CHAPTER FOUR

IT TOOK FORTY-FIVE MINUTES FOR the procession to work its way past David’s windows on its way up to the castle.

The Beggs enjoyed it to the full. Especially Mrs. Begg, who oohed and ahhed, who pointed out which clans each contingent of highlanders was from—she appeared to have memorised all the tartans—and breathlessly intoned the names of the more important personages as they passed, particularly the mounted clan chiefs in their full regalia.

“Look at Sir Evan MacGregor,” she breathed as the MacGregor clan swept by in a torrent of scarlet. “Have you ever seen anyone so handsome in all your life, Lady Kinnell?”

“Present company excepted, no,” Elizabeth replied, a smile in her voice.

“Oh well, of course!” Mrs. Begg replied, giggling. “Kenneth knows I esteem him above all others, don’t you, my love? But Sir Evan’s costume is just so dashing.”

“I shall have to purchase one just like it,” Mr. Begg replied. “Can you imagine me, Lauriston, addressing the Lord President in tartan and eagle feathers?”

“I would pay good money to see it,” David said, and everyone laughed.

“And there is Lord Murdoch Balfour,” Mrs. Begg went on. “Do you see him, Kenneth? On the black horse?”

David’s heart began to beat in his throat at the sound of that name. It was almost a fortnight since he’d run into the man at the tailor shop, and every day he thought of their last conversation.

“You know where my house is. Come anytime…”

He thought about that invitation, every day. But he hadn’t gone. The memory of how he’d felt two years before, after they’d parted, lingered still. The blackness that had descended on him afterwards. The long, endless downhill from the mountain. Down and down.

He feared to tread that black descent again.

From the corner of his eye, he saw Euan studying him—Euan recognised Balfour’s name, of course—but David didn’t turn his head. He kept looking forward, letting his gaze roam over the riders below, until, at last, he picked out Balfour, tall and elegant on his midnight steed.

David was as sceptical as it was possible to be about this ceremony. He’d watched hundreds of troops pass to the patriotic sound of bagpipes and drums without feeling the slightest bit moved. But when he saw Balfour, dressed far less flamboyantly than Sir Evan MacGregor, in dark-green-and-blue tartan, he felt a stirring in his breast for the first time all day.

It wasn’t with patriotism, though. It was with a far more personal feeling.

“Oh, he’s like Young Lochinvar,” Mrs. Begg breathed, and they all laughed again, David too. And it was funny, except…except that she was right.

So faithful in love, and so dauntless in war

There never was knight like the young Lochinvar…

Inwardly, David groaned. Was he a lassie to be thinking such nonsense?

He’d spent the last two years trying to forget Lord Murdo Balfour, certain he’d never see the man again. It had been over a year before he’d given in to his old weakness, scared that touching another man, or being touched, would stir up memories he wanted to forget.

That fear had been unfounded, as it happened. His first lapse hadn’t reminded him of Balfour at all, nor any of the few times after that. Those furtive, anonymous encounters had borne no relation to being with Balfour. David scarcely spoke to any of those men, scarcely even looked at them. He’d certainly never looked at any of them as he was looking at Balfour now, with his heart kicking a determined tattoo in his chest and his breath coming shallow and quick at the mere sight of him, down on the street below on his black steed.

“You know where my house is.”

“Goodness me, it is Lord Murdo!” Elizabeth said then. “Do you remember him, Mr. Lauriston?” She turned her head and caught his eye, forcing him to reluctantly look away from Balfour’s departing figure. “You dined with him at my father’s house once. Do you recall?”

“Ah—yes, I believe I do,” David confirmed.

“Do you know,” Euan said in a tone that held an audible note of amusement, “I think I recognise him too.”

David glanced at Euan, a slight frown drawing his brows together in warning—Euan was perfectly well aware of Lord Murdo Balfour’s identity. Balfour had been with David that night two years before, had bargained with Euan after David’s reckless intervention. There was no way he could have forgotten him.

Euan feigned puzzlement, a finger on his lips. “Was he possibly at the assembly we talked about earlier? The one Lady Kinnell was at?”

David stayed silent, letting Euan know he wasn’t happy, but Elizabeth interjected, unwittingly rescuing the younger man.

“I believe he was at that assembly, Mr. MacLennan. I remember I had to dance with him, and it was terribly nerve-racking! Mother had persuaded herself he was looking for a wife, and she was being utterly impossible that night.”

“Looking for a fancy son-in-law, was she?” Mr. Begg asked with jolly tactlessness.

Elizabeth’s smile faded a little, but she answered him with a show of good humour that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Yes. Well, she got her wish in the end. Though not with Lord Murdo Balfour.”

She turned back to face the window then, her shoulders and back tense, and the thumbprint bruise at the nape of her neck livid. David glanced at Euan, who looked grim. Of course, he’d been looking fairly grim throughout the whole procession. It was obvious to anyone who cared to look that he didn’t find the spectacle as stirring as David’s other guests. Perhaps he saw it as a demonstration of the power of the state—all that military might being displayed in honour of the monarch of the United Kingdoms of England, Scotland, Wales and Ireland.

David’s view of the procession was probably closer to Euan’s than to that of the patriotic Beggs. Yet he’d hosted this celebration. Brought in food and wine and played the part of a loyal subject of the King. Well, he was loyal, wasn’t he? Certainly in deed, if not in thought. He was a respectable man, part of the machinery that upheld the rule of law, even when he tried to fight its effect. Like when he’d represented Euan’s brother. He’d tried his damnedest, within the bounds of the law, to prevent Peter MacLennan being transported, but it hadn’t been enough.

What a man could do within the law was rarely enough, and that was the hell of it.

Once the procession was over, and while the formal ceremony to hand over the Regalia was being conducted in the castle, David’s small party returned to the other guests in the parlour. David circulated the room, offering his guests more refreshments. While he topped the ladies’ glasses with wine punch, Ferguson refreshed the men’s ale, and Catherine replenished some of the empty plates on the sideboard from the kitchen.

David’s guests were jolly by now, some even becoming a little silly. Hardly surprising when they were tippling before noon. Despite his sociable demeanour, David didn’t feel jolly, though. He felt too sober, untouched by the ale he’d drunk and out of step with his guests’ merriness, and it wasn’t just the alcohol or his distaste for the pageantry bothering him.

Once David had been round all the other guests, he approached Euan and Elizabeth. They stood a little apart, talking together, their heads bent close. He felt, oddly, like an intruder as he drew near.

“Would you like some more lemonade, Lady Kinnell? Or more ale for you, Mr. MacLennan?”

They looked up simultaneously, both of them seeming surprised to see him standing there for an instant before they each began to refuse his offer, their words tumbling together then petering out into awkward silence.

After a pause, Elizabeth said, more collectedly, “Mr. MacLennan was just telling me about the people he works with.”

“Oh yes?” David looked at Euan enquiringly.

“I was telling Lady Kinnell about Mr. and Mrs. Gilmour, the owners of Flint’s,” Euan said, a hint of defiance in his tone, as though he thought David wouldn’t approve. “I was explaining that it was Mr. Gilmour who founded the paper, but Mrs. Gilmour is just as involved. As we all are. It is a collective endeavour. We all have a say-so in what happens.”

He glanced at Elizabeth. “I wish you could meet them,” he said. “They are a most unusual couple.”

Elizabeth tilted her head to the side. “Oh? Why is that?”

“They live as equal partners,” Euan said. “They drew up an agreement before their marriage that whatever the law might say, Mrs. Gilmour’s property was to remain her own, that her rights over their children would be equal to her husband’s, and that she owed him no obligation to obey his commands.”

Elizabeth was silent for a moment; then she said, sounding bewildered, “Why would they do that?”

“They believe that Woman should not be Man’s slave,” Euan said simply. “And if I ever marry, I will do just as they have done. If I marry, I don’t want a domestic slave.”

“No?”

“No. Man’s oppression of Woman is the first, and worst, act of oppression in human history. Until we repair that, how can we repair the other inequalities all around us? Every child grows up witnessing this most grievous form of slavery. We drink it in with our mothers’ milk and take it for the natural order. But it is not.”

Elizabeth swallowed, as though past a lump, her pale throat working almost painfully. She looked away, averting her face.

“You are passionate about this,” David observed into the silence that followed. It occurred to him that if he was being a proper host, he would change a subject that seemed to be causing one of his guests distress, but he couldn’t help thinking that it may do Elizabeth good to hear this.

Euan turned his head to look at David. “I am,” he admitted. “My father beat my mother like a dog. One night, it was so bad Peter took a poker to him and drove him out of the house. He never came back. Peter was only fourteen, and the rest of us all under ten. Mam died a few days later. He’d broken something inside her, and we couldn’t afford a physician.”

Elizabeth made a choked sound at that, and Euan turned to her at once, paling at her look of distress.

“I’m so sorry,” he said. “I forgot myself—I shouldn’t have spoken so frankly.”

“No, no,” she said, shaking her head. “It’s just that—it’s horrible, Mr. MacLennan. Losing your mother in such an awful way. My own father is such a gentle man, isn’t he, Mr. Lauriston?”

David nodded. “Your father is the very best of men,” he agreed, noticing she made no mention of her husband.

“Why can’t all men be like that?” she asked, and though the question was put quietly, somehow David knew it was a cry from the heart. Those expressive eyes, wounded and astonished, gave her away.

David watched her carefully. “I don’t understand it,” he said. “There were at least two women in my home village who were regularly beaten by their husbands. One of them was a cousin of my mother’s. She used to take refuge in our home when her man had been drinking. It’s worst for women like that, who are poor. They have no power to change their circumstances. No financial power—”

“No woman has any financial power!” Elizabeth interrupted raggedly.

David fell silent.

“No married woman,” she added, shambling her neutral mask back on.

“You’re right, of course,” David agreed evenly, watching her. The swift rise and fall of her chest betrayed her extreme agitation. “Even a rich woman is a pauper in marriage.”

“It’s not merely that married women have no property, Mr. Lauriston,” Elizabeth replied quietly. “It’s that they are property.”

“Mrs. Gilmour says that marriage is a form of slavery, under the law,” Euan said then. “It is the greatest of all injustices.”

Elizabeth nodded, then flushed, as though she’d only just realised what she’d given away. She averted her gaze and shrugged one slender shoulder. “I suppose it could be like slavery, if the husband wields his power unfairly.” She gave a false little laugh. “Goodness, how serious we are being, and on such a day! Do you think the procession will come back down the hill soon? I am going to have a look.”

Just like that, she broke away from the two men and hastened across the room to the window where her sister stood. Putting an arm around the other woman’s waist, she tilted her head to rest on Catherine’s shoulder.

“I’ll warrant she knows precisely what it is to submit to the yoke of marriage,” Euan muttered when she was out of earshot. “Did you see her neck, Davy?”

David nodded. “Looked like fingerprints.” He paused, then added, even more quietly, “I’ve heard some things about her husband.”

“What things?”

“Not much. Just that he brutalised younger boys at school.”

“Once a brute, always a brute,” Euan muttered. “She should leave him.”

“He is her husband—if she ran away from him, he would be within his rights to demand she return.” David swallowed against the sick feeling that observation stirred in him. “He owns her.”

Euan didn’t say anything to that, but he pressed his lips together, his eyes still fixed on the two sisters.

“I really did remember her, you know,” he said at last. “From that assembly we went to. She waved at you. Then later, you danced with her. She looked at you like you’d hung the moon in the sky for her. I was sure she was in love with you.”

“She wasn’t in love with me,” David murmured. “She was just being a typical young lady at an assembly. Happy. Excited.”

“I know what I saw.” Euan turned his head and smiled at David. “I thought you were a lucky dog. Did you make a bid for her hand? I suppose her family thought you weren’t good enough?”

David shook his head. “I didn’t think of her in that way, but even if I had, her mother would have opposed me, I imagine.”

He didn’t mention that Chalmers would have given him his eldest daughter’s hand in a heartbeat.

“Can you imagine what they would think of someone like me?” Euan laughed, though his laughter held a bitter tinge. “A working-class radical without so much as two brass ha’pennies to rub together. Yet I would make a better husband than the one she has, if those bruises are anything to go by.”

They stood for a moment longer, united in silent agreement. Then the wheezing drone of the bagpipes started up outside and Catherine gave a squeal of excitement and everyone rushed to the windows again to watch the procession come back down the Lawnmarket from Castlehill.

Euan took a notebook and a bit of worn-down pencil from the inside pocket of his coat. He began to make quick, neat notes in his book. David saw the pages were close-written, the lines economically crossed, written right to left, then bottom to top, the results almost indecipherable.

Euan glanced at David, noting his interest. “I was telling the truth, you know,” he muttered. “I am a journalist.”

“And is that the only reason you came to Edinburgh? To write a story?”

“Yes.”

Just that. Yes.

There were so many other questions David wanted to ask. Had Euan searched for Hugh Swinburne when he ran away two years ago? Was that what had taken him to London in the first place? And if he was only here as a journalist, why come to see David? That last one bothered him enough that he put it to Euan, keeping his voice low.

“Did you really come to my door today looking for a view?”

A pause. “No, of course not.”

Ah.

“What then?”

Euan reached into his coat again. “I wanted to give you this.” He drew out a small leather purse, which he pressed into David’s hand.

“What’s this?”

It was a stupid question. He could see very well what it was, and feel the weight of the coins inside.

“It’s the money you gave me,” Euan said. “I told you I’d repay you, didn’t I?”

David frowned, remembering Euan’s serious gaze as they parted on an empty stairwell of the Imperial Hotel, remembering pushing his purse into Euan’s hands and urging him to get away.

Not to look back.

“Thank you,” David murmured. He didn’t know what else to say. He’d never looked to get the money back and he didn’t need it. But clearly it was important to Euan that the debt be repaid, so he tucked the purse into his pocket.

“How long will you be in town?” he asked after a pause.

“For the duration of the King’s stay. I’ll write three or four pieces, I expect. Impressions of Edinburgh During the King’s Visit. Something like that.” Euan nodded at the window. “It won’t all be about this type of thing. Tomorrow I’m going down to the Cowgate slums.”

“I wouldn’t have thought you’d need to visit them to write about them,” David replied quietly. “You’ve stayed there yourself.”

“That feels like a long time ago,” Euan replied.

“Only two years.”

“A lot’s changed for me since then. Unpopular as Flint’s is with the powers that be, it sells well and I get paid good money for what I do. I live quite well now. Not as grand as you”—he smiled, raising an eyebrow at David—“but well enough. I’ve gotten used to my comforts. I need to go back to remind myself what it’s like in those old tenements.”

Just then, the rest of David’s guests sent up a little cheer, drawing their attention back to the windows. Euan craned his neck to see out and began to scribble in his notebook again.

It wasn’t long before the procession was over, the cavalcade of peers and troops on its way down the Mound, the crowds that had lined the streets below since early morning slowly dissipating.

Within half an hour of it being over, a knock came at the door. David went to answer it and was surprised to find a footman in livery standing there. His thin, pale face was coolly impassive but for the faintest curl of his upper lip. That curl—that almost imperceptible sneer—betrayed his contempt of David’s modest rooms.

“Lady Kinnell’s manservant,” the man said by way of clipped introduction. “Here to escort her to her carriage.”

Suddenly, Elizabeth was at David’s shoulder.

“Fraser,” she said in a strained tone of voice. “What are you doing here? Mr. Ferguson is taking me home.”

Fraser’s expression didn’t alter. “His lordship sent me,” he informed her. The tone of his voice was neutral, and yet that faint sneer remained in place.

David could see that this man did not respect his mistress.

Elizabeth nodded jerkily. “I need to put my bonnet on,” she said. “Wait here, please.”

David didn’t like the way the man inclined his head, as though granting her leave. He didn’t like his cold demeanour or his watchfulness. He had the distinct feeling that every detail Fraser saw was being stored away for future use.

When Elizabeth came back, she had her sister and brother-in-law in tow. Catherine looked as though she was trying to hide her anger. Ferguson looked wary.

“It’s perfectly all right,” Elizabeth was saying to her sister soothingly. “Alasdair’s just being considerate. He’s very protective; you know that.”

Catherine looked far from convinced. Her brow was pleated with worry, her normally smiling mouth pinched and unhappy. Her frown didn’t ease even when Elizabeth leaned in to buss her cheek.

“Will we see you tomorrow, Lizzie?” she asked, a fretful edge to her voice.

“I hope so,” said Elizabeth with a small smile, one that she extended to her sister’s husband before she turned to David. Her expression became very reserved.

“Thank you for your hospitality, Mr. Lauriston,” she said coolly. Her tone invited no intimacy in front of her watchful manservant.

“You’re welcome, my lady,” David said, equally formally, taking his lead from her. He thought he saw a glimmer of gratitude in her dark gaze for a moment, but it was gone so quickly he might’ve imagined it, and then she was sweeping out the door, her servant at her heels.

It struck David as he watched her leave that she looked as though she was going to face some ordeal, and that the man escorting her acted more like a gaoler than a manservant.

Was he being fanciful? Reading more into what he saw because of what Balfour had told him? But no, Elizabeth’s own words, her distress at Euan’s story about his mother, the way she hid herself behind that distant mask in front of her servant, and most of all, those bruises on her neck—all of it pointed to something being terribly wrong. As David closed the door behind her, he couldn’t help but feel worried and angry. Couldn’t help but wonder if he would ever see her again, or if her husband would spirit her off to his estate, far away in Galloway, and keep her there.

“Davy.”

He turned to find Euan standing behind him, seeming agitated. The Fergusons must’ve returned to the parlour—there was no one else in the hall.

“I’m sorry, but I must go now,” Euan said. His eyes flickered past David to the closed door. “I had no idea what time it was. I’m…a bit late for something.”

He stepped forward, and David automatically moved aside.

“You’d better away, then,” David said, adding truthfully, “It was good to see you, Euan.”

Euan stopped midstep, caught in the doorway. He turned to David, his gaze oddly intent, as though he was considering saying something. In that moment, he seemed more like the old Euan than he had at any other time today, fresh-faced and youthful, his fair hair falling down over his brow, his sandy lashes doing nothing to veil his searching gaze. A handsome man, this one—and a serious one. “It was good to see you too,” he said. A pause. “I didn’t just come to return the money, you know.”

“No?”

“No. I wanted to thank you for everything you did for me.”

“I didn’t do anything.”

“Yes, you did. You helped me over and over again—and you stopped me making the biggest mistake of my life. I’ll always be grateful to you.”

For a moment, he looked as though he’d say more, but the only other words that came out were a mumbled, “Good-bye, Davy,” and then he was out the door and heading down the stairwell at a run, his boots clattering on the stone steps.