Page 60 of Enlightened
“All right,” David said, leading the way to Murdo’s bedchamber and pushing the door open. “It’s better when I keep moving. Sitting around is the very worst thing for it, I think.”
Murdo followed him inside, closing the door behind them. “Going back to legal practice doesn’t sound like a good idea, then.”
David was already halfway across the room, but at those words he turned. Murdo was leaning against the closed bedchamber door, watching him with an intent expression.
“I suppose—I suppose I’ll have to make sure I take breaks. That sort of thing.”
Murdo swallowed visibly. “Don’t.”
“What?”
Murdo gave a short laugh, letting his head knock back against the door. “I don’t mean don’t take breaks. I mean—don’t go back.”
“What?” David said again. God, he sounded stupid.What? What?
Murdo’s expression grew determined, the look of a man undertaking a task he’d dreaded. “I don’t want you to leave Laverock House,” he said. “I want you to stay with me. Forever, if you’ll have me.”
David stared at him, too shocked to speak. The notion of having something he wanted so very badly—a lifetime beside the person he loved—was something he’d deemed impossible. And now Murdo was offering it to him. No, demanding it of him.
As he struggled to find words to reply, Murdo’s determined expression faltered.
“You’re always telling me that what we have can’t last, that we have to be careful. Always reminding me that you’ll be leaving me soon…”
David thought, suddenly, of Chalmers, and of the woman he had loved. The beloved he’d regretted leaving to die alone. And in that moment, David realised that he didn’t want it to be like that for him and Murdo. He wanted to be at Murdo’s side for the rest of their lives. He wanted to share it all, the good and the bad, the joy and the sorrow. He wanted to be able to lean on those broad, capable shoulders when he was weary, and to have Murdo lean on him.
“Love should not be denied.”
They would have to be careful, of course they would, but they could surround themselves with the broad, green stretches of the Laverock estate. They could deal with any difficulties that came their way together, side by side. If they wanted it enough, it could be managed. And, oh, how David wanted it! He was done with self-sacrifice and guilt and martyred isolation. Murdo had saved him from that. Murdo had shown him he was no sinner, whatever the world might say.
“If you’re worrying about me making plans to marry anyone behind your back, you needn’t,” Murdo added determinedly. “I’m done with that.”
“You did rather burn your bridges on that one in Culzeans the other night.”
“I knew exactly what I was doing.” Murdo spoke intently, his dark gaze very direct, as though he needed David to understand this. “I saw Kinnell across the room, all pleased with himself, and right then I saw that I had this one chance. Not just to save Elizabeth but to savemyself. To rid myself of all the things that had been chaining me down—my engagement, my father, the expectations that attach to a man like me.” He gave an uncertain smile. “I burned all those bridges, David, and in that moment, I think I felt free for the first time in my life.” He stepped forward, closing the distance between them, touching David’s face with gentle fingers. “Come home with me.”
“I want to,” David said, returning Murdo’s earnest gaze. “But I have to be sure—have you really thought about what you’re giving up? You once told me you wanted everything the world had to offer, not just male lovers, but a wife and family of your own—”
“And I was wrong,” Murdo interrupted. “I was lost back then. Oh, I didn’tthinkI was lost. I thought I was going to have it all. Two lives, one that would be respectable and safe, and a secret one of pleasure and vice.” He gave a rueful laugh. “I thought you were naïve, till you made me see that the life I’d always wanted—the two lives I’d wanted—didn’t amount to anything at all. I wasn’t going to have it all. I was going to have nothing.” He paused. “You saved me from that.”
David opened his mouth to say,And you saved me.To tell Murdo all the ways in which he’d saved David.But the words died in his throat. For now, anyway, because Murdo was looking at him in a way that made speech impossible. Murdo Balfour, who’d spent his life hiding his true feelings behind an amused little smile and a single crooked brow, was looking at David with desperate, undisguised hope.
“So you’ll come back with me, then?” he whispered. “To Laverock?”
For a moment, his question hung in the air between them. Till David somehow managed to unlock his throat and make his mouth work again and gave Murdo his answer.
“I will.”
Epilogue
One year later
David had the coachman stop the carriage and let him out at the top of the hill. It was too beautiful a day to sit in the carriage for this last and best part of the journey. By getting out here, he could walk a couple of miles over the ridge before dropping down to the glen through a path in the woods that backed onto Laverock House.
David watched the carriage rumble on without him. It would arrive with no passenger, only an economically packed trunk of clothes, three boxes of books and papers he’d picked up from Murdo’s Edinburgh townhouse during his brief visit, and a clootie dumpling wrapped up in muslin cloth. This last, his favourite boyhood treat, came from his mother’s kitchen in Midlauder. She’d spent the last three days fussing over him and sent him home not only with the pudding but—despite his protests that his leg was quite better—with a pot of her homemade liniment which, she told him, he was to make sure to keep using every day.
It was a bit of a climb to the top of the next hill, but after that it would be level walking for a good while, and, anyway, it felt good to David to stretch his legs after all the hours he’d spent in the carriage. These days he relished the small discomforts that came with such exertions, the faint burn in his calves and the rasp of his breath as his lungs worked harder.
By the end of the climb up, David’s knee ached a bit, but only a bit. He sat down on a large, flat boulder to rest, giving his knee a brisk rub while he looked out at the place he’d come to call home—at the tumbling river with its black, rocky teeth, and at the hills, dominated by brownish bracken now, but soon to brighten with the advent of spring. Above his head, a skylark—a laverock—wheeled and plummeted, and David tracked its bold, sweeping dance for several minutes till it finally disappeared into a copse of trees.