David didn’t know what to say. He searched Balfour’s face and saw he was serious. “I don’t know—” he began. He recalled too easily the long, melancholy winter that had followed their last parting.
“You don’t need to give me an answer,” Balfour replied. “You know where my house is. Come anytime. I’ll be in town for the next month at least. I’ll instruct my servants to admit you, even if I am not there.”
He released David’s hand. Their arms fell to their respective sides, and they were separate again.
“I’ll think about it,” David said, after a pause.
He suspected he’d do little else.
He nodded at Balfour once; then he turned and walked out the tavern.
The door closed behind him. He lingered for a moment to turn his coat collar up against the drizzling rain before he began the short stroll to his rooms in the Lawnmarket.
As he paced up the street, he heard Balfour’s words in his mind again.
“I would like to see you again.”
I would like to see you again.
They were such commonplace words.
Such commonplace words to make him feel so utterly hollowed out.
Chapter Three
Monday, 12thAugust, 1822
“Why did I let you persuade me into this, Ferguson?” David grumbled as he searched his pantry for a platter to hold the fruit cake that his friend had brought.
David’s little kitchen table was already crammed in preparation for his guests’ arrival: cold roast fowl, sliced mutton, a plate of little savoury pies that his maidservant had fetched at near dawn this morning along with gingerbread and scones. And now a rich fruit cake. It would be a feast.
Donald Ferguson laughed, his round, merry face making David smile despite himself. “Because you’ve the best view of the procession of anyone I know, Lauriston. And because I shamed you into it, of course.”
Donald Ferguson was a young advocate whose late father, a judge, had been a particular friend of Chalmers’s. Chalmers had sent some work the younger man’s way, and Ferguson had repaid him by taking one of his daughters off his hands. Catherine Chalmers was now Catherine Ferguson.
The Fergusons were a well-suited pair, David thought. Both good-humoured and prone to laughter, though Catherine’s sense of humour was drier than Donald’s.
Ferguson called almost every man in the faculty friend. Why he bothered seeking out the company of David, who was serious, studious and downright unsociable, was unfathomable to David. But for some reason, the man had decided to make a friend of him, insisting on having David over to his and Catherine’s small home to dine with them at least once a week, as well as dragging David away from his desk in the library at some point most days, whether to beg for David’s advice on a case, or for his company at a tavern or coffee house.
When David had complained to Chalmers of Ferguson diverting him from his work, the older man had merely laughed.
“It’s just as well he does,” Chalmers said. “Someone has to remind you to eat.”
Reminding David to eat was one thing; persuading him to invite a dozen guests into his brand-new rooms at an absurdly early hour of the day to watch the “Carrying of the Regalia of Scotland” from the castle to Holyrood Palacewas quite another. It was true, though, that his apartments were ideal for the purpose. Situated close to the castle on the Lawnmarket and high up on the third floor, David’s front windows were a perfect location from which to watch the procession make its way to and from the castle. Already, the street below was brimming with spectators.
“It’s not even a real ceremony,” David grumbled as he transferred the cake Ferguson had brought onto the plate he’d unearthed. “Just some made-up pageantry of Sir Walter’s.”
“Oh, don’t be such a misery.” Ferguson laughed. “People love Sir Walter’s pageantry. They love to feel they’re part of a rich tradition—what’s the harm in that?”
David scowled. “And what’s wrong with the truth? Why do people want to believe in all this nonsense?”
“It’s notcompletenonsense.”
David shifted some of the plates on the table around to create a space for the cake. “Near enough. They only found the so-called ‘Regalia of Scotland’ a few years ago. And it’s certainly never before been transported from one end of the High Street to the other by a parcel of aristocrats in tartan who couldn’t find their collective way to Holyrood Palace without written directions.”
Ferguson chuckled. “Well, there’s a first time for every tradition,” he said. “And you can’t deny the people are enjoying it.”
“No, I can’t,” David sighed. The public enthusiasm for the King’s visit bewildered him. He’d never have thought in a thousand years his fellow Scots could be whipped up into such eager hysteria. But then the architect of the visit, Sir Walter Scott, was an old hand at creating dramatic fictions, wasn’t he? And as Ferguson said, the people were loving the pageantry, even if it was a complete fabrication.
