Page 28 of Enlightened
Within a minute or two, Liddle was back. He carried a silver tray bearing a thick bundle of correspondence for Murdo.
“You called, my lord?” he said quietly as he placed the tray on a small table at Murdo’s right hand.
“Yes, would you show Mr. Lauriston to his chamber?”
“Of course, my lord.” The butler turned to David. “Would you follow me, sir?”
David rose stiffly from his chair, his knee protesting a bit as he reached for his cane.
“And make sure you rub that leg down,” Murdo said firmly, making David’s cheeks heat as he wondered what Liddle thought of that comment.
Liddle led David upstairs—just one flight, thankfully—and down a short corridor.
“Your bedchamber, sir,” the servant said in his quiet, precise voice, standing aside to allow David to precede him, adding, “His Lordship’s is next door.”
David’s cheeks warmed at that comment, but he said nothing, merely walked into the middle of the room, where his open trunk stood.
“Your clothes have been pressed and put away, sir. I trust that meets with your approval?”
David turned, smiling politely. “Yes, thank you.” The first time that had happened, David had found it mortifying—the thought of a servant putting away his drawers and shaving things for him—but he’d grown used to it now. It was how things were done.
The butler inclined his head and withdrew, closing the door behind him.
David’s first thought was to wonder why it was called the Green Room. The walls were hung with yellow silk wallpaper, and the satin bedcover was yellow too. There was no green anywhere that he could see.
The room felt stuffy to him. He went to the window to lift the sash, and the busy sounds of the city poured in—the rumble of carriages, the clatter of horses’ hooves. He pulled the drapes closed over the open window, and they stirred in the breeze, doing nothing to muffle the noise from the street below.
Stripping down to his drawers, David folded back the rich satin bedcover, exposing the sheets and blankets below, and crawled inside. Although he found it difficult to sleep during the day, he was exhausted, and he closed his eyes with every expectation of drifting off. But sleep wouldn’t come. He lay there, listening to the clock ticking, his traitorous body refusing to succumb as ten, then twenty, then thirty minutes passed. Eventually, he swore and sat up, swinging his legs out of the bed, reasoning that he may as well go straight to see Elizabeth.
After crossing the room to the armoire, he poured water into the porcelain basin and briskly washed himself before fetching fresh clothes from the wardrobe, grateful that the creases had already been pressed out of them. Once dressed, he studied his face in the mirror, rubbing a hand over his cheeks. He’d shaved that morning at the inn, and although there was a faint roughness of new growth that dragged at his fingertips, he’d get away without shaving again. His too-long hair was tumbling into his eyes, though, and he reached for his jar of pomade to tame it, finger-combing a generous dab of the waxy, resin-scented stuff through his thick, dark-red locks.
When he looked at his reflection in the glass, he was briefly shocked. He’d donned his best black suit of clothes and—for once—exercised some care in the tying of his neckcloth. Between that and his ruthlessly tamed hair, he looked like…well, like the old David Lauriston. A quiet, measured professional man. A bookish sort. Dry and studious, not a bit of passion in him. Not at all like a man who donned his lover’s worn-out breeches to go fishing and let his hair grow so long that it hung in his eyes. Not like a man who loved someone of his own sex. No one would think such a thing of the respectable gentleman in the looking glass.
He was still considering his reflection, a frown marring his brow, when a great rapping came from the street below. David went to the window and twitched the curtain aside to peer down. There was a gentleman standing at the top of the steps, a gold-topped cane—presumably the instrument of that loud knocking—in his hand.
David couldn’t make out much of the man from his vantage point, only the top of his black hat and a general impression of elegance and wealth. A moment later, the front door swung open, and the man was admitted.
David waited a few minutes before he went downstairs, enough time for the visitor to be shown into Murdo’s presence so that David could slip away without having to be introduced. Once he was satisfied he’d allowed enough time to pass, he put on his hat, picked up his cane and left his bedchamber.
His strategy didn’t quite work out. When he reached the bottom of the stairs and crossed the hallway, he discovered that the drawing room door was wide open and that Murdo and his visitor stood just inside the threshold, facing each other. Murdo, the taller of the two, had his arms crossed over his broad chest, a belligerent expression on his face, while his visitor spoke in a low, driven tone, his words indistinct. At the sound of David’s cane tapping on the floor, they both turned their heads, and for the briefest instant, before he shielded his expression, Murdo looked horror-stricken.
Shaken by that, David turned his attention to the visitor, quickly realising that if the man wasn’t Murdo’s father, he had to be another close relative. He was tall and broad, like Murdo, with the same thick hair—once dark, now streaked with grey—and black, flashing eyes. They shared the same shape of head, the same determined chin, but there were differences too. Murdo must have gotten his quick smile and the appealing glint of humour in his ink-black gaze from his mother, because this man had no humour about him at all. Everything about him had a downward cast—the outer corners of his eyes, his long nose, the thin slash of his mouth. It was a forbidding face and, right now, a sneering one.
“Is this him, Murdo?” the man asked, his gaze raking David from head to toe. “Your latest catamite? The one you’ve been so reluctant to part yourself from?” His voice dripped with contempt.
The sudden, unexpected insult shocked David like a physical blow, and his gaze snapped to Murdo, who looked so furious David was sure he was about to lose his formidable temper. To David’s surprise, though, he pressed his lips together, keeping himself in check, even as a faint flush across his cheekbones and the flaring of nostrils betrayed his agitation.
“I know you have no manners, Father,” Murdo said, “but Mr. Lauriston—mysecretary—is a guest in this house, and I will thank you to show him the respect he deserves.”
“Your secretary,” the marquess repeated, his tone frankly disbelieving. Then he shook his head and brushed past Murdo, walking farther into the room and sitting himself down on the same chair Murdo had selected earlier. It was the chair, David realised, of the master of the house, occupying as it did the dominant position in the room.
Murdo turned to David. “Go and see your friend,” he said quietly. “Liddle will arrange the carriage for you.”
“There’s no need for Mr. Lauriston to leave,” the marquess said behind him in a carrying, cut-glass voice. “I’m not here to discuss matters of state, Murdo. Nothing I have to say to you needs to be said in private. In fact—”
Murdo turned on him. “Father—” he began, but the marquess went on, heedless of the interruption.
“—it rather seems to me that it’s only fair if he stays to hear what I have to say.” He gave Murdo a small, cruel smile before turning his gaze on David again. “Don’t you agree, Mr. Lauriston?”