Provoked (5 page)

“You should forget this,” David said quietly, “and go back to your studies. That is what your brother would want.”

“I can’t. I have to do this.”

“It won’t help Peter.”

“I know,” Euan said. “Nevertheless, I have to.”

“You won’t find this man, and your studies will falter—and what would Peter think of that? He would be devastated.”

Euan took a deep breath, visibly calming himself. “I’m only asking you for a little help, Davy. A name, an address. That’s all.”

“It’s not all. I would have to make enquiries, and my sympathies have already been remarked upon—”

“Please Davy. Help me.” The young man’s voice was husky, all pride abandoned now.

David sighed. It really was completely pointless, but he’d never been able to walk away from a plea for help.
“You’re soft, laddie.”
That was what his father used to say.

Besides, there was only one cure for what ailed Euan MacLennan: failure. There was nothing like failure for eroding hope, nothing else in the world. Waiting for months—years—for a letter that would never, ever come.

“All right,” he sighed. “I will try to find out who this Isabella is—”

“Thank you! I knew I could—”

“But—” David held a hand up to stay Euan’s babbling gratitude. “In return, you will agree to give up on this scheme if my enquiries bear no fruit.”

“Yes, anything.”

“And, if we do learn anything, you will do nothing—
nothing
—without first telling me, because make no mistake, Euan, this Lees is a very dangerous man.”

“Yes,” Euan agreed hurriedly. “Of course, anything you say, Davy.” His smile was like sunshine breaking through clouds. Hope and optimism and belief blazed in his blue eyes.

All David felt was an uneasy worry in his gut.

Chapter Four

On Saturday, David walked out to Jeffrey’s home at Craigcrook. It was a few miles northwest of the city, and he did it at a brisk pace, relishing the exercise and the gradual improvement of the air from the dark murk of the Old Town where he lived and worked, to the elegant but still reeky New Town, and farther out on the road to Queensferry.

He liked best the point at which the city seemed to lose its grip on the land, the buildings diminishing in size and gradually petering out until they were no longer part of the city at all but little hamlets of their own. Best of all was the last stretch, after he turned off the main road and took the road to Craigcrook.

It was dusk by this time, and it felt like he was in the country proper. Birds twittered from tree to tree, searching for a roost for the night, and the uneven dirt-packed road beneath his feet felt like home. It felt good to walk on the earth instead of on cobbles, good to experience silence and solitude. For the first seventeen years of his life, he’d lived on his father’s farm, working long days at the old man’s side with his brother Drew. He missed those days sometimes—being outdoors, being connected to the land and the seasons—and now he slowed his pace to a stroll the better to enjoy the old, familiar feeling.

As he walked, David mentally ticked off the names of the members of the faculty he’d already positively excluded as having any possible connection to “Isabella”. More than half already, and he’d only been making his enquiries for a few days. So far it was all exactly as he’d expected but that didn’t make it a pointless exercise. Euan wanted—needed—to do something for his brother. David understood that, and he would do what he could to help, even if all it amounted to was snipping off the last thread of hope the lad had.

Besides, it would help take his mind off the other thing that had been playing on his mind all week—his encounter with Murdo Balfour. Whenever he ceased actively thinking of something else, his mind would sneak back to that memory, lingering on the recollected pleasure of their encounter in the dark close till he realised what he was doing and determinedly banished it once again.

David was accustomed to reliving his rare encounters with other men. Usually, though, he was mired in regret as he did so. This memory was different. Much as he tried to concentrate on what it had felt like to kneel on the filthy wet ground and give in to his abiding weakness, what he kept remembering was the moment Balfour dragged him to his feet and kissed him. Balfour’s warm, firm lips. His sleek tongue. His solid presence.

And not feeling alone.

David pressed his lips together and reminded himself that what he had done was a sin. There was nothing in the world that could change that. He made himself think of his parents, how disgusted they’d be at the thought of him with another man. Christ, he’d seen his father’s reaction once before, hadn’t he? It had only been a kiss, but just the look of horror on the old man’s face had destroyed David that day.

He was so immersed in his thoughts that he almost walked past the gate that led to Jeffrey’s house. Set back from the path, it was easy to miss, a dark bit of ironwork shadowed by foliage. David gave it a shove, half expecting it to be locked, but no, it swung slowly open, the well-oiled hinges making no sound. Closing the gate behind him, he walked straight into a copse of trees, coming out the other side to emerge onto a broader path that led up to the house itself.

The house was bigger than even David had expected. A big baronial pile, its high walls were obscured by a thick layer of dark green ivy. A multitude of towers, turrets and crow-stepped gables drew the eye upwards to a sky that had already darkened to violet. A few bats flitted overhead, chittering.

Coming to a halt at the front door, David paused, wondering how Jeffrey and his wife could possibly want such a large house, just for the two of them. This was worlds away from David’s life. His own rooms in the heart of the Old Town were pleasant. He had a bedchamber of his own as well as another room where he could dine and work in the evening. He even had a maidservant who came every other day to clean and lay the fires and take his laundry away. She cooked his breakfast in the little kitchen on the days she came—dinner too, some days, though he generally preferred to eat in a chop house or inn in the evening. All in all, he lived very well compared to most people.

Comfortable as it was, David’s home was nothing to this great house. Hard to believe that at the same age as David, Jeffrey had been in a similar position, struggling to bring in the steady stream of work a man needed to assure his success. Perhaps that was why he’d taken on this imposing house? As a measure of success, it was undeniable. Jeffrey cocking a snook at all the Tory bigwigs who’d made his early career so difficult.

Standing on Jeffrey’s stoop, David felt suddenly nervous. He was comfortable with Jeffrey himself but had only met his wife once, briefly, and he had no idea who the other guests were. He brushed his hands over his coat and straightened his hat, taking a deep breath. It’s just a dinner, he told himself. Raising his fist, he firmly rapped on the door.

The female servant who answered took his hat, coat and bag, then led him into the drawing room. Jeffrey and his wife sat talking with a middle-aged couple and a young woman who looked to be their daughter.

Jeffrey spotted David hovering in the doorway and rose from his chair, his expressive face lit with a bright smile.

“Mr. Lauriston!” he exclaimed as he walked forward to greet David. “So glad you could come!” He shook David’s hand and added,
sotto voce
, “I invited someone who could be useful for you to know.”

He ushered David over to the rest of the group. Mrs. Jeffrey stood to greet him. It seemed she remembered him.

“Mr. Lauriston, how nice to see you again.” She was a plain, sallow-skinned woman with mouse-brown hair, unassuming in her manner and easy to overlook. When she spoke, though, her distinctive American accent was warm and confident.

David took her proffered hand and bowed over it awkwardly, fretting inwardly over his pose and the correctness of the distance between her gloved hand and his face. He was always embarrassed by social niceties. He’d been taught at his father’s knee to look past all that; taught that the substance of a man’s character mattered more than the polish of his manners. His father—an elder of the church and a good Presbyterian—would think it absurd to judge a man by the way he held his cutlery, and for some reason, it made David feel disloyal to him whenever he tried to master such inconsequentialities.

“Allow me to introduce you to Mr. and Mrs. Chalmers and their daughter, Elizabeth,” Mrs. Jeffrey said, curling her arm around David’s and drawing him over to the other guests. “Though of course, you must know Mr. Chalmers already.”

David realised he did recognise the paunchy, balding man who had risen from his chair as Mrs. Jeffrey approached with David in tow. Patrick Chalmers was a senior advocate, a man David had never spoken to or, he was sure, been noticed by. Highly regarded by the judges, Chalmers had no shortage of work and was an influential man in the faculty. David was surprised Jeffrey knew the man well enough to ask him to dine. They ordinarily moved in very different circles.

“Ah yes,” Chalmers said, shaking the hand David offered. “Mr. Lauriston, of course.” It was polite of him to pretend he knew who David was, and David was properly grateful.

“It’s good to see you, sir,” he replied earnestly.

“My wife, Mrs. Chalmers,” the older man said, gesturing at the lady seated behind him.

David executed another inelegant bow, and Mrs. Chalmers gave a chilly sort of nod. She was a spare, grey-haired lady of around fifty years with a querulous expression that looked to be permanent. David felt rather like a leg of lamb as she looked him over assessingly.

“And my daughter, Elizabeth.” Chalmers’s voice warmed, his jowly face indulgent as he looked on his child, an ordinary-looking girl with dark eyes and middling-brown hair dressed in a fussy pink gown. Unlike her mother, she stood to be introduced and bobbed a little curtsey in response to his bow, giving him a shy smile.

As soon as David took a seat, Mrs. Chalmers began to question him, rude, pointed questions about his family and background, designed to ascertain his prospects, no doubt.

“Are you one of the Lauristons of St. Andrews? I know several of that family.”

“No, ma’am. I’m from a small village around twenty miles from here called Midlauder.”

“I’ve never heard of it,” she said, frowning. “What do your people do there?”

David explained that his father was a tenant farmer, that the tenancy would go to David’s brother eventually. As he spoke, he could tell by Mrs. Chalmers’s hard stare and thin lips that she was not impressed by what she heard.

Elizabeth Chalmers was much more pleasant than her mother. Her not-quite-pretty face reminded him of his older cousin, Connie, and when they sat down to dine, she did not stay silent as so many young ladies would have done but displayed a lively interest in the wide-ranging conversation that played out over the course of the meal. By contrast, Mrs. Chalmers opined several times, when asked a direct question, that she was sure she couldn’t offer a sensible opinion and that she was happy to defer to her husband—though she struck David as a lady who knew her own mind very well.

Whenever Elizabeth spoke, Mrs. Chalmers’s mouth tightened with displeasure. She was the sort of woman who could make her unhappiness felt without speaking a word. The crease of her brow was eloquent, the pinch of her lips graphic. The younger woman was not cowed, though. She continued to converse with the group as a whole, ignoring her mother’s antics, though her eyes flicked often towards her unhappy parent.

As for Mr. Chalmers, he seemed oblivious to his wife and beamed whenever his daughter spoke, his pride in her very evident. His approval seemed to keep Mrs. Chalmers silent, until Jeffrey raised the topic of a recent election. From there, the conversation inevitably veered onto radicals and the events earlier in the year.

“You defended those weavers, did you not, Mr. Jeffrey?” Elizabeth asked. “The ones who were executed for their part in the uprising?”

Jeffrey opened his mouth to answer but was interrupted by Mrs. Chalmers.

“When we go to London, Elizabeth—if we
ever
do—you are going to have to learn to curb your tongue at social occasions,” she said sharply. “That is not an appropriate subject for polite conversation, and certainly not from a young lady!”

The conversation ground to an embarrassed halt. Elizabeth’s cheeks blazed. Mr. Chalmers said nothing, though he frowned slightly at his wife. She pressed her lips together, but her expression was unapologetic. Jeffrey shifted in his chair, unsure how to react.

It was Mrs. Jeffrey who finally took control. “Come now,” she said to the older lady, coaxing. “We’re not in London now, thank heavens! And we’ve all been enjoying Miss Elizabeth’s conversation immensely, isn’t that right, Mr. Lauriston?”

Drawn unwillingly into acting the part of the girl’s knight errant, David stammered out his agreement. “Ah—yes. The company of an intelligent woman is infinitely more enjoyable than that of a lady who has nothing to talk about other than—than—fashions and entertainments. And I do, of course, have a special interest in the case Miss Chalmers speaks of myself.”

“Mr. Lauriston juniored to me on the weavers’ case, Miss Chalmers,” Jeffrey added smoothly, then, looking at Mr. Chalmers, added, “Excellent junior. He has a fine legal brain, and he works like a Trojan.”

Mr. Chalmers glanced at David.

“You are too forbearing, Mr. Lauriston,” Mrs. Chalmers complained, unwilling to give up the point. “Most gentlemen would not be so understanding.”

Elizabeth stared down at her plate, saying nothing.

For the rest of the meal, she offered no other views. Even when Mrs. Jeffrey tried to draw her out with innocuous questions, her responses were quiet and brief.

When dinner was over, the ladies rose, quitting the dining room to take tea in the drawing room while the gentlemen had their port. The table seemed much larger without them, an empty chair beside each of the three men. Chalmers stretched out, looking relaxed and easy for the first time all evening.