CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Thursday, 5th September, 1822
The carriage journey to Perthshire was gruelling. Though not terribly far from Edinburgh, the roads were poor, and at the slow pace Murdo insisted upon, it took them the whole day to get there.
Murdo had hired a special carriage to take David. It was spacious inside with a specially made bench that David could recline upon, allowing his leg to stay completely still in its bindings. Murdo’s servants had lined the bench with blankets and stocked it with pillows to make it as comfortable as possible for David.
Despite these efforts, the journey was still torturous. The roads were badly rutted and very narrow and winding. Even at a slow place, David felt like he was being constantly jolted and jarred. He couldn’t even distract himself with reading since the constant movement nauseated him.
Murdo rode on horseback most of the way, but, on their last stop, he didn’t take a new horse, choosing to join David in the carriage instead.
“Just ten more miles,” he promised as he climbed in, “and the scenery on this last stretch is beautiful.”
“How would I know? It’s not as if I can see out the window,” David griped. He hated the petulant tone of his own voice but he was tired and in pain and feeling sorry for himself, not just because of the discomfort of this journey, but at the thought of what lay ahead of him. He’d already had a week of enforced idleness, and it was driving him mad. He couldn’t see how he’d bear three more months of this.
“You can see out the window if you sit up,” Murdo said gently. “Let me help you.”
He helped David into a sitting position that enabled his leg to remain stretched out and began to pile the pillows and blankets up behind him to provide support. But there just wasn’t enough bulk to make good the gap between bench and wall. The reclining bench had been designed for someone to lie on, not sit up.
“I’ve already tried that,” David said glumly as Murdo tried yet another combination.
Oddly, Murdo’s mouth quirked up at his grumbling. “I’ve never seen you peevish before,” he said, sounding amused.
A pang of guilt struck David. Murdo had done his utmost to make this journey as pleasant as possible. And all David could do was complain.
“I’m sorry,” he sighed.
“Don’t be. It’s actually quite reassuring to see you being as human as the rest of us for once. You usually make me so aware of my own feet of clay.”
David frowned. “You make me sound like a prig,” he said. “Am I that bad?”
“No, just annoyingly virtuous at times,” Murdo replied cheerfully. “Like when you tell me that life’s about being true to yourself and I know you’re being completely sincere.”
Before David could respond to that, Murdo spoke again. “Oh, look, I’ve got it! If I sit up behind you, you can rest your back against my chest and you’ll be able to see perfectly.”
He threw the pillows he’d piled up out of the way and slid in behind David, wedging his big body into the space between the head of the bench and the back wall of the carriage. Then he wrapped his arms round David’s chest, carefully pulling David back a little, till David’s tailbone met his groin. David suppressed a moan, turning his attention instead to the carriage window through which he could indeed now see.
“Is that better?”
“Much, thank you. But what about you, aren’t you terribly uncomfortable?”
“It’s only ten miles, and”—Murdo dropped his lips to David’s ear—“this position has its compensations.”
David flushed, unsure how to respond. There had been nothing of that nature between them since his accident. How could there be with David so disabled? But the memory of the night that Murdo had fucked him haunted him constantly. And Murdo’s proximity and kindness were fostering a new and different intimacy between them that hadn’t existed before. There was friendship between them now, as well as the other. A regard that went beyond David’s desire to hold a well-made male body against his own.
These new feelings were galling at times—like when he realised that he didn’t want to share Murdo’s attention with anyone else, and that it perturbed him that Murdo’s head footman was so handsome… Or perhaps these absurd observations were nothing more than a mark of his forced indolence, of having too much time on his hands?
The carriage jerked forward, jolting them both and saving David from having to respond to Murdo’s teasing remark, but there were still Murdo’s arms around his chest and the warm huff of Murdo’s breath at his ear to contend with. There was still the impossible-to-shake feeling of well-being and security that flooded him whenever Murdo was physically close to him.
It had been such a long, long time since he’d had anyone to lean on.
“We’re about to turn down the hill that takes us into the glen,” Murdo murmured in his ear. “That’s when it begins to get more picturesque.”
It was quite a steep hill, and David was glad to have Murdo holding him steady as the horses picked their way down. It would not have been a comfortable descent on his own, sliding around on the bench, trying to stay still.
At last they were at the bottom, and Murdo said, “Just look at that.”
The glen stretched out before them, long and narrow and yellow-green, between two ranges of mountains. A river gushed through it, bubbling white and frothy over big black stones. Out of the corner of his eye David caught a flutter of movement and, turning his head, spied two peewits tumbling and wheeling in the sky.
He hadn’t seen a peewit in years.
“What do you think?” Murdo said in his ear.
“It’s beautiful,” David answered honestly, even as his gaze tracked up the mountains and he thought with a pang, I won’t be able to go up there.
Not for a while anyway.
“As soon as I saw it, I knew it was what I’d been looking for.”
“Is this part of your estate, then?”
“Not quite. The border of my land begins about three miles from here. This is McNally’s land. He’s not very well disposed to me at the moment, but I hope to change that.”
“Well, you can be very persuasive.”
“Do you think so?” A soft laugh stirred the strands of hair at David’s temple, sending a pleasurable shiver down his neck. The shiver made his whole back brush lightly against Murdo’s chest, and the strong arms around David briefly tightened in response. Just that simple physical exchange made David feel suddenly happy and hopeful as he hadn’t felt in years. Hopeful despite his crumbling career, and his money worries, and his physical injuries.
“Yes, and I should know,” he teased. “None better. God knows I’ve been subjected to your persuasiveness often enough.”
Another good-natured chuckle, then lips at his temple in a brief kiss.
A sigh.
“David.”
Just his name. Not a question but a statement. Or maybe an answer.
David waited, allowing himself the silence and the arms about him as he did so.
“I thought you were dead,” Murdo said at last.
David waited, but Murdo said no more, and at last he broke the silence himself. “I’m sorry if I caused you distress.”
“Distress.” Murdo laughed harshly, as though the word was absurd.
After a moment, he said, “I saw Kinnell push you, and you fell back. I just knew the horse was going to rear. I ran down the steps, but I couldn’t get to you in time. I saw its hoof clip you, and you just dropped like a stone, and then the horse was stumbling all over you. I thought, he’s dead, he’s dead. I ran up to you, and you were so white, as though all the blood had just drained right out of you.”
David didn’t know what to say. He sifted through the threads of too many feelings, regret, anguish, but something too that felt oddly like happiness, to know that Murdo cared.
“The thought of you being dead—I realised I couldn’t bear it. Bad enough not to have you. But for you not to be alive somewhere? That was—it was unthinkable.”
David turned his head, suddenly needing to see Murdo, and for once, he didn’t bother to mask his own feelings. Hell, he didn’t know what his own feelings were, but he thought they might not be dissimilar to Murdo’s, because he looked as overwhelmed and emotional as David felt.
“I don’t know what this thing between us is,” Murdo said, and he sounded genuinely bewildered. “But I can’t give it up. I can’t give you up.”
“Murdo—”
David didn’t know what else to say, so instead he raised one arm, curving it about Murdo’s neck, and drew him down till their lips met. He kissed Murdo, and it was like water. Like something necessary and life-giving. Murdo’s lips parted, and David deepened the kiss, for once the aggressor.
When Murdo finally raised his head, they were both breathing heavily.
“I’ve missed kissing you,” Murdo said. “I never thought I’d miss kissing above all other activities.”
The carriage took a deep bend then, throwing them against one another and making them laugh, even as David’s leg ached like the very devil. When they came out of the bend, Murdo said, “Look, you can see Laverock House from here.”
He pointed out the window, and David followed the line of his arm to a house several miles away, set on a hillside, looking down over Murdo’s land. It was difficult to make much out from this distance, but it looked to be a good-sized manor house, built of solid grey stone.
“Your home,” Murdo said. “For the next few months.”
Home.
It sounded good.
It sounded…wonderful.
David looked up to find Murdo smiling at him, and he smiled back.
He was going home.
And it felt right.