Man Of The Mist. Elizabeth Mayne

the results of his newly acquired skill of plying a razor blade

      “You’ll never pass for a Highlander, Willie, if you keep scratching your arse.”

      “That’s easy for you to say. You’ve worn a damned kilt all your life. I’m only stuck in this blasted skirt to get inside Bell’s Wynd, damn it all.”

      Evan turned from the mirror. The knife-edge pleats of his red-and-green MacGregor plaid swung easily about his knees. He gave his Cambridge roommate a thorough inspection, then straightened the drape of Willie’s philabeg. Evan thought it best to cater to the Englishman a wee bit.

      “It’s a rare man who wears a philabeg day in and out in Scotland these days, Willie. A whole generation got in the habit of wearing britches, like my da, and now me. ’Course, that’s because you English made wearing a tartan a capital crime. Holding on to it got a man and his whole family deported.”

      Willie’s bulldog jaw twisted in a grimace. “Then why in the bloody hell do we have to get suited up in one tonight?”

      “For the same reason we suffer silk stockings and knee britches to get inside Almack’s, you dolt—because that’s where the prettiest women are!

      “Now, mind you...” Evan swung a conspiratorial arm around his English friend’s broad back. “Things here in Edinburgh are a bit different than in London. The important thing to remember is, you can’t just dance with any lass. You’ve got to be approved to dance with every girl you choose by presenting her to Aunt Nicky first. She rules this assembly with an iron hand. Never mind that she’s deaf as a post and a century older than Ben Nevis.”

      “That’s the mountain, right? Ha!” Willie barked. “All right, I’ve got the rules down pat. You’ve been over them a hundred times already. Don’t ask any girl to dance who’s dressed in white...’cause she’s a debutante and looking for a husband. Girls with hair hanging down their backs are forbidden, underage and taboo. Widows will let me know they’re available by doing something with their fans.”

      Evan clapped Willie on the back. “You’ve got the gist of it, mate. Let’s go!”

      They both halted on the wooden banquette on High Street. Evan self-consciously flicked a speck off his cuff and crossed the street to join the queue lined up outside Bell’s Wynd. He’d timed it right. The doors of the renowned assembly hall had just opened, as scheduled, at six o’clock.

      Dappled sunlight flickered over the mixed crowd of well-dressed matrons and ladies in radiant shades of evening wear, and men and youths of all ages clothed in an amazing array of colors themselves—clan tartans, dress plaids, cockades and bonnets and exotic fur sporrans.

      Evan grinned as the strong and fragrant spring wind played havoc with the ladies’ curls, lifted feathers and sent sweet, heady perfumes surging into his nostrils.

      At the top of the steps, he had to elbow his way inside the packed vestibule. He felt another surge of anticipation for the evening ahead—his first time out on the town of Edinburgh alone, without a henchman along, keeping close tabs on him. Why shouldn’t he be alone, when he’d turn eighteen in another week?

      Once inside the vestibule, Evan found that the jostling crowd had crushed a young lass against the wall beside the door. He gallantly stood back, treading on Willie’s toes, so that the tall beauty could squeeze ahead of him and regain her place in the line. She murmured a shy thanks and fit in where she could.

      Evan noticed two striking things at a glance. The first was her ball gown. The pale blue silk was cut and draped in the latest, up-to-the-minute Empire style, which was only just taking fashionable London by storm. She couldn’t have got past him in the crush if she’d worn the hoops that the rest of the Scotch ladies sported. In fact, he noted as he scanned the balance of the ladies caught in the vestibule, she was the only female not wearing hoops.

      Which brought him to the second most obvious fact regarding her. Her soft brown curls were pulled back to the crown of her head and fastened with a nosegay of ribbon and heather, revealing her high brow and lovely oval face entirely. But from the crown of her head, down past her waist, her hair fell unbound and unrestrained.

      Regrettably, the first beauty who had captured Evan’s eye and stirred a warm feeling of lust in his loins was plainly not yet sixteen years of age.

      That did not stop him from taking advantage of his height and looking over her shoulder to see what else he could learn about the young lady below her pretty chin.

      His covert inspection of two lovely, firm breasts assured him that she was very close indeed to reaching that momentous birthday when she would be allowed to put up her hair and dance with the gentlemen at Bell’s Wynd.

      But not tonight.

      She fumbled for something in her reticule, preoccupied, unaware of Evan’s speculative interest in her lovely bosom.

      Evan was achingly aware of how sweetly her cheek curved, as well as of the turgid fullness of her breasts, straining against the daring cut of her bodice.

      The press of the restless crowd pushed him dangerously close to her, so close that he could detect the sweetness of lavender water drifting up from her hair. But that same waist-length drape of unbound hair intruded on his enjoyment of the arousal she stirred inside him. As a first-year Cambridge man, he felt ages more mature than she, and valiantly tried to direct his attention away from her.

      The line at the door bottled up badly. Behind Evan, Willie jostled impatiently. The miss turned a lacy handkerchief and a tortoiseshell comb out of her reticule, but nothing else.

      “Oh, dear,” she whispered. “I’ve lost my voucher.”

      Evan cocked a sharp ear to catch her accents. Her diction was so precise, he was convinced she was English. She lifted her chin, peering straight ahead to the inner door, then looked to the right, scanning the crowded vestibule, searching for a familiar face. Then she excused herself in general to the other people close to them and turned, facing Evan, trying to peer discreetly on tiptoe around and over his wide shoulders.

      He was almost completely undone by the pleasing appearance of her face. Her brow tightened lovingly over gentle blue eyes and a slim, perfect nose. Very full lips pressed against each other, indicating that she wasn’t, at the moment, happy.

      The large man ahead of her shifted abruptly, sending the girl accidentally careering intimately against Evan. At least he was certain that it wasn’t intentional on her part that she should graze his semi-erect shaft with her hip.

      “Oh, pardon me!” She glanced up at him through thick, curving lashes. Her eyes simply seethed with passion and energy, overloaded by excitement and fright. They were the palest of blues, ringed with a darker circle, and wide and luminous and gently tilted at the outer corners, which imparted to her the soft, innocent appeal of a doe.

      They seemed familiar, but then, Evan knew a lot of lassies with blue eyes. He knew many with brown eyes, too. They’d been chasing him relentlessly ever since he went away to school at Eton. She said, “I’m so sorry, but I’ve lost my voucher. I have to go and see if I dropped it outside, or left it in my father’s carriage.”

      Evan started to reach inside his jacket to give her his own voucher, but he realized he couldn’t very well do that and still get inside Bell’s Wynd himself. He wanted in Bell’s Wynd now more than he had before.

      He swung around, finding Willie stuck in the doorway and scowling like a bear. “Willie, can you change places with me? There’s a damsel in distress ahead of me. Lost her ticket.”

      “That’s a new approach. Never had that one tried on you before, have you, old man?” Willie leered and poked an elbow in Evan’s belly. “You’d think they’d let you get inside the door before some lightskirt offers to drag you out. I don’t know how you do it, Mac.”

      Evan grimaced with embarrassment, mostly because he didn’t know what exactly to say to that. He hadn’t given a thought to the girl having motives of the kind Willie alluded to, and he wouldn’t