Page 12 of Beguiled
“I would pay good money to see it,” David said, and everyone laughed.
“And there is Lord Murdoch Balfour,” Mrs. Begg went on. “Do you see him, Kenneth? On the black horse?”
David’s heart began to beat in his throat at the sound of that name. It was almost a fortnight since he’d run into the man at the tailor shop, and every day he thought of their last conversation.
“You know where my house is. Come anytime…”
He thought about that invitation, every day. But he hadn’t gone. The memory of how he’d felt two years before, after they’d parted, lingered still. The blackness that had descended on him afterwards. The long, endless downhill from the mountain. Down and down.
He feared to tread that black descent again.
From the corner of his eye, he saw Euan studying him—Euan recognised Balfour’s name, of course—but David didn’t turn his head. He kept looking forward, letting his gaze roam over the riders below, until, at last, he picked out Balfour, tall and elegant on his midnight steed.
David was as sceptical as it was possible to be about this ceremony. He’d watched hundreds of troops pass to the patriotic sound of bagpipes and drums without feeling the slightest bit moved. But when he saw Balfour, dressed far less flamboyantly than Sir Evan MacGregor, in dark-green-and-blue tartan, he felt a stirring in his breast for the first time all day.
It wasn’t with patriotism, though. It was with a far more personal feeling.
“Oh, he’s like Young Lochinvar,” Mrs. Begg breathed, and they all laughed again, David too. And itwasfunny, except…except that she was right.
So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war
There never was knight like the young Lochinvar…
Inwardly, David groaned. Was he a lassie to be thinking such nonsense?
He’d spent the last two years trying to forget Lord Murdo Balfour, certain he’d never see the man again. It had been over a year before he’d given in to his old weakness, scared that touching another man, or being touched, would stir up memories he wanted to forget.
That fear had been unfounded, as it happened. His first lapse hadn’t reminded him of Balfour at all, nor any of the few times after that. Those furtive, anonymous encounters had borne no relation to being with Balfour. David scarcely spoke to any of those men, scarcely even looked at them. He’d certainly never looked at any of them as he was looking at Balfour now, with his heart kicking a determined tattoo in his chest and his breath coming shallow and quick at the mere sight of him, down on the street below on his black steed.
“You know where my house is.”
“Goodness me, itisLord Murdo!” Elizabeth said then. “Do you remember him, Mr. Lauriston?” She turned her head and caught his eye, forcing him to reluctantly look away from Balfour’s departing figure. “You dined with him at my father’s house once. Do you recall?”
“Ah—yes, I believe I do,” David confirmed.
“Do you know,” Euan said in a tone that held an audible note of amusement, “I think I recognise him too.”
David glanced at Euan, a slight frown drawing his brows together in warning—Euan was perfectly well aware of Lord Murdo Balfour’s identity. Balfour had been with David that night two years before, had bargained with Euan after David’s reckless intervention. There was no way he could have forgotten him.
Euan feigned puzzlement, a finger on his lips. “Was he possibly at the assembly we talked about earlier? The one Lady Kinnell was at?”
David stayed silent, letting Euan know he wasn’t happy, but Elizabeth interjected, unwittingly rescuing the younger man.
“I believe hewasat that assembly, Mr. MacLennan. I remember I had to dance with him, and it was terribly nerve-racking! Mother had persuaded herself he was looking for a wife, and she was being utterly impossible that night.”
“Looking for a fancy son-in-law, was she?” Mr. Begg asked with jolly tactlessness.
Elizabeth’s smile faded a little, but she answered him with a show of good humour that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yes. Well, she got her wish in the end. Though not with Lord Murdo Balfour.”
She turned back to face the window then, her shoulders and back tense, and the thumbprint bruise at the nape of her neck livid. David glanced at Euan, who looked grim. Of course, he’d been looking fairly grim throughout the whole procession. It was obvious to anyone who cared to look that he didn’t find the spectacle as stirring as David’s other guests. Perhaps he saw it as a demonstration of the power of the state—all that military might being displayed in honour of the monarch of the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
David’s view of the procession was probably closer to Euan’s than to that of the patriotic Beggs. Yet he’d hosted this celebration. Brought in food and wine and played the part of a loyal subject of the King. Well, he was loyal, wasn’t he? Certainly in deed, if not in thought. He was a respectable man, part of the machinery that upheld the rule of law, even when he tried to fight its effect. Like when he’d represented Euan’s brother. He’d tried his damnedest, within the bounds of the law, to prevent Peter MacLennan being transported, but it hadn’t been enough.
What a man could do within the law was rarely enough, and that was the hell of it.
Once the procession was over, and while the formal ceremony to hand over the Regalia was being conducted in the castle, David’s small party returned to the other guests in the parlour. David circulated the room, offering his guests more refreshments. While he topped the ladies’ glasses with wine punch, Ferguson refreshed the men’s ale, and Catherine replenished some of the empty plates on the sideboard from the kitchen.
David’s guests were jolly by now, some even becoming a little silly. Hardly surprising when they were tippling before noon. Despite his sociable demeanour, David didn’t feel jolly, though. He felt too sober, untouched by the ale he’d drunk and out of step with his guests’ merriness, and it wasn’t just the alcohol or his distaste for the pageantry bothering him.