Enlightened (19 page)

“What do you mean?” Euan asked, looking up, his interest piqued.

“Culzeans is a private club for Scots peers and men of influence,” Murdo said. “Its members collectively own most of Scotland. My father is one of the leading members. It’s where all the big decisions are made, where the marriages of the great and the good are brokered.”

David wondered if Murdo’s own engagement had been brokered there, then tamped down that thought, asking instead, “Are you a member?”

Murdo frowned. “I used to be. I haven’t crossed the threshold in over ten years, but hopefully they won’t have struck me from their list. We’ll soon find out.” He turned to the butler again. “Mr. Liddle, have the carriage brought round. Mr. Lauriston and I are going to Culzeans.”

“Very good, my lord,” the butler murmured, withdrawing.

“Do you really think he’ll be there tonight?” Euan asked when Liddle was gone. “He’s only just got Elizabeth back today, after all.”

“I don’t know,” Murdo said. “But what choice do we have? We have to try.”

Chapter Fifteen

Culzeans, which occupied a large townhouse at the edge of St. James, oozed money. From the opulent drapes at the windows to the liveried footman standing guard at the front door, it was the very picture of a wealthy gentlemen’s club.

“It’s not so popular as White’s or Brooks’s,” Murdo told David, “but a lot of eminent Scots are members—though many of them will also be members of other clubs.”

“Like your father?”

Murdo nodded. “My father probably spends more time at White’s. But he comes here to catch up with his Scottish connections.”

On seeing them approach, the footman rapped the front door. It was opened by a tall, older man in butler’s garb who invited them into the vestibule, apologised obsequiously for not recognising them and asked for their names.

“I am Lord Murdo Balfour,” Murdo said, “and this is my guest, Mr. Lauriston.”

“Forgive me for asking, my lord, but are you a member?”

“I am,” Murdo said easily. “Though it is some years since I last visited.”

The butler bade them take a seat while he checked the membership records. It didn’t take long. The membership ledger showed that Lord Murdo was indeed a member and had been for the last twelve years. Having thus been granted entry, Murdo was also permitted to sign David in as his guest.

“Will you require a table for dinner, my lord?” the butler asked as he ushered them through the vestibule. “We have roast beef this evening, and there’s an excellent syllabub.”

“Not just now, thank you,” Murdo said politely. “I think we will take a look around to begin with.”

“Very good, my lord. You will find a number of lounges on this floor. This is where our gentlemen like to meet and converse. The dining rooms are on the next floor, and the card rooms are on the floor above that.”

“Thank you,” Murdo replied, his cool tone discouraging any further conversation. Taking the hint, the butler nodded and withdrew.

“Come on,” Murdo said to David, and they began a tour.

It quickly became plain that, despite the single front door, Culzeans occupied more than one house. There were four separate lounges of varying sizes on the ground floor, and the rooms had been arranged so that the members could stroll from one to the other with ease. Most of them were crammed with small groupings of comfortable-looking leather armchairs, many of which were occupied by the members and their guests. The fireplaces in each room burned merrily, and candles blazed from sconces on the walls.

It was when they reached the fourth and last lounge that Murdo was hailed by someone he knew.

“Murdoch, my boy! What on earth are you doing here?”

Murdo stopped dead at the sound of his father’s cut-glass voice, and David halted slightly behind him. As luck would have it, the earl hadn’t noticed David when he’d first clapped eyes on Murdo, and his tone was warm with mingled surprise and approval, his harsh features lightened by something that looked like real pleasure. A moment later, though—when he saw David at his son’s shoulder—the pleasure faded and his mouth tightened into a grim line.

“I see you have your…secretary with you,” the earl added. There was enough of a pause before the word
secretary
to convey his displeasure without alerting his companion, a man with a stiff bearing who looked to be around the same age as the earl, to his true thoughts about David.

Murdo looked up and, after a brief hesitation, shifted his course to approach his father and the other man.

“Good evening, Father,” he said. “Lord Hartley.”

Lord Hartley. So this was the man whose daughter Murdo was engaged to.

David had no choice but to follow Murdo. He stayed a little behind him, hovering at his right elbow, noting the cool expression on Lord Hartley’s face as he took Murdo’s proffered hand and shook it briefly.

“This is my secretary, Mr. Lauriston,” Murdo added, standing a little to the side. Hartley gave the slightest of nods, forced to acknowledge David but clearly not pleased to be introduced to so lowly a personage. David bowed politely, though not deeply, in return. The earl ignored him.

Lord Hartley turned back to Murdo. “I didn’t realise you were in town,” he murmured, turning to glance at the earl as though expecting an explanation from him.

“He’s only just arrived, haven’t you, Murdoch?” the earl said, smiling tightly.

“Indeed.” Murdo gave his father a wintry smile in return, then turned to Hartley. “I was actually planning to call on you tomorrow, my lord. I was hoping we could speak in private. Perhaps in the afternoon?”

The earl spoke before Hartley had a chance to respond. “I have to attend Parliament tomorrow afternoon. The evening would be better. Perhaps over dinner—”

Murdo interrupted him before he could go further. “You misunderstand, Father,” he said mildly. “I wish to speak to Lord Hartley in private.”

The earl’s lips thinned at that, but Lord Hartley said, “We can talk now, if you wish. There must be a private chamber we can use here.”

“I regret I cannot this evening. I am on an errand of some importance.”

“More important than speaking with your future father-in-law?” Hartley replied with a slight sharpness to his tone.

Murdo’s pause was uncomfortable. “Yes,” he said at last. “I’m afraid so.”

The earl’s expression was pure ice, somehow furious and blank at once.

Hartley plainly wasn’t pleased either, but he gave a curt nod. “Very well,” he said. “Come to the house at two o’clock tomorrow.”

“Thank you.” Murdo executed a short, stiff bow. “Please excuse us.”

He didn’t say anything to David until they were moving through the open doors into the next room.

“Sorry to be so high-handed with you,” he murmured, “but you are supposed to be my secretary.”

David just gave a soft laugh.

They took the stairs up to the next floor, the dining rooms. These were bustling with patrons partaking of the roast beef, which looked to be rather dry, and the “excellent syllabub”, which was, in fact, alarmingly grey. The diners seemed happy enough to wolf their dinners down, though. They weren’t here for the food, after all, but for the drink and the cards and, most of all, the company.

David and Murdo looked in each of the three dining rooms but saw no sign of Kinnell. When they came out of the last one, Murdo said, “Let’s try the card rooms. It’s rather early, but we may as well look.”

It was early. The hard gaming that came later and that would have scores of gentlemen crowding round the tables wouldn’t begin for a while. Only a small number of older gentlemen were sitting around, enjoying a few hands of cards for what appeared to be modest stakes. And again, there was no sign of Kinnell.

“He must have decided to stay at home this evening, with Elizabeth,” David said. The thought made him shiver. What would Kinnell do to her? What about when he discovered she was with child? He pushed that thought away determinedly. Enough time to think about that later when he lay sleepless in bed, as he knew he would tonight.

“Probably,” Murdo said. “Let’s get back and see whether Liddle’s found out any more for us. We have to do something before he gets her out of London.”

They made their way back down to the ground floor, wending their way through the maze of rooms. Murdo wanted to avoid the room he’d seen his father and Hartley in earlier, so he slipped a coin to a footman who took them down a service corridor that bypassed it, leading them straight into the largest and quietest of the lounges, where members could read their newspapers in peace while they drank their port.

At the same moment that David and Murdo entered the lounge, another pair of gentlemen strolled through the door on the opposite side of the room.

One of them was Kinnell.

He was pink-cheeked from the cold, and he was smiling—grinning, in fact—bright-eyed and pleased with himself, seeming well disposed towards his fellow men.

“Bring us your best brandy,” he told the same servant who had greeted David and Murdo earlier. “I’m celebrating.”

His companion—short, tubby and balding—laughed. “I wish you’d tell me what this celebration is about!”

But Kinnell’s glee was already fading. He had seen Murdo, and David, and he was observing their approach. His thin, hawkish features were taut with bristling anger that was kept in check by what David suspected was a touch of fear.

“Yes, do tell, Kinnell,” Murdo said with the bland, easy smile he wore when he was masking his thoughts. “What are you celebrating? Or perhaps I should take a guess?”

Kinnell went to walk past Murdo—to cut him entirely—but Murdo put out a hand, easily detaining him. He
tsk
ed. “Come now, you aren’t going to ignore me, are you?” he said. “I do so hate to be ignored!”

Kinnell wasn’t a small man, but Murdo topped him by a couple of inches and his broad shoulders dwarfed the other man’s thinner frame.

“Let me by,” Kinnell gritted out. “We are not friends, but at least let us not make a scene.”

Murdo laughed, and his expression was not pleasant. “Ah, but perhaps I want to make a scene,” he said, not lowering his voice in the slightest, his big hand still on Kinnell’s shoulder. A few heads turned and newspapers were lowered as the encounter began to attract attention.

Once again, Kinnell tried to shrug him off and walk away, but Murdo wouldn’t let him. He stepped closer, crowding Kinnell till the other man was forced to take a step back.

“Steady on there!” the tubby man protested weakly.

Murdo turned his head and smiled at him, his geniality oddly unnerving. “Do you want to participate in this conversation? Or are you going to be a good chap and keep your trap shut?”

The tubby man’s face burned, and he slunk back, leaving Kinnell alone.

Murdo turned his attention back to Kinnell. “You were looking ever so pleased with yourself when you came in here,” he said. “I think you must have been reunited with your lovely young wife. Am I right?”

David caught a flurry of movement at the corner of his eye. He turned his head to see a few more men entering the room. They filed in and leaned against the back wall, blatantly watching the drama. Now it was quiet enough to hear a pin drop.

“Well?” Murdo prompted.

“And what if I have?” Kinnell bit out, a faint sneer of triumph lifting his thin upper lip.

“No, it can’t just be that,” Murdo mused, tapping his chin with his forefinger. “You look far too happy for merely that. Oh, wait, I have it! Did you give her a sound thrashing before you came out? Now
that’d
put a smile on your face, wouldn’t it? You do enjoy handing out a thrashing. Especially to someone smaller and weaker than you.”

There were a few gasps at that, and Kinnell went white.

“How dare you!” he hissed.

Murdo’s gaze bored into him. “Tell me I’m wrong,” he said. “I’d love to be wrong, believe me. But I fear Elizabeth is probably tending her injuries as we speak.”

“Do not call
my wife
by her given name!” Kinnell shouted, pushing Murdo’s arm away. He managed it this time, but his voice shook with what sounded like real fear when Murdo stepped into his path to stop him passing, making him halt in his tracks.

“Enough of this, Balfour,” a deep voice interjected from the back of the room. “She’s his wife and his business. Leave it be.”

Balfour didn’t even look round. “Stay out of this. Anyone who cares to stand at the shoulder of this
dog
is going to get the same that’s coming to him.”

Whoever it was that had spoken fell silent. Murdo smiled at Kinnell. A wolf considering how to take down its prey.

Kinnell tried to gather his dignity about him, but his fear was pouring off him now. He cast a look of loathing at David.

“Is this what comes of
associating
with commoners?” Kinnell loaded his words with enough disgust to clearly imply that there was something untoward about David. David kept his eyes on Murdo and Kinnell, but he felt the gazes of the audience to this drama moving over him. Heard their murmurings as they speculated about his identity.

Fortified by the reaction of the onlookers, Kinnell added more arrogantly, “Besides, what business of yours is my wife?”