Page 21 of Provoked

Bella?

Balfour smiled at Elizabeth. “I am well acquainted with Miss Galbraith and her mother,” he said. “And I shall be calling on them at the earliest opportunity.”

Lees got drunk with Peter and told him about a young woman called Isabella. She lives here in Edinburgh.

When Euan had described Lees, it had occurred to David that his description—tall, dark-haired, an English-sounding voice—sounded rather like the man he’d sucked off in an alleyway in Stirling. But it hadn’t been more than a passing thought. Why would it be? Many men looked like that. Now, though, with the mention of this girl, Bella, whose father had once been an advocate, the thought of Lees loomed large, and David found himself glancing at Balfour again through new eyes.

“On Saturday evening, Catherine and I are attending the assembly in town with Bella. Do you intend to go, my lord?” Elizabeth directed the question to Balfour, but her eyes flickered towards David.

“I should certainly like to do so,” Balfour said. “And I will hope to dance with you, Miss Chalmers.”

Mrs. Chalmers, who had begun to look a little unhappy at the direction the conversation had taken, looked mollified at this particular attention to her oldest daughter, while Elizabeth blushed and glanced again at David, an odd, pained expression in her eyes. Puzzled, David smiled at her, and she seemed to brighten.

When he looked away from Elizabeth, it was to discover Balfour’s gaze on him, cool and assessing. He averted his eyes, reaching for his wineglass and hoping no one had noticed the warmth he’d felt steal over his cheeks.

At last the meal was over, and the ladies withdrew to take tea while Chalmers brought out the whisky again.

David had had several glasses of wine at dinner and, of course, all those drams in Chalmers’s study. He knew he should stop drinking. He felt the telltale signs of his self-control loosening. His mind had begun to fixate on that night in Stirling, his gaze creeping again and again to Balfour, lingering on his broad, black-clad shoulders and the snowy linen wound round his throat. He knew himself in dangerous territory and dug his fingers into his palms to stop his hands stealing out to pick up the glass. Even as he resisted, though, another part of his mind urged him to drink. What did it matter, after all? What was the worst that could happen? The whisky would relax him, and God knew he was wound as tight as a spring.

He tried to concentrate on the conversation between the other two men to distract himself. Chalmers was quizzing Balfour about the unsuccessful plot to murder the Prime Minister and his Cabinet earlier in the year.

“It is said that Lord Liverpool can hardly venture outside for fear of attack,” the older man observed.

Balfour shrugged. “Radicals,” he said shortly. “They are few but fanatical.”

Chalmers smiled. “You do realise you are in the company of someone who defended some radicals?”

Balfour looked briefly surprised. “You defended the weavers?”

“Not I,” Chalmers said. “Mr. Lauriston was their champion.”

Balfour’s head swung round, dark eyes penetrating, a question in his raised brows.

“I worked with Mr. Jeffrey on the defence of two of the weavers who were executed,” David said shortly, unwilling to share more than that.

Balfour stared. “I see,” he said after a long pause.

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence.

“Tell me, my lord, is London your permanent home?” Chalmers smoothed over the odd, tense moment with a bland question.

“For most of the year,” Balfour replied, turning his attention to the older man. “I try to come up to Kilbeigh—my father’s estate—at least once a year. I usually come in spring or autumn, as I prefer to avoid the place when the midges are biting.”

Chalmers laughed. “Oh, I am all too familiar with those beasties! They are at their worst in the west, are they not?”

“You are from the west, then? Rather than Edinburgh?”

Chalmers nodded. “I hail from Oban, originally. Though I’ve lived here for thirty-two years now and count myself almost a native.”

That accounted for the faint lilt in Chalmers’s voice, then.

“Do you ever see yourself returning home?” Balfour asked.

“Goodness, no! I would miss city life. I like my club. I dine there twice a week at least. And I enjoy the debates at the Speculative Society of which I am a member. My friends are all faculty men, like me. I should miss their company greatly if I moved away.”

David suppressed a smile. It did not escape him that Chalmers’s favourite occupations all kept him away from his shrewish wife.

“You prefer the intellectual life,” Balfour observed.