By My Sword Alone David Black (best story books to read txt) 📖

‘That’s not your job,’ Dorothea had replied.

‘As a colonel of cavalry, I think you’ll find it is.’

‘Are you really so naïve? I think you’ll find for colonels of cavalry it is usually drink, cards and whores! As any colonel of cavalry in any army here for a thousand leagues will tell you! But we both know your real job isn’t being a colonel, is it? It is gathering information. And as far as I can see, you’re not very good at it.’

‘So why do you flutter about me, like a moth to light, if I am so useless?’ asked James, all smug from believing he had topped her argument.

‘Dear Lord, preserve me! So pretty, yet so dense!’ Dorothea was the synthesis of frustration. ‘Because people know who you are and where you’ve come from. They’re curious where the future King of Great Britain stands … what he might offer … what he might ask for … so when you plough your furrow, I want to see what you turn over, you idiot!’

A pause for the emotion to leave her voice, then, ‘And I want to know what de Valençay’s going to know, after you tell him.’ Then another pause, during which she allowed her icy stare to melt a few degrees, before she airily observed, ‘And I am standing when there are seats to be had, and my hand has lacked a cup of punch this last age.’

*

The electoral sejm, when it finally took place, was in the same large open air pavilion they’d used for the debates, bounded by hedge boxes, with a long, raised dais at one end, standards bearing family arms and crests all the colours of the rainbow fluttering and snapping from ranks of poles that surrounded the gathering. The noise of the crowd was fearsome, with trumpets and bugles being drowned out. But in the din there was dispute; the numbers of the pro-Augustus lobby were too few, with those who were there, intimidated into silence.

The decision of the gathered nobles was clear, though announcing it had been difficult above of all the noise. Stanislas Leszczyński was declared Stanislas I of Poland. At least that was what James and Dorothea assumed, given the deafening cheer that went up. A contrary result would have almost certainly led to instant bloodshed.

That would come later, James suspected. Dorothea agreed. Conflict with Russia and Austria was inevitable. Tsarina Anna, and Charles VI of Austria, would not allow the defeat of their candidate to stand.

It amused James Lindsay no end however, that his namesake, the pretender to the throne of Great Britain, could ever have imagined his name might have entered the ring as a possible compromise. Now that James had been here and seen it all as it had unfolded. How else could he have understood how intensely parochial it had all been? Or how all the outsiders had only eyes for the pot being stirred before them, too much so to have even considered there might have been a contender in the man who pretended to the throne of Britain?

It made him chuckle when he reflected on how deluded the great could become, and how incapable they were of ever imagining their own irrelevance. All it took was a little distance from reality and a coterie of flatterers to drown out the truth, and it was easy to hear what you wanted to hear, and imagine thusly.

But then, James had decided early on in his journey here that this was a game he was not going to play. Dorothea had been wrong when she accused him of being, ‘not very good’ at it. It wasn’t that at all, it was that he no longer cared.

The Gräfin Dorothea. What a woman she was. Not a classic beauty, her face was too full of character for that, but mesmerising, nonetheless. Pale, with a golden mane of hair and ice blue eyes. Once she’d satisfied herself that the Chevalier James Lindsay had indeed not been sent by the Comte de Valençay to kill her, the eyes had lost their lethal edge. Once seen, that edge was never to be forgotten. And especially because she had refused point blank to explain why she thought the comte might actually want her dead.

He’d not been alone in being disposed to feel wary of her.

‘She’s a von Kettler,’ di Monti, the French minister to Poland had once whispered in James’ ear. ‘Out of one of the litters of the ruling family of the Duchy of Courland. Who, for the uninitiated, are quite a tribe in these northern marshes. Also. She is a player, chevalier. And she always, in the end, plays for her own side. I merely mention it as she seems to be quite taken with you.’

Right now however, it seemed that it was James who was feeling taken by her, as she steered and manoeuvred him around the post-vote celebrations, looking demure and doing her utmost to stop her ears from actually flapping, eavesdropping or openly listening, all while hanging on her chevalier’s arm and trying to affect an air of not taking a blind bit of notice.

‘And who are you gathering information for, milady?’ James had asked her after one particularly boring exchange with some minor aristo.

‘Why do I have to be gathering for anyone? Cannot a lady be curious as to the goings on of the world?’

‘I refer you to your earlier comment regarding any known associate of the Comte de Valençay,’ said James.

His words drew an instant, venomous look, then a sigh. ‘My land is very small. A tiny little haven, surrounded by big, lumbering beasts that do not care where they plant their hooves. So it is as well for us to know who it is who might wish us well, or ill, or even be indifferent, or careless,