Provoked (21 page)

“Can I ask
you
something now?” Balfour said, breaking the silence.

“Of course.”

“Why do you call me Balfour instead of Lord Murdo?”

David flushed. “I know it’s not proper, but it’s how I think of you,” he admitted. When Balfour arched a brow, he continued, half reluctantly. “When we first met—that night in Stirling—you didn’t disclose your title. You told me your name was Mr. Balfour, so from then on, that’s how I thought of you. As Balfour. Even though I later learned you were a peer.”

Balfour fixed his dark eyes on David. “You never thought of me as Murdo? That is my given name.” His eyes were almost black, the colour of coffee. In this light, you couldn’t see where the deep brown of the iris met the pure black of the pupil.

David flushed, thrown by the odd intimacy of the question. “I can’t say I have.”

Balfour glanced away. “Odd, aren’t they,” he said after a pause. “Names, I mean.”

“What do you mean?”

Balfour gave a funny little half-hitched smile. “My mother is the only person in the whole world who calls me Murdoch—that’s my real Christian name.”

David couldn’t help but smile too. “You have a mother?” he teased lightly. “I thought you were made of marble.”

Balfour looked comically offended. “I have a doting mother, actually. I’m the youngest boy—her baby.”

David smiled. “I’m the youngest too. Though there are only two of us, me and my brother Drew.”

“There are six of us,” Balfour replied. “My oldest brother, Harris, then Iain, then me. And the three girls.”

“It must be nice, to have so many siblings.”

“Sometimes. What does your mother call you?”

“Davy.”

Balfour raised an eyebrow. “That’s what MacLennan called you.”

David shrugged. “That’s different.”

“How?”

“In ways you can’t understand.”

“Explain it to me.”

“Oh, I’d need much more whisky for that.” David’s tone was light, teasing. But Balfour rose from his chair and fetched the decanter anyway, refilling David’s glass with a slosh of amber fluid.

David sighed, resigned. He took a long swallow and leaned back in his chair. “Where I come from, most people use my given name.”

“Where do you come from?”

“A village called Midlauder about twenty miles from here. My father leases a small farm there. In Midlauder, there’s the big house—”

“Who lives in the big house?”

David paused, briefly. “It was Sir Thomas Lennox when I was a boy. Now it’s his son, Sir William.” Balfour showed no hint of recognition, though he nodded. David went on. “The estate manager runs the home farm. Then there are the tenanted farms, like my father’s. Most of the people who live in the village are farm labourers, other than Mr. Odell, the minister and Mr. Graeme, the physician. Then there’s the smithy and the inn. And one shop, run by the widow McAndrew.” He smiled a little wistfully. “It’s a small place.”

“Believe it or not,” Balfour said drily, “I’m familiar with the concept of villages.”

“Ah, but you would’ve been the son of the big house.”

“Well, yes.”

“What did they call you when you were a boy? Lord Murdo?”

“Most of them, yes. Or Master Murdo.”

David smiled. “You’re so used to it, you don’t even notice. Men of your class—the way you’re addressed—it tells the story of who you are and where you came from.”

Balfour arched a brow. “But not men like you?”

“Not to the same degree. It’s different. When I was boy, everyone called me Davy, except my father.”

“What did he call you?”

“David. Always my Sunday name.” He smiled, half fond, half sad. “My brother’s Andrew, but he got Drew, even from my father. I was different.”

“And now,” Balfour said, “you’re a man of letters, and they call you Mr. Lauriston. You’ve moved up in the world. Congratulations.” He tipped his head back, emptying his glass.

“Not everyone. When I met the weavers and their families, I saw how I intimidated them—how we all did. So I told them I was just like them. I told them I didn’t come from money, and I told them about the wee farm my family lived on and how hard it was to make ends meet. I told them my name was Davy. And so that was what they called me.”

Balfour turned his head during that speech, and when David finished, their eyes met and held.

“That’s why Euan calls me Davy. And why I call him Euan. Because we’re the same, in a way.”

“In more ways than one. He’s a university man like yourself, isn’t he?”

“You know about that?”

“Hugh mentioned it earlier. He thinks—like my father—that educating working men is a dangerous thing.”

“Do you think that?”

Balfour shrugged. “Too late to worry about it. The world is changing. My father is trying to preserve a world of aristocratic power and privilege that’s already dead. He doesn’t see it, but I do.”

“Doesn’t seem like it’s dead to me,” David said.

“No. Well, there’s nothing like a dying animal for fighting back, is there? But you only have to look at the aristocracy to see we’ve only got a generation or two left in us. All we’ve got is land—and most of us are selling that off to pay our gambling debts. We don’t make anything; we don’t even manage what we do have very well, most of us.”

“Aren’t you going to fight for it, Balfour? Don’t you think it’s worth fighting for?”

Balfour yawned and shook his head, stretching his legs out before him. “I don’t see the point of fighting losing battles for other people. I’d rather concentrate on making the best of what I’ve got in the here and now.”

“Just because you lose a battle, doesn’t mean it was never worth fighting.”

“A noble sentiment, Lauriston. How very you.”

David bristled, hating the fact that Balfour’s mocking words made him feel like a naïve boy. “There’s nothing wrong with noble sentiments.”

“No,” Balfour agreed. “But they won’t keep you warm at night.”

“You’re not without principles,” David said. “You came all this way to save your cousin, didn’t you?”

“That’s different,” Balfour said, shrugging. “I owed my aunt a debt. She did something for me a long time ago. Besides, Hugh is family.”

“You value your family, then, at least.”

Balfour laughed. “Don’t try to find a virtue in me, Lauriston. You won’t. Family is just another kind of privilege. Little groups of people, sticking together to further their shared interests. I’m not averse to making such allegiances to advance myself.”

“That’s not all family is,” David protested, thinking of his hard-working father, his brusque, loving mother, kindly, warm-hearted Drew. The fierce and helpless love he felt for them all, despite everything.

“No? In my experience it is.”

“Then I pity you.”

“Don’t waste your time, I’m perfectly content.”

They were such opposites, David thought. Different in every possible way.

Suddenly, he felt overwhelmingly tired.

He set his glass down on the occasional table next to the sofa and stood.

“You know, I think I’ll go home after all,” he said.

Balfour looked up at him, a moment’s disappointment in his dark gaze before he masked it. “You’re not staying the night?”

“No,” David replied. “I’ve decided I need my own bed.”

Balfour’s gaze moved over him, and David felt unsettled, standing while the other man examined him with that bland expression. What was he thinking? At last, Balfour levered himself up from his chair. “If you insist,” he said at last. “I’ll call for my carriage to take you.”

“There’s no need.”

“Don’t argue.” Balfour sighed. “Please.”

He crossed to the room and pulled the bell rope.

“I’ll be going back to London tomorrow,” Balfour added in a flat voice. “So this is good-bye.”

“Good-bye?” David wished he could bite back the word as soon as it was out. It seemed to him his voice rang with disappointment.

“I don’t expect I’ll be in Scotland again for a while.”

“I see. Well, I’ll wish you all the best, then.” David thrust out his hand.

For a moment, Balfour simply stared at his outstretched hand, till David felt so uncomfortable he wanted to draw it back. But then Balfour took it, and in one swift movement, turned David’s hand over, palm down, and lowered his head to press a kiss to the back of it.

Balfour’s lips were soft and warm, but the fingers holding David’s hand were strong and determined. The gesture made David feel supremely off-balance. It was typically Balfour: challenging and humorous at once. Making a woman of David with his queer courtliness. It was…romantic.

David pulled his hand back swiftly, masking how shaken he was with a laugh.

“I’m glad I met you, Lauriston,” Balfour said, his expression back to the usual careless amusement. “You’ve made these last weeks very interesting.”

“Well, I’m glad to have entertained you,” David countered, adopting a determinedly light tone.

“Are you? You certainly have, whether you intended to or not.” He gave a wry smile. “Are you quite sure you won’t stay the night?”

For a moment, David hesitated, but he knew it would be a mistake. An intimacy had sprung up between them tonight—not the physical kind, a different sort—that unsettled him in ways he couldn’t put a name to. “Yes, thank you,” he said at last. “I’m quite sure.”

Was that regret in Balfour’s gaze? If so, it was good-humoured enough. “Very well.”

The footman came then, and Balfour went to confer with him, giving him his orders. When the footman had gone, he strolled over to David, who had risen from his chair.

“Will you permit me to give you one bit of advice, before we say farewell?”

Wary, David nodded.

“Don’t rule out marrying Elizabeth Chalmers. She’s in love with you, and she’d be a good wife to you. She could give you children and make you a home.”

It was so close to David’s own recent thoughts on the matter that he almost laughed. Instead he merely shook his head. “I couldn’t do that to her,” he said. “She deserves a husband who will love her fully.”

Balfour’s lips thinned, and his eyes glittered. All at once, his good humour was gone.

“There you go again,” he snapped. “Always the bloody martyr, aren’t you? With your terrible affliction that you won’t subject any innocent souls to? Christ, why don’t you just let yourself have a bit of happiness? Marry a woman who loves you and slake your needs with men on occasion. It’s not as though thousands of others don’t do it every day!”

“Is that what you’re going to do?”

“Yes! Yes, it is! I don’t want to be like you. I want everything this damned world has to offer! If that means bending the truth a little here and there, what’s the harm? Christ, you’re so damnably yes-or-no about everything! So judgmental—”

“I’m not judging you,” David protested. “I couldn’t give a damn what you do—but I
can’t be
what I am not. I can’t, and that’s the beginning and the end of it.”

“Christ almighty, don’t you want to be
happy
?”

David knew, somehow, that that was a cry from the heart. He looked at Balfour, and it was as though the man was standing naked before him. The always present amusement had been wiped away entirely, and on his face was an expression of naked longing. It made David wonder what it was that Balfour longed for that made him look like that.

“I’m not sure life is about being happy,” David answered with quiet honesty.

Balfour gave a harsh laugh at that. “Another Lauristonian sentiment,” he sneered. “I should have predicted that one. Tell me, then. If life isn’t about pleasure or happiness, what is it about? Tell me, Lauriston, so I can learn from your great wisdom.”

It was tempting to say nothing, to walk away. He knew Balfour would mock whatever answer he gave. But for some reason, he felt compelled to utter it.

“I think it’s about being true to yourself,” he said at length.

He was right—Balfour laughed. It was an ugly sound. A sneering, mocking insult. “To thine own self be true? Christ, that’s rich, coming from you! You hate your own guts because you like cock, that’s how true to yourself
you
are!”

David felt a lump rise in his throat and had to swallow against it. He couldn’t deny that accusation. He thought of the night he’d lain in Balfour’s bed while the man kissed and stroked and suckled him. He thought of the wave of unprecedented tenderness that had washed over him afterwards.

Balfour wasn’t finished yet.

“You deny the very essence of who you are, and you do it every single fucking day. And then you have the gall to turn around and tell me that if I have the temerity to want the things that other men take for granted, I’m not being
true
to myself?”

“I never said that,” David replied. “If you decide to marry, that’s a matter for you and your conscience. For my part, I won’t do it. Yes, I hate what I am at times, but at least I accept myself enough to realise that I can’t lie my way through life, pretending to prefer women when I don’t.”

At that moment, there was a knock on the door, and Balfour, who had opened his mouth to speak, swallowed his words and barked, “Enter!”

It was Johnston the footman. He’d brought David’s coat—freshly brushed—and his hat along with the news that the carriage was waiting. If he’d overhead any of their argument, he gave no sign. Balfour dismissed him impatiently.

David shrugged the coat on and jammed his hat on his head. Suddenly he felt regretful and empty. This was likely the last time he’d see Balfour and, for some reason, that thought left David with a yawning chasm inside him.

“Believe it or not,” he said gravely, looking squarely at the other man, “I wish you every happiness.” He went to walk past Balfour and was surprised when the other man caught his upper arm in a strong grip. Before he could protest, Balfour took David’s face in his big, warm hands and kissed him fiercely.

It was a painful, desperate kiss. Balfour’s hard mouth ground the soft tissue behind David’s lips against his teeth and he made a strange, almost animal noise in his chest. Before David could even react, Balfour had thrust him away, and they stood staring at one another panting. “Don’t wish me happiness, damn you,” he said bitterly.