“Nor am I,” Payton shot back, his tone sharp for the first time. “I’m not a bloody clerk of the kitchen. May I remind you I am a valued member of the prince’s council, dealing with a budget of over £200,000 for all of his residences and holdings.”
“Sorry, old chum,” James said immediately. His friend was smart and sensible. Every man-Jack who knew him and knew Prinny appreciated Payton hovering somewhere nearby to whisper words of wisdom into the prince’s tin ear.For all the good it would do!
Payton shrugged and James knew he was forgiven.
“Anyway,” his friend said, “if you’d brought back the art from the Louvre as you’d been asked, you would have been so high in Prinny’s good graces you could have swived with the queen herself without recrimination.”
“Again, not my fault.” James thought back to his wasted trip to Paris.
“Not a dog’s fault either. Not that time,” Payton reminded him.
James fixed his university chum with a hard stare. “No, it was the damned Prussians that time, swarming into Paris and taking everything that wasn’t nailed down before the British could get their share of the art.”
“You mean before Prinny could. After all, Wellington was there, wasn’t he, helping every nation?”
James rolled his eyes. “Everyone except me. While his troops made sure the Flemish and the Dutch got their paintings, Wellie gave me the cold shoulder regarding what Prinny wanted.”
“Did you get anything?” Payton asked.
“I managed a few small sculptures, a vase, and some old Spanish masters that even Ferdinand VII didn’t want back.Ha!They are rather dark, mind you. The opposite of our Prinny’s taste. He wanted some of those Prussian paintings from the Kassel Museum, but so did old Friedrich Wilhelm III.”
“Not that old. The Prussian king is only in his thirties, I believe.”
“You have a way of missing the point.” James was prepared to drink heavily over his recent bout of bad luck. “Most of all, our regent wanted the Apollo Belvedere, as he fancies there’s a likeness, but of course, that got sent back to the Vatican.”
“A likeness! Between Apollo and Prinny!” Payton had to take a few moments to laugh until he nearly cried. Finally, he said, “So your banishment is the Pope’s fault.”
“No,” James disagreed, and this time he couldn’t help cracking a smile. “Again, the Prussians! They accompanied crates of art all over the Continent, not only the Apollo I was after, but also the Medici Venus.”
Payton nodded, “For Prinny’s bedchamber, no doubt.”
His mock-serious tone was all it took to finally restore James’s humor. “I can just imagine our prince ogling that perfect representation of womanhood every evening before he retires to bed. His mistresses would be jealous of Greek marble, would they not?”
For an instant, his mind went to Miss Talbot, another perfect representation of womanhood, except for trying to trick him into marriage.
“Never mind, old chap,” Payton said. “We shall do our duty here, two men under the thumb of His Royal Highness, and then we’ll move on. Or at least you will. I shall stay put at least until next spring.”
Thinking of his comfortable life in London, his home on Hanover Square, his experienced and welcoming mistress, James sighed.
“It was the dog’s fault,” he muttered again before signaling the serving wench for another pint.
