Midnight Honor

by Marsha Canham

  The duke came forward slowly, his hands clasped behind his back. The look in his eyes, as he inspected her bedraggled appearance, was clearly contemptuous, his smirk triumphant.

  “A lovely evening for a final chat, do you not agree?”

  Anne clamped her lips together and simply stared back.

  “Determined to defy me to the end, I see,” he murmured. “In truth I will confess you have made an admirable adversary. I would have thought to break you weeks ago. There is still time to reconsider, however; we have a few moments before the stroke of midnight.”

  “I have nothing to say to you,” she said, her voice little more than a dry rasp.

  “I did not think you would, and yet we do have one other small piece of business to attend to before we can proceed.” He smiled, and brought one of his adjutants forward with a wave of a hand. The soldier carried a leather-bound ledger, which he opened and presented to the duke. He then produced a small bottle of ink and a feather quill from a satchel he wore slung over his shoulder.

  “I have a document here,” the duke said, turning the ledger around so that she might see it contained two sheets of paper, “which requires your signature.”

  Anne tore her gaze away from his long enough to glance down, but the light was too poor and the script was illegible. “What is it?”

  “Nothing that should give you any cause for concern. Nothing that will compromise your principles or your politics or, God forbid, your heroic stature within your clan. It is merely a statement of fact, that you are a Jacobite, that you willingly disobeyed your husband by calling out your clan, and that you enthusiastically participated in acts of war against the Crown.”

  “A confession? Is this to ease your conscience before you have me murdered?”

  “My dear Lady Anne, if I had merely wanted you murdered, I would not have gone to all this trouble, I assure you. As for my conscience, I would warn you not to test its limits much further, nor my patience for that matter. Both are perilously close to the end of their tether. Now sign. We are running out of time and these games grow tiresome.”

  “It is all right, Anne. You can sign it”.'

  Startled, she looked up, looked around, searching for the source of the voice. She was not the only one who scanned the ring of trees; the soldiers turned their heads, brought their muskets up, and braced themselves as the woods came suddenly alive with sounds and shadows. From behind each tree, each thicket and bramble, emerging like ghosts out of the fog, came a score or more of MacKintosh clansmen, most armed with swords, pistols, and muskets. Detaching himself from the rest and walking fully into the blaze of torchlight was Angus Moy, his shoulders clad in forest green tartan banded with leather crossbelts. Gone was the image of the perfect gentleman. Gone was the polished elegance in his stance, the casual insouciance in the set of his jaw. His hair fell long and loose to his shoulders, his chin was dark with stubble; the gunmetal gray of his eyes blazed as hot as the torchlight and called forth all the blood and history of his warlike ancestors.

  “It is all right, Anne. You can sign his little scrap of paper; it was part of our agreement. There should be a second document there for His Grace to affix his signature to in front of these witnesses, granting you a full pardon.”

  Anne felt weak, breathless. Her lips parted around the soundless escape of air that was her husband's name.

  “You have something for me as well?” Cumberland demanded, turning to face the laird of Clan Chattan.

  Angus turned his head slightly, and another figure wearing the black frock coat and plain white neckcloth of a clerk stepped forward from the edge of the wood. He looked plainly ill at ease in the presence of so many bristling soldiers and armed Highlanders, and he hastened across the clearing, sending little pinwheels of mist spinning off in his wake.

  “I have the d-document in question, Your Grace,” he spluttered, barely loud enough for the duke to hear without tilting his head. “I also have a letter from His Royal Highness's First Minister, Lord Newcastle, suggesting that you comply with the terms of the agreement as laid out by Lord MacKintosh and his London solicitors. He states that should the House or the infernal news sheets get wind of any suggestion that the battle orders were forged, or in any way, ah, tampered with that day, the repercussions could be perilous and far-reaching. Moreover—”

  “Yes, yes.” The duke cut him off, aware of Anne's proximity and of the heavily armed clansmen who, although they might not be able to hear or understand what was being said, were a viable threat nonetheless.

  “You are a grave disappointment to me, MacKintosh,” the duke said. “I had high hopes for your future here in the Highlands. I could have made you a rich man, a powerful man; you could have had a seat in Parliament, become a Minister even, and replaced that milksop Forbes.”

  “I have all the wealth I need right here,” Angus said, his eyes locked on Anne. “And if I have disappointed you, Your Grace, then I can die with a clear conscience.”

  The duke smirked and murmured under his breath, “Sooner, perhaps, than you think.”

  But Angus heard him and grinned as he raised his arm again, bringing another circle of armed Highlanders forward out of the woods. These men were on horseback, the beasts clearly outfitted with the military saddles and trappings that identified them as mounts of the King's Royal Dragoons.

  “Did you meet with any difficulties?” Angus asked.

  “No, sar,” said Ewen MacCardle. “Found 'em right where ye said they'd likely be, lying in wait for an ambuscade. Left the lot of 'em trussed up like hogs in a bog.”

  Angus's smile was as ominous as the assortment of knives and pistols that glittered in his crossbelts. He came forward, and the duke, it was noted by all, took an instinctive step back. The soldiers who had escorted him suddenly found themselves disarmed, as did the guards who had brought Anne from the Tolbooth. Fearing the worst, the officious clerk from London took out a large white square of linen and began to mop his brow.

  “Oh dear, oh dear,” he muttered. “This was supposed to end peacefully.”

  “And it will,” Angus said, snatching the quill and ink out of the frozen hands of Cumberland's adjutant. “Just as soon as His Grace signs the pardon.”

  “You would dare threaten violence against my person?” Cumberland hissed, his eyes bulging.

  “I would not only threaten it, I would happily slit your throat and the throat of every man in your guard. Moreover I would bury you so deep in these woods the hellhounds would never find the bodies, much less learn what had become of you—a similar fate, I expect, to the one you were planning for my wife and me?”

  The duke pursed his lips for a moment, then took the quill, stabbed the tip in ink, and scratched out his signature on the designated page. Angus removed it from the ledger and blew gently on the angry scrawl before folding it and handing it to the clerk. “If anything happens to this, I will personally come looking for you. If I do not hear from my London solicitor within the week telling me that he has received it, I will come for your family as well. Do I make myself clear?”

  The clerk swooned backward, swabbing his temples and throat. “Oh … inestimably clear, my lord.”

  “Good. Now go with my men. They will stay with you until your ship sails.”

  “Wait,” Cumberland demanded. He shoved the ledger at Anne and tapped the confession. “I insist on having her signature as well, if you please.”

  Angus looked disdainfully at the pudgy finger. “I hardly think you are in a position at the moment to insist on anything.”

  “No,” Anne said, “I would be happy to sign it.”

  She reached out for the quill. Her hands were still bound together, which made the movement awkward and brought a savage curse to Angus's lips. Torchlight flared off the blade he drew from his crossbelt; with a single stroke, she was free.

  Anne waited until her fingers steadied, then signed her name with an elegant flourish: Anne Farquharson Moy Mhic an Tosaich, Colonel, HRH Charle
s Stuart Royal Scots Brigade.

  Epilogue

  Anne traced her fingers gently over the ugly welt of scar tissue that marred the smooth skin below her husband's ribs. He was lying on his side, asleep, but at the touch of her fingers, then her lips, he stirred and rolled slowly onto his back. He saw the threat of tears in her eyes and he sighed, enfolding her in his arms and holding her close against his chest.

  “It wasn't your fault,” he murmured, burying his lips in her hair. “You didn't know what you were doing.”

  “I knew enough to nearly kill you.”

  “You were enraged, and I did not move out of your way fast enough, an error I will not make again, you can be sure.”

  “I thought you were dead,” she whispered. “All that time, when I did not hear from you, I thought I had killed you.”

  “The first two weeks, I thought you had, too. MacCardle tells me I was out of my mind with the fever. Then, when I recovered”—he paused and kissed her again, tightening his arms around her so that she was encouraged to slide over and lie directly on top of him—“I was told you were in prison, and there was little that could be done to set you free. I damn near lost my mind again.”

  Anne folded her arms across his chest and propped her chin on her hands, content just to look at him, content to feel his hands stroking up and down her back. They had spent the better part of the last ten days in bed, most of it sleeping, eating, bathing, sleeping. Angus slipped away now and then to oversee the repairs to Moy Hall, for the English had come back several times during Anne's incarceration and there was hardly a chair without its stuffing ripped open or a cupboard not smashed to kindling. Most of the servants had returned when they heard the laird had somehow miraculously won his lady's freedom. There were also two hundred clansmen camped around the loch, with more appearing every day, many of them MacGillivray and MacBean men who had no homes left to go to and no one to lead them. Of the twenty-one lairds of Clan Chattan who had stood in the front line alongside MacGillivray, only three had survived the charge, and two of those had died later of their wounds.

  The clansmen who found their way to Moy were still some of the fiercest fighters who had taken to the field that day, and with Anne standing proud by his side, Angus declared that he would have need of every one of them in the weeks and months to come. There were a thousand fugitives hiding in the hills who would need food and clothing and transportation out of Scotland, and MacGillivray's men were the best smugglers in Caledonia. The English were systematically stripping the Highlands of cattle, sheep, and livestock, hoping to starve the people into submission, but to an exceptional band of reivers and rustlers, what was stolen once could easily be stolen twice.

  Angus had received word the previous afternoon from his solicitor that Anne's pardon had arrived safely in his office, along with affidavits from the three royal ministers to whom Angus had shown the forged battle orders. Cumberland had immediately destroyed the copy Angus had taken from Major Worsham's pouch, but the gesture had been theatrical at best, petulant at worst. On its own, there was nothing to prove the order false. But there had indeed been other papers in Worsham's possession, including copious notes taken during the meeting with Cumberland, when it was explained how easy it had been to forge Lord George's signature and add the clause that had led to such unjustified, unconscionable slaughter. Angus had gone to London himself to present the evidence to the First Minister, and to name the only terms on which he would not send copies of all the documentation to the London Gazette.

  In the days following the battle at Culloden, Cumberland had been regarded as a valiant hero; he had triumphed over the savagery of a Highland army twenty thousand strong! He had saved England! He had saved his father's crown!

  But then, as the stories of the hangings and brutalities began to seep south, the papers were less enthusiastic in their praise. Prince Frederick of Hesse had returned home with an entire army that had refused to fight under such a “butcher,” and the people were appalled to learn the reason why. They were also becoming curious to know why, out of the thirty-five hundred rebels currently imprisoned in the Highlands, so few had actually been taken on the field that day.

  Angus was in a position to give further eyewitness accounts of the total lack of compassion and honor and the needless cruelty to the dying and wounded; that, plus evidence of the duke's complicity in forging false battle orders, would turn the hero into a beast overnight. The triumph would become a shameful disgrace, and in the backlash of sympathy, both in England and abroad, the Scots might well emerge in a stronger position to challenge the throne than before.

  In return for his silence on the matter, Angus demanded Anne's immediate release from prison and a full pardon. Further, since he had served in the king's regiment right up to the moment he had taken a near-fatal wound from a “Jacobite” sword, he expected the original terms of his immunity agreement to be upheld, and to include the surviving lairds and families of Clan Chattan.

  It had taken three weeks for couriers to go back and forth from London to Inverness, but in the end Angus had won. He had appeared before the minister wearing the scarlet tunic and gold braid of an officer in the King's Royal Scots, but he had returned to Scotland wearing the tartan and crossbelts of a man fully in command of his own destiny. Cumberland had made the exchange that same night. Now, ten days later, Anne was warm and safe in his arms; she was still terribly thin and her nights were not entirely peaceful, but at least she was sleeping, and eating well enough, and she only wept when she was left alone too long to think about all the dreadful losses.

  “I have arranged to have John's body moved to Petty, to a small green hill overlooking the firth.”

  “He would like that,” she said softly, “being able to look out over the water with the mountains at his back.”

  “And MacBean by his side, as always. We found Gillies's body and asked Elizabeth if she minded them sharing the brae together. She said I should be asking the priest instead, for with the two of them in the churchyard, they'll be sure to raise the devil.”

  The shine was back in her eyes, but it came with a smile this time. “Granda' told me yesterday that Elizabeth is with child, so he's not completely gone. There will still be a MacGillivray at Dunmaglass.”

  “If it's a son, I suppose I will have to give him back his father's bucklers.”

  Anne's eyes narrowed beneath a wry frown. “I wondered where you had come by all that impressive armor in the clearing. I almost did not recognize you as the fastidious gentleman scholar I married.”

  “It suited my mood. And besides, I thought I needed a little of MacGillivray's roguish courage to bolster me.”

  “You have more courage than it would seem wise or safe to have these days, my lord. Or do you think Cumberland will forget that you blackmailed him?”

  “He will not forget. But he has already taken his army to Fort Augustus. In a month, when he becomes bored with the lack of opera and swans' liver, he will go home to London, and we will not seem quite so significant. Besides—” He rolled carefully onto his side, taking Anne with him; another deft shift and she was beneath him, her eyes round and wide and blue as sapphires as he settled himself between her thighs. “I have more important things to worry about at the moment than the wounded vanities of a fat little tyrant.”

  “You do?”

  He moved his hips forward and savored the heat of her welcome a moment before curling his hands in the fiery silk of her hair and holding her through a long, molten kiss.

  “Unless, of course, you would rather talk,” he said against her lips. “Which is what a fastidious gentleman scholar might well do under the circumstances.”

  “In that case”—her hands smoothed down his waist and grasped his hips—“I think I prefer to keep my roguish warrior awhile longer.”

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2001 by Marsha Canham

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