Elizabeth Mayne - Man Of The Mist

“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.”

“Really?” she said challengingly. “Are you saying my being a duke’s daughter there doesn’t matter one iota? That one clansman’s as good as any other?”

“No,” he answered deliberately. “Is there one in particular who’s caught your eye then, puss?”

“Papa, you’re being deliberately obtuse. You know what I mean. May I go home tomorrow?”

“No, you canna go home tomorrow, or the day thereafter, either. Wouldn’t think of sending you back this soon and giving anyone the notion we have something to hide. You’ll just have to make do, Elizabeth. And that means you will see to your normal duties during the little season.

“Besides, Amalia vows she’ll strangle me if I allow you to waste this season in London, puss. Don’t think you should, since MacGregor’s come to town.”

“Amalia!” Elizabeth cried, her voice choked. “What’s she got to do with this? She hates Evan!”

“Hmmm...good point. She definitely dislikes the rogue. I’ve always wanted to know why. Do you know the answer to that, puss?”

“I believe she’s always thought he’d turn out a rakehell, too handsome by half. Most likely she had a tendre for him, like every other soul in the whole wide world, and could never get him to bat an eye her way.”

“Hmmm... Well, can’t say I’m surprised by that. She’s five years older than the scamp.” Murray laughed and rocked the stern of his pipe from one corner of his mouth to the other. As was his custom, he left it clenched between his teeth, dragging down the right corner of his mouth while he proceeded to talk around it. “My point is, Amalia would like to see you settled and married, Elizabeth. Frankly speaking, so would I. You’re not getting any younger, you know.”

Smoke wreathed his head while he sat thinking and gazing at the haze.

“You can’t ask me to put up with another batty old maid in my house, can you, puss? Nicky and Charlotte are enough for one poor old Scot to manage, aren’t they? No, you would be best-off married, Elizabeth. You’re not the kind of woman who is cut out to be a spinster. You feel things too deeply, and react to sensations born spinsters are perfectly blind to. No, no. You need a strong, demanding husband, you do. You’ll have to trust my judgment on that.”

“Oh, no, I won’t,” Elizabeth declared, with a firmness he found alarming. “Father, I intend to follow in Aunt Nicky’s footsteps and take her place as the patroness of Bell’s Wynd,” Elizabeth argued heatedly. “I can’t do that if I’m married.”

By the way she switched from endearments to formal address, Lord John knew Elizabeth was beginning to clutch at straws. If their conversation dwindled to the point where she called him sir, it would mean Elizabeth’s tender feelings were hurt. In that, she had always been easy to read. His older girls had called him Father for so many years he rarely thought of them as anything but adults now. But to Elizabeth he had been Papa a very, very long and dear time.

“Now, there you’re wrong. You are not at all like Aunt Nicky, puss.” He took his pipe from his mouth and leveled her a rock-steady gaze. “You need a man.”

Bordering on genuine panic, Elizabeth argued. “Surely you’re not serious, my lord!”

“You’ve completely misread the situation between us, Elizabeth. Just because I haven’t pushed any of the men forward who have asked for your hand, that doesn’t mean that I haven’t entertained and declined offers from some of these young pups. There hasn’t been a rogue whose character or means I fully approve of yet. I have high standards, you know. Not just any Sassenach will do.”

“Sassenach!” Elizabeth gasped, shocked. That would never do at all. “What are you really saying? Any old Scot’s as good as the next, is he?” Elizabeth was needling him deliberately now. “Papa, you said it was my choice and you would not force me.”

“Ah, so I did, in principle. But that was then and this is now.” John Murray sighed. “That’s why I haven’t made any mention of offers before. However, in light of today’s reflections, I believe it would do you good to remain in town for the little season. It’s only a few weeks—as long as Parliament is in session. Young Robbie will keep safe and sound in the nursery until then...and...we’ll see, hmm?”

No matter how nicely he coated the bitter pill, Elizabeth had difficulty swallowing it. “Papa, I want to go home.”

“And so you shall, dear. All in good time.”

“No, now.”

“No, Elizabeth. Don’t be tiresome. You’re much too old to stage tantrums or resort to hysterical sulks.”

“I can’t believe you’re siding with Amalia.”

“I’m on the side of common sense, always, puss.”

“Fine!”

Elizabeth stood. She looked down at her father, her mouth compressed, the stubbornness of her chin very telling of her Murray roots.

“Don’t expect me to confide in you in the future. I may just go to Scotland without your permission, sir.”

“Humph!” The duke grunted.

Elizabeth met his piercing gaze without wavering. He put his smoldering pipe on a porcelain dish on the table and laced his fingers together across his stomach. He was a fit man, in his early fifties. Only a rash fool would have misjudged his vitality and strength by the premature whiteness of his hair. Elizabeth was not often a fool.