Page 44 of Provoked
On Tuesday, David ventured to the faculty library. He had little choice. He and Chalmers were meeting the solicitor in the MacAllister case at eleven o’clock. The hearing was in a few weeks. David had meticulously reviewed all the papers and witness precognitions again to identify the weakest areas of their case and suggest how the gaps might be filled. He was to sit down with Chalmers at nine o’clock to take him through his conclusions.
“What happened to you?” Chalmers asked when David approached him in the library. The man’s eyebrows were raised—that was about as dramatic a reaction as it was possible to get from Chalmers.
“Thieves. My own fault. I took a shortcut home on Saturday night through a dark close.”
“Not the brightest idea you’ve ever had,” Chalmers concurred. “Are you all right?”
“I’ll live.”
With that, they got down to business.
They worked well together. Chalmers appreciated David’s hard work, and David welcomed the older man’s shrewd insights. Chalmers questioned some of David’s conclusions about the case and made several additional suggestions David hadn’t thought of which they debated vigorously. David grew animated as they discussed the case, his sharp mind dissecting Chalmers’s arguments as he dealt with them point by point. He had always been able to rely on his work for this—to draw him out of himself; to help him forget his worries.
When the solicitor arrived for the consultation, Chalmers gave the man a list of tasks as long as his arm to carry out over the next two weeks before they consulted again. There would be little for David to do on the case before then, and he left the meeting feeling aimless.
He had several other cases, but not much was happening on any of them at present. He went to speak with his clerk, but there were no messages for him, and when he checked his box again, it was empty.
He felt low when he left the library, and without any conscious decision to do so, took a detour on the way home to buy another bottle of whisky. He drank half of it with his scanty dinner, falling into a mercifully dreamless sleep in front of the fire.
By Wednesday, he still hadn’t heard anything from Euan, and the lad’s silence had begun to bother him. David hadn’t liked how Euan had been talking on Saturday night as they watched the entrance to the Assembly Rooms from their dark close. Following Isabella Galbraith. Watching for Lees. In one evening, his plan had escalated into something new and infinitely more dangerous.
Midmorning, David went to the library, where he made himself speak to a few of the senior advocates. Then he spent an hour in a coffee house, trying to read a newspaper before heading down Fleshmarket Close. It was his third visit since the attack, and this time he found his quarry—Janet the whore. He pressed a half crown into her hand, waved off her garbled thanks and took his leave.
He decided then that it would do no harm to take a turn down to the New Town, to see if Euan was indeed there. He knew the Galbraiths lived on Heriot Row after all, and it wasn’t as though he had anything better to do.
It was a cold but sunny autumn day, and David enjoyed the stroll. If he’d been at home on a day like this, striding down the country lanes near Midlauder, he’d have taken his hat and coat off, but that wasn’t possible in the grand part of Edinburgh that was the New Town. Instead he had to content himself with tipping his head back and letting the sun shine directly on his face.
When he got to Heriot Row, he slowed his pace and began to carefully observe his surroundings but was unable to spot anything out of the ordinary. He was so busy looking for a young man loitering that he didn’t notice the two ladies strolling towards him.
“Mr. Lauriston! What are you doing here?”
His head snapped up to see Elizabeth Chalmers and her sister Catherine approaching him, arm in arm.
“Miss Chalmers, Miss Catherine—” he began but broke off when he saw Elizabeth’s expression. Her eyes were wide with horror.
“Oh my word, whathappenedto you?” she cried.
With an inward sigh, he pasted a smile upon his face and told the story he’d now told a dozen times all over again.
“Oh, you poor thing!” Elizabeth exclaimed when he was finished. “Did you have anyone to look after you?”
“I didn’t need anyone—”
“Of course you do, everyone does!”
“Truly,” he insisted. “It looks much worse than it is. My pride has taken the hardest blow. It was very foolish of me to go where I did.”
Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest his waving away of her concern, but he beat her to it, asking brightly, “And where are you ladies off to on this lovely day?”
“We are on our way to call on Miss Galbraith,” Catherine replied. “She lives on this very street.”
“Oh, does she?” David replied, managing a creditable degree of polite surprise.
“Yes, at the other end,” Catherine said, gesturing to where David had just come from. He thought quickly. At the very least, it would be good to see exactly where Miss Galbraith lived.
“Will you allow me to escort you both, then?” he asked, turning on his heel. “I really ought to return to Parliament House, and your company, if only for a few minutes, would make that a much more pleasant prospect.”
Elizabeth beamed, and Catherine smiled politely. “That would be lovely,” Elizabeth said happily, curling her little hand round David’s proffered arm.