The Blood of Roses (6 page)

Unable to complete the horrible thought, Catherine covered her face with her hands and ran from the secluded gardens, too distraught to notice the second shadowy figure who was startled into jumping back into his place of concealment as she ran past.

Damien Ashbrooke had also overheard the report delivered to Colonel Halfyard, though not by accident. He had noted the dusty corporal’s arrival and had followed the pair into the gardens, curious to know what could be so important to pull his uncle away from an expensive bottle of French brandy. It could only be news from Scotland, and, with his own sources becoming unreliable at best, the risk of being discovered among the ornamental shrubs was far outweighed by the need to know.

Far more than friendship and legal services had fostered his acquaintance with Alexander Cameron. Like so many others, Damien Ashbrooke was not pleased with the idea of the English crown sitting on the head of a pompous German surrogate—one who had not even troubled himself to learn the language or customs of his new country. From secret meetings in darkened back rooms to the secretive toast of passing a wineglass over water before drinking—a token of homage to the exiled Stuart king over the sea— Damien had been swept up in the romance and intrigue. Having been told from an early age that the most rabid Stuart supporters were located in the northern reaches of Scotland, and that these skirted warlords wanted only to force the country back into the dark ages of a feudal society, he was as surprised as Catherine had been to discover they were men of courage, honor, and conviction. They had risen twice before as a country to object to the laws imposed upon them by an English parliament. The first time had been when their king, James VII, had been deposed in favor of William of Orange; the second came in 1715 when William’s daughter, Queen Anne, had outlived all of her seventeen children and Parliament had chosen to ignore the direct and sovereign bloodlines of the Catholic James Francis Stuart in favor of the Protestant George of Hanover.

Poorly led and badly executed, both Scottish uprisings had failed, yet here they were again, willing to suffer imprisonment, exile, even death to support Charles Stuart’s quest to reclaim the throne of England for his father. Fortunes had been lost, families broken or destroyed, and many brave men cast from their homes and forced into exile in foreign lands. Nineteen Scottish peerages had been abolished during the last rebellion, and some of these clan chiefs still languished in abject poverty thirty years later simply because they refused to repudiate the vows of allegiance they had made to their rightful king. A chance meeting with one of these men, John Cameron of Loch Eil, a Scottish laird living in Italy with the court of King James, had led to an introduction to his youngest son, Alexander, and Damien’s transformation from curious observer to eager participant had been complete.

The tall, black-haired Highlander had both awed and fascinated Damien. He was a genuine soldier of fortune, someone who had spent half his life fighting wars, dodging assassins, embarking on adventures dangerous enough to curdle a grown man’s blood. It was no wonder Damien had taken a good long look at his own tepid, structured existence and found it wanting. He did not flatter himself to think he could ever come to possess the physical prowess or fighting instincts of either Cameron or Aluinn MacKail, but he could and did contribute talents in other, equally important areas of expertise.

He arranged for the funding and purchasing of weapons and supplies to be smuggled into Scotland. He organized and contributed to a system of information-gathering that kept the Jacobites aware of any troop movements, naval deployments, or political maneuverings that might be to their aid or detriment. Conversely, through underground news sheets and pamphlets, the English Jacobites were kept informed of the activities north of the border that might not otherwise become public knowledge. It was Damien who had confirmed the arrival of Charles Stuart in the Hebrides, and it was Damien who had sent word to the Jacobite camp that General Sir John Cope was being dispatched to quell the rebellion before it became a real threat.

The fall of Edinburgh, the cowardly behavior of His Majesty’s Royal Dragoons, the ineptness of General Cope to outwit the prince’s fledgling forces would be information the Hanover government would prefer the general population not to know. The good citizens of London were skittish enough already with the stories of Highlanders seeking to avenge a hundred years’ worth of injustice. Naked, hairy, and breathing fire, the Scots were reported to be ravaging beasts who dwelled in caves and fornicated with sheep, who considered rape, murder, even the eating of human flesh to be a way of life.

Stepping onto the path again, Damien started back toward the house. He had certainly been startled to see Catherine come running out of the darkness, but she usually could be counted upon to be somewhere she should not be or hear something she should not hear. That much had not changed with the advent of her marriage to Alexander Cameron and probably never would. It was a wonder, in fact, she had not uncovered his, Damien’s, secret affiliations, an oversight he credited to her current distraction. It was better that way, however. Safer—for both of them. He had a feeling, despite the young corporal’s prediction of a victory at Dunbar, that the taking of Edinburgh was just the beginning.

Glancing up at the brilliant wash of starlight, he cast a silent plea of his own heavenward. A moment later a bright tracer of light seared an arc across the night sky. As he watched the blazing star fall and die, he hoped with all his heart it was not an omen of things to come.

Prestonpans
2

A
t almost the same instant Damien and Catherine were directing their prayers toward the heavens, an equally impassioned cry was ringing out across a glistening, dewladen moor more than two hundred miles away. With Alexander Cameron’s darkly chiseled features looming over her, Lauren Cameron curled her fingers deeper into the glossy black shanks of his hair and guided his mouth down over the taut and straining peak of her breast. Her body arched and writhed into the eager boldness of his caresses. Her limbs felt engorged with blood, leaden and useless against sensations she had no means of controlling.

“Oh, God, Alasdair.” She gasped. “God …”

With a grunt of urgency, his body slid forward, impaling her on a thrust of flesh so hot and turgid the air that had hissed through her teeth was drawn sharply inward again. Her lips trembled open and her eyes quivered shut. Her whole body became engulfed in flames of crimson ecstasy, and when he began to move within her, it was all she could do to claw her hands into the rock-hard flesh of his buttocks and pray she could retain consciousness. A single mass of pulsating nerves, she groaned in awe and braced herself against the quickening thrusts, plunging headlong into wave after wave of intense, searing rapture. Her head thrashed side to side, further scattering the cloud of titian hair beneath them. Her lips moved, but no sounds came forth, and her hands slid on his gleaming flanks as she strained to take more of him, take all of him, unmindful that each shocking impact sent her skidding on the wet deergrass.

With an echoing groan of mindless pleasure, he arched his magnificent torso upward, no longer concerned with fighting his conscience as a rush of ecstasy burst from his loins. A cry rattled deep in his throat, the shape of it unintelligible as Lauren began to convulse beneath him. So violent were her spasms and so desperate was his own need for release that barely had his senses recovered from one onslaught then he could feel the juices rising in him again … and again … each shuddering eruption prolonged for what seemed an eternity.

Finally, when the tumult subsided and he collapsed, panting and sweating within her welcoming arms, there were tears of joy and triumph welling hotly along her lashes.

“I knew ye would come tae me, Alasdair. I knew ye would.”

The day had begun long before the sun had risen, long before the stars had lost any of their brightness and could still be seen through the lazy mist that cloaked the land. The Highland forces were camped on a field surrounding the small village of Duddington, directly east of Edinburgh. Less than four miles away, near the coastal town of Prestonpans, General Sir John Cope and his government troops were bedding down to a comfortable and refreshing night’s sleep, no doubt chuckling over the fancy display of rebel footwork they had witnessed that day.

Cope had chosen his position well. He had the sea at his back, a wide clear plain on either flank—ably protected by rows of silently ominous artillery pieces—and an impenetrable morass of mud and swampland guarding against any manner of frontal attack. The rebel army, bristling for a confrontation, had tested Cope’s defenses that day, appearing at first light on his left flank, only to find themselves staring into the black maws of primed and waiting cannon. They had circled back to re-form on his right, a maneuver that had taken three hours to execute and Cope only minutes to swivel his guns to defend.

Prince Charles had grudgingly but wisely ordered his army back to Duddington where he had then convened his chiefs and generals for a hasty council of war.

“Gentlemen,” he said loudly, overriding several heated arguments that were in progress over the day’s events. “There must be some way of dislodging General Cope from that plain!”

“Cope is a seasoned campaigner,” advised Lord George Murray, the prince’s field general. “He knows he holds the advantage of ground and knows he can sit there until the heavens rain solid gold sovereigns if he chooses. He is in no hurry to bring the battle to us, not with reinforcements on the way from London. On the contrary. The longer he sits the stronger, his position becomes and the more confidence his men gain—another factor weighing heavily on his mind, I’m sure, for most of his troops are drawn from militias and have never seen battle before.”

Lord George Murray was a tall, elegant man in his early fifties, one to whom soldiering came by instinct. He had joined the prince’s army at Perth and, like many of his peers, had staked everything on this venture, but was quite prepared to lose it for the sake of his king and country. He was not prepared to lose it through incompetence, however, or overeagerness—two qualities he had been much dismayed to find in his prince. Charles, being a much younger man, was prepared to acknowledge and follow sound military logic when it was presented to him. But finding himself on Scottish soil, at the command of an army of volatile Highlanders, proved too great a temptation for his sensibilities. He was all for charging straight ahead, taking himself onto the battlefield on his tall white gelding and leading the men to triumph and glory. It had come as a great shock when the clan chiefs had insisted on the appointment of commanding generals, more so when they had specified the need for military experience over zeal.

Lord George Murray had been enlisted in the government army in the days of Queen Anne’s rule. Even though he had not seen active duty since the ill-fated rebellion of 1715, the chiefs trusted him implicitly because he was one of them, and because he quickly proved to be a brilliant tactician and canny strategist. The prince, no fool when it came to pleasing his chiefs, appointed Lord George to command the army on the field, and Lord John Drummond, the deposed Duke of Perth as his lieutenant general. The Duke of Perth was openly candid about his lack of real experience and acknowledged his appointment had been more for political reasons rather than for any burning military genius he could bring to the field. Lord George, however, took his job seriously and, being a blunt and outspoken man, was not adverse to ruffling anyone’s feathers, even if they happened to be princely. He spoke to the prince sometimes as he would a child, explaining why it was not to the army’s advantage to stage a frontal attack, or why they had to be extremely wary of artillery placements.

“Cope knows we will eventually have to carry the battle to him,” Lord George said evenly, disregarding the faint lines of rebellion etched around the prince’s lips. “And when we do, his cannon will cut us to pieces before we have covered half the distance across that wide, flat plain.”

“Your trust in our gallant men is inspiring,” came the moist, nasal twang of William O’Sullivan. He was an Irishman, one of the prince’s friends and advisors, and, because he thought the post of commander should have been his, he attempted to discredit and embarrass Lord George at every turn. He had wasted no time in pointing out to the prince that Lord George’s brother was a prominent Whig and that Lord George himself had been approached by the government and offered a high commission in the Hanover army. He even went so far as to suggest Lord George had secretly accepted and was serving the prince only in order to betray their cause from within.

“Your faith in our ability,” he continued blithely, “leaves me … quite frankly … breathless.”

“I have the utmost faith and trust in the courage and ability of our Highlanders,” Lord George retorted. “As it happens, however, I place a higher premium on their lives.”