Midnight Honor (14 page)

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 those 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.”

“My money is on Glasgow,” Forbes said. “The Pretender will be desperately short on supplies and will not want to risk a march to Edinburgh without regrouping.”

“Neither will he want to delay recapturing the royal city,” Garner suggested. “He must know the reserves he left behind were forced to abandon their positions when Hawley came
north. Yet he will believe, like every Stuart king and queen before him, that the key to holding Scotland lies with holding Edinburgh.”

“I agree,” Loudoun said heartily. “Which is why Hawley has asked
us
to send reinforcements to
him
. Three thousand men, to be precise, which will strip us to the bone, but well worth the risk if we can end this thing sooner rather than later. I had thought to hold off until morning discussing your reassignment, Angus, but I see no point waiting. The general has specifically requested Royal Scots brigades—what better way to shatter an army in retreat than to have them face their own kind across the field of battle, eh?—and since your men are more than ready for active duty, I'll be sending your MacKintosh brigade back with Major Garner. I believe, Major, you intend to depart at week's end?”

“Sooner, if possible,” Garner said. “I am just awaiting the arrival of a supply ship.”

Her eyes closed, Anne felt every scrap of energy drain out of her body. Her knees grew weak and her hands trembled; her fingers lost their grip on the silk panels of her skirt and the hem slid forward, brushing the bottom edge of the velvet curtain.

“There you have it, then, Angus. Angus? Are you with us, man?”

“What? Oh. Yes. Yes, of course, I was just lost in thought there for a moment.”

“You'll be in the thick of it soon enough, my man, no time for losing yourself anywhere. We will be relying on you to help hold Edinburgh and keep the rebels trapped until Cumberland can bring his army north. In the meantime, make it a priority to find out what your wife knows. It can only benefit us to be aware of the prince's intentions ahead of time, and a wife who knows her husband is going away for an extended period of time is often inclined to reveal more than she might otherwise do.”

“I doubt the threat of my absence would cause anything but relief these days.”

“Whisper in her ear,” Forbes said. “Tickle her on the chin, promise her you will keep your powder wet and your wick
dry, whatever it takes to placate her. We are running out of time, here, and your efforts will not go unrewarded. Lochaber was once MacKintosh territory; it could well be again.”

“I will do my best, sir.”

“I have no doubt you will.”

Chapter Seven

A
nne did not know how long she stood in the darkness of the alcove after the men had departed. She was too stunned to think. Too angry. Too disillusioned. Too hurt. Her husband's betrayal went so far beyond her grasp she felt as though it must have been someone else's voice she had heard, not Angus's.

She thought she should cry, but somehow that was not appropriate either. A small, insidiously cruel part of her felt more like laughing—that was what you did when you stumbled across the village fool, was it not? But just who had been played for the bigger fool she was not yet certain. She had wanted so desperately to believe the man she married was inherently good and honorable, she had never even considered the possibility he was a consummate liar, a manipulator, a traitor. Lochaber was indeed a ripe, lush plum, and if that was what Forbes and Loudoun had offered for his cooperation, then it was far more than thirty pieces of silver; well worth deceiving a wife and betraying a prince.

Had he thought a night of passion would make her malleable and docile? Had he thought a night of sweet lovemaking would make her betray her grandfather and cousins' whereabouts to him? She had, of course, but that was after the fact, for the dragoons had already been sent to watch Dunmaglass. And if he was just “humoring her” as Loudoun
had ordered, why had he lied to Worsham about her whereabouts last night?