Midnight Honor (55 page)
Authors: Marsha Canham
“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 Charles Stuart Royal Scots Brigade
.
Epilogue
A
nne 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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eISBN: 978-0-307-56791-8
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