The Blood of Roses (9 page)

The leader of the three grinned lewdly as he heard the unabashed lust in the woman’s groans as she pumped her hips into each grunted pelvic thrust. She was probably not what the captain had had in mind when he dispatched them on this foolhardy expedition, but no doubt he would find some way to make use of her, regardless of whether she provided them with military information or not.

A final gesture for silence and caution had the corporal withdrawing his knife from its leather sheath. He carefully laid his musket aside, not wanting to risk an accidental misfire that could alert the entire rebel army, then crept the final ten paces before raising the knife and plunging it ruthlessly between the Highlander’s sweat-slicked shoulder blades.

Alexander heard the shrill scream of a night creature somewhere out over the darkened moorland and paused momentarily to try to pinpoint its source. He had forced himself to take three complete circuits of the sprawling encampment and, thankfully, felt the better for it. His body was no longer behaving as if it were stretched on an invisible rack; his nerves no longer scraped against a jagged edge of steel. He was thinking clearly again and knew that to keep doing so, he must not think of Catherine.

His third circuit of the camp, therefore, was undertaken with an eye toward the military action due for the morning. He was in full agreement with Lochiel’s assessment of the situation: If Cope had any warning whatsoever of the rebels’ presence in the morass, their hopes for a victory were slim. The crossing had to be made in stealth and darkness and completed before the English general had time to realign his damned artillery. Surprise was the key. Surprise and speed, both of which were the mainstay of the Highlanders’ methods of warfare.

If only there was some way to unseat the general’s confidence in his position. If only there was some way to shatter the iron-fast discipline of his officers and infantrymen, to bring about a repeat of their startling performance at Colt’s Bridge.

Recalling the incident, Alexander’s dark eyes narrowed against a gust of smoke-laden breeze. He had been leading a small party of Camerons along the road to Edinburgh, intending only to scout the route and determine where the English would be most likely to stage a defense. His men had been spoiling for action ever since leaving Glenfinnan; apart from one or two minor encounters with government patrols, hardly a sword or pistol had been drawn in anger. His men would have gladly, enthusiastically hurled themselves into a skirmish with the two regiments of dragoons they’d encountered at the bridge, had Alex given the order to do so. But before they had even warmed themselves by hurling insults and jeers first, the dragoons had balked and wheeled their horses away from the opposite riverbank, leaving the Highlanders staring at each other in complete astonishment.

Knowing they had been vastly outnumbered and outgunned, Alex had shared his men’s surprise. Common sense had forbade him from overextending his distance from the main body of the army, but, as he later found out, the dragoons had maintained their retreat all the way to Leith, several miles beyond the city of Edinburgh, before realizing the Highlanders had not pursued.

Only one officer had appeared ready to stand his ground at the bridge, and he had been as outraged by the cowardly behavior of his men as he had been when he recognized the tall, black-haired figure who sat in similar stone-cold silence observing him from across the bridge.

Hamilton Garner.

There had been no mistaking the lean and arrogant features, the ramrod-stiff posture, the uniform impeccably laid on with every brass button and gold braid arranged in military precision. Jade-green eyes, as frigid as arctic ice, had stared across the river with the same piercing fury they had lashed at Alex months before over the span of crossed sword blades. The hatred they emanated was seething and malevolent, almost a tangible thing as it strove to provoke a similar response in Alex.

Lord Ashbrooke, Catherine’s father, had said the wound Garner received during the duel had not been fatal. Even so, Alex had not expected to see the haughty lieutenant— now apparently promoted to captain—fully healed and preparing to defend a bridge hundreds of miles from Derby. Damien Ashbrooke had sent word via his couriers that Garner had launched an intensive search for Raefer Montgomery and his new bride. His inability to find any clue as to their whereabouts had rooted an unhealthy obsession in Garner’s mind; he had vowed to find both Montgomery and Catherine and exact revenge for his humiliation if it took his dying breath to do so.

With the rest of his regiment, officers and dragoons alike, scrambling for the safety of the forest, Hamilton Garner had drawn his sword and kicked his horse forward toward the stone arch of the bridge. Had the self-righteous fool been about to cross the river and challenge Alexander to a rematch? Cameron had no way of knowing, for within moments of Garner’s men interpreting his intentions, they had surrounded him and literally dragged him into the retreat.

Alex frowned over the memory and looked down at the smooth pebble he had been rolling between his fingers. His fist clenched around it as he remembered his own disturbing pang of disappointment that day. He would have welcomed the chance to test his steel against Hamilton Garner again, if only to rectify the mistake he had made in not delivering the
coup de grâce
the first time. And why hadn’t he? God only knew, it was not out of respect or admiration for the man. Perhaps it had been because of the flash of pale blonde hair he had seen on the fringe of the crowd of horrified spectators.

Alex tensed and let the pebble slip through his fingers and fall to the ground, forgotten. With a slight, almost imperceptible move of his arm, he closed his hand around the steel-clawed butt of the pistol he wore tucked into his belt. He let the shiver of cool anticipation clear his mind of all thoughts as he concentrated his instincts on the nearby rustle of a carefully placed footfall.

Whoever was walking up behind him was no more than ten feet away, his approach too furtive to be a friendly clansman. Alex was quite alone on the dark rim of the encampment, a situation he was not permitted to enjoy too often these days. Lochiel had detached Struan MacSorley as captain of his own personal guard and ordered him to watch Alexander’s back instead. Word had reached the chief of the Camerons that the Duke of Argyle, Alexander’s mortal enemy, had not received the news of the
Camshroinaich Dubh’s
safe arrival at Achnacarry with any humor, nor had he accepted the subsequent death of his nephew, Malcolm Campbell, at Alexander’s hands with peals of delight. The failure of Argyle’s elaborate plan to capture Alexander and see him hang from a noose at Inverary Castle had prompted the duke to double the long-standing reward of ten thousand pounds for his capture. Aluinn MacKail had also learned the duke had hired an assassin, a man known in such specialized circles as The Frenchman, who boasted a success rate of one hundred percent. Alex had shrugged aside the threat with his customary indifference—after all, he had spent most of his fifteen-year exile dodging Argyle’s bloodhounds. But Lochiel had not welcomed the reports so blandly, nor had Aluinn MacKail or Struan MacSorley, either of whom usually were with Alex at all times.

Neither of them would exhibit the poor sense to creep up on him in the dark of night, however.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, laird—”

Alex dropped into a crouch and whirled around, pivoting on the balls of his feet and drawing his pistol at the same time. The old, poorly clad clansman threw his hands up before his face and stumbled back several paces, squawking pleas and petitions in Gaelic when he saw the fully cocked pistol leveled at his chest.

Cursing with equal fluency, Alex sprang to his feet and in a single long stride, grasped the visibly shaken clansman by a fistful of tartan and lifted him onto the tips of his toes.

“You goddamned blithering fool! What were you thinking, stalking a man in the dead of night?”

“I … I wisna stalkin’, laird,” the man stammered, clawing at the vise that gripped his throat. “I didna
mean
tae stalk, laird. I walkit normal, but quietlike so as nae tae distairb ye. I could see ye were thinkin’ rare hard an’ I didna want tae distairb ye till ye were through!”

Still suffering the effects of an adrenaline rush, Alex lowered the weight of the man slowly, then released his grip on the bunched folds of tartan.

The clansman scrabbled cautiously back out of range of the long, powerful arms and watched frog-eyed as the flintlock on the pistol was stepped down and the gun resheathed in the leather belt.

“What the devil is so important you risked getting your head blown off?” Alex demanded harshly.

The old man swallowed noisily and lowered his hands, a signal for the rest of his scrawny body to relax out of its cringed stance, uncrumpling like a folded piece of parchment.

“Ma name is Anderson, laird. Robert Anderson, an’ I ken the night is short an’ ye’ve a mout O’ work tae dae—”

Alex raised his head; the look in the obsidian eyes was enough to cause another spasm in the old man’s colon.

“—but when I haird the orders f’ae the morn’s mornin’, it come at me that I should speak at ye right the way.”

“Speak at me—” Alex paused and took a breath. “Speak to me about what, Robert Anderson?”

“Me an’ ma three sons live a ways benorth O’ Preston, we dae. Raise sheep an’ the like, wi’ ma brither Lachlan. We’ve anither brither, Colla, wha’ runs a wee cobble alang the coast atween Aberdeen an’ Auld Reekie.”

“You’ve a brother who smuggles goods from Aberdeen to Edinburgh? What of it?”

“Weel … these sheep O’ ours sometimes fetch it in their heids tae wander doon tae the Forth an’ romp in the salt water. Fairst few times they doun it—faith, but it took all the blessit day an’ night tae tromp round the moor tae fetch them hame again. Then one time they doun it when Colla were stoppit by tae visit our mam, an’ s’trowth, if he didna blow a snirtle up his sleeve an’ show us a way straight across the skinkin’ muck.”

Alex, who had been reconsidering his earlier generosity in sparing the man, stiffened and felt the hairs across the nape of his neck stand to attention.

“Are you trying to tell me there is another way through the swamp? A way not marked on the maps?”

“Ach, I dinna ken it be markit on any skrint O’ paper, only that ma brither Lachlan an’ me, we livit here all our lives an’ didna ken there were aught but the one way across it.” The shepherd spread his hands and twitched his eyebrows upward. “I’m no’ sayin’ it’s mair than a bawk atween two bogs O’ weed an’ mire, but I can tell ye it’s a mout sight cleaner an’ quicker than sinkin’ up tae yer pintel in slime.”

Alex tried to calm his racing thoughts. Was it possible: another way across the morass that no one but the local smugglers knew about?

“If I showed you a map, Anderson, could you point out exactly where this balk is located?”

The clansman sucked thoughtfully at his cheek and scratched a few sparse clumps of red hair that prickled over the crown of his head. “Aye. I could dae. I could
show
ye better, but.”

“My friend, if you’re right about there being another way across that moor, and if Lord George likes what you show him on the map, you might just end up leading the whole damned army through.”

Robert Anderson grinned and jammed his tattered blue bonnet on his head as Alex hastened him back through the labyrinth of campfires and snoring bodies. The general’s mood was no better than Alexander’s had been at first, but he was soon bristling with cautious excitement at the end of Anderson’s story. He sent Alex out at once to verify the existence of the hidden balk and, in the meantime, went himself to rouse the prince. The council of chiefs was recalled; a tentative new plan was proposed and instantly accepted. By two in the morning Alex had returned, and, less than an hour later, the entire Highland army was poised on the edge of the black and mistshrouded morass.

3

A
lone sentry, standing guard on the border of the harvested cornfield, was jerked out of his drowse by a sound that brought to mind a swarm of bees approaching a hive. The buzz receded almost at once, carried away by the drifting banks of salt-tanged fog that scudded up from the sea. Thin and wisped in places like a witch’s veil, the mist thickened noticeably when it reached the edge of the bog. There it lay shoulder high, white as cream, forming a solid mass that constantly shifted, like some undulating globule of foam.

Private James Wallace did not care overmuch for this particular duty. His skin had remained wet and clammy throughout the long night; he had imagined noises coming at once from everywhere and nowhere. And the dismal little fire he had managed to keep alive with bits of twigs and dried cornstalks did nothing to alleviate his sense of unease. If anything, it accentuated the grotesque shadows caused by the broken mist—a mist that was thinning more and more now that the sun was struggling toward the horizon. Already it was light enough to see snatches of the main encampment, less than five hundred yards away. Soon the rolling hills beyond Edinburgh would reveal themselves to the golden cap of dawn, and soon the waters of the Forth would be changing from inky black to gun-metal blue.