Enlightened (22 page)

David found himself on his feet without having made the conscious decision to stand. A jolt of pain travelled down his leg from hip to knee, but he managed to suppress a gasp.

“You will not speak of that lady again,” he said in a deadly voice. “You are not fit to lick her boots.”

The earl smiled, eyeing David’s reaction with undisguised interest.

“Do not react to my father’s jibes,” Murdo said to David. “He’ll only do it more. He enjoys riling people.”

The earl laughed then, a soft, appreciative sound. “You know me so well, Murdoch,” he said. There was a pause—a few heartbeats—and then his faintly amused expression faded into something undeniably sorrowful.

“You were the only one, out of the three of you. The only one I had real hopes of.”

“What rot,” Murdoch said mildly. “There are no two sons more obedient than Harris and Iain. I am the only who ever defied you.”

“And you are the only one with wit, with ability. You are the only one who sees the world as it is. Oh, Harris will get the title and the lands. What of it? You could have had so much more than that. You could have been a kingmaker, Murdoch. You could have risen to the highest reaches of power.
That
is what I wanted for you! That is what this marriage was about—and you
know
that! When I brokered it for you, you were in agreement—”

“You mean, I did not protest,” Murdo put in.

“Do not play the puppet with me. You intended to come back to London and follow the path we’d always talked about.”

“Become like you,” Murdo said, expressionless. “Rise through the ranks, the real influence behind the public face of government.”

“Yes, and you could’ve done it. But, instead, you went running off to Scotland—to
him
”—he gestured at David—“and ignored all the summonses I sent you. Why?”

“I came to my senses.”

“Came to your senses? You will never be received in polite society again! You think any of those men who like to invest in those schemes that make you so much money will send you a brass farthing once they hear of this scandal? You will be a
pariah
, Murdoch.”

Murdo shrugged. “True, but there is nothing to be done about it now.” He paused. “It’s amusing, actually. For all these years, you’ve held the possibility of ruin over my head, and here I go and do it by myself. All that power you had over me, and until tonight, I never realised how flimsy it really was. All I needed to do was renounce everything you ever gave me. Which wasn’t so very difficult once I realised how little I wanted it.”

“You’ll be well satisfied, then, now that you have nothing,” the earl snapped.

“That’s not how I see it.”

The earl glanced at David, understanding dawning. “I see,” he said, adding after a moment, “Well, I wish you’d told me rather than falling on your sword like this. I’m sure we could have come to some sort of accommodation. There aren’t many beds of married love in this city. It’s not so difficult to arrange a house, privacy—”

Murdo laughed with what sounded like genuine amusement this time. “You don’t expect me to believe you’d have come to an
accommodation
with me? You, who always said a man keeps secrets at his peril.”

The earl’s lips thinned. “If you had told me—”

Murdo didn’t let him go further. “If I’d told you, you would have done everything you could to sabotage it,” he snapped. “And anyone who stood in your way would have been destroyed.”

The earl fell silent. He didn’t protest or indeed say anything.

Murdo turned to David. “Here’s a story for you: when I was boy, I lived for the summers. We spent them at Kilbeigh, in Argyllshire—my mother and my siblings and me. Not my father. He was always too busy in London.” He turned to his father. “It must be years since you were in Scotland.”

The earl said nothing, and Murdo turned back to David. “When I was sixteen, I told my father I wanted to stay at Kilbeigh. Manage the estate for my brother Harris, who was to inherit the title. That way Harris could stay in London and take his seat in the Lords. I thought that would satisfy my father’s desire for one of his sons to follow in his political footsteps. I knew Harris would be perfectly happy, so long as his allowance was being paid.”

“Harris isn’t like you. He hasn’t the wit for politics,” the earl interrupted, but Murdo ignored him.

“My father surprised me,” he told David. “He was encouraging. He said that he would arrange for me spend some time with Mr. Mure, the senior land agent at Kilbeigh, to see if I liked the work. I was sent to Kilbeigh on my own, in the family carriage. I felt like a man for the first time in my life.”

David wanted to tell him to stop. He knew something was coming that was awful, and part of him didn’t want to hear it—except that he knew Murdo needed to say it, and he needed David to be his witness.

Murdo smiled at him, and his gaze was unbearably sad. “One day, after I’d been home a few days, Mr. Mure told me we were going out early. I was to be saddled and ready for seven o’clock the next day. I remember getting dressed that morning, wondering what the day would bring. As soon as I got down to the stables, I knew—” He broke off.

“What?” David said, prompting him. “What did you know?”

“I knew that something was wrong,” Murdo continued, swallowing. “There were redcoats in the stable yard, and a clerk from the sheriff’s office. He had legal papers. Once we were on our way, I asked Mr. Mure what was going on, and he told me that it was an eviction. I didn’t know what to expect. Certainly not the burning down of an entire village.”

Oh God, no.

David’s heart wrenched as he remembered another conversation, in another drawing room, months ago. David had spoken of the clearance of the highlanders from their ancestral lands. Had accused Murdo of exactly this.

“You’re a highlander, aren’t you? The son of the laird himself. Did your father evict any of his tenants from their homelands to make room for sheep? Burn down any houses?”

Murdo had begged him to stop.

“I’m so sorry—” David whispered now.

“That day cured me of any wish to manage Kilbeigh,” Murdo said now. “As my father knew it would. But then, you’ve always been such a student of human nature, haven’t you, Father?” He turned back to the earl now, who sat in the winged armchair, looking remote and defiant. “You always know just the thing to do, to persuade, to cajole…”

“It would have been such a waste,” the earl said, his voice clipped. “You had so much potential, even then.”

“I loved Kilbeigh,” Murdo said. “I was happy there.”

The earl shrugged. “Happiness comes and goes,” he said. “The ability to shape the future direction of this kingdom, though—that is something that few men can boast a part in. That is what I offered you.”

“And I have thrown it away.”

“Yes, you have.” The earl rubbed his hands over his face in a gesture of supreme weariness. “You have thrown it away,” he repeated, and this time it sounded like he was coming to understand that it could not be undone.

“This evening, you publicly disowned me,” Murdo said. “That is not something you will go back on.”

“No, it is not,” the earl admitted. “All the way over here, I tried to think of a way out of this, but there is none. There is nothing I can do to save you from your own foolishness. There were so many witnesses. It will be an immense scandal. I have to disassociate the rest of the family from you entirely.”

“I understand,” Murdo said. “I will not embarrass you by showing my face around Town. I’m going back to Scotland after this, and I don’t intend to come back.”

“Good,” the earl replied, but his face belied the word on his lips. He looked devastated. And David realised, in that moment, that in his own way, the earl loved his son.

Murdo took a deep breath. “I don’t ask much in return. Only—”

“Only?” A brief glimmer, of hope perhaps, lit the earl’s gaze. That if Murdo wanted something of him, after all…

“Only—that you leave us alone.”

Us.

The glimmer of hope in the earl’s gaze faded and died.

“Murdoch,” he said, and there was a wealth of pain and regret in the word. “You achieved something tonight I’d never have thought you capable of. You rendered yourself entirely useless to me. I can’t do anything with you.”

“I know.”

The earl closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again, he said, “Do you remember confronting me about the eviction, all those years ago?”

Murdo nodded, slowly.

“You said you were going to get back at me one day. And I said that was foolish, that revenge only for revenge’s sake served no purpose. It is a waste of energy you could use more productively elsewhere.”

“I remember it well,” Murdo said. “You said that revenge is only meaningful if it furthers some other objective. Otherwise it is merely the bite of a dog. You said that any fool can wield a whip; the trick is in bringing the horse over the line.”

“Quite so,” the earl said and smiled faintly, a ghost of remembered pride. He rose from his chair and crossed the room to stand an arm’s length from his son.

“You have put yourself out of the race, Murdoch,” he said. “I don’t flog dead horses. In fact, I don’t grant them another moment of my attention.”

For a long moment, the two men gazed at one another.

“Thank you,” Murdo said.

The earl’s expression grew hard then, and bitter. “Don’t thank me,” he bit out. “One day you’re going to look at your life, and you’re going to realise he wasn’t worth all this sacrifice.”

Murdo didn’t say anything, just gazed steadily at his father, waiting.

The earl shook his head and turned away. “You are the greatest disappointment of my life,” he said.

Then he walked out of the room without another word.

Chapter Eighteen

The next morning dawned blustery and cold. Grey clouds scudded around the sky as David made his way to the Lennox residence and the wind buffeted him, forcing him to grab hold of his hat several times. March was coming in like a lion this year.

Will’s house was smaller and less grand than Murdo’s, a red-brick affair in a less salubrious, though still respectable, corner of London. David’s stomach gripped with nerves as he knocked at the door, wondering what reception he could expect.

“Sir William said you were to be brought straight to the study, sir,” the grim-faced butler told him. “If you’d care to follow me.”

He escorted David down a narrow hallway, stopping in front of one of the doors to lightly knock.

“Enter,” came the voice from within.

It was just one word, but unmistakably, it was Will. An aristocratic inflection to it, like Murdo’s, but Will’s accent was more obviously Scottish. The voice of a country gentleman who’d played with the local children when he was a boy and been tutored at home.

The butler opened the door, inviting David to precede him into the room with a sweeping gesture, and David crossed the threshold into a cosy study. Will had evidently been sitting behind his desk. He was already in the act of rising when David entered. They moved towards one another, coming to a mutual halt in the middle of a Turkish rug in front of the fireplace.

“Mr. Lauriston,” he said with a careful smile.

“Sir William.” David shook the offered hand as quickly as was decent before drawing his fingers free. Behind him, the click of the door signalled Will’s servant had withdrawn, and they were alone.

There was a long pause, then Will said, “I see you have a cane now?”

“It’s temporary,” David replied shortly.

“What happened?”

“Nothing much. An accident. I am all but recovered.” David forced himself to look at the other man, keeping his own expression determinedly blank.

“You certainly look well,” Will said at last, and his gaze travelled over David, up, then down. Not too obviously, but obvious enough, to men like them. Had he looked at his grenadier guard like that, David wondered, before he fucked him in front of an audience?

“So do you,” David said blandly, giving no hint of his thoughts. He added coolly, “Marriage must agree with you.”

Will didn’t respond to that, but his gaze, so very direct a moment ago, slid away.

“I hear you have a daughter,” David added, all polite interest.

“And a son now,” Will confirmed.

“My felicitations.”

Will nodded dismissively, apparently disinclined to discuss his children with David. “Would you like a nip of something?” he asked, gesturing at a decanter of something amber on his desk.

At ten o’clock in the morning?

“No, thank you,” David murmured. “But I wouldn’t mind sitting down.”

“Oh, of course,” Will replied, glancing at the cane in David’s hand. “I should have offered before.”

He should have, David thought. But then, Will had never been the most thoughtful of men.

It was an idle observation, but one that pulled him up oddly short. He’d cursed Will Lennox plenty of times over the last decade, but never for anything less dramatic than breaking David’s heart. The sheer banality of this reaction—disapproving of the man’s manners, for God’s sake—struck him as somewhat anticlimactic.