Elizabeth Mayne - Man Of The Mist

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.”