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!”