Provoked (14 page)

“Not much,” David admitted. He outlined their conversation succinctly, describing the girl’s reactions to his questions.

“I don’t think she likes Lord Murdo,” David concluded, “though her mother seems to. She hinted there might be a man in London she favours but didn’t mention anyone in particular.”

“No one who could be Lees?”

“Not that she mentioned, but I could tell she was being careful.”

“It doesn’t matter. Lees will turn up at her door eventually,” Euan said. “I’m sure of it.”

David couldn’t help but hope that Euan was wrong, that Lees would stay well away from Isabella Galbraith. He knew how desperately Euan longed to confront the man, but he worried for the lad. For all Euan’s insistence that he was tougher than he looked, he wasn’t much more than a boy, and his fierce idealism would be no match for a man like Lees.

It would be a long while before Euan would give up waiting for Lees, if the man never appeared. But as determined and committed as Euan was, he would give up eventually. There was nothing in the world like a long, dreary wait for slowly killing every bit of hope in you. David knew that better than anyone.

After Will had left Midlauder, David had waited more than two years for just a glimpse of the friend he’d loved so dearly. But the flame of hope that burned so strongly in David’s heart to begin with couldn’t keep burning with nothing to fuel it. As letter after letter went unanswered, David’s hope had slowly died, till there was nothing but ashes left. And when he’d finally seen Will again, riding through Midlauder on a fine black horse, he hadn’t even been surprised when his friend had looked away without speaking. As though they were perfect strangers.

David glanced at Euan. The lad still leaned against the wall in his threadbare coat, staring out the mouth of the close. He looked oddly lost and David was reminded again of himself in his university days, struggling to find a place in a new and very different world. It had been hard, even with the wee bits of money his father had periodically scraped together for him, to get through those years of study. How much harder was it for Euan with his only family torn from him?

As they waited, they talked in a desultory way. David stamped his feet and rubbed his gloved hands together against the cold. Euan didn’t seem to feel the cold as badly. He stayed in the same position throughout, leaning against the wall, shoulders hunched and chin burrowed down inside the collar of his coat, but otherwise his lanky frame was still.

“You should go home, Davy,” he said eventually. “You’re freezing, and it’s not as though you can come with me when I follow the lassie anyway.”

David
was
freezing. And tired and bored. Nevertheless, he felt a stab of guilt to leave Euan alone here.

“Are you sure? I can stay a bit longer if you want the company.”

“To be honest, watching you huff and puff and rub your hands is making me feel the cold more than if I was on my own.”

David gave a laugh. “All right, but if you get tired of freezing your arse out here, the offer of a bed stands, no matter the hour.”

“Thank you,” Euan replied. “But I mean to wait by the girl’s door as long as it takes.”

“Let me know how you go, at least. You know where I am. Don’t leave it too long.”

Euan nodded. “I’ll call on you. Soon.”

David was about to step out of the shadows when Euan’s arm shot out, hauling him back. He staggered, his weight landing against the younger man’s chest.

“What—?”

“Wait!” Euan hissed. “Look who it is.”

A small group had just emerged from the Assembly Rooms—Balfour, Isabella Galbraith and Mrs. Galbraith. Balfour offered an arm to each of the two ladies, and they began to walk down the line of carriages. The carriages and horses soon impaired David’s view, but he spotted a groom jumping down from the driver’s bench of one of the parked carriages and running round to open a door. That had to be Balfour’s carriage.

“They’re leaving,” Euan said softly. “I’m going to start slowly walking that way now so it won’t be obvious I’m following them. Can you wait for a few minutes before you go? We’re less likely to be noticed if we come out of here separately.”

“Yes, of course,” David replied, but he was speaking to the night air. Euan had already sidled out and was gone.

David counted out five full minutes, waiting till Balfour’s carriage began pulling away before he emerged. But as soon as he stepped out, he saw he had made a grave error.

He should have waited a little longer, for on the other side of the road, in the space left by the departing carriage, stood Balfour. He’d put the ladies in the carriage, but he had stayed behind.

Balfour wore a long black evening cloak over his elegant clothes and carried a silver-topped cane. He looked magnificent and untouchable, and he was staring straight at David, standing in the mouth of the close.

David realised, with a dawning sort of awareness, that the expression on his own face probably looked nothing short of horrified. He turned on his heel and started walking quickly away in the opposite direction to that taken by Euan.

What had Balfour thought, seeing David emerge from the shadows of the narrow close, long after he’d left the Assembly Rooms? Given what David had done with Balfour in a similar place less than a month ago, he could make a fair guess, and his face burned at the thought.

He wasn’t far from the end of George Street when he heard his name being called. He turned around, unsurprised to see that it was Balfour calling to him—and not walking but actually loping down the street.

Even running down George Street in evening slippers, Balfour somehow managed to look effortlessly masculine. The thought might have made David smile if he hadn’t felt so nervous and mortified.

“On your way home, Lauriston?” Balfour said once he’d drawn level with David. The deep voice was as smooth as honey, his breathing unaffected by his exertions.

“Yes.”

“Shall we walk together, then?”

“I turn south at the end of the street,” David replied flatly. The end of George Street was scarcely fifty yards ahead, not worth the bother of catching up with someone at all.

“Till you turn off, then,” Balfour said tightly.

“Fine.” David began walking quickly, and Balfour fell into step beside him.

After a moment, Balfour said conversationally, “You never introduced me to your friend, Lauriston. Tell me, was he fucking you in that alleyway?”

David swallowed. He’d been half expecting this, and he kept his answer short, his eyes fixed ahead. “No.”

“No? Sucking you, then? Or you him, perhaps? You like that, don’t you? On your knees, in the dirt.”

David compressed his lips tightly, refusing to answer, and walked more quickly.

“Answer me, damn you!” That demand was accompanied by a hand hauling at his arm, jerking him around bodily to face the other man and witness an expression on Balfour’s face he’d not seen before. No trace of humour now.

“It’s none of your business,” David bit out.

“I beg to differ,” Balfour shot back. “You are my business.”

“What?”

Suddenly the hand gripping David’s arm was pushing, pushing him into a shadowed portico. Taken by surprise, David stepped backwards, his feet tripping a little as Balfour pressed him farther till he was swallowed by shadows and his shoulders hit the wall.

“I’ve made you my business,” Balfour muttered, bracing his hands against the wall on either side of David’s head and looking down into David’s upturned face.

“Why?” David demanded.

Balfour’s eyes glittered. “I wish I knew,” he said, and it was such a surprising response that David couldn’t think how to reply.

An odd silence bloomed between them, thick with arousal and tension. Balfour pressed closer, till his cock was nudging David’s hip. It felt as achingly hard as David’s own. David hissed in a shaky breath, all too aware of his heart tripping in his chest and of the heat invading his face. Balfour surrounded David, his breath gusting against David’s cheek, his scent invading David’s senses. He breached David’s carefully constructed walls with his deliberate physical domination, and as much as David resented it, it made him hard and desperate and lustful. It made him want to sink to his knees and take the man in his mouth again.

Lust didn’t make you forget all the reasons you shouldn’t do something. It just made you not care. It made you not care, even knowing you would regret your actions later. And so it was that when Balfour leaned in a fraction of an inch closer and brushed David’s lips with his own, David did nothing to stop him. And when the man shifted his whole body closer, when he took hold of David’s face between his gloved hands and slid his sleek tongue into David’s mouth in a devouring kiss, David groaned and gripped the edges of Balfour’s cloak for dear life.

It was a long, passionate, reckless kiss, and when Balfour at last drew back, David couldn’t speak, just stared, shocked, at the other man. Balfour stared back with dark, glittering eyes.

“I played the game wrong with you before,” he murmured. “I thought I should appeal to your reason—but I needed to appeal to your body, didn’t I? If you think about things too much, you get tied up in knots.”

David swallowed. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

“I’m doing it again,” Balfour said with a rueful smile. “Forget I spoke. Come with me instead.”

“Come with you where?”

“To my house. It’s just a few minutes’ walk away.”

“I don’t know,” David murmured, his gaze shifting away from Balfour. He wanted to go even though he knew he shouldn’t. His history was strewn with the wreckage of past regrets.

So what was one more regret? One more sin.

Balfour took David’s chin in his fingers and turned his face back, forcing him to meet Balfour’s dark gaze. “Don’t think so much. Everything gets complicated when you think about it, but this is really very simple. I want you. You want me. And when it’s over, we part.”

David just looked at Balfour in silence, but something in his expression must have altered, because Balfour smiled.

Chapter Eleven

By the time they reached Balfour’s house, David was having second thoughts. They’d walked here side by side without touching, and the October night had inserted its cold fingers between them, cooling David’s lust. He’d had ample time for reflection and the beginnings of regret during the short journey.

And yet, when they reached the townhouse, he didn’t hesitate or turn around. He went up the steps to the front door behind Balfour and followed him inside, past the expressionless footman holding the door open and into a house of restrained, masculine elegance.

At Balfour’s suggestion, he removed his hat and gloves and greatcoat, handing everything to the footman, who bore his burdens away and brought back a candle to light their way upstairs.

Everything in Balfour’s house was rich and elegant, from the long-case mahogany clock in the hall, to the framed paintings they passed as they climbed the stairs, to the long rug that muffled their footsteps as they made their way down the corridor to Balfour’s bedchamber.

Balfour swung the door open and stepped aside, inviting David to precede him.

The first thing David noticed was that it wasn’t, as he’d expected, a bedchamber. It was a sitting room, with two deep, wing-backed armchairs bracketing either side of a big marble fireplace. The grate glowed with the embers of an earlier blaze and the wasted luxury of a fire burning in an unoccupied room shocked David somewhere in the depths of his Presbyterian soul.

Balfour lit more candles, and now David could see that there was a second room connected to this one. Through an open doorway on the other side of the sitting room, he spied the hulking shape of a large bed, limned by the glow of a second fire. Balfour’s bedchamber.

“Would you like some wine?”

Tempted to find a little courage in a glass, David nodded. “Thank you.”

Balfour crossed to the sideboard, where a decanter of wine and several glasses waited on a silver tray. The crystal of the decanter sparkled in the candlelight as Balfour lifted it and poured out two glasses of ruby liquid. He strolled over to where David stood in the middle of the room—a slow, cocky stroll—and offered one of the glasses. Their fingertips brushed as David took the glass, and he almost dropped it in his haste to withdraw, fumbling it awkwardly and saving it just in time.

“Careful,” Balfour drawled. David flushed. He lifted the glass and took a long swallow to hide his embarrassment. He felt better almost immediately and finished the glass quickly. Only then did he realise that Balfour was leaning against the sideboard watching him, his own glass untouched.

“Another?” Balfour asked with a polite smile.

David had the disturbing feeling the man knew just how much he’d needed that drink. Unsettled, he shook his head and set his glass down, nerves thrumming. The politeness, the hospitality, Balfour’s damned
patience—
all of it bothered him. He was used to rough, urgent encounters. Usually in awkward situations. Alleyways and corridors and abandoned places. Never bedchambers. David didn’t think that he’d ever been in another man’s bedchamber till now.

Scrabbling for familiar ground, he paced towards Balfour, coming to a halt an arm’s-breadth away.

“What do you want, then?” he said hoarsely. “I can suck you again, if you’d like.”

Balfour put his own wineglass down in an unhurried way and levered himself away from the sideboard. He smiled, to himself it seemed, his lips kicking up at one side, a slight dimple flashing in his cheek.

“Well, since you’re asking,” he said, finally looking at David, “I’d like to see you naked. And then I’d like to fuck you.”

David wished he could control his flushes. He could feel the tidal rush of one spreading upwards from his chest to his throat and farther, till the heat of it scalded his cheeks. “I don’t allow anyone to do that.”

Balfour smiled. “Do what? See you naked or fuck you?”

“Fuck—penetrate—whatever you want to call it,” David replied, face burning.

Balfour stared at him as though he was a fascinating exotic animal. “Why ever not?” A puzzled frown drew his brows together.