Elizabeth Mayne - Man Of The Mist

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.

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.