Page 12 of Enlightened
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.”
He was referring to the time David’s father had come upon him kissing Will Lennox when David was sixteen, a discovery that had prompted David’s gentle father to strike David for the first and only time in his life.
David shook his head. “We are not on bad terms. We don’t speak of it at all—my father’s an elder of the Kirk and he worries for my soul, but he believes that if I don’t act on my desires, God won’t punish me, so he is able to live with it, that way.”
“I take it from that, that you give him no reason to believe you act on your desires?”
“No, I never would. I don’t wish to give him any more reason to worry. He’s suffered enough sleepless nights over me.”
Murdo laughed shortly. “God, we couldn’t be more different. Over the years I’ve taken great pleasure in thumbing my nose at my father. I still do.”
David stilled. Murdo never spoke about his father. Not voluntarily.
After a long pause, David said with studied casualness, “He knows you prefer men?”
Murdo gave one of his mirthless huffs of laughter. “My father knows everything about everyone, and—as he has reminded me all my life—knowledge is power. He uses his knowledge to persuade people to act as he wishes them to.”
His tone was bitter, revealing.
“Has he used knowledge about you to compel you to act as he wishes?”
Murdo stared at the empty bench opposite them, his expression grim.
“All my life—or tried to, at least. He was probably rubbing his hands together in glee when he found out about my preference for men—such a good bit of blackmail material.”
“But wouldn’t a son with such preferences reflect poorly on him?” David asked, half-appalled, half-curious. “Surely he has a vested interest in keeping it quiet?”
“You would think so, wouldn’t you? But my father is far more devious than you can possibly imagine. When I pointed out that a sodomite for a son would do his political career no favours—I was seventeen at the time, I believe—he replied that he would never allow my disgrace to be made public. Rather than allow my proclivities to pose a threat to the honour of the family name, he would admit me to an asylum—to be cured, you understand.”
David stared, appalled. “Perhaps he was worried for you and thought the fear of committal would keep you on the straight and narrow?”
Again, Murdo laughed, a hateful sound, harsh and contemptuous. “Oh no, he doesn’t mind about my preferences, you see. Everything serves a purpose in my father’s world. Once we had reached our understanding—my compliance in exchange for his tolerance—he was quick to put me to use. Before long I was tasked with befriending a man he wanted some information on. Someone with the same…interests. In fact—” He paled noticeably and broke off, exhaling sharply. “Never mind.”
David had never seen Murdo so shaken. Carefully, he touched his lover’s knee, stroking gently with his thumb. “Tellme.”
To David’s alarm, Murdo dropped his head into his hands and let out a shuddering sigh. He stayed like that for a long time. Eventually, in a thin voice, he said, “Do you remember me telling you about the first time I was buggered?”
Buggered.David balked at the ugly word, at the wrongness of it being applied to Murdo. It took him a few moments to think back to another conversation, months before.
“I remember. You said there were two men,” David said slowly. “And that they were rough with you.” Even as he spoke, a kind of realisation began to dawn, and nausea swirled in his gut. “Please tell me that had nothing to do with your father.”
Murdo didn’t deny it. “The one my father had asked me to befriend was called Gilliam,” he said flatly. “Somehow, he found out who I really was. I’d arranged to meet him at a house in the country for the weekend, and they—he and his friend—well, they really let me have it. Threw me in a carriage once they were done, and sent me home as a message to my father.”
Somehow, David managed to keep the hand on Murdo’s knee stroking gently, soothingly, even as a wild animal clawed in his chest to get out. To get out and find this Gilliam and his friend. And Murdo’s father.
Murdo lifted his head out of his hands, though he still didn’t look at David. “It was fifteen years ago,” he said disgustedly. “Yet even now, it affects me like this.”
“Of course it does,” David protested gently. “It would affect anyone like this.” Under his fingers, he could feel Murdo’s tension. The thrum of it was almost like a vibration beneath his fingers, and he couldn’t make his mind up whether all that nervous energy was trying to reject David’s compassion or clamouring for it. Certainly Murdo didn’t reach for him. He rested his elbows on his thighs and held his hands in front of his face, loosely clasped. He’d made a cage of himself, with David on the outside. David’s hand on Murdo’s knee was the only connection between them, but since Murdo let it rest there, David reasoned he must want it to stay.
“My father made sure Gilliam paid for that insult later, but even so, that was the episode that made me realise just how dispensible I was to him. After that, I decided I had to get out from under his thumb. And since he held the purse strings, the only way to do it was to become financially independent.”
“How old were you when this happened?”
The story was pouring out of him now, no hesitation in the answer that followed.
“Almost twenty. I was done with Oxford by then, ready for something new. So I set about learning finance and trade. My Uncle Gideon was only too pleased to help me—he detests my father—and I had the benefit of aristocratic connections galore, of course, which Gideon liked.