Page 50 of Provoked

Balfour took up his seat behind the desk again and gestured to David to take the smaller chair on the other side, putting him in the position of a petitioner. Well, he couldn’t really complain; hewasa petitioner, after all. Or was about to be.

“So, Lauriston, what do you want?” Balfour leaned back in his chair, half smiling, his dark gaze steady.

David took a deep breath. “I hardly know where to start,” he began.

“Goodness me! David Lauriston stumped for words? Now that does surprise me.”

David stared at him, taken aback by Balfour’s words, or rather by the faint sneer underlying them. Balfour returned his look with no more than a raised eyebrow.

“All right, then,” David said after a long pause. “I’ll get straight to the point, if I may. The other day, after I met you outside Miss Galbraith’s home, you saw a man in the street, and you ran after him. I think I know who that man is.” At Balfour’s frown, he shrugged. “That is to say, I don’t knowpreciselywho he is, but I believe he’s a government agent.”

Despite how provocative that statement was, Balfour’s expression didn’t change much at all. One eyebrow lifted, by the smallest degree. Nothing more.

“I see,” he said at length. “Pray, go on.”

“He is, in fact, the man I spoke of on the night we dined with the Chalmers. The man who infiltrated the weavers’ ranks. The man who brought about the events that resulted in all those executions and transportations.”

Balfour’s gaze was steady. “Is that right?”

“It is. And he is—at this very moment—being pursued by a man with revenge in mind.”

Balfour’s gaze sharpened, his studied unconcern dissipating. “You?”

The question took David so much by surprise that he started. “No, of course not!”

“Then who?”

“A friend of mine. A brother of one of the transported men. He came to me to ask me to help him find this man. And, somewhat unwittingly, I did.”

Balfour frowned. “You helped him unwittingly?”

“My friend approached me weeks ago, telling me that the man he was looking for was in love with a young woman whose father I might know. He thought the young woman was the key to finding this man—I thought he was being naïve. I was certain that no agent of the Crown would be so foolish as to disclose secrets about himself that would enable him to be so easily found.” David sighed. “I agreed to help him because I thought that, when he ultimately failed, as I was sure he would do, he would return to his studies.”

“But?”

David grimaced. “But the woman was real, and shewaskey to finding him. And now my friend knows where he is.”

“The woman was Isabella Galbraith,” Balfour supplied, expressionless.

“Yes.”

“And your friend is the young man from the assembly.”

David said nothing.

Balfour stared at him for a long moment. “Why are you here?”

“I made my friend promise that if he found the man he sought—Lees was the name he went by—he would speak to me before he did anything. He was reluctant, but he promised. Today he came to me and fulfilled that promise. Now he is free to act.” David paused, looking away. “I hadn’t intended to let him confront Lees without me, but—we both fell asleep, and when I woke, he was gone.” He flushed then, realising how that confession sounded.

A muscle twitched in Balfour’s jaw. “And now?”

“I fear my friend will be harmed. I came to you hoping you would be able to give me Lees’s direction. I have to go after Euan. He has no idea what he’s dealing with—”

“Why are you doing this?”

David gazed at the man, nonplussed. “I don’t want him to be harmed. He’s just a lad. Innocent.”

Balfour’s lip curled. “You are infatuated with him.”