Alec Mackenzie's Art of Seduction (Mackenzies & McBrides #9)(24)
Conversation was seemingly random, though Alec knew Lady Flora directed it with the ease of a master.
At the moment, they were discussing the Venetian painter, Giovanni Canaletto, now a resident of London and painting scenes of London vistas. Lady Flora owned one of his paintings of the Grand Canal in Venice, which hung prominently on the wall opposite her. She’d not seated herself under it, because those who should be looking at her might be tempted to admire the painting instead.
“He’s come to London because his customers have ceased traveling to Vienna,” one gentleman proclaimed. “Too much war on the Continent. Always bad for travel, war, not to mention business.”
Alec studied the portly lord who sat steadily consuming food and drink. The man had earlier proclaimed he detested all travel but that between London and his estate in Essex. He’d been invited to the salon because he was a self-proclaimed wit—Alec had yet to hear him say anything witty—and because he sat in on trials of Jacobite prisoners.
“Yes, it’s better in jolly old, peaceful England, is it not?” another gentleman said, his voice languid, but he gave the lordship a cold stare. “Where all war is in the past, and we never have to worry about our fields being overrun by armies while we sit on our bums eating ices.”
“Exactly,” the lordship answered.
“No armies overrunning your Essex estate anyway,” another gentleman said. “Bloody Scots overran mine in Derbyshire. Picked it clean, stationed troops in my outbuildings. We still haven’t cleared up the mess.”
A few gentlemen nodded agreement. One of the ladies laughed, a shrill sound that stabbed at Alec’s ears. “Gracious, how gloomy you all are. The Scots were easily routed and sent home. Besides, I didn’t mind all those handsome men riding down upon us, skirts flying up to show all they had. Such a change from a stuffy Englishman.”
“And what stuffy Englishmen are you disparaging, madam?” a younger man asked, turning in his seat to eye her. He wore silk stockings, blue satin breeches, and a long dark blue velvet coat sewn with jewels. His face was whitened with powder, and he wore no wig, his own hair powdered and pulled back into a tail held with a drooping black velvet ribbon. “Not those in this room, I hope.”
“Oh, yes,” the lady said, her eyes sparkling. “I know exactly who I mean.”
Mrs. Reynolds broke in. “Forgive us, dear sir. We ladies grow too used to the tame and the civilized. The barbaric excites us. Give us time and we will return to enjoying the civilized.”
“Barbaric is correct,” the young dandy replied with a sniff. “Those Highlanders ran about in their tartan cloth full of lice, yelling like the devils they are, murdering all in their path. Only the prince was in any way civilized, something of a beauty I understand.”
“A youthful beauty,” Mrs. Reynolds replied. “I prefer a gentleman who has a little more experience of life.”
That mollified the gentlemen in the room, most of whom were well thirty.
Alec dared meet Celia’s gaze and found her with her fan held to her mouth. The light in her eyes told him she laughed behind it.
He wanted to send her a wide smile, but he kept it a twitch of lips. Her cheekbones flushed brighter.
The talk turned to Prince Charles Stuart—his dress, his manners, his strategies, his charisma. Alec remembered the man too—his pride and arrogance, his inexperience and extreme sense of self-importance that got thousands of good men, including Duncan and Angus, killed.
They discussed Charles’s decision to retreat to Scotland. Because these were men and women of some worldliness, they didn’t immediately assume the prince had been quaking in his shoes at the idea of stronger fighting if his followers tried to take London. The present company debated the question of why the Scots had turned back, speculating about the prince’s own prudence, false reports that French assistance was no longer forthcoming, news that Cumberland’s army was on the move.
Alec knew exactly why they’d turned back. Lord George Murray had realized the futility of trying to take the whole of Britain at once, and had encouraged the retreat to secure Scotland first. If they’d continued, they’d have been cut off from the north and slaughtered to a man. Besides which, the troops, farmers all, had wanted to return to Scotland to secure their homes for the winter. In addition, by that time, enchantment with the young prince had started to wear thin.
Alec hadn’t agreed with the adamant MacDonalds and Camerons, or even Mackenzies, who’d backed Charles, but Murray’s understanding of Highlanders and what the King’s Army could do had saved many a man—at least until Culloden.
None of the gentlemen in this room had ever been soldiers, none had fought either for or against Charles Stuart. None knew of the long marches in the cold, the weariness that seeped into the bones, the energy that had to be dredged up to fight, to live, to defeat those trying their best to kill you.
These men didn’t know the brutal reality of looking into the face of a friend, gray and lifeless, or finding pieces of the man you’d drunk whisky with the night before scattered over the grass, the wonder that those pieces weren’t you.
They didn’t know the anguish of a brother dying in front of them, begging to be killed to spare him the indignity of being gutted by enemy bayonets. Never knew the grief in a father’s eyes when he shot his firstborn son, the heir of his body, granting that wish.