Enlightened (5 page)

“What about you?”

“I’m going to ride over to Howie’s place this morning and take a look at his cattle. He’s willing to part with a few, and I gather their yield is the envy of Perthshire.”

“You’re turning into quite the gentleman farmer.”

“I’m learning.”

“Do you want to go fishing later?” David asked.

Murdo gave a slow smile. “I’d like that.”

David gave a soft laugh, even as his cheeks heated. He’d asked quite innocently, but now he remembered the last time they’d gone fishing, and what they’d got up to in their private little nook of rocks.

There hadn’t been any catch that day.

Before David could answer, there was a soft knock at the door. It was Archie, the footman, bearing the morning’s post on a silver tray. He placed the tray at Murdo’s right hand and enquired if they wanted anything else, withdrawing when both of them shook their heads.

Murdo rifled through the pile of correspondence. “Two for you,” he said, handing over two slim packets before turning his attention back to his own correspondence.

David perused his letters. He recognised the looping handwriting on one of them as that of his friend Donald Ferguson—Elizabeth’s brother-in-law. Donald had been looking after some of David’s cases while he was staying at Laverock House and regularly wrote to him to keep him advised as to progress and to seek David’s advice.

Breaking the seal, David unfolded the letter and began to read.

My dear Lauriston,

I write to you with the gravest of news. Patrick Chalmers is dying…

“David?”

Murdo’s voice was sharp with concern, but David couldn’t tear his gaze from the letter and those looping letters.

Chalmers—his mentor, the man to whom David owed his career—was dying.

Chalmers—his friend.

He thought of Elizabeth, hiding from her husband in London. She probably wouldn’t get the chance to see the father she adored again, and the thought made his heart ache.

“David, what’s wrong?”

“It’s from Donald,” David got out numbly. “Patrick Chalmers is dying, and he wants to see me.”

He looked up. The stark pity in Murdo’s eyes somehow made the situation feel more real, and he had to swallow against the sudden lump that appeared in his throat. “I have to go to Edinburgh.”

Murdo nodded, but he added, “Are you sure you’re fit to travel?”

“Yes, of course.” He thought feverishly. “Do you suppose you could leave for London today instead of tomorrow? That way, I could come with you as far as Edinburgh. It would be much quicker than getting the stagecoach. Is that possible?” He frowned, thinking. “If not, perhaps Walter could take me as far as Perth, and I’ll take a coach from there—”

Murdo interrupted him. “David, slow down. We’ll go today but—”

“Thank you, I—”

“
But
, will you promise me that you’ll stay at the townhouse in Edinburgh while I’m in London? And…” He paused, seeming to consider for a moment before continuing. “And will you promise to make no other permanent arrangements till my return?”

David gazed at Murdo, taking in the hesitant expression and the new, unhappy lines that bracketed his mouth. This mattered to Murdo, he realised.

“All right,” he said warily. “I promise.”

With that vow in his pocket, Murdo seemed to minutely relax, a tension about his jaw easing enough that he managed a sad smile.

“Good,” he said. Then, becoming brisk, “We’d better get packed, then.”

Chapter Four

The journey to Edinburgh was very different from the one David had taken in the opposite direction five months earlier. Physically, it was a good deal more comfortable. No need for him to recline this time, his leg splinted and harnessed. This time he sat in the carriage in quite the normal way, on the bench opposite Murdo, and the most discomfort he felt was a persistent stiffness in his leg from sitting so long.

The journey was different in other ways too. Last time, he’d been journeying to an unknown place, for an unknown duration, with Murdo telling him that Laverock House would be his home for the foreseeable future. Now he was leaving that home behind. Perhaps forever.

It had occurred to him, as he packed his trunk after breakfast, how very few of his own possessions he had at Laverock House. Most of his things were being stored at Murdo’s townhouse in Edinburgh. He only had a few clothes of his own—he borrowed whatever else he needed from Murdo—and some books and papers. It struck him as sad that he could pack away the last five months of his life, the richest, happiest months of all his life, he admitted to himself, into a single trunk. There was no need to leave anything behind.

A few hours ago, he’d watched from the carriage window as Laverock House grew smaller and smaller, until it disappeared altogether. And he’d thought,
I may never return here.
It had wrenched at him, that notion.

“How’s the leg?”

He looked up, distracted from his thoughts by Murdo’s voice. Such a distinct voice, with its deep, rich timbre and those smooth English consonants, only the barest hint of Scots in it. Murdo nodded at David’s knee, and he realised that he’d been rubbing it in an absentminded way. Realised too that it ached. He made a face.

“A bit stiff,” he admitted.

“You have your liniment with you,” Murdo pointed out. “I’ll rub it down for you, if you like.”

David hesitated, torn. A leg rub sounded heavenly, but he didn’t relish the thought of disrobing to any extent in the carriage. If the coachman stopped and looked in on them, what would he think?

What if, what if.

Already the world was intruding on them, making David realise how very sheltered these last months at Laverock House had been. No need to wonder what anyone thought there. Enough space and privacy for their intimacy to be kept between the two of them, and to go unnoticed and unremarked upon.

Murdo saw his hesitancy. “Come on, let’s get those breeches off. The sooner we do it, the sooner you’ll be dressed again.”

David weighed the risks. Their last stop had only been twenty minutes before, so there was no need for the carriage to stop anytime soon. What’s more, the road had been deserted all day. There was really very little chance of him being caught in a state of undress by the coachman or anyone else. David sighed and lifted his leg, offering his booted foot to Murdo in acquiescence, smiling wryly when Murdo, grinning his triumph, grasped the heel of the boot and began to gently lever it off.

As ever, Murdo was as meticulous as any valet, careful to draw the leather sleeve away from David’s tender leg in one long, smooth movement. The second boot was, as always, easier. While David undid the buttons of his breeches, Murdo moved to sit beside him, shouldering his way out of his coat and wadding it up to make a cushion of it, careless of its fine elegance.

“Put that at your back and lean against the wall,” he said, handing the wadded-up coat to David. “Then lay your leg over my lap, and I’ll see to you.”

With another sigh, a more contented one this time, David obeyed. Just changing the position of his leg helped ease the pain, letting Murdo take the aching weight of it across his powerful thighs.

“Can you get your breeches off from there?” Murdo asked.

“Perhaps if I leave one leg on—”

Murdo made a huffing noise of frustration, cutting him off without words, and leaned over to grab hold of David’s borrowed breeks and tug at them, forcing David to arch his hips off the seat. A moment later, Murdo had drawn them off altogether and tossed them unceremoniously onto the opposite bench. The next moment he was rolling down the stocking on David’s right leg and peeling that off too.

David watched, unprotesting now, as his injured limb, pale and somewhat wasted still, was laid bare. Despite regular exercise, his right leg remained slightly thinner than the left. The knee looked wrong to David too, a bit off centre somehow. He made a face, not liking the sight of his weakness. It wasn’t just how it looked. It was the physical reminder of everything he couldn’t do. Walk, climb, run. The things he’d always loved and, until now, had taken for granted. Abilities he may never fully recover.

“What’s wrong?” Murdo asked. He missed nothing, damn him.

“I hate the look of it,” David said shortly. “It’s ugly.”

Murdo’s brows drew together in a puzzled expression. He turned his head to the offending limb, caressing the length of it with his hands while David watched. Murdo had strong, capable hands that could rub the pain in David’s leg away, gentle hands that could wring such sharp pleasure from David’s body that he couldn’t stop himself crying out from it.

David watched, mesmerised, as Murdo went through the now-familiar motions of opening the liniment jar, dipping his fingers in to get a bit of the dense, waxy stuff, then rubbing it between his hands, releasing a scent that David would associate forever with soothing comfort and relief. And then Murdo’s hands were on David, slowly sweeping up the length of his thigh, his thumbs digging into the wasted, perennially tired muscles, the blunt heels of his hands kneading and working over the damaged architecture of David’s injured limb.

David closed his eyes, giving himself over to the singular pleasure of pain relief, letting himself have this, take this. This freely offered gift.

“It’s not ugly,” Murdo murmured. “Nothing about you could ever be ugly to me.”

His voice was soft and deep, as free from laughter as David had ever heard it, and David’s heart clenched in the cage of his chest to detect the sincerity in it. He swallowed, embarrassed to realise that Murdo had probably seen the bob of his throat and correctly read its meaning.

This vulnerability seemed to grow deeper each day, in direct proportion to the depth of his feelings. The two were linked, quite inextricably, his affection for Murdo exposing him in ways that horrified him. The protective barriers he’d spent a lifetime building up felt like they were crumbling away in the face of emotions he was helpless to deny. There would be no protection left to him when this ended.

And the end was coming.

The black descent that came after the end would be upon him very soon. He’d been through it once before, but this time it would be much, much worse.

The soothing hands on his leg stilled, and when David opened his eyes, it was to see Murdo watching him with an expression caught somewhere between sadness and concern. David’s chest ached, and all he could think to do to ease the feeling was to look away. He busied himself with sitting up, swinging his legs off Murdo’s lap and making a show of searching the floor of the carriage.

“Where on earth’s my stocking?” he said, amazed to hear how prosaic he sounded.

He found it at last, keeping his gaze averted from Murdo as he rolled the fine-knit material over his calf, his skin still faintly sticky from the liniment, then stretched across the carriage to fetch his crumpled breeches from the opposite bench.

“David—”

Murdo’s hand on his shoulder pulled him back. He didn’t resist, allowing Murdo to draw him back down onto the bench, though he kept his gaze on his own hands and the soft brown material bunched between his fingers.

“What’s wrong?”

David just sat there. What could he say? That their affection for one another, so obvious during that tender moment a minute ago—
“Nothing about you could ever be ugly to me.”
—made David feel…unsafe? Worse, that he knew now he’d never be safe again, that he had lost the safety of his splendid isolation the moment Murdo Balfour had walked back into his life six months before?

That every day made him more vulnerable? That the thought of their parting…

“It’s nothing,” he lied. “I’m just—” He broke off.

“Is it about Chalmers?”

Guilt welled at Murdo’s assumption. How could he be thinking of himself when the only reason he was in this carriage was to see Chalmers one last time before he died?

He swallowed. “Donald’s letter said he hasn’t long now.”

“Don’t worry,” Murdo replied. “We’ll get you there on time.”

The sudden reality of his friend’s imminent death struck David at that moment like a great wave. It swamped his heart with a powerful crash, then ebbed away, leaving behind a rocky debris of regret and grief that clawed at him.

Life was very fragile.

“I should go and see my family soon,” David said, surprising himself.

“You miss them,” Murdo said, and it wasn’t a question.

“Yes. They are good people.” Being with them nourished something in him, doing him as much good as the wholesome broth his mother made.

Murdo smiled. “Well, you had to get all that virtue from somewhere.”

David gave a weak laugh. “Are you teasing me again? I know you think I’m sanctimonious at times.”

Murdo laughed too, but it was a soft, affectionate chuckle, no teasing in it.

David pulled on the breeches then. He buttoned them up and straightened his clothes, and when he was done, he sat back down next to Murdo, enjoying the warmth of the other man’s leg against his own.

After a while, Murdo said, “I thought that you and your father weren’t on the best of terms? You told me he hit you when he found you with your friend that time.”