Page 61 of Enlightened
Rising from his perch, he began to walk along the ridge, his eyes drinking in the familiar views as he walked. It was good to be back here, in the country. He loved the almost-lonely beauty of his new home. Edinburgh was elegant, but it teemed with people. Returning to the city for the first time in almost a year, he’d been struck by how busy it felt, how noisy and dirty and muddled it was. He’d finished up the business matters he’d needed to deal with as soon as he possibly could, eager to come home.
It would be another half year before he needed to leave Laverock again, though the occasional trip was unavoidable. He was, after all, Lord Murdo Balfour’s man of business now—and, increasingly, an investor in his own right. And it wasn’t as though Murdo could attend to these matters by himself anymore. The people round here didn’t know the details of the scandal that had driven their aristocratic neighbour back to Perthshire, banishing him from the polite drawing rooms of London forever, but they whispered about it. Most particularly about the married woman who had broken his heart. The woman he’d fought a duel over, no less. It was why Lord Murdo had engaged Mr. Lauriston as his permanent man of business, they said, since he could no longer show his face in London.
It was why, they whispered, he would never marry.
The story was scandalous, romantic, and most importantly, verifiable. And Murdo played his part of new gentleman farmer beautifully. Not that it required any effort—it was, after all, what he’d always wanted to do. He would happily spend the rest of his life exiled in Perthshire, managing his new estate.
He had agreed, though, to accompany David on his next trip, a visit to Lancashire in the autumn to inspect a new factory Murdo was financing. While they were there, they’d be looking in on the MacLennans. Euan and Elizabeth were married now and fond parents to a fine, strong boy: Patrick David MacLennan. Murdo wanted to stop at the Lake District on the way back to Scotland. There was good hill walking there, he said, and scenery to rival Laverock Glen, though David found that difficult to believe.
David stopped when he reached the end of the ridge. The edge of the woods that led to the house was just a few feet away, but David wanted one last look at the glen below before he took the path down the hill.
He was standing there in the weak spring sunshine, his open coat flapping in the wind and his hat in his hand, when a shout roused him from his reverie.
“There you are!”
It was Murdo, emerging from the woods. David felt his smile grow, felt the face-aching broadness of it. It was a mirror of that rare and wonderful smile that Murdo reserved for him alone and that Murdo wore now.
“You bastard!” the other man exclaimed as he drew closer. He was laughing, though, white teeth flashing. “I came out to meet the carriage for our grand reunion to find nothing but apuddingto greet me!”
The laughter that bubbled out of David came from deep inside him, like water from an underground spring. It burbled up and fell from his lips as he walked into Murdo’s arms, stopped only by the firm press of the other man’s mouth as they came together in a fiercely joyful kiss.
“That’s better,” Murdo murmured when they finally pulled apart, and the soft words tingled against David’s lips.
“I’m a day early,” David said. “I didn’t think you’d be at the house, or I’d’ve stayed with the carriage.”
“What can I say?” Murdo grinned. “I must’ve had a premonition that my beloved would get home today.”
My beloved.
“I missed you,” David said.
“And I you.”
They smiled at one another for a long, perfect moment, right there, at the edge of the woods. At the edge of the broad, green stretch that surrounded their home.
“Come on,” Murdo said. “Let’s go back to the house.”
He took David’s hand and tugged him towards the start of the woodland path.
Murdo clambered over the stile first, and when David stepped up after him, he said, “How’s the leg?”
David glared at him. Murdo still asked that question every day. Force of habit, Murdo claimed. “It’s good,” David replied firmly. “I got out of the carriage at the top of Bank’s Hill and did the climb up here with no bother.”
“None at all?” Murdo sounded sceptical.
David sent him a defiant look. “Just the barest ache at the very end. Nothing a five-minute rest didn’t cure.” He jumped from the stile step to the ground to make his point.
Murdo raised one brow in a perfect arch—cool and amused—the eternal aristocrat. “Did your mother give you any more liniment? I think I’d better give you a rubdown if your leg’s been aching.”
David couldn’t suppress a grin at that. “As it happens, she did.”
“She’s an excellent woman, your mother,” Murdo observed.
“She is,” David agreed. “She’s the one who sent that clootie dumpling you saw in the carriage earlier. It’s her prized recipe and her dearest wish is that you’ll give it a try.”
“That monstrous pudding?” Murdo looked appalled. “That’s your mother’s clootie dumpling? Good lord, David, it weighs aton! What’s in it? Rocks?” He shook his head, wrinkling his nose. “I’ll leave the clootie dumpling to you to dispose of, if you don’t mind. You’re the one with the sweet tooth.”
“Oh come on, you have to at leasttryit,” David wheedled. “If I write and tell her that no less a personage than Lord Murdo Balfour ate her dumpling, she’ll be able to crow to all the neighbours for weeks.”
Murdo reached for David’s hand, entwining their fingers together. His eyes danced with humour. “All right, I’ll try it,” he said, tugging David towards the path. “I promise.”
“I’ll hold you to that,” David replied, enjoying the warmth of Murdo’s hand in his and the companionable bump of their shoulders as they made their way down the path.
“Honestly,” Murdo sighed. “The things I do for love.”
The End