Page 51 of Provoked

David shook his head, staring at the man lounging before him in disbelief. “I am asking you to help me save him. I fear for his life, Balfour. I don’t need much—just an address. I’ll go there myself.”

“Don’t you think you’re overreacting?”

“No, I don’t,” David snapped. “The man Euan is going to confront incited men to do things that resulted in them being executed. What might he do to a hot-headed boy who faces up to him?”

Balfour’s dark eyes moved over David’s face, searching for something. Whether he found it or not, David did not know. After a moment, Balfour slowly turned in his chair and reached for the servants’ bell. A footman soon appeared. Not Johnston this time.

“Have the carriage brought round,” Balfour ordered. “I will be ready in five minutes; then Mr. Lauriston and I will be leaving for the Imperial Hotel.”

The Imperial Hotel was several miles away, near Holyrood. Balfour’s carriage made short work of the journey, and as they travelled, he gave David a potted history of the man David thought of as Lees—Balfour’s cousin, it turned out.

“Hugh is the son of my father’s youngest sister. She eloped with a redcoat before she was officially out—my father was furious—but the marriage was certainly fruitful. Hugh is one of seven. However, my uncle is far from wealthy, and Hugh always knew he’d have to make his own way in the world. I think he was happy enough about it, till he met Isabella Galbraith.”

“He fell in love with her?” David asked.

“So he told me, when I finally caught up with him the other day.”

“You didn’t know before then?”

“I’ve been half courting her myself. I wouldn’t have done that if I’d known.” Balfour sounded indignant at the idea.

“So how did he come to spy on the weavers?”

Balfour said nothing for several long beats of time. Then softly he uttered, “My father.”

“Your father?”

“My father is the most ruthless and ambitious man you could ever hope to meet.” Balfour sighed. “What the purpose of all his intrigue is, I’ve never been able to understand, but it’s what he lives for. He sees everyone as a pawn in his game. He’s used me in the past, but I don’t allow it anymore. He really ought to have been one of those great Elizabethan men, poisoning courtiers and plotting regicide. He’d have loved that.”

“As it is, he’s had to lower himself to transporting weavers?”

Balfour shot him a steady gaze. “That’s about the size of it. My father’s part of the inner circle of government. The government sees radicals as a threat and has been using agents to flush out the most dedicated ones.

“Hugh approached my father about Isabella Galbraith more than a year ago. He knew her father and mine were close friends, and he hoped my father would speak up for him with Isabella’s parents. He was also hoping my father would find him a lucrative position in government. My father did neither. Instead he recruited Hugh into this game.” Balfour laughed then, though without humour. “And he said nothing to Isabella’s father. I suspect when Hugh drew her virtues to my father’s attention, my father decided that she would makemean ideal wife. It was his idea I court her.”

“Did you know Hugh was working for your father?”

“I found out a few months ago, from my aunt. She came to see me and begged me to find Hugh. She wanted to get him away from my father’s influence. She guessed he was embroiled in something dangerous but didn’t know what.”

“So you came up from London to find him?”

“It’s why I was in Stirling the first night I met you.”

David felt his face flush scarlet at the vivid memory of that night and was glad of the shadowed carriage interior.

“And did you find him there?”

“No. I hadn’t seen him for months when I caught sight of him on the street last week. He led me a merry dance, I can tell you, before I finally ran him to ground.”

“And when you did?”

Balfour said nothing for several moments, and David couldn’t make out his expression in the dark. “We didn’t part well,” he said at last. “Hugh wants to believe in my father. He wants to believe all this hasn’t been for nothing. That he’ll get his Bella, in the end.”

The carriage drew to a halt before David could question Balfour further—they had reached the Imperial Hotel. Balfour made no immediate move, but reached inside his greatcoat and drew something out.

“Here.”

He presented a knife to David, the blade pointing at his own breast, the hilt at David.