Page 32 of Enlightened

David made himself speak, made himself say the impossible words. “When I left him a week ago, he was hanging on, but barely. You should expect the news any day now.”

Elizabeth’s eyes grew glassy with tears that brimmed, trembling with the promise of their imminent fall as she absorbed David’s words.

“That’s not why I’m here, though,” David went on. “I wasn’t sent to give you that news. I was sent here to make arrangements in relation to your trust. Your uncle wrote to your father after Kinnell appeared at his office—your father was worried.”

“Was he?” The tears fell then, casting down her pale cheeks. “Oh, David, I’ve brought him nothing but grief in his final days! Grief and shame. A runaway daughter deserting her husband.”

“Don’t think that!” David protested. “He was comforted to know you were away, safe from Kinnell. And I was able to promise him I would look out for you—and to tell him that Euan would protect you too. He knows you have friends who will do anything to keep you safe, and he cares nothing for your supposed shame.”

“But I will never him see again,” she cried. “And the last time I did see him, I said almost nothing to him. Alasdair was with me, and I was afraid to speak. His last memory of me is of a silent, frightened girl.”

David squeezed her hand to make her look at him and shook his head. “He has a lifetime of memories of you, not just that one. And in these last months, he’s had all your letters to show him you have recovered and grown strong and happy again. When you ran away from Kinnell, you took his greatest sorrow from his shoulders. There is nothing you could have done to make him happier.”

“Do you think so?” she choked through her tears.

He raised her small hand to his cheek in an uncharacteristic show of affection. Her grief pierced his usual stiffness, made a mockery of his customary reserve.

“I know it,” he said. “I know it.”

Chapter Eleven

As painful as it was to give Elizabeth the news about her father, David was glad he’d been the one to do it. Glad that he’d been able to sweep her guilty regrets aside and give her the comfort that only someone who knew her father could. It had helped David too, the private sharing of grief between them subtly easing his own sorrow.

By the time Euan returned to the house at six, Elizabeth was calm again, though David thought that Euan looked strained. He entered the tiny kitchen, pulling up short in surprise when he saw David.

“Davy!”

Euan’s incipient smile died on his lips as his gaze turned to Elizabeth and then down to something he held in his hand—a letter. He proffered it to Elizabeth.

“It’s from your sister,” he said gravely. “There was another for me”—he broke off, gaze roaming to David again—“but perhaps the news has preceded me?”

David said nothing. He didn’t need to. Elizabeth had already broken the seal on the letter and was scanning the lines. Her expression remained calm, but he guessed what the letter said from the faint rounding of her shoulders and the lowering of her head.

“He’s gone,” she said. “My father died on Tuesday morning.”

“Oh, Lizzie—”

Euan went to her, wrapping his arms around her and kissing the top of her head, murmuring endearments and reassurances. If David had been in any doubt about what they were to one another, he could not have remained so after seeing this. He glanced away from them, touched by Euan’s devotion, but also—envious. The envy was a savage, unworthy howl in his breast, and he muzzled it quickly, ruthlessly, appalled at himself.

At length they broke apart, and as Elizabeth wiped her damp cheeks, Euan took the chair beside David at the kitchen table.

“Forgive me, Davy. I’ve barely greeted you.” He smiled a little sadly. “But it’s good to see you again, and looking so well. We were so worried about you, weren’t we, Lizzie?”

Elizabeth said, “I was wretched with worry when I heard you’d been hurt.”

“She felt responsible for your injuries,” Euan added. “And there was nothing I could say to convince her otherwise.”

“You couldn’t possibly have known what would happen,” David said, fixing his gaze on Elizabeth. “No better than I myself did. The truth is, it was down to rotten luck more than anything—not heroics on my part.”

“Don’t say that!” Elizabeth protested. “Iknowwhat you did. Euan saw you go after Alasdair. You stopped him getting to me, and in return, he pushed you under that horse.” She swallowed. “You were hurt because of me.”

“Well, now I’m fine,” David said. He meant to sound firm and certain. Instead he sounded surly.

Elizabeth looked at him for a long moment, her expression troubled. Then she said in a small voice, “But you have a cane now.”

The observation hit him like a rock. He had become a man who walked with a cane. David Lauriston, who used to walk twenty miles in a day over the Pentland Hills without giving it a thought. Reduced to this.

He tried to hide how much her words affected him, pasting a smile on his face.