Authors: Highland Spirits
“Just a dab, laird. Ye’ll no want—”
“If I wanted to reek of scent,” Michael snapped, “I would rather smell of good Scottish peat or heather, so until someone devises a way for me to do that, keep your odious mixtures to yourself.”
“Your hat, sir,” Chalmers said, retaining his dignity as he held out the flat chapeau bras that was de rigueur for any gentleman attending a court function.
Taking it, Michael said ruefully, “If the grand folk with whom I shall rub elbows today do not mistake me for a surly barbarian, Chalmers, it will be entirely due to your efforts. I am sorry to be such a constant trial to you.”
“Nay then, laird. Ye’re nowt o’ the sort,” Chalmers muttered gruffly.
Leaving him, Michael went in search of his sister and the two older ladies, fully expecting to have to kick his heels for an hour at least. Instead, he found Mrs. Thatcher and Lady Marsali awaiting him in the drawing room, and as he entered, he heard the unmistakable sound of his sister’s rapid footsteps descending the stairs.
Turning in the doorway, Michael watched her approach. “I should have carried the quizzing glass Chalmers tried to give me,” he said with approval.
“You?” Bridget laughed. “I cannot even imagine it, although you look very pretty today, Michael.” She paused, eyeing him with visible expectation.
He could not disappoint her. Smiling, he said, “I would have made great play with the quizzing glass, my dear, but I certainly do not require one to tell you how beautiful you look.”
“Very pretty, sir.” She turned, fluttering her gilded fan and showing off her court dress, a mantua draped over a petticoat, both of pale blue silk brocaded in a floral pattern with colored silks and silver thread. She wore it over French pannier hoops that swelled fashionably side to side and remained flat fore and aft. Her hair was a mop of ringlets, powdered and adorned with lappets of blond lace like streamers, a multitude of jeweled hairpins, and two short white plumes. “Did you forget your gloves?” she asked him as she folded her fan to smooth her own.
“No, ma’am. I have them tucked under my arm with the damned hat.”
Bridget chuckled, clearly in an excellent humor.
Mrs. Thatcher rose to her feet when they entered the room, and said, “You both look quite splendid, so if you are ready to go, we should do so at once. The men will be growing restive outside.”
She looked splendid herself in a court dress of maroon and black striped velvet trimmed with gold fringe, and a magnificent pink-powdered wig at least a foot high. The wig bore such a quantity of jewels that Michael wondered how she could hold up her head under the weight. Beside her, Lady Marsali, in a much more conservative dress of yellow ribbed silk, looked her usual elegant self. Her jewelry, he knew, would compare with that of anyone at St. James’s.
“We will present a marvelous display,” Bridget said with satisfaction.
Michael agreed, but he soon learned that he had underestimated the extent of their display. Outside on the pavement there awaited four elegant sedan chairs, sixteen chairmen, and four footmen. All the men wore matching maroon and black livery, white gloves, and neatly tied, powdered perukes.
“Devil a bit,” Michael muttered, “we’ve become a damned parade.”
“Cousin Bella,” Bridget said, “I thought you had no menservants.”
Mrs. Thatcher laughed merrily, “Bless me, child, they are not mine. I merely hired them for the occasion. I dare swear there will be no footpads lurking betwixt here and the palace, but they will lend us consequence and keep the rabble from annoying us. When my dear husband was alive, we kept our own chairmen, but now that I control my money myself, I spend it only when I want to, on occasions such as this one. Kintyre, do you take the first chair, and we shall take the others.”
Michael had assumed they would travel the considerable distance from George Street to St. James’s Palace by coach, but he soon learned that many people preferred the convenience of chairs, especially when it came to the courtyard at St. James’s, which was smaller than anyone might expect and difficult for coaches to negotiate. The chairmen might not have thought the journey such a treat, of course, but Mrs. Thatcher consistently displayed a generous nature, so Michael assumed that they were well paid.
The nearer they drew to St. James’s, the more crowded the streets became. People lined the flagways to watch, making it necessary for the chairmen to carry their burdens into the street along with the usual traffic, slowing every vehicle and horse to a snail’s pace. Nonetheless, the crowd’s excitement became contagious. Even Michael found himself smiling when a grinning urchin nearly toppled off the curbstone, clapping his grubby hands and waving at the passing parade of chairs.
When they emerged in the courtyard amid dozens of other chairs, Bridget beamed, looking as beautiful as ever he had seen her. Her cheeks were so rosy that he suspected she had rouged them, although nature had made such artifice unnecessary in her case. Nevertheless, she looked wonderful, and he hoped young MacCrichton would be at hand to be impressed.
Unfortunately, the excitement and sense of anticipation that buzzed through the company in the courtyard soon turned to tedium inside. Long lines filled the entryway and corridors, and by the time Michael and his party reached the throne room, he was heartily sick of the ordeal. Bridget had wilted long since, and her unceasing complaints taxed what little patience he had managed to retain.
Mrs. Thatcher and Lady Marsali seemed inured to the tedium, but neither was chatty. The din around them made up for the lack of conversation until they reached the last corridor, when footmen and other royal servants began to demand silence. By the time they reached the doorway to the throne room, the so-called drawing room had begun to feel more like a church service than a social occasion.
At first Michael had paid no heed to the passing time, but when it began to crawl he began more and more frequently to consult his watch. From then until they reached the throne room, an hour and a quarter passed and the temperature in the palace increased noticeably. As they entered the throne room the chamberlain took their names, waited a few beats, then announced Mrs. Thatcher. She approached the throne first, with Lady Marsali following.
When Michael heard his name and Bridget’s, he extended his forearm and she rested one gloved hand on it while she managed her fan and her train with the other. She had practiced the movements before a mirror, and she made them now without hesitation or misstep.
Queen Charlotte proved to be a thin, pale, dark-haired little woman with a large mouth and nose. Michael knew she was at least four years his junior, for she had married King George only four years before at the tender age of seventeen, but he thought she looked much older.
“She looks tired,” Bridget murmured at his side while they waited their turn to approach the throne.
“No doubt the hours she has been sitting here would account for that, added to the effort of producing three children in the few years since her marriage,” he whispered back. However accurate the comment might be, he knew it was also unfair. The king was ill, and doubtless the queen worried about him.
Lady Marsali shot both Michael and Bridget a look, and they fell silent.
Two minutes later, they had made their bows, backed away from the throne, and an usher was escorting them from the room. It was then that Michael caught sight at last of Balcardane and his family, gathered near the back of the room. They were conversing quietly with Lords Menzies and Rothwell, and their wives. Miss MacCrichton, wearing a mantua and petticoat of pale green silk trimmed with silver lace, looked particularly appealing, Michael thought.
When she glanced toward the throne, he managed to catch her eye. She smiled, but no sooner had she done so than the usher murmured, “May it please you, my lord, we must not linger. We do not want to impede the flow, sir.”
Stifling a growl, Michael moved on.
The next moment, he found himself in another hot corridor, standing in another line, facing another hour or more of mind-crushing tedium.
Pinkie was sorry to see Michael and his party leave so quickly, because she was bored nearly to tears. Duncan, Rothwell, and Menzies—all of whom had the entree and therefore were amongst those august persons allowed to remain with the queen and her courtiers—had been muttering together about tobacco, of all things, and smuggling. Several unfortunate episodes of the latter had affected the price of the former, a product in which they had heavily invested. Pinkie did not understand most of what they said, and she could not imagine a more boring topic, but their intense discussion made it nearly impossible for others in their parties to converse.
A low buzz of chatter was inevitable and acceptable at any drawing room, but Maggie had warned them all that the queen frowned upon conversation that grew so loud as to keep her from hearing the names of those being presented. Thus it was that, although the others in Balcardane’s group addressed brief comments to one another from time to time, they did no more.
Pinkie had been surprised that the queen had not deigned to speak to her during her presentation. Charlotte had nodded her head, a bob more like a maid’s curtsy than the display of regal condescension that Pinkie had expected from the queen. Maggie had explained afterward that Charlotte spoke little English.
“Moreover, she knows practically no one,” Maggie added. “The poor thing has been practically shut up the whole time she has been in England. I don’t know what the king fears, but she keeps to her children and her household. The women who serve her say she is kind, although Elizabeth Campbell does not approve of her affectations and what Elizabeth calls a stubborn nature. But Elizabeth is stubborn, too,” Maggie added with a smile, “so doubtless they simply don’t get on well.”
Pinkie wished she could ask questions about the queen and the court, or that she had someone her own age to talk to, but although she had met a number of young women, she had met no one she wished to call friend. Most of them, in fact, seemed disposed to be no more than politely friendly. From time to time she wondered if they had somehow learned about Red Mag and Daft Geordie, but if they had, no one had been cruel enough to fling it in her teeth. Maggie generally presented her as Balcardane’s ward, which she was, of course. She would remain so for another month, until Chuff came of age and assumed that legal responsibility.
“I wish Chuff could see all this,” she murmured to Mary when the gentlemen fell silent for a few moments. “He would enjoy all the pomp and splendor, I think.”
“Are you not enjoying yourself?” Mary asked with an anxious frown.
Pinkie smiled, not wanting Mary to think her ungrateful. “How could one not enjoy such an event? I just wish he were here to share it.”
“Drawing rooms are for the presentation of young ladies to the queen,” Mary said quietly. “Duncan or Rothwell will present Chuff to the king instead, at a levee, just as soon as his majesty enjoys good health again. Moreover,” she added with a wry smile and a glance in her husband’s direction, “Chuff probably is content to remain quietly at home today. He said he had the headache, did he not? Doubtless he drank too much last evening, with Mr. Coombs.”
“Aye, perhaps,” Pinkie said, falling silent again. She knew that it was not drink that had put her brother under the weather but rather the confrontation that he and Mr. Coombs had endured that morning with Duncan about their activities the previous day. She knew—and she suspected that Mary did, as well—that before they had left the Sefton party, Duncan had ordered both young men to attend him in his bookroom early the next morning, and that he had been angry with them for abandoning Roddy to his own devices, and thus inadvertently putting him in danger.
The huge dog was still enjoying residency at Faircourt House. Pinkie had visited him that morning while the gentlemen were in the bookroom; and when the family at last returned from St. James’s, she waited only long enough to put off her court dress and don a more informal one before visiting him again, only to learn that Master Roddy had been out before her and had taken the dog into the house.
Astonished that apparently no uproar had resulted from this injudicious decision, she hurried back inside and ran the pair of them to earth in Roddy’s bedchamber. When she entered the room, she found the boy reclining on his cot against a huge pile of pillows, reading a book. The dog lay sprawled beside him, its head resting on one of the pillows, its long-legged body covering most of the otherwise neatly made cot.
Both of them looked up at her, the dog raising its head and cocking its ears. Apparently deciding that she was friendly, it put its head back down on the pillow with a comfortable sigh and shut its eyes again.
“Roddy, lad, what are you doing with that beast in here?”
Setting aside his book, Roddy grinned impishly. “He’s guardin’ me,” he said, giving his companion’s head a pat. “In the event, ye ken, that yon villain tries to steal me again, right out o’ the house.”
“You,” Pinkie said, “are doomed to be hanged, sir. You try that tale on your papa and see if you don’t earn a hiding worse than the one you received yesterday.”
“And what makes ye so sure I got a hiding, then?”
Surprised, she said, “Did you not?”
Raising his chin in a way that made him look like a miniature replica of his father, he looked her in the eye and said, “That is no affair of yours, lass.”
“To be sure, it is not,” she agreed, concealing her amusement. “Still, I do not think you ought to keep that dog in here.”
“I’ll take him back out in a wee while,” Roddy assured her.
“Did your lessons go well today?”
Roddy grimaced. “Yon great bletherskate tellt me if I ever split on him again, he’d thrash me fra’ here to Christmas. He wouldna take tellin’ that I didna split.”
“The tow gangs wi’ the bucket, laddie,” Pinkie said gently, employing a favorite expression of her brother’s.
Roddy sighed. “That’s what Chuff said. He’s no happy wi’ me either.”
“You did not split on them if that means they think you told Himself that Mr. Coombs went off with Chuff instead of attending to you. Still, you know, it was your adventure that led to his discovering theirs.”