Man Of The Mist

The linen strained at the seams across his shoulders, which had widened considerably since the last time Elizabeth had seen Evan. Her gaze followed the long curve of his back, reluctantly noting that he hadn’t gained an ounce of surplus flesh in five years. Maturity had not caused him to let out his belt.

Her mouth tasted drier than ashes, and she tried in vain to moisten it with swallowing. She had as much luck whetting her tongue as she had tamping down the memories that sent her pulse singing and heightened the color staining her cheeks... Evan MacGregor had come home at last.

Elizabeth drew in a shuddering breath and turned to her brother, determined to focus only on him. Amalia grimly handed a glass of amber liquid to Tullie, ordering, “Drink this, my lord.”

“How do you feel, John?” Elizabeth asked, in a shaken voice.

“I’ll live,” Tullie stated matter-of-factly before tossing the contents of the glass down his throat. He coughed deeply, then grimaced. “Get on with it, Butter. Do your worst, before I toss my accounts.”

He turned his face away from the injury, stared balefully at Elizabeth and motioned her closer. “Elizabeth, come shield me from Amalia. She’ll badger me all the way to Traitor’s Gate with her relentless questioning. Come, lass, distract me while MacGregor’s henchman fingers the lead inside me.”

“My lord!” Amalia sputtered, patting his clenched fist solicitously. “You mistake my concern. How can you make light of such a dread injury?”

Elizabeth wanted to roll her eyes. Amalia and Tullie being civil to one another was as rare as sunshine on Ben Nevis in February. Tullie couldn’t stay out of trouble any more than Amalia could mind her own business. Looking him squarely in his now dull eyes, Elizabeth said, “All right. It’s time for truth or consequences. What’s the woman’s name this time?”

Tullie burst into laughter that was quickly squelched by pain. With his good hand, he pinched Elizabeth’s cheek, quipping grimly, “Och, dinna ask such a cheeky thing with Amalia listening. God’s truth, she’d transport me down under, she would, did I divulge the wrong lady’s name.”

“That’s an idea worth entertaining,” Elizabeth bantered. “Imagine the rest our hearts would take if you were out of sight and out of mind for a year or two? You nearly scared my abigail to death, my lord. Throwing rocks at my windows at four in the morning!”

“Och, well...” He grinned sheepishly. “One of my Highlanders suggested we mind the elders and not wake the whole house. Discretion, I believe it’s called.”

Amalia tutted, shook her head and warned Elizabeth, “Don’t encourage any of them.”

“And why not?” Tullie argued, a tad drunkenly. “I’d be in a lot worse shape had I not encountered a few fellow Highlanders this night, I’ll tell you.”

Elizabeth watched as Tullie’s approving and grateful glance went to Evan MacGregor. That brought her own gaze into direct visual contact with Evan’s penetrating eyes again. Caught, she couldn’t have taken her gaze away from his then to save her life.

She felt exposed, like a butterfly in a cold glass case. A thousand dark questions loomed in the depths of Evan’s wintry blue eyes, but he said nothing as he raised a lamp aloft, above Corporal Butter’s adept hands.

A muscle twitched high on Evan’s cheekbone, and then his gaze slid indolently down her exposed throat and lingered on the deeply shadowed crevice between her breasts, crisscrossed by silk. Elizabeth’s hands itched to clench the silk wrapper and draw it tightly closed around her body. His look made her shockingly aware of the night rail she wore in his presence.

Only Evan MacGregor’s eyes had the ability to send shivers raking over her skin, to draw her nipples taut and contract the smooth flesh of her belly.

The sun creases at the corners of Evan’s eyes deepened with pleasure, confirming that he knew the full extent of his effect upon her. An amused twist lifted one corner of his mouth in a wry, mocking smile that made her racing pulse boil, even as she hardened her expression to one of ire and displeasure.

He met her angered glare with his own arrogant challenge, deliberately cocking a brow above his long-lashed, sensual eyes. That look discounted everyone else in the room except her and him. His bold eyes confirmed that only his wants and desires mattered.

“Damnation! Go easy, man!” Tullie swore, jerking his shoulder sharply.

Corporal Butter grated out a curse and lost a pair of long-nosed tweezers. The tool clattered to the floor.

Evan looked back to the serious business at hand. Elizabeth let a whisper of relief escape through her parted lips as Evan bent to retrieve the tool.

“I’ve got two fingers on the bloody ball. Just a wee bit more, Yer Grace, and I’ll have it loose. Give me that.” Butter stuck out his hand for the fallen tool.

Elizabeth blurted out unthinkingly, “You must wash that before it is used again!”

Both officer and soldier-surgeon straightened at the same time, staring at her as though she’d lost her wits. Evan’s arched brow dropped to a harsh line. His expression now said clearly that she should mind her place.

Elizabeth flushed instantly at the effectiveness of his unspoken rebuke, then let out another sigh of relief as Evan handed the bloody tool to Maxtone. He rinsed it in hot soapy water and put it back in Butter’s bloody hand, while Tullie complained in a raw voice, “Balls of fire, Elizabeth! We aren’t diapering babies here!”

Elizabeth gulped. More color stole into her cheeks. How she hated to be the focus of everyone’s censure! She swallowed again. Amalia nudged her furiously, hissing her concern about Tullie’s pain-flecked gray orbs.

“So tell me, my ladies.” Tullie bit off each word, matching his speech to the erratic beating of his heart. “How long have you been in London town?”

“Three days. We’ve just nicely settled in.” Elizabeth realized his request for words was a plea for distraction. It didn’t matter what she or Amalia said.

“Aunt Charlotte came down first and opened the house. Elizabeth and I accompanied Father to Leinster. He stayed over to ride the foxes with Reverend Baird and Uncle Thomas. They should all arrive promptly at noon tomorrow.” Amalia added, for clarity.

“Humph,” John grunted. “You needn’t have reminded me Colonel Graham is due back on the morrow, thank you.” He shot a queer look at MacGregor that Elizabeth couldn’t decipher. Corporal Butter grunted, as only a Highlander could. His “humph” could mean anything.

“There’s no hope this will be healed by morning, is there, Butter?”

“Not a Chinaman’s chance,” Butter told him reprovingly.

“Ah, well, that canna be helped.” Tullibardine sighed. His pained gaze wandered back to Elizabeth. “And what prompts your rare appearance in London, Elizabeth?”

Elizabeth normally needed little prodding to explain her reasons for avoiding the social life in London to her brother. It was no secret that she preferred living the retired life in Scotland, but with Evan MacGregor able to hear every word she uttered, she preferred to keep her own counsel. Not on her life would she mention that her visit to town had been prompted by a wee imp named Robbie.

Consequently, she failed miserably to come up with any sort of answer to her brother’s question. But that didn’t keep her concentrated gaze from straying every other moment to Evan.

On the surface, there wasn’t any wonder about that. Evan MacGregor was so achingly handsome, most ladies would simply have stared until their eyes were sated. The last time Elizabeth saw him, he’d been the most shockingly beautiful seventeen-year-old she’d ever laid eyes upon.

Now, Evan was a man, nearer to twenty-four than twenty-three. A little taller than she remembered, he’d grown into the whipcord strength that had always served him well. She judged his height to be three good inches over Tullie’s six feet. Evan’s hair no longer had the wild, untrimmed look of a Highland lad’s. Close-cropped waves feathered about his noble head, as black as raven’s wings.

Devilishly wicked whiskers, which hadn’t been there before, now emphasized the handsome angularity of his jaw. Elizabeth jerked herself out of another fawning display of childish adoration before she made a complete fool of herself.

She wasn’t a child anymore. Neither was Evan MacGregor. Try as she might, she couldn’t call what had happened between them years ago the actions of impulsive children, either. Grimly Elizabeth forced all memory back into the past. It was best dead and forgotten.

Amalia gasped aloud as a strong spurt of blood shot across Tullibardine’s chest. Fortunately, Evan had angled his body so that Elizabeth couldn’t see the tools Butter pushed in and out of John’s shoulder.

What Elizabeth did see was the amount of color seeping from her brother’s normally ruddy face. Beads of sweat now glazed Tullie’s brow and neck.

Amalia pressed another tot of brandy into John’s left hand. As he gulped that, Elizabeth shot a meaningful look at MacGregor’s back, asking, “Pray tell me, brother dear, the rationale behind your taking a murdering cattle thief and his henchman as your seconds tonight?”

The marquess scowled deeply, making Elizabeth wonder if it was pain that caused his expression, or disapproval of her deliberately disparaging words. “Damn me if I didn’t have the bad luck to get assaulted on my way to White’s, Elizabeth, and felt the need of fellow Highlanders’ sure arms. Bullets are terribly debilitating, don’t you agree?”

“Assaulted!” Amalia declared. “In Saint James?”

“Regrettably so,” Tullie conceded with a gasp. Several moments passed before he forced his voice to continue. “A rather violent group they were, too. The mob did some damage to the club, and other buildings along the way.”

“Whatever for?” Elizabeth couldn’t prevent shock from showing on her face. “A mob, in Saint James?”

Evan MacGregor cast a considering glance at Amalia, then looked levelly at Elizabeth. “’Twas a pack of rabble whose real target was the Prince of Wales. Carlton House was their intended destination, until they ran afoul of the watch on Saint James. That’s where the melee turned into a riot. They overturned several carriages, whose occupants received a sound thrashing. Several shots were fired before the mob finally dispersed. Luckily for His Grace, we Grey Breeks were available to help the Horse Guard put down the riot.”

“There you have it,” Tullie said sloppily, showing the effects of undiluted liquor. But Elizabeth took exception to his slurred words implying it was normal happenstance.

Incensed, Amalia demanded, “Did they take whoever shot you into custody?”

“Well, now, there’s a question I canna answer.” John’s eyes seemed to glaze over with more pain than he was able to override. “Demmed miserable piece of business, is all I have to say. I’d almost fought my way to White’s before the soldiers arrived, but the sight of uniforms and muskets threw another torch under the bloody anarchists.”

“So I am to take it you weren’t involved in a duel this night, Tullie?” Amalia asked, deliberately changing the subject.

John Murray quirked his brow, and laced his reply with a rolling brogue. “Och, forgive me, Amalia, for setting the honor of Scotland back another decade, but I found myself without weapons more damaging than my own two fists. You understand that the king takes a dim view of us Scots tramping about his capital city armed to teeth with dirks, claymores and Doune pistols.”

“A crying shame, milord,” Elizabeth said impudently. “The king should give you a medal for your forbearance and courage. ’Tis a dangerous city, I fear.”

“Not so much as you may be inclined to believe.”

“Got it!” Butter crowed. He straightened all at once, holding the gruesome lead ball between his bloody fingers before John Murray’s astonished eyes.

The coppery stench of fresh blood invaded Elizabeth’s nose, making her want to retch from the taste of it, but a Murray never flinched at the sight, much less the smell, of blood.

“So you have.” The marquess exhaled a deep shudder of relief. “Now, which of you ladies can take the neatest stitch?”

That said, the marquess of Tullibardine promptly fainted dead away.

Chapter Three

John Murray would have slid to the floor in a boneless heap if Evan MacGregor hadn’t caught his elbow and forearm under the man’s sinking chest and pressed him firmly back into the upright barber’s chair.

Maxtone stepped on the levers, tilting the chair. Between the trio of strong men, they managed to get Tullie firmly secured in his tilted seat.

With his mouth open and his jaw slack, Tullie presented the most ungraceful pose for a grown man that Elizabeth had ever seen in her life. Even so, her pride in her brother’s courage went up another notch.

Not one shout against the pain had escaped his lips. He’d chatted through the whole ordeal as if his pain were of no import. Elizabeth knew from her own haunting experiences that the truth was, the human body could only endure so much before one’s courage dwindled to nothing in the face of body-racking pain.

She didn’t think John’s loss of consciousness was taken as a sign of weakness by any person in the room with him.

His muscular arms dangled limp over the sides of his chair. A steady rivulet of blood cascaded out of the deep surgical cut and dripped on the oak floor.

Amalia took advantage of Tullie’s loss of consciousness to smooth an errant lock of damp hair from his brow. She bent and placed a sisterly kiss on his cheek. “There, there, my bra’ laddie, sleep while you may.”

While the surgeon and Tullie’s manservant reached for towels to begin mopping up, Evan focused his full attention on Elizabeth. His black brows twisted, and those censorious eyes of his became achingly more intimate. He said pointedly, “Well, then?”

“Well, then, what?” Elizabeth bristled, not liking his peremptory tone, or his blasted appraising look, either! Again he had made her acutely aware that she was barefoot and dressed only in thin gown and wrapper. Hardly suitable attire for a confrontation with a renowned rake.

“Which of you is going to sew Tullie up? That’s what.” Evan cast a dismissive look at Elizabeth, and settled on Amaha.

“Och, nooo... Not me!” Amalia protested. “My hands are shaking so bad, I can’t thread a needle, much less poke it in a man’s flesh. I’ve never done such a thing.”

“I’ll do it.” Elizabeth contradicted all her instincts, which demanded she fade quietly into the woodwork now. Heedless of her revulsion for blood and her deep-seated fear of physical pain, she stepped forward and briskly washed her hands at the basin on John’s marble-topped commode. She was one Murray who would die before admitting a weakness to a MacGregor.

Her hands were nowhere near as steady as she wished they could be. The real truth was, she’d never poked a needle into living flesh, either. But she’d go gladly to hell and back before granting that truth to Evan.

Not twenty-four years old, and the man had already made a legend of himself by his valor in battle. Elizabeth had heard her uncle, Colonel Thomas Graham, rattle off chapter and verse throughout the entire Christmas holiday about the adventures of the Grey Breeks, his privately recruited company of Royal Highlanders. The MacGregor had figured largely in nearly every harrowing tale of the ongoing battles with the French on the Peninsula.

But Uncle Thomas had made no mention of having brought his entire company back to England. She’d pose some pointed questions of her own on the morrow, when her father and Thomas Graham arrived from the countryside.

Pretending to a calm she was far from feeling, Elizabeth took needle and thread in hand and lifted the towel draped across her brother’s surgical wound.

Butter’s stubby fingers pressed the bloody flesh together, showing her where to begin. Elizabeth glanced at Butter’s face. His pale blue eyes revealed concern for her brother. Elizabeth vowed to make the neatest stitches she could.

“Had some experience at this, have you, Corporal Butter?” she asked.

“Och, aye, an’ then some. Though I daresay I’ve spent more time sewing up foolish Sassenachs than I have the loyal clansmen that remain. Yer doing fine, lassie. The bullet went in clean. Stuck in the gristle, not the bone. He’ll heal quick enough. I’ve seen worse. Cannonade, now that makes a mess of a man.”

“I can well imagine,” Elizabeth added dryly. She blinked her eyes to clear them, and concentrated on making small, neat stitches and tying firm knots in the wet boiled thread. An even twenty saw the large incision firmly shut.

Finished, Elizabeth stepped aside so that Butter could apply a liberal washing with carbolic and a clean dressing. She put the needle aside and washed her hands in hot water.

“Good work, Izzy.” MacGregor splashed a healthy tot of whiskey in a clean glass and extended the drink to Elizabeth as she folded the towel she’d used to dry her hands.

“My name is Elizabeth, and I never touch whiskey, thank you.” Elizabeth had lived long enough to know that whiskey had ruined more good men and their families that she cared to count.

“Drink it. It will do you good,” MacGregor insisted.

“Aye, think you so? How much liquor had those men in the mob consumed this afternoon? It doesn’t take all that much to make good men forget common sense, Christian duty and the virtue of prudence. You’ve just come from witnessing the results of unlimited excess, I would say. So I’ll pass, thank you.”

“Oomph.” Evan MacGregor straightened to his full height. Elizabeth feared that his six feet and three inches somehow went much further than it should in intimidating her. “You always did have a tongue that was sharper than a blade honed on a razor strop, Izzy. I see you have added fastidiousness and sanctimoniousness to your store of unpleasant virtues, as well. Suit yourself. Hie yourself back to bed, and see how well you sleep with the smell of blood in your nose. It’s no’ a pleasant task.”

He set the glass down, untouched by her, and moved away. The marquess’s bandage was in place. Dismissing the two other men with a wave of his hand, Evan MacGregor slid his arms under John Murray’s back and hoisted him out of his chair. He strode across the room, bearing Murray’s twelve stone as if it were six, and put the marquess in his bed.

“I believe I can manage from here, milord,” Tullie’s valet said gratefully.

“I’m certain you can,” MacGregor replied. Butter had already taken up their jackets, gloves and hats. “I’ll see myself out. Send word immediately if His Grace has any further difficulties. I’ll be at my barracks, if he or the duke has need of me.”

Silently Elizabeth followed MacGregor and his man to the front door. Evan moved down the staircase with resolute purpose, smashing his diced cap down on his head. Were his spine forced to be any more erect, it would have shattered into brittle pieces with each determined step.

Not once did Evan MacGregor look back at Lady Elizabeth Murray. Even though he knew she followed him down the stairs, and saw her reflection in the remarkable two-story bank of glass windows that graced the rotunda foyer of the town house. Even though his own batman, Corporal Butter, paused at the door to touch the rim of his cap in a salute, and audibly bid Lady Elizabeth, Godspeed and good-night.

Elizabeth deliberately doused the flow of gas to the experimental lights fronting her father’s town house. That action cast their portion of Grosvenor into fog-shrouded darkness. She pressed the door firmly shut and locked it. She remained at the glass-banked door, peering out longingly after Evan until she could no longer see the man striding so purposefully into the night.

There were so many questions she could have asked...so many bits and pieces of news she could have told him... but she’d kept silent. And so had he.

She closed her eyes, feeling the chill of the night seep into her skin where her forehead rested on the windowpane. Mayhap it was better this way...better that nothing be said, that none of the old feelings of the past be stirred up and brought out into the open.

The big house surrounding her seemed to settle at once into its normal late-hour silence. She could hear the sonorous ticking of the grandfather clock and smell the damp that had come in with the fog, mixing with the familiar scents of her father’s pipe tobacco and Aunt Nicky’s talc.

She took a deep, calming breath and ordered the racketing clatter of her heart to cease. Calm, quiet and peace were all that counted in this world. Decorum and appearances mattered, not desire and impulse. She had to dig very deep inside herself to find the resolve she needed to put this unexpected meeting with Evan MacGregor in its place. When she found it, she vowed with a vengeance that she wouldn’t think about Evan MacGregor.

By sheer force of will, Elizabeth suppressed all curiosity regarding MacGregor’s unexplained appearance in London. What Evan MacGregor chose to do with his life was his business.

Elizabeth repeated that fact over and over again. The MacGregor wasn’t worthy of a single minute of her thoughts, and she wouldn’t give him that. After all, she was a Murray, and every soul in Scotland knew there was no one more determined and strong-willed than a Murray.

Evan MacGregor cursed loudly and fluently as he threw off his jacket and dropped his pistols on the rude table serving as his writing desk in his quarters.

He already hated being assigned duty in London. Blast Colonel Graham’s orders to hell and back! The moment his superior returned from his holiday, Evan vowed, he’d demand a transfer back to the Continent. Hell! He’d take six months in Newcastle working with raw conscripts over six months in London recruiting and grooming officers for the king’s army.

Damn Elizabeth Murray! Why couldn’t she stay home in Dunkeld, where the blasted chit belonged? And if he couldn’t have that, why hadn’t the divine providence that moved all things turned her into a gross, shapeless, cow-eyed sow?

He’d escaped her siren’s wiles five years ago, when she was naught more than a willful, ungrateful, beautiful spoiled brat. What was he to do now that she’d turned into an exceedingly clever and lovely woman of the world?

“Merciful heavens!” Krissy wagged her head and clucked her tongue as Lady Elizabeth quietly shut the door of the adjoining nursery. “There now. Did I not tell you wee Robbie never fluttered a lash through the whole commotion?”

“So you did,” Elizabeth said promptly. “But I do like to see that for myself.”

“Humph.” Krissy grunted in response.

Lady Elizabeth was like that, always putting four-year-old Master Robbie’s welfare before her own, as if the sweet little boy were her very own bairn. Not that Krissy could fault her lady for that, especially since Robbie had taken his grandam’s death so hard. The poor little mite had spoken nary a word in the three months since auld Abigail Drummond had been put in the ground. Lady Elizabeth had every right to be worried about him.

“Och, what a night of nights this has been. Come, milady, best you get to bed. God save us, we should all drop off to sleep with the ease and peace of a bairn.”

Krissy bustled across Lady Elizabeth’s boudoir to fluff the pillows on her lady’s tester bed, straighten the rumpled coverlet and smooth the sheets. “Do you think Tullie will be able to rest at all, milady? What if the watch should come asking questions? Should I run and tell Mr. Keyes the marquess is indisposed?”

“No. Amalia will see to that. As to Tullie’s condition, I’d warrant he’s sleeping better than we are at the moment,” Elizabeth wisely answered.

“Tut-tut, you just climb up into bed and drink this warm milk I heated for you. It will soothe you right down,” Krissy urged. “I canna help noticing you dinna like talking about the MacGregor. Is there summat between the two of you, then?”

“Not that I can think of.” Elizabeth evaded a more direct answer to the loyal servant who had been with her for the past three years.