Page 25 of Provoked

“Are you quite sure you’re a lawyer, Lauriston? There is something touchingly naïve about you at times that is quite at odds with your profession.”

David flushed again. “I realise you think I’m ridiculous, but a man of honour would not laugh at me.”

“Are you calling me dishonourable?” Balfour’s voice was disbelieving, a dangerous edge creeping in.

David refused to back down. “Would you make promises to a woman in church, then break those promises? Is that not dishonourable?”

“It is the way of the world. Like as not any woman I marry won’t expect—or want—my fidelity.”

“It doesn’t matter what she expects or wants,” David said implacably. “A promise is a promise.”

Balfour gave a disbelieving laugh. “Youarean idealist.”

David thought about that. “Perhaps,” he conceded at last. “And glad to be one if only an idealist keeps his promises.”

Balfour didn’t answer that, but he looked at David for a long moment before he turned his head forward again.

“Why did you represent those weavers?”

The unexpectedness of the question after the brief silence threw David. “Because they deserved to be properly defended.”

“Because they were right?”

“Because anyone in their position deserves to be represented by an advocate who will try his best for them.”

“Avoiding the question, Lauriston?”

“No. Answering it honestly. That is the reason I represented them. If you want to know if I agree with their views, you need to ask me another question.”

“Do you agree with their views?”

“Do you?”

Balfour laughed, though not humorously this time. He turned his head, his eyes travelling over David’s face. There was something heated and intense in his gaze that made David’s gut clench. “You first.”

David shrugged, cultivating a cool expression even as he suppressed the dangerous glimmer of attraction. “Some of them. I believe the suffrage should be extended. I think if it is not, there will be much more violence. Perhaps even a people’s revolution, as happened in France.”

“And would you welcome war between the classes?”

“Of course not.”

“But your weavers would have done so. They went to war, did they not? A short-lived war, but a war nonetheless.” The deep voice was all seriousness now.

David stared at Balfour, fear and attraction churning inside him, an unpleasant combination that nevertheless made him feel fully alive in a way he hadn’t felt in a long time. Was this man Lees? He was not speaking tonight like a man nourishing a secret passion for a woman, but he knew Isabella Galbraith all right. She might be the lady he had his eye on. And he fitted Lees’s description. He could be the man Euan MacLennan sought.

“The weavers told me that the war, if you can call those skirmishes a war, happened because of government agents. Men they believed to be their own, who deliberately provoked those events with the sole purpose of flushing out those most likely to speak out against the government.”

Balfour met his gaze. “Is that so? Who were these agents, Lauriston? What happened to them?”

They faced each other on the cold, dark street, the mist snaking between them.

“I should dearly like to know,” David said. “People died because of those men.”

“Perhaps people were saved because of them.”

“We’ll never know, will we? Their actions deprived the weavers of the chance to decide for themselves how they would act. Perhaps they would never have raised arms against the government. Now three of those men are dead and the rest are being transported. Not to mention the people killed in the riots.”

“And look how many died by the guillotine in France,” Balfour said. “Would that be better?”