Midnight Honor

by Marsha Canham

  “Come,” he said, indicating the French doors. “We can talk out on the terrace.”

  It was cooler outside, but because the bulk of the house gave them shelter against the wind it was a fresh change from the candle smoke and cloying perfumes.

  She walked to the far end of the promenade and stood a moment looking out over the crystalline stillness of the gardens before she turned and met the dark eyes.

  “I hope you've not brought me out here to talk about Fearchar's proposal from last night. Since you were relieved to hear me turn him down, I cannot imagine what else there is to be said.”

  “I was relieved, aye. But no' for the reasons ye may have thought.”

  “You would have signed a petition supporting me as clan chief?”

  “Are ye sayin' ye dinna think ye would make an able leader?”

  “I would make as good a leader as any man, and a better one than most,” she said evenly. “I simply did not think you, of all people, would approve a woman in that position.”

  “Well, if ye're pressin' for a confession, I can think of better positions for a lass, aye,” MacGillivray murmured through an enigmatic smile. “But I've seen ye prick the rumps o' yer cousins with a sword, an' I've watched ye bring down a stag with a single shot. I've seen ye lead the three o' them into a mêlée against twice yer number, an' I've heard the crowds cheerin' for ‘wild rhuad Annie’ when ye came away bruised, but not too bloodied to keep ye from throwin' yerself back into the fray. Mind, that was before ye traded yer powder horn an' firelock for fancy silk skirts an' fine lace ruffles. An' before ye started talkin' like a lady and sippin' yer soup from a spoon, instead o' the side o' the bowl.”

  “I could say the same for you,” she countered, launching an eyebrow upward as she inspected him boldly up and down. His enormous shoulders were clad in the full formal dress of a gentleman, with doublet, waistcoat, and ruffled sleeves complementing the red-and-blue plaid of his kilt. “Clean shaven, your hair curled and tucked into a ribbon while you sup at the Lord President's table. Your buckles are polished and”—she leaned forward, sniffing the air delicately—“is that French water I smell? With your fiancée not even here to enjoy it?”

  His eyes narrowed. “Who told ye I had a fiancée?”

  “Lady Drummuir, if it matters … which it should not.”

  “No,” he mused. “It should not. No more so than the cause o' the burn on yer cheeks that was not there yesterday.” He reached up through the darkness and ran the tip of his finger along her chin and throat. “Ye should tell yer husband to use a sharper blade when he shaves. 'Tis a shame to chafe such fine, smooth skin.”

  Anne backed away, her heart giving one loud slam against her rib cage. “I hardly think Angus's shaving habits are a matter we should be discussing.”

  “Nor are ma intentions toward Elizabeth of Clunas.”

  She started to say, “I fail to see—” but snapped her mouth shut again and hugged her upper arms against a sudden chill. “You said you had to speak to me about something. We will be missed in a few minutes.”

  “You, mayhap. I've already made ma excuses.”

  “You're leaving already? But—?”

  “Savin' a dance for me, were ye? Sorry to disappoint, but I've paid ma respects an' not a drop o' blood shed but ma own.” He reached inside the front of his coat and, for a split second, his face was turned to the light, revealing a new twist to his smile—that of pain.

  When he withdrew his hand again, the fingers were wet and shiny, slick with blood.

  “My God! What happened to you?”

  “It's naught but a wee hole,” he said, waving away her concern. “The shot went in an' out clean enough.”

  “Shot? You were shot!”

  “A wee bit louder, lass.” He scowled and looked up at the second-story windows. “I dinna think they all heard.”

  “Shot,” she hissed. “What do you mean you were shot? When? Where? And what the devil are you doing here playing the gentleman fool?”

  “Aye, playin' is the word for it. For if I'd not come tonight, actin' as if nothin' was amiss, I'd likely be swingin' from a gibbet by morn's mornin'.”

  Anne shook her head even as she reached down and struggled to tear a strip of linen from the bottom layer of petticoat. “I don't understand.”

  “After ye left last night, one o' the lads said as how he thought he heard horses in the woods. We went out after them, an' sure enough, found where a troop o' bloody redcoats had been hiding in the trees near the edge o' the glen. They were easy enough to follow in the snow, but—”

  She looked up sharply. “It was you. You were the ‘renegades’ the major mentioned earlier.”

  MacGillivray only shrugged. “He's no' as stupid as most Sassenachs. He left men to watch their backs while they rode away. One o' them saw us an' gave off a warning shot. Before we knew it, the soldiers came in at the gallop an' we were in the middle of a fight.”

  She straightened and folded the linen into a thick wad. Batting away his hand with his objection, she eased his jacket open, fitting the makeshift bandage snugly beneath his waistcoat. His shirt was already dark with blood; some of it had started to seep through the brocade vest.

  “You have to leave and get this tended to before you bleed to death.”

  “Aye, I will do. But I thought I should warn ye first.”

  “Warn me? About what?”

  “There were another set o' tracks leavin' the glen. Two men. They followed you an' yer cousin Eneas most o' the way to Moy Hall.”

  “Most of the way?” she parroted.

  “Ma lads lost all the tracks after ye crossed Moy Burn. Did Eneas keep to the water for a bit?”

  She nodded. “I thought he was being overly cautious, but—”

  “There will be no such thing as over-cautious from here on out, lass, not unless the thought of a gibbet appeals to ye.”

  “It does not.” Anne shivered and glanced back at the house. “He asked me if I had been out riding on the moor last night.”

  “Who did, the fancy major with the ghostie eyes?”

  She nodded. “Angus laughed it off. He said I was with him all night. Whether or not the major believed him—” She shrugged. “There are not too many places our tracks could have been going, other than Moy Hall.”

  “Aye, but his men dinna know who they were followin', do they?” he asked quietly. “Ye were not exactly wearing yer silks an' laces.”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But nocht. If they truly suspected it were you, ye'd have irons clapped around yer wrists by now. An' if ye say Angus covered for ye…” He paused, as if her husband's actions surprised him as much as they had her. “Was he no' in Inverness last night?”

  “He came home early. He was waiting for me, in fact, when I returned. Needless to say, he was not happy to discover I had been out.”

  “He didna raise a hand to ye, did he?”

  Anne looked up, startled to hear a sudden change in John's voice. “No. No, of course not. Angus has never even raised his hand to swat a fly in anger, not in the four years I have known him.”

  He said nothing, but after a long moment, she heard his teeth chatter through an involuntary shiver.

  “You have to leave here at once,” she said. “Come, I'll see you safely to the door.”

  “Now that truly would be a foolish idea. Stay here. Count to fifty or so before ye go back inside, an' have a care no one sees ye leave the library. Go back up the stairs an' find Angus. Stay fast by his side an' he'll see ye through the rest o' the night until ye're home safe.”

  “What about you? Will you be all right?”

  He looked down to where her hand rested on his forearm. “It would take more than a pea-sized ball o' English lead to bring me down, lass. Ye mind what I said, though, an' stay close by yer husband.”

  “Be careful.”

  He held her gaze a moment, then crossed the terrace and vaulted over the low stone balustrade. She heard the crunc
h of his shoes on the frozen ground for a minute more, then it was lost to the sounds of the party on the floor above.

  MacGillivray had been shot, and she had been followed. There had been English troops in the woods at Dunmaglass, and if they had been watching The MacGillivray's home, they must have known Fearchar and her cousins were inside.

  But had they followed Fearchar to Dunmaglass, or had they been watching Dunmaglass all along? If it was the former, it would mean her grandfather wasn't as wily an old fox as he fancied himself to be, and he could be arrested at any time.

  If it was MacGillivray who had fallen under government scrutiny, it might be because the English were anticipating the very thing that had brought Anne out in the middle of the night: plans to split the great Clan of the Cats into two factions. They would be justifiably alarmed; Inverness was in the heart of MacKintosh territory, and the prospect of a thousand sword-wielding clansmen taking to the hills, men renowned for their ability to stage bloody raids and vanish into the night, would surely cause the latrines within the garrison walls to overflow. Loudoun and Forbes would do anything within their power to prevent such a division, even if it meant arresting the clan chief without proof of any wrongdoing.

  The silent progression of logic brought Anne's fingers pressing against her temples, and it took every last scrap of willpower to keep from following MacGillivray over the stone wall.

  But of course she could not. John was right: She had to go back upstairs, find Angus, and act as if nothing had happened.

  Her head was throbbing like an over-swelled bladder, and the novelty of fresh air no longer held any appeal. Guessing she could easily have counted to several times more than fifty by now, she retraced her steps to the library. The latch on the French doors proved to be stubborn, and she had just cursed it into place, had barely stepped clear of the alcove, when she was stopped cold by the sound of voices in the outer hallway. The footsteps were brusque and purposeful, making their way toward the library door.

  Anne glanced quickly around, but there was nowhere to hide. There was nothing but a bank of windows behind her, with a two-foot section of wall on either side forming the arch.

  Without stopping to think about it, she reached quickly for the gold ropes that held the curtains swagged to either side. The heavy crimson folds fell across the opening of the alcove, closing it off from the main room. Desperately, Anne caught the fabric and steadied it, then retreated against the French doors, feeling open and exposed to anyone who might glance out an upper window. Beyond the flimsy wall of velvet, the voices and footsteps marked the introduction of several men into the library. The outer doors were closed, followed by the sound of more serious, forthright steps bringing someone over to the desk.

  “I will feel a damned sight better when these are locked away,” came the gratingly familiar voice of Duncan Forbes. “I suppose one must admire the resolve of a courier who has been given specific orders to deliver a dispatch directly into the recipient's hand, but a damned inconvenience nonetheless.”

  “You were inconvenienced?” Lord Loudoun's laughter was coarse. “The very delightful Miss Chastity Morris's teats were practically in my hands, and I suspect she would have willingly placed them there in another moment had Worsham not come to fetch me away.”

  “Your pardon, my lord. I have no doubt you can regroup and reacquire.”

  “Only if you agree to lead a diversion to keep my wife distracted elsewhere.”

  Polite laughter indicated there were at least two or three more men present who had accompanied Duncan Forbes into his study. Anne glanced around the shadowy alcove again, distressed to see how the smallest slivers of light sparkled off the gold threads in her frock. Worse still, her farthingale consisted of a series of descending hoops that held her skirts out in a graceful bell shape. Crushed as she was against the glass panes of the door, the hem was thrust out in front, the outermost edge almost teasing the length of velvet curtain.

  As carefully as she could, she gathered the folds of silk and inched them back out of harm's way.

  “Any word from Hawley?” asked a sober voice in the group. “Is he sending reinforcements from Edinburgh?”

  “General Hawley has but two thousand men and orders to hold Falkirk, Perth, and Stirling. I doubt he could spare a stableboy at the moment.”

  “If there is any truth in the report we received yesterday, there are only five thousand men in the whole of the prince's army. Ill-equipped, demoralized …”

  “We have underestimated their resolve before,” Worsham interrupted in his quietly insidious voice. “And it would not behoove us to do so again. Major Garner, I understand your dragoons were amongst the first to engage the rebels at Colt's Bridge, and again at Prestonpans?”

  Anne put a face to the English officer's name. Hamilton Garner was tall, blond, and arrogant, with the cold green eyes of a cobra. His dragoons had run away from the Highland army at Colt's Bridge without exchanging a single shot. At the battle of Prestonpans, slightly more than three thousand Jacobites had defeated General Sir John Cope's army of twice that number in a morning ambush. Major Garner had been among the shamefully few to stand and fight, but he had been captured. Eventually, because the prisoners vastly outnumbered the victors, he and the others had been released on their own parole, promising not to take up arms against Prince Charles again. Garner had broken that parole the instant he was free. He had ordered the cowards under his command to be flogged within an inch of their lives, and testified against five officers hanged in the public square.

  There were rumors suggesting the major's fight was not just with the prince, that he bore a personal vendetta against one of the prince's most daring and successful captains, Alexander Cameron—the Camshroinaich Dubh whose name had conjured ghosts out of Fearchar Farquharson's past. Lady Drummuir, with her reliable legion of spies, had heard that Cameron had won Hamilton Garner's betrothed in a duel, that he had married the woman himself—a Sassenach—and taken her home to Lochaber. He had also been at Colt's Bridge and Prestonpans, and Garner's rage, having seen him there, knew no bounds. He had sworn to track his enemy to the ends of the earth if it meant killing every Jacobite single-handedly in the pursuit.

  “These rebels do not fight in accordance to any known military order,” Garner protested now. “I cannot begin to recount the number of times I have attempted to enlighten General Hawley to this unpleasant fact. They creep about in the darkness, wading through bogs, emerging covered in mud and stink. Any lines they form are ragged at best and break at the first screech of encouragement from their infernal pipers. They discharge but one round from their muskets and toss them aside, reaching our lines with their claymores in hand, while our men are still bent over their weapons, priming them for a second shot. They will even fling off their plaids and skirts if the bulk of their clothing hampers them. Imagine that, if you will. Scores of screaming, half-naked devils descending upon you, wielding swords as tall as any normal man.”

  There was a pause, then an indignant harrumph from Lord Loudoun. “They fight like barbarians, sirs. They eat cold oatmeal and animal blood, for God's sake. They are a clamorous, disorganized rabble, and the major showed exemplary fortitude flaying the skin off the back of any man who did not instantly set aside the terms of his parole.”

  “Indeed,” Worsham murmured, nonplussed by the earl's rant, “for where is the merit in upholding a soldier's oath when one is dealing with cattle thieves and sheep-fuckers?”

  Anne, listening from behind the curtain, felt the blood boil up into her cheeks. Her lips parted in an attempt to gather more air into her lungs but the effort was hampered by the tightness of her stomacher. The urge was growing to fling the draperies aside and confront the lot of them, and indeed, her temper was such that she might well have thrown caution to the wind and done exactly that had the next voice not stopped her cold.

  “Come now. You are too harsh on my neighbors. We are not all enamored of our farm animals. Some of us prefer all thos
e lovely English lassies you have had transported up from London.”

  Another round of lusty laughter acknowledged Angus Moy's remark.

  “Indeed, the whores are cleaner than most,” said another man. “And decidedly more eager than their Highland counterparts.”

  Worsham's voice rose above the second round of ribald laughter. “But your wife, sir,” he said to Angus. “She seems a fiery little vixen with energy to spare. Surely you are not tossing her into the stew pot as well?”

  Anne held her breath, her fingers clenching tight around the folds of her skirt. She fully hoped to hear the lethal hiss of steel as her husband drew his sword to cut the envisioned smirk off the Englishman's face, but she was shocked to hear him respond with an exaggerated sigh.

  “Alas, I grew weary long ago of my wife's … various energies. And of trying to curb either her tongue or her penchant for supporting lost causes.”

  “Women,” said Duncan Forbes, “can be bellicose creatures at the best of times. Pretty to look at, intriguing to bed, but if they are not taken firmly in hand on the walk back from the altar, they can be the cause of one blasted migraine after another. Even my son used to despair at times of his Arabella's simpering, but a few sound beatings put her quickly to rights. Perhaps you've just been too lax on her, m'boy. A good throuncing once in a while never hurts; shows who's master and who is just there by the grace of our benevolence.”

  “I will keep that in mind,” Angus said with a low chuckle.

  “She is a Farquharson, is she not?” Major Garner posed the question over the sound of Forbes closing and locking a cupboard in his desk. “Related to the old man and his trio of foot soldiers?”

  “He is her grandfather,” Angus provided.

  “And you see no need to rein her in?” His surprise was as apparent as Angus's nonchalance.

  “Frankly, we've told him not to,” Loudoun answered. “She is the old bastard's pride and joy, and so long as he thinks she has the freedom to come and go as she pleases, he will stay in contact with her. Especially now. I warrant Fearchar Farquharson knows within a mile where the rebel army is and where they will be going after they cross the border.”