Page 54 of Enlightened

Murdo had begged him to stop.

“I’m so sorry—” David whispered now.

“That day cured me of any wish to manage Kilbeigh,” Murdo said now. “As my father knew it would. But then, you’ve always been such a student of human nature, haven’t you, Father?” He turned back to the marquess now, who sat in the winged armchair, looking remote and defiant. “You always know just the thing to do, to persuade, to cajole…”

“It would have been such a waste,” the marquess said, his voice clipped. “You had so much potential, even then.”

“I loved Kilbeigh,” Murdo said. “I was happy there.”

The marquess shrugged. “Happiness comes and goes,” he said. “The ability to shape the future direction of this kingdom, though—that is something that few men can boast a part in. That is what I offered you.”

“And I have thrown it away.”

“Yes, you have.” The marquess rubbed his hands over his face in a gesture of supreme weariness. “You have thrown it away,” he repeated, and this time it sounded like he was coming to understand that it could not be undone.

“This evening, you publicly disowned me,” Murdo said. “That is not something you will go back on.”

“No, it is not,” the marquess admitted. “All the way over here, I tried to think of a way out of this, but there is none. There is nothing I can do to save you from your own foolishness. There were so many witnesses. It will be an immense scandal. I have to disassociate the rest of the family from you entirely.”

“I understand,” Murdo said. “I will not embarrass you by showing my face around Town. I’m going back to Scotland after this, and I don’t intend to come back.”

“Good,” the marquess replied, but his face belied the word on his lips. He looked devastated. And David realised, in that moment, that in his own way, the marquess loved his son.

Murdo took a deep breath. “I don’t ask much in return. Only—”

“Only?” A brief glimmer, of hope perhaps, lit the marquess’s gaze. That if Murdo wanted something of him, after all…

“Only—that you leave us alone.”

Us.

The glimmer of hope in the marquess’s gaze faded and died.

“Murdo,” he said, and there was a wealth of pain and regret in the word. “You achieved something tonight I’d never have thought you capable of. You rendered yourself entirely useless to me. I can’t do anything with you.”

“I know.”

The marquess closed his eyes for a long moment. When he opened them again, he said, “Do you remember confronting me about the eviction, all those years ago?”

Murdo nodded, slowly.

“You said you were going to get back at me one day. And I said that was foolish, that revenge only for revenge’s sake served no purpose. It is a waste of energy you could use more productively elsewhere.”

“I remember it well,” Murdo said. “You said that revenge is only meaningful if it furthers some other objective. Otherwise it is merely the bite of a dog. You said that any fool can wield a whip; the trick is in bringing the horse over the line.”

“Quite so,” the marquess said and smiled faintly, a ghost of remembered pride. He rose from his chair and crossed the room to stand an arm’s length from his son.

“You have put yourself out of the race, Murdo,” he said. “I don’t flog dead horses. In fact, I don’t grant them another moment of my attention.”

For a long moment, the two men gazed at one another.

“Thank you,” Murdo said.

The marquess’s expression grew hard then, and bitter. “Don’t thank me,” he bit out. “One day you’re going to look at your life, and you’re going to realise he wasn’t worth all this sacrifice.”

Murdo didn’t say anything, just gazed steadily at his father, waiting.

The marquess shook his head and turned away. “You are the greatest disappointment of my life,” he said.