Kitabı oku: «Man Of The Mist»

Prologue

Edinburgh, Scotland

May 1, 1802 Belltane

“Stars! This bloody wool itches,” William Grey muttered, scratching at his bare shanks underneath his borrowed kilt.

Evan MacGregor’s laugh echoed down the narrow corridor leading out to the jakes The inn’s lighting was poor, but his vision very sharp as he leaned closer to a scrap of mirror tacked to the wall. He checked the folds of linen and lace spilling over the high collar of his black velvet jacket. Then Evan flattened three fingers and rubbed them upward, inspecting 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 know what to do if she did. Besides, she was most concerned with her missing voucher. She hadn’t appeared to notice his looks at all. Sooner or later, though, every girl did, much to Evan’s chagrin.

“Right you go, then.” Willie gave ground a step or two, and Evan squeezed between his friend’s large body and the door, then held the crowd back so that the girl could come out, as well.

“You didn’t have to give up your place, too,” she said as they reached the less crowded wooden banquette.

“Oh, I don’t mind.” Evan stopped on the edge of the crowd, looking right and left down the line of carriages that had discharged their passengers onto the banquettes but had yet to clear the traffic on High Street. It made him glad he’d taken a room in town for the night. “Do you see your carriage?”

The girl had turned away from him, searching around the boards, looking for her elusive ticket. Then she about-faced and stood on tiptoe, shielding her eyes from the glare of the low sun with her hand. “No.”

“You’re sure your voucher isn’t in your reticule?”

“Quite sure.” She moved her hand away from her face and looked directly at him. One look followed another, and then she jerked her head up and down, twice, searching him over from head to toe.

A lot of ladies fussed over Evan’s looks, but no one had ever done that to him, and he felt right peculiar because of it. She made him worry that he’d somehow forgotten some vital article of clothing or, worse, got his kilt hiked up over his belt so that he had his arse — or something more personal — exposed. Had he broken out in spots? Forgotten to shave a newly sprouted patch of whiskers off his jaw? “Is something wrong?”

“What’s your name?” she demanded.

Well, he almost lied and claimed to be a Campbell, because MacGregors had been doing that for ten generations, just so that their bloody heads remained securely attached to their shoulders. “Who is it that wants to know?”

The pretty girl blinked in obvious surprise at his defensive reply, which certainly didn’t answer her question. A little indentation sharpened the lines of her eyebrows, and she pressed her very full lips down. It was a full minute before she said, “Don’t you know who I am? I’m Elizabeth... Murray. Aren’t you Evan...Evan MacGregor MacGregor?”

Well, Evan didn’t say anything, because in all truth, she’d just knocked him speechless.

“You can’t be Elizabeth Murray,” he said foolishly. “Why, Elizabeth Murray is only fifteen years old—just turned that, in fact.”

“And so I did, April the nineteenth. And if you’re Evan MacGregor, you recently sent me a watercolor picture of a bluebird you bought from an art student in Paris by the name of James Audubon.” She flashed him a smile that revealed beautiful teeth and a deep dimple in her left cheek. “And I might add, Evan MacGregor, you’ve changed, too! You’re taller than Tullie, and ever so much more handsome. I didn’t recognize you at all. Oh, Evan, it’s been so long!”

There he was, standing on High Street, and Izzy Murray was squealing like any chit of ten and five. Worse, she was throwing lovely, slender arms around his neck and kissing him on the mouth and pressing those sweet, full breasts of hers flush against his chest, afore God and all of Edinburgh!

He thought he was going to die. Blessed Saint Cuthbert, he thought he was going to die. Else be hanged, drawn and quartered right there on High Street by the duke of Atholl’s henchmen because here was this tender young lass — not a sennight beyond her fifteenth birthday — throwing herself all over him.

She turned what had only been mild arousal into the hardest bone he’d ever felt in his whole life, kissing him and squealing like a happy piglet, bringing the attention and the ire of half the Highlands down on the good-for-nothing heir apparent of the Gregarach — the Children of the Mist.

Elizabeth Murray was a woman grown, at fifteen years old! He hadn’t seen her in ages. In his mind, his Izzy still had plaits, and ankle-high dresses covered by pinafores.

But he’d written her hundreds and hundreds of letters, and she’d answered every one. Not one of which lately had hinted that the changes a lassie goes through to become a woman had already happened to her.

Somehow, Evan got hold of her shoulders and set her back, at the full length of his arms, scowling at that beautiful woman’s face that he would never have recognized in a hundred years on his little Izzy.

“I can’t believe it. You’re Izzy?” He shook his head in denial. “You should have written me that you’d grown up. Why, look at you. I’m shocked. You should have sent me a miniature, or at least given me a hint or two. You could have said, ‘Oh, by the way, Evan, did you know I’m five and a half feet tall and I weigh eight stone?’”

“But you’ve changed, too. I hate to tell you this, but your face is all shaped just like all the MacGregors’. That’s what made me ask your name. When you didn’t say your name outright, I knew it. You had to be a MacGregor. Anyone else would have said his name right out.”

“You didn’t need to remind me of that,” Evan grumbled, reminded of his not-so-respectable ancestors, who’d got the name MacGregor proscribed on pain of death. “So what are we going to do about this lost voucher of yours?”

“We could just wait out here and talk until Amalia realizes I’m not inside.” There was definitely the light of flirtation sparking in her eyes... and something else, too. Evan hardly dared to guess what. “She’s bound to come looking for me sooner or later. Later, I hope.”

More than just mischief was dancing in her bright eyes when she linked arms with him and tilted her pert face upward, smiled and started walking toward Saint Giles’s.

“Aye, but you’ll still need a voucher to get past the dragon at the door.” Evan nervously attempted to disengage himself from her arm.

“I suppose.” Elizabeth glanced up and down the crowded street again. “Let’s go look for Papa’s carriage.”

She tightened her hold on Evan’s arm, and he had no choice except to escort her up High Street, searching for the duke of Atholl’s carriage, which was parked under an overhang at Luckenbooths, next to the cathedral.

The coachman and footman took exception to the duke’s youngest daughter showing up arm in arm with a stranger. Izzy’s laughing explanation of who Evan was didn’t pacify a pair of henchmen old enough to have hunted Rob Roy himself before the proscription act against clan MacGregor was repealed by Parliament in 1774. Both looked inclined to unsheathe their claymores, part his head from his shoulders and then ask, after the fact, why they couldn’t get paid the usual bounty.

“We’d best go back and wait on the steps outside Bell’s Wynd,” Evan said wisely. But Izzy insisted she search the carriage. The henchman and coachman grunted ominously as she did that.

“It’s not here,” she said with a disappointed shrug of her shoulders that was followed by the brightest smile for Evan. “Well, no matter. Come along, we’ll go back and wait at the door. The aunts will miss me soon enough, even if Amalia doesn’t.”

That said, she threaded her arm through Evan’s again, oblivious of the glares of her father’s tail.

They returned the way they’d come, under escort this time, and remained under scrutiny the whole time they waited, until one of the Murrays inside Bell’s Wynd came out.

As luck would have it, James Murray, who was three years older than Evan and also studying at Cambridge, came to fetch his sister. He recognized Evan at once, and clapped him on the back with a high regard that went a little ways in reducing the glares coming from the duke’s henchmen.

As the crowd at the entrance had dwindled, the matter of Elizabeth’s missing ticket was easily covered. She wasn’t just a daughter of the highest-ranking Scottish noble attending the assembly. Miss Nicky Murray of Mansfield, the patroness of Bell’s Wynd, was Elizabeth’s great-aunt.

Disaster was thus averted, and Elizabeth reluctantly released her hold upon Evan, to be escorted by James back to her plethora of chaperones.

Cut loose and on his own again, Evan found Willie in the crush and introduced him around. There was no lack of available dance partners for the brisk reels and gay flings. Evan actually enjoyed the ceremony of bringing a pretty young lady forward to Aunt Nicky, who was enthroned on her dais, and securing a polite nod of her head at each of his choices.

During the interludes, he took time to visit with his rediscovered friend in the company of the numerous spinster aunts who acted as chaperones. Lady Elizabeth wasn’t enjoying the assembly. What girl would when she wasn’t allowed to dance?

Evan’s heart went out to the lass over that egregious disappointment. He wasn’t so old that he couldn’t remember what it was like to sit on the side at a gathering and be unable to enjoy it because of the strict rules of etiquette held by their class.

Worse, he was most confused by his own physical reaction to her. He loved Izzy, in the loyal, altruistic way he loved all his friends and kinsmen.

Their six years of correspondence, following two years in the same schoolroom together, had made him feel closer to her than he did to his own sister. None of his feelings for Elizabeth tonight were at all brotherly. He couldn’t help thinking that perhaps they never had been.

He’d always taken on the role of Izzy’s protector in the schoolroom. It was so easy to slip back into that comfortable way of thinking of her as somehow weaker than he and needing a champion. But Elizabeth was simply too young to stir in him the feelings of deep lust, desire and passion that alluring older women did. Despite his looks, Evan was painfully shy when it came to making advances to women. He couldn’t have borne it if he was rejected, or failed to perform as expected by an older, experienced woman.

Knowing that, and thinking with a head that should have been rational enough to override the heavy ache in his cods, why then did he ask the too-young Elizabeth to dance without Aunt Nicky’s permission?

And God only knew why Elizabeth threw caution and decorum to the winds and agreed.

Never, in all of his days, could Evan have predicted that one impetuous dance, one gay and happy highland reel, was to be the beginning of all his heartache and troubles.