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 his life was his business.

Elizabeth repeated that fact over and over again. The MacGregor wasn’t worthy of a single minute of her thoughts, and she wouldn’t give him that. After all, she was a Murray, and every soul in Scotland knew there was no one more determined and strong-willed than a Murray.

Evan MacGregor cursed loudly and fluently as he threw off his jacket and dropped his pistols on the rude table serving as his writing desk in his quarters.

He already hated being assigned duty in London. Blast Colonel Graham’s orders to hell and back! The moment his superior returned from his holiday, Evan vowed, he’d demand a transfer back to the Continent. Hell! He’d take six months in Newcastle working with raw conscripts over six months in London recruiting and grooming officers for the king’s army.