Palmer swallowed his drink and went red in the face. “Oh dear,” he said. “I appear to have stuck my foot in.”
British gentlemen, as a rule, avoided knowingly causing offense, so Elias took none. In his experience, though, it made for great awkwardness later should a conversation continue under such false assumptions. When the British had seen the Maronites ally with the French for more leverage under Ottoman rule, they had reflexively allied with the other mountain community, the Druze. Whenever Paris had a foothold in any one region, London had to have one there, too. Europe’s power balance was a precarious thing. They stopped at nothing to maintain it, especially not where the gateway to India was concerned.
“You’re with the French, then,” said the other young man, Mr. Tomlinson.
“I’m with the mountain,” Elias replied, not suppressing his frown.
“Either way, I understand everyone is friendly now,” Lord Palmer said. “You seem a good sport. It’s never personal anyway, is it? The trouble is, we can’t just let France have it all; the froggies would be hopping all over the region like a plague the moment the Ottomans are all a-cock. And mark me, they will be a-cock.”
His friend Tomlinson raised an eyebrow at him.
Palmer glanced around the circle. “What. They are hemorrhaging territories. Whoops, there went the Balkans.”
“Palmer, don’t be a bore,” drawled Lord Ballentine.
“You can’t say there are ladies present,” Palmer replied, “as every lady present here is keener and more knowledgeable on politics than I shall ever be.”
“My brother-in-law had business in the Levant,” Tomlinson said. “It’s easy to become confused—lots of higgledy-piggledy politics there. Shouldn’t trouble us here on this fine evening.”
“Not at all,” Palmer said generously. “We are well familiar with such troubles here ourselves in any case, nothing to be shy about.”
Mrs. Blackstone wrinkled her nose. “Such troubles? What troubles can you mean?”
“Don’t encourage him,” said the Irishwoman, Aoife Byrne. The blond lady next to her patted her hand.
“King Henry the Eighth had a bad habit of cutting things off, including the pope,” Palmer said with a flick of his long fingers. “It caused us a few centuries of religious wars.”
Elias finished his champagne, thinking what a long evening this was going to be, when Catriona spoke up.
“You surprise me, Lord Palmer,” she said, her tone rather cool, and there was a slight edging away in the circle, which normally followed the entry of someone grand. “Do you truly believe that Henry the Eighth split from Rome for religious reasons?”
Tomlinson blanched. “Uh-oh,” he said. “I know that voice. I know that expression.” He clapped his friend on the shoulder. “Sorry, old boy. You are about to feel stupid.”
Palmer’s neck turned blotchy. “Is it too late to take back what I said and to claim the opposite?”
“Henry the Eighth created his own church to consolidate his power and to refill his coffers with former monastic lands,” Catriona said. “He was playing perfectly rational power politics. I should think the same applies to most all conflicts elsewhere.”
Lord Ballentine stopped a waiter. “Brandy, for everyone,” he ordered.
“Isn’t everything about power in the end,” Mrs. Blackstone suggested.
“Absolutely,” Lady Lucinda agreed.
“With all due respect,” Palmer said to Catriona, thus announcing he was about to make a patronizing statement, “when Bloody Mary reigned; when they shuffled royals back and forth during the reign of Queen Anne; when the Jacobites rallied to return a Catholic prince to the throne two hundred years after the fact, were they not motivated by a higher sentiment?” He raised his gaze toward the ceiling with some reverence.
“Leaders wage war over power,” Catriona said, unmoved. “The fairy tales they spin to rally the common soldier is of course quite another matter.”
She fixated on Palmer through her gold-rimmed glasses, but everyone was looking at her. She stood tall and unmissable. This was her element; she was unfurling, one quick petal at a time, and a wiser man in Palmer’s position would beat a retreat before she was in full bloom. Breathtaking was the word, Elias thought.
The lord promptly turned to him. “Mr. Khoury,” he said in a conspiring tone, “didn’t your brethren form an alliance with the Holy See, around the time when King Henry went on a stampede?”
Now everyone was looking at Elias. This was the Campbell dining table all over again; where Catriona went, parlors seemed to turn into coffeehouses and political circles.
“Well,” he said. “At the time, the pope was the strongest ally we could secure to keep the Ottoman Turks out of our business.”
“Sounds rational enough to me,” Tomlinson remarked.
“Incidentally, it was a Druze prince who forged this connection for us,” Elias added. “His name was Fakhr al-Din.”
“Astonishing,” said Palmer. “Here I thought all that trouble in the sixties was about your people and their people not standing each other.”
Elias looked him in the eyes. Lord Palmer raised his empty goblet to his lips.
“Our communities used to live well together, often in the same villages,” Elias said softly. “The alliances we had are old. They made us stronger against the Mamelukes, and later against the Turks when needed.”
“I daresay I had no clue,” Palmer said, sounding apologetic. “I’m merely a humble reader of newspapers, not a diplomat. Forgive my ignorance.”
Not even the diplomats had a clue what was happening on the ground, and they did not have to, as their influence was entirely divorced from their competency. Catriona’s blue eyes moved over him warily; something must have shown on his face. He could have just left it at that. Had Catriona not been in the room, he probably would have. He looked at Palmer. “I understand that English maps depict the . . . higgledy-piggledy politics of our region along sectarian lines,” he said. “As such, you can’t tell that different mountain communities once shared villages and alliances.”
The waiter arrived with the ordered brandy tray, and several hands reached out to grab fresh drinks.
“Are you suggesting we have the wrong map?” Lady Lucinda asked, looking genuinely interested.
“I suggest your map doesn’t tell the whole story. But it looks clear and simple, so there’s that.” It also made people in the Near East look like creed-addled fools.
Palmer opened his mouth as if to make another quip but then he thought better of it.
“Would you tell us the whole story, Mr. Khoury?” Mrs. Blackstone asked. “If you please.”