Man Of The Mist. Elizabeth Mayne

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.”

      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