear a posy he had sent me.”
“So I heard,” Rothwell said dryly. “A pity he didn’t use a rope instead of one of your hair ribbons, my dear. The silly clunch must have known the ribbon would not bear his weight.”
“He did
not
know,” she retorted indignantly, “and he was utterly unconscious when James found him. Indeed, he was lucky it was James who did, too, because of course James knew precisely what to do for him, which someone else might not.”
“He is certainly lucky I did not find him.”
“Yes, he is,” she said tartly, “for you do not know nearly as much about reviving people and helping them as James does, because he has learned a great deal about such things from his friend Dr. Brockelby. Indeed, had James not been nobly born, he might have liked to become a doctor himself.”
“His birth didn’t stop him from becoming a painter,” Rothwell pointed out.
“A
Court
painter,” Lydia said quickly. “Even Mama does not think that is such a bad thing to be, for he will very likely make a great deal of money someday.”
Rothwell was tempted but decided there was nothing to be gained by telling his half-sister that she and her mama were laboring under a slight misconception. Instead he said, “James’s noble pride certainly does not keep him from coming to me whenever he runs out of money. Is that what stirred you to this notion of visiting him today, Lyddy? Did he send for you?”
“No. In fact …” She hesitated, and to his surprise, a glint of mischief lit her eyes. “Ned, do you recall the last time James was here—before you two quarreled and he stormed out of the house—when Mama was showing us the family book?”
Rothwell grimaced. His stepmother was inordinately fond of regaling her friends and family with the fact that both she and her late lord were descended from Edward I by his two queens. When a fashion developed for having one’s pedigree professionally detailed, Lady Rothwell had instantly ordered theirs done, and the entire lineage had been duly painted in a book. The primary illustration was nothing so common as a genealogical tree either. Instead she had devised a pineapple plant sprouting out of a basket on which King Edward’s head was painted. All the intermediate arms were painted on the leaves, and the fruit had been sliced open to reveal busts of the late earl and herself flanked by smaller portraits of their offspring.
Remembering, Rothwell said, “Ridiculous stuff.”
Lydia chuckled. “You only say that because James’s portrait is much more flattering than your own.”
“Mine is scarcely even visible,” he reminded her, not mentioning the much more painful fact that his mother’s picture had been omitted. “The thing looks like an afterthought.”
“It probably was one,” she agreed, “but Mama could scarcely leave you out altogether, since you are the present earl.”
“And since I paid for her pretty book.”
“Did you? Yes, I suppose you did. But Mama is so taken up now with genealogy that she bored on and on to James when he was here that day, and you know how he is when his sense of the ridiculous is stirred. Look.” She gestured toward the wall behind him, and Rothwell’s gaze followed the gesture.
Two new portraits had taken pride of place among the many covering the gallery wall. The first, showing a voluptuous female reclining against a tree and smiling seductively at a snake dangling from a nearby branch, with an apple in its mouth, was labeled
Eve de Carsley.
Its mate depicted a slender, extremely foolish-looking male, his privy parts hidden by a convenient bit of shrubbery, who gazed up in bewilderment at a stern-looking face formed in dark thunderclouds surrounded by lightning bolts. That portrait was labeled
Adam de Carsley.
Rothwell stared at the pair for one long, pregnant moment, then burst into laughter so hard that he soon had tears streaming down his face, and had to hold his aching sides.
Lydia watched him with a crooked smile and did not attempt to speak until he had stopped laughing. Then she said matter-of-factly, “It is very funny, of course, but what are we to do, Ned? That is what I meant to ask James today, for you must see that we cannot leave them there. Mama thinks he stopped by whilst you were out today only to bring her more distillation of nightshade for her complexion. She would be utterly mortified if any of her guests saw these pictures. Why, she has invited Lady Townshend and the Countess of Portland to dine tonight.”
Stifling a last chuckle, Rothwell straightened and said, “I’ll take care of them, Lyddy. Don’t trouble yourself.”
“Very well. But, Ned—” She looked directly at him. “You will keep them safe, won’t you? They are very well done.”
He reached out and pinched her chin. “I will, puss. I think they are magnificent. Should you not be dressing?”
She smiled. “It does not take me two hours to dress, sir, but I will leave you now. I have letters to write.” And, still smiling sunnily, she turned toward Lady Rothwell’s sitting room.
“Lydia.” When she glanced back, he said gently, “No letters to Lord Thomas Deverill—”
“As if I would!” She tossed her head.
“And no more flirting with Oliver,” he added grimly. “I do not want to have to dismiss the lad for allowing his head to be turned by a saucy minx who ought to know better.”
She tilted her head curiously. “Would you really turn him off, Ned?”
“Instantly and without a character.”
“Oh.” She thought for a moment. “That would hardly be fair to him, sir.”
“No, it would not. But it would be necessary.”
Nibbling her lower lip, she turned away more slowly this time, and he was sorry to see the light fade from her expression, but he hoped she would take his warning to heart.
When she had gone, he glanced back at the two portraits and grinned. There were times when he liked his irresponsible but undeniably talented half-brother very much indeed.
Ringing for a footman and giving orders that the two pictures should be rehung in his own bedchamber, he went back to the bookroom, where he was soon poring over a map of Britain in an attempt to discover if his newest and most distant estate was really as far from the Isle of Skye as Bristol was from Oxford.
London, September 1750
H
AD THE RATTLE OF IRON COACH
wheels on the cobblestone streets not been enough to make Maggie want to cover her ears, certainly the acrimonious bickering between the coachman on the box and her companion, leaning precariously out the coach window to shriek insults at him, would have been more than enough.
“Fiona, sit down and be quiet,” Maggie said, raising her voice in an attempt to make herself heard above the din. It was useless. Street cries mingled with the argument between the two, underscored by the clatter of wheels and hooves, and her coach was by no means the only one racketing along the crowded street.
She was in London at last. In fact, once the reluctant MacDrumin had at last been persuaded to let her travel to England, the arrangements had been made quickly and her journey had been swift. Indeed, if she was not mistaken, today was Friday, the eleventh of September, and Bonnie Prince Charlie would arrive in London within the week. Safely tucked inside her corset, crackling at times against her ribcage when she moved, were the messages she carried from numerous Highland leaders, to present to the prince.
She had feared her journey would take much longer, for as if to recover his sense of dominance after her arguments had worn him down, MacDrumin had flatly forbidden her to spend so much as a single night at a public inn. Instead he had arranged for her to be passed like a secret parcel from one Jacobite family to another, and had told anyone expressing interest in her travel preparations that his daughter was bound for Edinburgh to visit friends. Maggie had enjoyed her trip and had learned a great deal, although not all of the news she received had been welcome.
In the homes she visited in Scotland, support for the prince had seemed unexpectedly weak, but she remained certain that once his banner was raised again, Scottish Jacobites would rally to his cause; however, the further south she traveled, the less sincere had his sympathizers seemed. Though they enjoyed having “secrets” and never failed to hold their wineglasses over their water glasses when toasting the king—thus toasting the king
over the water
and not German George—these were but gestures and promised little true support. Moreover, and much more dismaying, was the fact that the ladies she met were far more loyal to the Stewart cause than their menfolk were. The men had been more apt to warn her of the dangers of her journey than to applaud her purpose. Nevertheless, everyone had been genuinely excited to know that the prince intended to slip secretly into London to meet with his supporters there.