Provoked (8 page)

“Water of Life,” Chalmers said, smiling. “Would you like a dram, lad?”

He was pulling out the glasses already. David’s acquiescence was a formality, but he gave it anyway.

“All right, then.”

The measure Chalmers poured was generous and the quality of the whisky was excellent, the taste smoky on David’s tongue.

“It’s from Islay,” Chalmers said. “Do you like it?”

David nodded. “That’s a rare malt.” He swallowed the last bit and put the glass down on the polished wood.

“Have another.”

David gave in to temptation. “Just one more, then, thank you.”

After the second, there were two more. Chalmers poured them without asking, and David drank them while they chattered about faculty matters.

“You might be wee,” Chalmers said, after a while, “but you can certainly put the whisky away. If I’d just walked in here, I’d never guess a drop had passed your lips.”

“I’m not wee,” David said with a smile he had to force. “I’m five feet and seven inches.” It was a good height, though it was true that he was slender and often assumed to be shorter as a result.

“Are you? You look like a gust of wind could blow you over.”

David hid his irritation at that comment. “I’m stronger than I look.”

Chalmers smiled affably. “I don’t doubt it, lad. Come on, let’s go down. It’ll be dinnertime soon.”

“I really should go,” David demurred. “Mrs. Chalmers will be inconvenienced by an extra guest.”

Chalmers shook his head. “Put that thought out of your mind, lad. You’re staying.”

When they went down to the drawing room it was to find Mrs. Chalmers, Elizabeth and her sisters gathered there in apparent domestic harmony. The girls all sat with their hands folded primly in their laps, while Mrs. Chalmers embroidered. They all looked up when the two men entered the room, disappointment registering on all but one of their faces to see their father and David. Only Elizabeth smiled, her eyes wide with surprise.

“Good evening, Mr. Lauriston,” she said. “How nice to see you again.” Her mother gave her a sharp look.

“I’ve invited Mr. Lauriston to join us for dinner,” Chalmers announced to the room. Mrs. Chalmers’s jaw tightened speakingly, but she merely nodded and rose from her chair.

“Excuse me,” she said. “I must speak with Cook and the servants. The table will have to be entirely rearranged.”

“Oh, please don’t—” David began, but Chalmers cut him off.

“Thank you, my dear,” he said to his departing spouse and ushered David farther into the room. “Come and meet my girls, Lauriston.”

David bowed to the three daughters he hadn’t yet met, Maria, Catherine and Jane, before he turned to Elizabeth.

“And Miss Elizabeth,” he said. “How nice to see you again.”

“Mr. Lauriston,” she replied, smiling widely. “I hear you’re working with Father on one of his cases. I’m delighted you could join us this evening. It is a most unexpected pleasure to see you again.”

“The delight is all mine,” David said gallantly, enjoying the way her face became brighter and more attractive as they conversed. She was an unremarkable-looking girl when she was silent, but when she spoke, her face was transformed. He couldn’t remember ever seeing someone so expressive.

“Has Father told you we have another gentleman joining us this evening?” Her dark eyes twinkled with merriment. “He is the younger son of a marquess, no less! We are all terribly excited to be meeting such a grand personage.”

“So I have heard,” David said, lips twitching. Plainly, whatever her mother thought, Elizabeth was not overawed at the thought of dining with a peer of the realm.

At that moment, the man they were speaking of arrived.

The footman entered first. “Lord Murdo Balfour, sir,” he said, addressing Mr. Chalmers.

David thought stupidly,
I know that name
. For the briefest instant, he didn’t connect it with the man at whose feet he’d knelt.

And then he saw him.

Murdo Balfour stood behind the footman, tall, broad-shouldered and expensively dressed. Familiar, yet not.

All of David’s ease left him, leeching away as his gut began to churn and his breath constricted in his throat. As their gazes met and held.

Yes, it was him. The man from the inn at Stirling. The man who’d stroked David’s cock in a filthy alleyway; whose own cock David had got down on his knees to suck.

He gave no sign of recognising David, but somehow David was sure he did, and then his gaze was moving on, honing in on Mr. Chalmers who was moving forward to greet him.

“Lord Murdo,” Chalmers said, offering his hand. “Welcome to my home.”

“Mr. Chalmers, I presume. I’m very pleased to meet you, sir.”

“My wife has been detained a moment. She will be back in a—”

“Good heavens, Lord Murdo! How mortifying that I wasn’t here to greet you!” Mrs. Chalmers bustled into the room, her voice high and excited, her colour up. “So good of you to come! You have met my husband?”

Balfour smiled at her. “We have introduced ourselves, Mrs. Chalmers. How nice to see you again.”

Mrs. Chalmers gave an oddly girlish titter. “Well, then, I only need to introduce you to our daughters, my lord. They are all very excited to meet you.”

“Don’t forget Mr. Lauriston, Mother,” Elizabeth said, earning herself a maternal frown. She wasn’t to know that David was only too happy to linger in the background.

Good God, the man was a
lord
. The younger son of a marquess. He hadn’t divulged that nugget at the inn in Stirling.

Balfour’s attention wandered back to David, despite being surrounded by the Chalmers girls—yes, he knew who David was all right. Their gazes met over one of the younger girl’s heads, and David couldn’t look away. His attention was snagged, like cloth catching on a nail.

It was only for a moment, but it felt like forever that they stared at each other. As for Balfour, he didn’t smile as such, but there was something in his face. Something still and knowing, though he was the first to look away.

Eventually it was David’s turn to be introduced to the guest of honour.

“And this is Mr. Lauriston,” Mrs. Chalmers said in her most chilly voice as she approached him, Balfour at her side. “He’s working on a case with Mr. Chalmers at present.” She paused, then added grudgingly, “Mr. Lauriston, Lord Murdo Balfour.”

Balfour put out his hand, the hint of a smile playing over his well-shaped lips. “I’m pleased to meet you, Mr. Lauriston.”

His hand was steady. His voice likewise, the warm depth of it caressing, that English-sounding accent smooth and mellifluous, so foreign compared to the clipped cadence of everyone else in the room.

David forced his own hand out. “And I you, my lord.” Balfour’s grip was warm, firm.

As David drew away, he thought that Balfour—he couldn’t think of him by any other name—gave his hand the lightest press. But the man’s expression remained so politely distant that afterwards David wondered if he’d imagined it.

After that, Balfour was swallowed up by the females in the party again, particularly the three younger ladies. They peppered him with questions about his life in London and his journey north, while David stood quietly by and watched.

When they went in to dinner, David discovered that he’d been sandwiched between the two youngest daughters, Maria and Jane. The older girls had pride of place on either side of Balfour.

The meal felt interminable. David had enjoyed Elizabeth’s company at Jeffrey’s house but Maria and Jane had no interest in anything other than gowns and hair ribbons and who had danced with who at some assembly they’d attended the previous week. David sat, morosely silent, and soon they cut him out of the conversation altogether, simply leaning past him to talk to each other, while he tried to listen to the others at the table.

“I gather your father’s estate is in Argyllshire, my lord,” Mrs. Chalmers said to Balfour. “It is so far from here! May I ask what has drawn you to Edinburgh?”

Balfour smiled. “I have some friends here, ma’am. But the chief reason for my visit is to see the fair city itself.” He paused and looked round the table at the ladies. “I think I have been lucky to see some of its beauty here this evening.”

Mrs. Chalmers tittered. “You are very kind.”

Chalmers spoke then. “You have friends in Edinburgh, my lord?” he asked politely.

“Yes, sir. As your lady wife already knows, we have a connection in common. Sir Edward Galbraith is a longstanding friend of my father. ”

Chalmers looked more interested at this. “You know Sir Edward, do you? We were on opposite sides of many cases. A fine opponent, he was. A shame he gave the law up. He was a very fine advocate.”

Balfour smiled. “He has put his debating talents to good use in Parliament, though. My father and his friends are glad of his skills as an orator.”

“I daresay,” Chalmers replied. “He always was a persuasive fellow. Your father is in politics, then?”

Balfour waved his hand. “He holds some small office in government.” A careless smile. “I can never remember the title. Politics doesn’t interest me, I’m afraid.”

“Not everyone cares for matters of State, it’s true,” Chalmers replied in a neutral tone, before returning his attention to his roast pigeon.

“Sir Edward’s daughter and I went to the same ladies’ seminary,” Elizabeth interjected.

Balfour turned to Elizabeth, a look of polite interest on his face.

“Bella and I are great friends,” Elizabeth continued. “She and her mother spend most of the year in Scotland. Lady Galbraith detests London, so we see each other a good deal. They live on Heriot Row, which is only a few minutes’ walk away.”

Bella?

Balfour smiled at Elizabeth. “I am well acquainted with Miss Galbraith and her mother,” he said. “And I shall be calling on them at the earliest opportunity.”

Lees got drunk with Peter and told him about a young woman called Isabella. She lives here in Edinburgh.

When Euan had described Lees, it had occurred to David that his description—
tall, dark-haired, an English-sounding voice
—sounded rather like the man he’d sucked off in an alleyway in Stirling. But it hadn’t been more than a passing thought. Why would it be? Many men looked like that. Now, though, with the mention of this girl, Bella, whose father had once been an advocate, the thought of Lees loomed large, and David found himself glancing at Balfour again through new eyes.

“On Saturday evening, Catherine and I are attending the assembly in town with Bella. Do you intend to go, my lord?” Elizabeth directed the question to Balfour, but her eyes flickered towards David.

“I should certainly like to do so,” Balfour said. “And I will hope to dance with you, Miss Chalmers.”

Mrs. Chalmers, who had begun to look a little unhappy at the direction the conversation had taken, looked mollified at this particular attention to her oldest daughter, while Elizabeth blushed and glanced again at David, an odd, pained expression in her eyes. Puzzled, David smiled at her, and she seemed to brighten.

When he looked away from Elizabeth, it was to discover Balfour’s gaze on him, cool and assessing. He averted his eyes, reaching for his wineglass and hoping no one had noticed the warmth he’d felt steal over his cheeks.

At last the meal was over, and the ladies withdrew to take tea while Chalmers brought out the whisky again.

David had had several glasses of wine at dinner and, of course, all those drams in Chalmers’s study. He knew he should stop drinking. He felt the telltale signs of his self-control loosening. His mind had begun to fixate on that night in Stirling, his gaze creeping again and again to Balfour, lingering on his broad, black-clad shoulders and the snowy linen wound round his throat. He knew himself in dangerous territory and dug his fingers into his palms to stop his hands stealing out to pick up the glass. Even as he resisted, though, another part of his mind urged him to drink. What did it matter, after all? What was the worst that could happen? The whisky would relax him, and God knew he was wound as tight as a spring.

He tried to concentrate on the conversation between the other two men to distract himself. Chalmers was quizzing Balfour about the unsuccessful plot to murder the Prime Minister and his Cabinet earlier in the year.

“It is said that Lord Liverpool can hardly venture outside for fear of attack,” the older man observed.

Balfour shrugged. “Radicals,” he said shortly. “They are few but fanatical.”

Chalmers smiled. “You do realise you are in the company of someone who defended some radicals?”

Balfour looked briefly surprised. “You defended the weavers?”

“Not I,” Chalmers said. “Mr. Lauriston was their champion.”

Balfour’s head swung round, dark eyes penetrating, a question in his raised brows.

“I worked with Mr. Jeffrey on the defence of two of the weavers who were executed,” David said shortly, unwilling to share more than that.

Balfour stared. “I see,” he said after a long pause.

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

“Tell me, my lord, is London your permanent home?” Chalmers smoothed over the odd, tense moment with a bland question.

“For most of the year,” Balfour replied, turning his attention to the older man. “I try to come up to Kilbeigh—my father’s estate—at least once a year. I usually come in spring or autumn, as I prefer to avoid the place when the midges are biting.”

Chalmers laughed. “Oh, I am all too familiar with those beasties! They are at their worst in the west, are they not?”

“You are from the west, then? Rather than Edinburgh?”

Chalmers nodded. “I hail from Oban, originally. Though I’ve lived here for thirty-two years now and count myself almost a native.”

That accounted for the faint lilt in Chalmers’s voice, then.

“Do you ever see yourself returning home?” Balfour asked.

“Goodness, no! I would miss city life. I like my club. I dine there twice a week at least. And I enjoy the debates at the Speculative Society of which I am a member. My friends are all faculty men, like me. I should miss their company greatly if I moved away.”