Page 17 of Beguiled
“Elizabeth is in town,” he said at last. “I gather from Catherine that you’ve seen her?”
David nodded. “They came to watch the procession from my rooms.”
“How did she seem to you?”
David paused, considering how to respond. He didn’t want to worry the older man, but…
“She didn’t seem her usual self,” he said at last, honestly.
Chalmers’s face seemed to crumble a little, as though David’s words were both a worry and a relief. “I’m anxious about her,” the older man admitted. “She’s been different since her marriage. Subdued. Lizzie was never subdued with me.”
Not with anyone, David thought, but he stayed silent, waiting for Chalmers to reveal the purpose of this shared confidence.
“I never wanted that marriage,” Chalmers continued after a while, his usual calm demeanour fracturing to reveal the concerned parent. “I thought she’d choose someone—well, never mind what I thought. I’m just worried. She doesn’t seemhappy.”
His anxious gaze landed on David, and in that moment, David understood that his own fears had not been idle. Her own father had seen the same changes in her and reached the same conclusions.
“What do you need from me?” he asked quietly.
Chalmers sighed. “If something happens to me, I don’t want her to have no one she can go to. I don’t want her to be isolated. Her mother—” He broke off, taking a deep breath before continuing more calmly. “I’d feel better if I knew someone else was keeping an eye on her. I know it’s a lot to ask, but I don’t know who else to speak to. Donald’s a good lad, but he’s not the type to make waves.”
Itwasa lot to ask. Elizabeth lived in London, and her husband was a wealthy peer, capable of destroying David’s career if he got on the man’s wrong side. What Chalmers was asking of him could cost him very dear.
He wouldn’t need to say no to sidestep the responsibility that Chalmers was seeking to give him. It would be easy to give a few meaningless reassurances that he’d do what he could, while pointing out the practical difficulties. But David couldn’t do that. Had never been able to walk away from a cry for help.
“I’ll watch out for her,” he said, meeting Chalmers’s troubled gaze with his own certain one. “And should she need it, I’ll do everything I can to help her. I promise you.”
David took his leave of Chalmers after a light dinner. It was dark when he left—yet not. Up the hill, on Queen Street, a faint haze of light glowed above the roofs of the townhouses. At first it puzzled him, but by the time he’d strolled halfway up the hill, he could hear the babble of the accompanying festivities. It was, he realised, the sound and reflected brilliance of the Illuminations, a grand spectacle that had been arranged in celebration of the King’s arrival.
The royal yacht had finally arrived at the harbour of Leith two days ago, but aside from taking part in his official welcome at Leith yesterday—and the inevitable procession that followed—the King had not been seen. It seemed, however, that the people’s disappointment at the King’s evident lack of enthusiasm was being effectively diverted by the sights that greeted David when he reached Queen Street and beheld the city…
…aglow.
Everywhere, there was light.
David had heard about the plans for the Illuminations—they had been much discussed—but nothing could have prepared him for the magnificence of them. Queen Street teemed with people gawking at the wonders around them, and David joined them, merging into the vast crowd. The facades of the public and commercial buildings were festooned with flowing fabrics and cleverly cut paper transparencies, all of them vivid and glowing with light. There were images of the King, Britannia, saltires, thistles and lions rampant, every kind of patriotic flummery, lighting up the dark and shivering in the breeze. It was amazing. Spectacular and unprecedented. Who would have thought this grey, sober city had in it so much colour?
A sudden explosion made David jump, then laugh as a shower of red and gold embers lit the sky. Another rocket went off, and another, one after the other like an artillery of guns. The explosions of light seemed somehow disconnected from the sounds, spontaneous fire bursts appearing out of nowhere, brief and amazing, leaving nothing behind but a drift of smoke that hung in the sky with nowhere to go.
The spectators—David among them—laughed and gasped and cried out at the wonder of the display, letting out a collective sigh of disappointment when the rockets finally stopped.
It was strange, he thought as he walked on, that such a simple thing had lightened his heart so much. What had he witnessed but a few coloured lights? The brief fellow-feeling of that shared laughter and joy. Yet he felt happier than he remembered feeling in ages, and more alive. Excited too, though he wouldn’t let himself think about the reason for that.
“You know where my house is.”
He allowed himself to be carried along with the crowd as he gazed at the wonders around him. He was drawing closer to a house he’d visited once before, but it wasn’t his doing. The crowd was taking him there. He just allowed it to happen.
“Come anytime…”
The local householders had become involved in the Illuminations too, it seemed. Every window on the street blazed with candles, the drapes thrown open, some of their occupants staring out at the street below. The light from all those windows brightened the streets till it was almost like daytime, or at least that part of the day before darkness truly falls. High above them, on the other side of Princes Street Gardens, the castle glowed too, its battlements strung with a necklace of fiery braziers.
David drifted along, stopping briefly to chuckle with the other bystanders at a group of four sailors dancing a drunken hornpipe while a fifth tootled on a reedy flute.
A battery of guns started thundering from the east. The guns on the Calton Hill, David guessed. More salvoes pounded out from the castle’s guns to the south, and a scattering of cheers went up.
“God save the King!” someone called out, a sentiment that was echoed over and over again.
When the guns stopped, the crowd began to move again, carrying David farther east. For a while, he strolled along Queen Street with everyone else, till he realised where he was. Standing at last in front of that house he remembered so very well.