Man Of The Mist

She sat motionless on the side of the bed and stared at the closed door of the nursery—the nursery that everyone in the household probably thought housed a much-loved by-blow of His Grace the duke of Atholl. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Krissy handed her the cup of heated milk, grinning. “I dinna mind admitting the MacGregor’s no strain on the eyes, is he, now?”

“If you say so.” Elizabeth remained noncommittal, all the while silently praying Krissy would stop. Enough was enough.

“Och, he’s verra nice to look upon.” Krissy happily voiced that opinion. “He appears to know you well, Lady Elizabeth...I mean everyone. Seems I remember he was often about years ago... at the clan gatherings, weddings and games and such. Am I right?”

“Oh...aye.” Elizabeth sighed. She finished the drink and put the cup and saucer on her nightstand, tucked her legs under the covers and said firmly, “Go to bed, Krissy. Get some sleep.”

“Aye, well, good night again, Lady Elizabeth. I’ll try not to make a nuisance of myself. Pleasant dreams.”

Not likely, Elizabeth thought grimly as Krissy bustled to the nursery door.

The servant paused with her hand on the doorknob, remembering something else. “Och! What time must I wake you up?”

“Seven at the latest, if I am to dress, have breakfast and make it to church on time.” Elizabeth doused the light beside her bed.

The next suggestion came through the dark. “Milady, I could tell the dowager you’re ill...or something...so you could sleep in a wee bit longer.”

“Absolutely not,” Elizabeth answered firmly. “I’d need gory, bleeding wounds more serious than Tullie’s to be excused from attending church with the dowager.”

“Well. It was just a thought. Good night, then.”

The room became quiet at last. So long as Elizabeth didn’t count the steady ticking of her clock, and the ever-audible drip of London’s abysmal wet fog, gathering on the upper cornice of the bay windows and plopping noisily onto the stone window sills.

Judging by the soft snores that soon came from the adjoining room, Krissy, who hadn’t a serious thought in her head, had dropped off to sleep in the blink of an eye. Not so Elizabeth.

But then, the good and the righteous always slept in peace and tranquillity, while the wicked and the damned were doomed to spend eons atoning for their sins. Elizabeth accepted that as a merciful God’s justice.

She didn’t deserve to sleep with the ease of an innocent like Krissy. Elizabeth’s soul was nowhere near as pure, and her heart was ten times more jaded.

People who lived a lie and kept dark secrets were never blessed with peace in the dead of night. Elizabeth’s thoughts drifted far, far away from this bed in her father’s London town house...to a tiny room in a Scottish border town. A room where the wet had penetrated the thatch time after time, leaving countless stains on sour whitewashed walls.

Time mercifully blotted out much of her memory. Sheer force of will obliterated details and sensations she never wanted to revive. But no matter how strong a discipline she forced on her thoughts, certain things remained fresh, clear and vivid.

The smell of a greasy quilt. The thick taste of a heavy fog that lingered over the village at high noon—flavored with the aroma of haggis and cabbage. The sound of buttons snapping their threads as hasty, too-eager hands tore a sark apart and cast it to the shadows. The heat and texture of Evan’s hands spreading across Elizabeth’s belly and cupping her breasts.

No, try as she might to force will to overcome and direct all memory, Elizabeth Murray would never, ever forget Gretna Green, and the day she’d eloped and married Evan MacGregor — May 28, 1802. Only weeks after she’d tossed propriety aside and danced with her childhood sweetheart at Bell’s Wynd.

That day had left unalterable, indelible impressions. Never mind the fact that only three living souls knew of that truth—Master Paisley, who had married them, Evan, and herself—the truth was and always would be unforgettable.

Elizabeth blinked dry eyes and glared at the shut door, wondering what in heaven’s name she would do now. How would she get through tomorrow? She had asked herself that question every night since May of 1802. All the brash and reckless courage of youth had failed her then, turned her into a sniveling, terrified coward once the deed was done.

Every day of her life since, she’d fought with herself to have the strength and fortitude to go forward, in spite of the dishonor and shame she had brought on herself and Evan, and might have brought on both their families.

In the beginning, that had only been for herself — so that she could continue to hold her head up and look her father and her brothers and sisters in the eye.

Living a lie all the while. Denying the truth. Until it was too late to rectify the wrong that had been done by any honorable means. Until it was no longer possible to hide the ever-evident truth that she was carrying a child inside her.

By then it had been way, way too late to own up to the truth. Evan had gone and done the unthinkable, joined the army and been shipped off to war. Alone, Elizabeth couldn’t find the courage to admit what she’d done.

But tonight, the cards in the hand she’d been dealt had turned. Evan had come back. For the first time in almost six years, Elizabeth couldn’t guess what suit the next trump was going to be, and she didn’t know what her next move should or could be.

God save me, she thought, and closed her dry, aching eyes. Willpower and determination would get her through. It had to. It had failed her only once in her life, that dreadful day—May 28, so long, long ago. Dear God, she prayed, please, don’t let Evan discover Robbie. Let me keep my secrets, let me keep my son.

Chapter Four

Sunday was bitterly cold from start to finish. A little weather never kept the duke of Atholl’s hardy ladies housebound on the Sabbath — not when the dowager devoted a Sunday to pursuing the Lord’s work.

They began with services at nearby Saint Mark’s, which were followed by the annual ladies’ guild winter bazaar, a monstrous undertaking that took up the balance of the cold and dreary afternoon. Throughout the whole long, cold afternoon Elizabeth sold rose cuttings to enhance next summer’s gardens. The bazaar made a long day longer.

Elizabeth couldn’t wait to get home and exchange her somber, very damp walking dress and pelisse for a warm gown of velvet and lace. She spent an hour in the nursery telling stories to Robbie in another effort to elicit whole sentences from her monosyllabic son. Since his nanny’s sudden death in October, Robbie had all but quit speaking entirely.

Elizabeth tucked her arm around Robbie’s wee shoulders, drawing him close. “How many beans did Jack get from the peddler, Robbie?”

“Dunno.” Robbie’s shoulders lifted under the light compression of Elizabeth’s loving arm. His thick cap of dark curls brushed against her cheek as he turned his face toward the windows overlooking the park.

“You don’t know?” Elizabeth asked, cognizant of her inner fear that there might be something wrong with her beautiful, perfect son.

It was bad enough that she was not allowed to claim him as her own, to openly act or be his mother. Her father’s acceptance and support of the child came with the stricture that appearances must be kept up.

Elizabeth’s father had guessed her incipient condition before Elizabeth, in her youthful ignorance, discerned it herself. Robbie had been born at Port-a-shee, on the Isle of Man, on March 4, 1803, and legally named an orphan and a ward of her father, under his privilege as Lord Strange, lord of the Isle of Man.

For the past four years, Elizabeth had engaged in an ongoing battle to spend as much time with her son as her father would allow. Considering the circumstances of Robbie’s birth, she was fortunate to have any contact with Robbie at all, and she knew that. Hence, she had always showered the child with loving attention every chance she got. That wasn’t enough for her. She feared her limited concern wasn’t enough for the child, either.

Ever restless, Robbie wiggled off the settee to dart across the room to his low shelf of toys and books. He pulled out book after book, discarding one for the next, until he came to a well-worn favorite, a volume of illustrated fairy tales. His cherubic face was as somber as a choirboy’s as he leafed through the pages, searching for the story of the giant and the beanstalk.

When he found the picture of Jack trading his mother’s cow for three beans, he popped back onto his sturdy feet, ran across the room and laid the open book on Elizabeth’s lap. She rumpled his hair and smiled.

“Ah, I see. You brought me the picture. How many beans is that? Do you know?”

Robbie tilted his face up to hers and sighed, deep and long. He held up four fingers, which was wrong, but he said, “Three,” which was correct.

“That’s right, three beans.” Elizabeth smiled as she tucked his first finger under the tight compression of his thumb, making his gesture match his words. “Three beans and one, two, three, four, five fingers. Very good, Robbie.”

Unconcerned with numbers, he whirled away and sat in the midst of his toy soldiers and castle blocks. In the blink of an eye, the child was engrossed in his toys and oblivious of Elizabeth’s presence.

Fascinated, as always, by everything Robbie did, Elizabeth watched him build a new wall and line a squadron of tin soldiers on its rim, then flop onto his belly to maneuver the pieces.

The door to the nursery opened, and Krissy bustled in, bringing Robbie’s supper on a tray. “Well, and himself does love the wee soldiers Colonel Graham gave him, doesn’t he? Good eve, milady. I’ve brought your supper, Master Robert. Come. Up to the table with you.”

Elizabeth stood. “Robbie, I’m going to go now. I have to speak to His Grace.”

“’Bye,” Robbie grunted, engrossed in the toys, oblivious of both Elizabeth and the servant setting up his supper on the nursery table.

Krissy cast an indulgent smile at Elizabeth that, in effect, excused the child’s bad manners. Elizabeth made her own allowances for Robbie’s not standing when she did. He was so young, a baby still in the nursery. Manners would come in time.

She could no longer put off the necessity of speaking privately with her father, and the sooner the better.

Elizabeth slipped through the door joining her and Robbie’s rooms and closed it quietly, but as she checked her appearance, she kept one ear cocked to the activity in the other room. Krissy could talk the ear off a marble statue. Robbie’s infrequent mumbled grunts made no difference to her.

Elizabeth ran a brush through her hair and vainly tried to loosen the tightness out of her chestnut curls, tugging on the cluster that draped across her shoulder to stretch it. The moment she let the end of the curl go, it corkscrewed back where it had been.

“Drat!” Elizabeth said. It did no good to brush the wayward curls, or tie them, or do anything but let those curls do what they might. Hence, she rather liked her newly cropped head of hair, adorned in the latest classical style, which was both short around her head like a cap and long and feathery from the curls left dangling at her nape and her ears. She tied a green velvet ribbon that matched her dress around her head and touched a curl here and there, satisfied with her appearance.

Elizabeth lingered at her vanity a moment longer, studying the bluish shadows under her eyes, which hadn’t faded, even though she’d spent most of the day outdoors. The intensity of her worries showed. She pinched both cheeks to heighten their color, concluding that that would have to do.

Finished, Elizabeth tiptoed down to the second-floor landing, deliberately pausing to use sound to locate each member of the crowded household.

Keyes exited from the salon, bearing the used tea service on a silver tray. The butler let in and out the happy noise of the aunts, the dowager and Amalia over their rounds of piquet.

Across the foyer, the click of ivory balls accompanied a scolding from Elizabeth’s brother James, Lord Glenlyon, to their uncle, Thomas Graham. Tullie was spending the evening in bed, still recovering from the effects of his impromptu surgery the night before. God willing, every soul in the house would remain exactly where they were for the next hour, Elizabeth prayed.

She circled the newel post at the foot of the staircase and crept down the long, carpeted hall dotted with statuary and hothouse greenery until she came to the closed door of her father’s study.

Taking a deep breath, Elizabeth dashed the perspiration from her upper lip. There was nothing to be gained from putting off what she had to do. Her soft tap on the closed door just barely qualified as a knock.

Elizabeth had the door open and her head and shoulders well inside the inner sanctum before her knock penetrated as far as the duke of Atholl’s desk. “Are you free, Papa? Could I have a word with you?”

John Murray took the time to remove a pince-nez from his nose before lifting his baleful gaze to his daughter. “Ah, Elizabeth, I’ve been expecting you. Come in, my dear. Do shut that door. Those drafts up that hall are a misery.”

Elizabeth stepped across the threshold, grateful that the first and worst hurdle was over — finding her father alone and with time to spare was nearly impossible. She closed the door and took a moment to quell the fluttering of her heart by looking around the study with feigned interest.

Elizabeth was not particularly fond of this study. Though it was her father’s room, she had always associated it with her mother. It was to this room that she and Amaha had trustingly come, hand in hand, to be told the sad news of their mother’s death sixteen years before. So she had a natural repugnance for this room — though never for the man who occupied it.

Which might have seemed exceedingly odd, because where the rest of the town house might be chilly, the study somehow retained a cozy warmth. Likewise, where the aunts, the dowager and the eight-years-older Amalia might find fault with Elizabeth, her father rarely did.

She wound her way through the maze of sturdy, well-used furniture, chairs and tables that made no pretense to art or style. A cheery fire crackled in the hearth and cast eerie light up to the trophy heads and antler racks. It was a man’s room in all ways, tainted by uisge beatha, port wine, and tobacco smoke, dark and somber in color, with heavy furnishings that befitted large-boned, heavyset men like her father.

Elizabeth settled in the corner of the wide couch before the fire. “Why is it always warmest in here, Papa?”

John Murray buffed the lenses of his glasses, then tucked them into a coat pocket. “Oh, I would account that to sharing the same chimney stack with the kitchens, I suppose. Didn’t plan it that way. But I daresay my father quite enjoyed the added warmth in his later days. So shall I.”

“Are you tottering into your dotage?” Elizabeth asked, with a dimpling smile.

“Are you being cheeky, puss?” the duke asked. He poured them both a glass of sherry and handed one to Elizabeth. “What shall we toast?”

Elizabeth took the flute in hand. The corners of her mouth twitched. Her higher principles advised her to hand the glass back and firmly refuse. But to do so would insult her father. Elizabeth could not make such a display. “Well...” she murmured, thinking of her own purposes. “We could ask for a quick and decisive Parliament. All the business of making Britain run smoothly, done in three weeks at the most. Do you think that would be appropriate?”

“Indubitably,” the Duke agreed. “Here’s to good business, wise leadership and common sense!” He touched the rim of his crystal to Elizabeth’s, and tasted the fine wine. The formalities done, he settled on the other end of the couch and gave the flickering flames in the hearth his attention. “You’ve something on your mind, Elizabeth.”

“Yes, Papa, I do.” Elizabeth set the full glass on the table at her side. She dropped her hands into her lap and entwined her fingers together to keep them still. “Let’s jump straight to the point, shall we? There’s no point in my being here in London for the little season. I want to go home, tomorrow at the very latest.”

She waited until all the words were out before turning her head to gauge her father’s expression. His large head nodded, dipping as he brought his glass to his lips and sipped the sherry. The lamps behind them on his desk made a wealth of white hair glimmer all around his head. The starched points of his collar crackled where they flared up against his smoothly shaved cheeks.

“What? You just arrived here a few days ago, and already you are bored with your friends?”

“My friends, no, Papa. You know very well what I find singularly unappealing. We’ve discussed this several times, and I can’t make my wishes any plainer. I am not in the market for a husband. I don’t need one. I won’t have one, and I certainly won’t look for one, nor display myself on the marriage market here in this filthy city.”

“Oh? Can’t say I’m surprised to hear that speech again. Elizabeth, you ought to think of something more original.”

“Papa!” Elizabeth exclaimed. “It isn’t fair to bait me. You know perfectly well what I mean. London is disgusting and dirty. I hate it here. I always have hated coming to London. You should allow me my independence. I do reach my majority in April.”

“Hmmm...I’m well aware of your age, Elizabeth,” Lord Atholl mused, concerned over his youngest daughter’s stated intention of avoiding marriage — no matter the cost. “Amalia hinted this afternoon that you’d have all your reasons to return to Dunkeld in place before you sought an audience with me. Planned a little fait accompli, have you? What you’ve offered doesn’t sound either urgent or convincing, though.”

“Amalia spoke to you?” Elizabeth asked, rattled by that admission. She waited with bated breath for her father’s answer. What had Amalia said? Had she mentioned Evan?

“Yes. Amalia and I had a very long and thorough conference earlier this afternoon.” The duke sipped his sherry, then put his glass aside and turned to study Elizabeth as he continued. “She tells me that Evan MacGregor put in an appearance last night. What do you make of that?”

“What should I make of it?” Elizabeth ignored the quickening tempo of her pulse. She kept her face impassive, her hands still and her eyes firmly on her father. “He has nothing to do with me, Papa. Why, I haven’t seen or heard one word from him since his sister married, five years ago!”

“Is that so?” John Murray inclined his head a bit, to better study his daughter’s flawless face. He failed to see a single sign of the heightened interest that he was seeking. Surely his gut feelings weren’t wrong?

Of his three daughters, Elizabeth, who had never really known her mother, most favored his late wife. Elizabeth had inherited the wide, intelligent eyes and brows and flawless skin of the Cathcarts.

Unfortunately, her chin and her very full lips proclaimed her a Murray to the core. She had a way of sliding her eyes to the side to study one that reminded him very much of his long-lost Jane Cathcart. She was giving him that look now, just as her mother had been wont to do. Elizabeth was keeping secrets again. There was nothing new about that.

“You are both of a proper age, now,” the duke said blandly, probing the still waters skillfully. “You liked each other well enough when you were children. Many a successful marriage has been built on less.”

“Marriage!” Elizabeth choked. “All that nonsense about Evan and I was over and done with when he went to Eton. You know that as well as I do, Papa.”

“Is that right, puss?” he asked absently, knowing better. They’d corresponded for years, three and four letters a week to one another, right up to the very day Evan’s sister married — May 28, 1802. He remembered the date precisely.

“Yes, it most assuredly is. I had every right to admire him years ago. Evan protected me. Mrs. Grasso was a right witch, you know, Papa.”

“She was a very good teacher,” John Murray said, nonplussed. His daughter flashed an insincere smile. The duke wasn’t the least bit fooled. She was throwing smoke and covering her tracks. A bloody ferret couldn’t dig the truth out of Elizabeth Murray.

God Almighty knew he’d done everything in his powder — everything short of beating a pregnant woman — to get her to tell him the truth at Port-a-shee, when it became glaringly evident that she’d bedded someone.

“And the other thing I’ve considered thoroughly is Robbie.” Elizabeth pounced on another quasi-valid reason. “This doctor you insisted on having examine him will be of no consequence. The only thing troubling Robbie is that he has no one to bond with now that Nanny Drummond has passed. He adored her. He’s grieving, that’s all. What is best for Robbie is to go back to Port-a-shee, and all that is familiar to him.”

“I don’t see the significance there. I’ve fostered the boy no differently than I’ve fostered any of a dozen other lads over my years.”

“Really, Papa? Is that the same thing as having a recognized parent?”

“Don’t throw words like those in my face, young lady. You made your choice years ago, and you will live with the consequences of that decision. Count yourself blessed to have the opportunity to know the lad under my patronage.”

“I’m not complaining. I am content with things the way they are.”

“You are? Then what’s your point?”

Exasperated, Elizabeth exclaimed, “My point is, I want to go back to Dunkeld. What’s so unreasonable about that? Will you grant me that boon?”

Murray patted his pockets till he found his pipe. He pulled it out and laid the bowl in his palm to scrape out the insides with a flattened pocket nail. It was a handy bit of business to fill the time with, while Elizabeth sat on tenterhooks, waiting. She wasn’t going to appreciate his answer. Elizabeth didn’t like being told no.

“Amalia thinks this season will be different.”

“Ha!” Elizabeth choked back a bitter laugh. “Papa, let’s not deceive ourselves, shall we? Not when we both know the truth.”

“Oh? Right, then.” John tamped two pinches of tobacco into the bowl from his pouch, put the stern of the pipe firmly between his teeth and sat back.

At issue between them was the home truth that mere mortal bairns were not conceived by immaculate conception. Had he even a clue who Robbie’s father was, Elizabeth would not be a spinster, she’d be a widow.

The duke had used his powers to make certain no one alive knew what circumstances his youngest child had gotten herself into at a young and tender age. Abigail Drummond had delivered Elizabeth of her infant and raised the child. She’d taken to her grave the identity of Robbie’s mother. And no one but Elizabeth knew the identity of the boy’s father. And she wasn’t talking.

“All right.” He gave in, handing her the lead she wanted. “Tell me your version of the latest, up-to-the-very-moment truth.”

“War,” Elizabeth said succinctly, and stared at him with eyes so pale a blue, they could be valerian plucked off a deserted Greek isle.

Atholl frowned as he put a taper to the candle nearest him and brought that to the bowl of his pipe, puffing and sucking to ignite the tightly packed tobacco.

“War, you say? What’s war got to do with you going to Dunkeld? Did I miss the passing of the Cross Truach?”

“War doesn’t have anything to do with the passing of a fiery cross, Papa,” Elizabeth said exasperated. “It has to do with the fact that there aren’t any worthwhile men left in England to court a duke’s daughter! They’ve all gone off to battle here, there and everywhere. Those that haven’t enlisted have quit the country seeking fortunes in tea from Ceylon, mahogany in India, cocoa in South America. Have I made my point clear?”

“Oh, aye. England’s come a cropper. Can’t deny that—what with rising after rising during the last century. But there’s plenty of good men in Scotland worth your while, Elizabeth.”