Man Of The Mist. Elizabeth Mayne

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.

      “May I remind you of the last time you decided you’d rather be in Scotland than in London with me for a session of Parliament? How far did you get on your little journey home alone during that rising, Elizabeth?”

      “That’s hardly relevant today. I was an eight-year-old-child then. I wouldn’t make the same mistakes.”

      “Except in your willful thinking, eh?”

      John Murray refrained from standing while his youngest faced him with rebellion in her eyes. Long experience had taught him to avoid direct confrontations with Elizabeth. Once she got her blood up, she was the very devil to get to back down.

      Should she warrant suppression, Atholl could certainly rise to the occasion and dominate her. But, of his three daughters, he preferred that this one remain on course with her basically easy-to-read and predictable come-ahead stance and attack.

      Elizabeth could be very devious if provoked. God knew that was the most strikingly formidable Murray trait that could be inherited. That she had mastered it made Atholl wish his sons were more like their baby sister.

      “Well, yes. I suppose I am being willful, sir.” She had the grace to blush with that admission.

      “Good.” He gave her a look whose purpose should have quelled any further rebellious acts. “I want it understood, Elizabeth, that if you do such a foolish thing as to run off without permission anywhere, I can and will exert the full power of my authority over you...whether that is to your liking or not. And if you’ve come to an age when you think to doubt my will, I suggest you think back to Port-a-shee, and then think again.”

      That reminder had the effect he sought.

      “Papa,” she pleaded, “I don’t want to defy you, I want to go home. I’m not asking for a trip to Cairo. I see no valid reason why you shouldn’t accommodate me. For once in my life, Amalia could make excuses about my absence from town. London won’t die without me here to amuse it.”

      The duke sighed. He propped his elbow on the armrest of the sofa and splayed his fingers across the side of his face. He stared hard at Elizabeth, willing her to accept the decision she’d been given.

      She remained as she was, her back to the fire, her hands pressed together in supplication, her face an angelic mixture of entreaty and sweetness. He felt like a cad.

      Their discussion would only disintegrate from here. The duke stood, walked around the sofa to his desk and sat in his creaky old leather chair.

      Where his youngest daughter was concerned, saying no was easy compared to the monumental effort it took to stand on that decision. It was fair knowledge to one and all that he favored and indulged his youngest more than he had any of his other children.

      He silently willed her to leave his study as he returned his attention to the briefs on his desk. She didn’t. She stood there by his fire, a living, breathing Christmas angel, praying. Whether her supplications were for him or for herself, he didn’t care to ask.

      It was some minutes before he spoke, and when he did it was without looking up from the papers he was reading. “Elizabeth, Reverend Baird is kept on retainer for the specific purpose of being available day or night to hear whatever confession you have to offer. Leave my study. Go find someone else to torment. I must read all of these dispatches and proposals before I retire.”

      “What about Tullie? You haven’t said one word about John. He’s not going to be available to escort me to all these routs and balls that Amalia says we must attend. I mean, it’s a pointless exercise, Papa.”

      The duke said, “There’s nothing wrong with James. He’s a good man.”

      “Papa, he’s worse than Tullie!” Elizabeth cried out, from sheer frustration. “James can’t be relied upon to get me as far as the door of whatever house I’m going to before he dumps me for the Cyprians across town.”

      “Now, that’s enough slander, Elizabeth! Glenlyon wouldn’t dare be so careless with your reputation!”

      Last, in final desperation, she threw out her lone remaining trump. “Father, Robbie’s not going to get any better just because you’ve heard of a specialist in London. He’s lost the only person that was ever important to him. No Sassenach doctor can change that.”

      John Murray picked up his pen and dipped it in the inkwell, affixing his signature to a document his secretary had marked as urgent. He dismissed Elizabeth with a stern warning. “Don’t start a rising in that direction, miss. Wee Robbie is my ward. I will do what’s best for him, as I will do what is best for you. Now, good night, Elizabeth. Let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.”

      Elizabeth couldn’t find words enough to express her disappointment to her father. She stood for quite some time without moving, hating this room, but unable to hate the man who dominated it so thoroughly. She prayed fervently that he would soften and change his mind, because he didn’t know what he was doing in forcing her to remain here in London while Evan MacGregor was in town.

      It filled her with terrible dread to consider her alternatives. She couldn’t imagine what fury her father might give vent to if the worst should happen, and Evan MacGregor came forward and told the duke that he and Elizabeth had run away to Gretna Green and got married when they were fifteen and seventeen years old.

      But she knew her father would surely kill Evan.

      Elizabeth swallowed what felt like her own heart lodged in her throat. She took a deep breath and tasted defeat. Abruptly she quit the study.

      Upstairs, she collapsed on a stool before the fire in her room, watching red-and-blue flames lick their way out from underneath several wedges of split oak. The sight consumed her. She felt like the wood, smoking and burning, aching, ready to burst into flames.

      “I’m a coward,” she said out loud. “The first and only Murray ever born who was an outright coward, down to the bone. Grandfather George must be spinning in his grave. I’ve shamed every Murray that fought at Culloden.”

      It wouldn’t do any good to argue with herself that it wasn’t true. Elizabeth Murray was a coward. All she wanted to do was run away...just as she had from the beginning.

      The slightest thought of pain and suffering made her tremble and quake. Thinking back to Tullie’s bravado of the night before only made her stomach turn vilely. How had he done it? But that was a man for you!

      Woman weren’t of that ilk, and little girls were even more vulnerable. Why, her father had only to remind her of one telling incident from her childhood—the one time she’d struck out on her own — and she knuckled under, even today.

      She was nearly twenty-one, would be in April—a woman grown, by all rights. But she had no backbone. She didn’t have what it took to stand up to anyone. Oh, she could act as if she did. Like that time her father had referred to. But how far had she actually got? Charing Cross, that was how far.

      She wasn’t a child now. More importantly, she had a child of her own, whose best interests were not being served by her father’s insistence that everyone in his household keep up appearances.

      Elizabeth had to do something.

      She couldn’t go to any member of her family for aid in any plan that went against her father’s will. Elizabeth had enough common sense to know which of her friends would help her with no questions asked. Only one had the means to go against a duke, Elizabeth’s long-standing friend, the writer Monk Lewis. Her only other friend with the gumption to assist her was George, Lord Byron.

      Both Monk and Byron adhered to styles that played fast and loose with society’s rigid expectations of correct behavior, though neither had gone beyond the unredeemable pale. And of the two, Elizabeth was more inclined