Enlightened (4 page)

“Whisky again?” Murdo bit out. “Whenever you’re confronted with something you don’t like, this is your answer, isn’t it?”

David stared at Murdo, stricken by the venom in his voice. The bite of Murdo’s fingers on his wrist wasn’t painful, but it demanded his attention.

“Other drunks talk too much,” Murdo went on. “But not you. You clam up. As soon as I see you reach for the whisky, I know I’ll not get another word out of you.”

“I’m not a drunk,” David said, hurt. He’d reduced his drinking substantially since coming to Perthshire. He thought Murdo knew that.

Wasn’t Murdo right, though, a sly little voice whispered in his head, that the times he did partake were when he was upset or worried about something, just as Murdo had said? David swallowed painfully over the sudden blockage that appeared in his throat at that thought.

Murdo sighed. The anger in his gaze faded, and he let go of David’s wrist. Turning away, he crossed the floor to the fireplace, where he took hold of the poker and nudged at the burnt-down logs.

After a long pause, David said quietly, “I’m not the only one who clams up about things. Every time I mention going back to Edinburgh, you shut down the conversation.”

“If you’re so eager to go—” Murdo began to mutter.

“I’m not,” David interrupted, his voice thick with frustration. “These last few months have been the best I’ve—” He stopped when his voice threatened to break, and took a deep breath before continuing more calmly. “Look, we both know I have to return, sooner or later. I have to earn a living, Murdo! All those years of building up my practice… If I’m to have any kind of a chance of saving it, I have to get back to work. And you—well, you have your own plans.”

Plans like marriage. Murdo had always been clear about that. He wanted what he had with David, but he wanted the trappings of respectability too.

Murdo turned to face David again and his handsome face was grim and unhappy.

“I know we have to talk about this at some point. But you don’t have to make any decisions right now, do you? The fact is, your leg’s
not
right yet—you’ve admitted as much yourself—and I have to go to London in the next day or two to take care of some things. Can we just get that out of the way first? Please?”

Murdo had been mentioning this London trip on and off for weeks now. There was business he had to take care of in the capital, he’d said, business he’d been putting off that couldn’t wait much longer, though he was always vague about what that business was.

“Why is this London trip so important?”

As he expected, Murdo looked away. “It’s difficult. I can’t explain—not yet. Please try to understand.”

David stared at him, disappointed. He said nothing, lips pressed firmly together to stop himself wheedling, and Murdo’s unhappy look grew unhappier.

“Please, David, I just need you to”—he broke off with a sigh of frustration—“that is, I’m
asking
you. Will you please just wait here till I get back? I shan’t be gone above a fortnight, but I’d feel happier going if I knew you would be giving yourself a little longer to recuperate.” He paused, then added, “And if I knew you would be here when I return. We can talk about everything properly then.”

David couldn’t answer him straight away. A heavy weight in his chest was crushing all the words out of him, and he wasn’t entirely sure what that weight was made of.

He managed a nod, though, and eventually, a muttered, “All right.”

And then Murdo was reaching for him, and David tried to forget everything else as he lost himself in Murdo’s embrace.

Chapter Three

The day after Dr. Logan’s visit, David’s leg was greatly improved—almost as good as it had been before he’d embarked on his ill-fated trip to McNally’s. He noticed the improvement as he rose from Murdo’s bed early that morning. Levering himself carefully to his feet, he waited for the inevitable pain in his knee, but instead of the slicing agony of the past few days, all that came was the lesser twinge of before.

He glanced at Murdo, thinking to share the news, but the other man was sleeping still, his face boyish and easy in slumber. David paused, admiring the familiar, handsome lines of Murdo’s face, smiling at how sleep softened him. It was tempting to wake him but it was still early and the other man looked so peaceful.

Instead, David crossed the room, his bare feet nearly silent on the rug-strewn floor, to pull one of the heavy velvet drapes aside. The early morning sun streamed through the gap he’d made, illuminating the bedchamber, penetrating to the very back of the room to bathe Murdo’s sleeping form in gold. Murdo shifted, murmuring a complaint, and David quietly closed the drapes again, watching as Murdo turned over and settled back to sleep.

David glanced at the clock on the mantel—it was barely six, but there was no danger of him falling back to sleep. If he returned to bed, he’d only lie there, fidgeting, and probably wake Murdo. Better to go to his own bedchamber where he could read or deal with some correspondence.

Pulling on his drawers, he headed for the door to the study that connected Murdo’s bedchamber to his own. He turned the doorknob slowly so as to minimise the noise and closed it behind him just as quietly. Once, the study had been a shared dressing room for the lady and gentleman of the house, but when Murdo had first moved to Laverock House, he’d liked the morning light the room got so well that he’d decided it would be better used by him during his working hours. A serendipitous choice, it transpired. A study they both used was far more plausible as a conduit between their bedchambers than a dressing room that David could have no earthly reason to be in.

David padded past the two desks—his and Murdo’s—smiling at the tidy piles of correspondence and paperwork lined up to be dealt with, and opened the door on the other side of the room, the one that led to his own bedchamber. The drapes were drawn in his bedchamber too, the bedcovers carefully mussed, and the door that gave out to the main corridor was securely locked. All of it part of his nightly routine.

He crossed to the wardrobe and drew out a set of comfortable clothes, ones that he wouldn’t mind getting dirty. With his leg feeling so much better, he thought he might go fishing later, and the old-fashioned brown breeches he’d pulled out—once Murdo’s—would be perfect for that, soft and worn, the matching waistcoat a loose fit on his lean form.

After tying his neckcloth in a perfunctory knot, all that remained to be done was to bring some order to his too-long hair. A dab of pomade brought it under temporary control, and, fully dressed, he threw a glance at the mirror to check his appearance, concluding with satisfaction that he didn’t look
too
disreputable. He might not pass muster at Parliament House—he looked, in fact, quite the yokel in his country getup—but he would do well enough for the breakfast table at Laverock House.

Like Murdo’s bedchamber, David’s faced east. The early morning sunlight streamed into the room, gilding his dark-red hair with brighter flashes of copper and gold. In the instant that he turned away from the looking glass, David could have sworn he saw his brother Drew. Drew’s hair had always been more fiery than his own, and those country clothes were exactly the sort of thing that Drew wore every day.

The unsettling vision made him turn back to the mirror, thinking to—what? See his brother? Of course he saw only himself, with his paler, citified complexion and darker, fox-red hair. He turned away from the glass, shaking his head.

The odd moment set him to thinking about his family, and when he took his seat behind the little writing desk at the window that looked out over Laverock House’s kitchen garden, he found himself lifting a letter he’d had from his mother a few days before. He read it through once, then again, imagining her speaking the words she’d scribed in that spare way of hers.

More than half the letter was made up of questions and advice about his leg. How was his walking now? Had he used the comfrey poultice she’d recommended? He should still be using it once a week, even now that he was walking. Was there a plentiful supply of comfrey at Laverock House? And was he making sure to rub down the whole leg with her liniment every night before he retired?

His mother had been devastated to learn of David’s injuries months before. And she’d felt bewildered and slighted when he’d told her that he’d be staying at Laverock House, rather than coming home to recuperate from them. He’d had to tell her that Murdo had offered him a temporary position to explain it to her in a way she could just about accept.

Well, he could write to her now and set her mind at rest on a few matters at least—the comfrey grew like wildfire in Murdo’s garden, and David was positively religious about using the liniment daily—no need to admit that it was applied by his employer’s hand more often than his own.

While he was dealing with correspondence, he may as well answer the other letter he’d received this week—the one from Elizabeth Chalmers.

He’d been rather surprised when Elizabeth started writing to him, but he’d grown to look forward to her letters during his recuperation. When he’d last seen her in person, she’d been running into a crowd in an attempt to flee her violent husband, Sir Alasdair Kinnell. It was David’s part in her escape that had resulted in his broken leg, and a fractured skull besides. Elizabeth had got safely away, though, finding their coconspirator, Euan MacLennan, in the crowd and fleeing to London with him.

Elizabeth’s first letter to David was little more than a tearstained apology about the injuries he’d sustained on her account, but there’d been one sign of defiance. The looping signature at the end of it:
Elizabeth Chalmers
, her maiden name. Her subsequent letters had shown a woman growing in confidence and happiness. And David hadn’t missed the growing frequency of references to Euan. In her last few letters, Elizabeth had stopped referring to him as “Mr. MacLennan”; he was “Euan” now. And in this latest letter, he and Elizabeth had become an obvious “we”.

“We have moved again. To Blackfriars this time
.
It is closer to the press, which is better for Euan since he spends so much time there.”

David found himself hoping that those casual
we
’s meant that Euan’s love for Elizabeth was reciprocated now, or that it would be one day. They both deserved a little happiness in their lives.

He wrote steadily for an hour, first to his mother, then to Elizabeth. He was just sanding the second letter when the study door opened and Murdo appeared.

“There you are,” Murdo said, the last word stretching into a yawn. He had pulled on a pair of drawers to preserve his modesty, but otherwise he was naked. His big body filled the doorframe and David allowed himself a moment to admire the breadth of the man’s powerful shoulders, the soft, dark hair that covered his chest and arrowed down the flat belly he was now scratching.

“How long have you been up?” Murdo added, drawing David’s attention back up to his face. A knowing smile curved his lips upwards.

David smiled back, even as his cheeks warmed at being caught out staring. “Since six. I didn’t want to wake you. You were sleeping so peacefully.”

“I must’ve been tired after last night’s exertions.” Murdo grinned, and David chuckled. Their gazes met, warm with amusement and shared, secret pleasure.

Murdo leaned his head against the doorframe. “Have you had breakfast?”

David shook his head. He didn’t admit that he’d wanted to wait for Murdo, but that was the truth of it. There wouldn’t be too many more breakfasts together after this one. Murdo was leaving for London tomorrow. When he returned, it wouldn’t be long before David had to go back to Edinburgh. All in all, they had just a handful of days together left.

“All right.” Murdo yawned. “Give me a quarter of an hour to wash and dress, and we’ll go down together.”

“What do you plan to do today, then?” Murdo asked as he slathered his toast in butter. If David held a buttercup under Murdo’s chin, he was sure the reflected light would shine like a beacon. Murdo didn’t just like butter, he loved it.

“First of all, I’m going through the last batch of title deeds. They arrived from Mr. Urquhart yesterday, and I’m hoping they’ll fill in the remaining gaps about the estate.”

Mr. Urquhart had been Sir Hamish’s solicitor. When David’s letters to the man requesting the deeds to the estate had gone unanswered, David had been forced to go to Perth to see the man in person. At that stage, the reason for Urquhart’s failure to respond had become clear—he was ninety, if he was a day, and, frankly, somewhat wandered. His only companion appeared to be an unmarried niece who, mortified to learn of David’s errand, promised to instruct her uncle’s clerk to go through all the deeds in her uncle’s possession to identify those pertaining to the Laverock estate.

Due to the sheer volume of deeds held by Mr. Urquhart, not to mention the total lack of any kind of system of organisation, the task had taken a number of weeks. However, the final batch had now arrived, and David could only hope that these would help to finally make sense of the estate title once and for all, clearing up the remaining uncertainties. Having spent so long teasing out the tangled legal threads of the myriad plots that made up the estate—some inherited, some purchased, some acquired by marriage—David wanted to at least complete his research before he left Laverock House.

“Rather you than me,” Murdo said.