Man Of The Mist
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“We’d best go back and wait on the steps outside Bell’s Wynd,” Evan said wisely. But Izzy insisted she search the carriage. The henchman and coachman grunted ominously as she did that.
“It’s not here,” she said with a disappointed shrug of her shoulders that was followed by the brightest smile for Evan. “Well, no matter. Come along, we’ll go back and wait at the door. The aunts will miss me soon enough, even if Amalia doesn’t.”
That said, she threaded her arm through Evan’s again, oblivious of the glares of her father’s tail.
They returned the way they’d come, under escort this time, and remained under scrutiny the whole time they waited, until one of the Murrays inside Bell’s Wynd came out.
As luck would have it, James Murray, who was three years older than Evan and also studying at Cambridge, came to fetch his sister. He recognized Evan at once, and clapped him on the back with a high regard that went a little ways in reducing the glares coming from the duke’s henchmen.
As the crowd at the entrance had dwindled, the matter of Elizabeth’s missing ticket was easily covered. She wasn’t just a daughter of the highest-ranking Scottish noble attending the assembly. Miss Nicky Murray of Mansfield, the patroness of Bell’s Wynd, was Elizabeth’s great-aunt.
Disaster was thus averted, and Elizabeth reluctantly released her hold upon Evan, to be escorted by James back to her plethora of chaperones.
Cut loose and on his own again, Evan found Willie in the crush and introduced him around. There was no lack of available dance partners for the brisk reels and gay flings. Evan actually enjoyed the ceremony of bringing a pretty young lady forward to Aunt Nicky, who was enthroned on her dais, and securing a polite nod of her head at each of his choices.
During the interludes, he took time to visit with his rediscovered friend in the company of the numerous spinster aunts who acted as chaperones. Lady Elizabeth wasn’t enjoying the assembly. What girl would when she wasn’t allowed to dance?
Evan’s heart went out to the lass over that egregious disappointment. He wasn’t so old that he couldn’t remember what it was like to sit on the side at a gathering and be unable to enjoy it because of the strict rules of etiquette held by their class.
Worse, he was most confused by his own physical reaction to her. He loved Izzy, in the loyal, altruistic way he loved all his friends and kinsmen.
Their six years of correspondence, following two years in the same schoolroom together, had made him feel closer to her than he did to his own sister. None of his feelings for Elizabeth tonight were at all brotherly. He couldn’t help thinking that perhaps they never had been.
He’d always taken on the role of Izzy’s protector in the schoolroom. It was so easy to slip back into that comfortable way of thinking of her as somehow weaker than he and needing a champion. But Elizabeth was simply too young to stir in him the feelings of deep lust, desire and passion that alluring older women did. Despite his looks, Evan was painfully shy when it came to making advances to women. He couldn’t have borne it if he was rejected, or failed to perform as expected by an older, experienced woman.
Knowing that, and thinking with a head that should have been rational enough to override the heavy ache in his cods, why then did he ask the too-young Elizabeth to dance without Aunt Nicky’s permission?
And God only knew why Elizabeth threw caution and decorum to the winds and agreed.
Never, in all of his days, could Evan have predicted that one impetuous dance, one gay and happy highland reel, was to be the beginning of all his heartache and troubles.
Chapter One
London
January 9, 1808
The ink of wintry midnight cloaked the nursery in the Duke of Atholl’s London town house. Auld Krissy Buchanan couldn’t see a thing. Yet what she heard in the heavy darkness made her eyes widen with alarm. She scrambled out of bed, snatched up her robe and tiptoed to her mistress’s adjoining room, taking care not to wake young Robbie as she opened and closed the adjoining door.
The alarming clattering sound came again, louder and stronger in the sleeping lady’s bedchamber. “Milady,” Krissy whispered. “Wake up! Do you not hear that noise?”
“Noise, Krissy?” From the deep cocoon of her tester bed, Lady Elizabeth Murray mumbled in a husky, caught-in-a-dream voice. “What noise?”
“Lady Elizabeth!” Krissy’s harsh whisper rose a shrill notch. “Summat’s breaking into yer father’s hoose!”
“Krissy? What did you say?” Wide awake now, Elizabeth sat bolt upright, turning to the corner windows, seeking the source of that most peculiar and very distinct noise.
It came again, three — no, four — quick little smacks on the window glass. Krissy gasped, unable to believe that the frightening sounds came from the window glazing. There were no balconies on the third floor, where the duke of Atholl’s womenfolk were quartered. How could anyone be out there?
Elizabeth’s eyes widened in alarm. “I heard that! What is it, Krissy?”
“A bloody London cutthroat, that’s what!” Krissy answered promptly. She snatched her warmest tartan robe closed and stoutly tied the sash before Lady Elizabeth’s feet touched the cold floor.
“We’ll just see about that!” Elizabeth insisted, rattled, but not panicked. After all, they were hardly alone. Her father wasn’t in residence, but the dowager duchess and her entire staff were. Elizabeth glanced at the clock on her nightstand as she lit a lamp. Four o’clock in the morning. Everyone would be sound asleep!
“Summat’s outside, banging on the window glass.” Krissy armed herself with the iron poker from the hearth. “’Tis your lucky day I’m here to protect you. Miss Nicky gave me fair warning about the tricks and troubles of dealing with the blasted Sassenachs. I kin defend the clan’s honor, I kin.”
Elizabeth withheld comment as she deftly fastened her robe at her waist. Auld Krissy was clearly frightened, else she would have remembered that little harm could come to any resident of 19 Grosvenor Mews. Without further discussion, Lady Elizabeth hurried to her corner bay windows.