Page 17 of Provoked

Euan leaned back in his seat and stared into the fire. “Tall. Dark haired. An English-sounding voice. He’s got a funny way about him. Superior.”

“You didn’t like him,” David surmised.

The other man turned his head and met David’s questioning look with a serious gaze.

“Not a bit. I said so to Peter at the time.”

David finished the jug of whisky in the same time it took Euan to finish his single tankard of ale. When he stood up to leave, the room reeled, then slowly came to rights. The reaction surprised him—he hadn’t drunkthatmuch—but the lack of food and sleep was telling on him now. He stumbled out of the tavern after Euan, wincing at the blast of cold air that hit them.

Euan pulled his cap over his ears. “When do you think you might learn more?” he asked.

“I can’t be sure. Shall we meet again next week?”

“Where shall we meet?” Euan asked. He averted his eyes, his expression embarrassed. “To tell you the truth, I don’t have the money to come to taverns and drink.”

David resisted the urge to say he’d pay. The lad’s pride had taken enough blows tonight. “Come to my rooms. I’m only round the corner from here, on Blair Street. Number twelve, on the second floor.”

Euan nodded. “Number twelve, second floor. When shall I come? Monday?”

“Best leave it till Tuesday. Come in the evening. After seven would be best.”

“All right. I don’t know how to thank you, Davy.”

“Just take care of yourself.”

“I will. G’night.”

“Good night.”

With that, Euan turned and hurried away. He was swallowed into the shadows within seconds, as though he’d never been there.

David stood looking after him for a minute, wondering where the lad was sleeping; then he crammed his own hat on and set off on the short walk home.

The usual pockets of ne’er-do-wells, prostitutes and ragged children lurked in every doorway on the way, some eyeing him malevolently, others pleading for a coin or offering favours for one. One of them, a girl, ventured closer, brushing up against him. Her dress was pulled down to expose a meagre bosom and her feet were bare. She was either desperate for a client or trying to steal something, her fingers whispering over the placket of his breeches. Her dead, calculating expression filled him with pity even as he pushed her firmly away.

At last he was home and trudging up the stone stairs of the close. He unlocked his front door and went inside, carefully locking up behind him. Going straight to the kitchen, he checked the larder. It was fairly bare, as usual. His stomach was gnawing with hunger, though, and he reached for the easiest thing to eat, a bit of cheese that was past its best. Paring away the rind, he ate it where he stood, then went to get ready for bed.

That night, he dreamed about William for the first time in years.

He was in the kirk at Midlauder, sitting in his family’s pew, except instead of his mother and father and Drew, it was William sitting next to him. Even though, in real life, William had always sat in the front pew with his father, Sir Thomas Lennox, and all the pretty Lennox girls. The most David had ever seen of William in church was the back of his head.

In the dream, though, William was sitting next to him, and, instead of his Sunday clothes, he was wearing a loose shirt and old breeches and had bare feet.

“Let’s go swimming, Davy,” he said, and his eyes gleamed with excitement. Eyes the same yellowy-green as the mossy bark on the old beech tree they liked to climb. There was a thick branch you could stand on and jump off, into the pond.

“I can’t, I’m in my Sunday clothes,” David said.

“No you’re not.”

He looked down, and no, he wasn’t. He was in his court gown. He put his hand to his head—he was wearing his court wig too. He drew it off, feeling silly. He was a man, then, not a boy.

And so, he realised, was William.

The open neck of William’s shirt displayed a swathe of pale skin dusted with dark hair. His shoulders were broad and powerful, his thighs muscled from riding. He smiled at David, and his smile was inviting.

“William—” His stomach churned with excitement and shame. He wanted William the way a man wants a woman, and it was so very wrong to feel this way. Especially about his friend.

William didn’t say anything. He just reached for David’s breeches, unfastening the buttons and freeing his aching cock, then bending over to—Christ, was he going to put it in his mouth?