Midnight Honor (25 page)

Anne had listened raptly to the stories told and retold around the campfires in Aberdeen about the bravery of the Camerons and the MacDonalds and Lord George's Athollmen, and the courageous roles they played in defeating the might of the English army at Colt's Bridge, then later at Edinburgh and Prestonpans. How she had wished Angus could be counted among them, fiercely steadfast in their loyalties, intrepid beyond measure, willing to forsake all—not the least of which was their lives, properties, and fortunes—in defense of their king and country.

And how she wished he could be here now, in this cramped and airless tavern on the outskirts of St. Ninians, a stone's throw from the sacred field of Bannockburn. How she longed to share with him the excitement of the pipers skirling in the background, the clansmen singing and pounding the tables with their tankards, and men like MacGillivray and Alexander Cameron joined together in toasting the prince's future success.

Easily as tall and broad across the chest as MacGillivray, the Dark Cameron had spent the past fifteen years in exile on the Continent fighting other men's wars. He had returned to his beloved home at Achnacarry only to find his country on the verge of rebellion, and since then had ridden at the right hand of Lord George Murray. It was rumored that he had brought an English wife with him, which did not set well with a clan whose elder statesman, Old Lochiel, had been with the exiled court of James Stuart since the failed uprising of 1715. But it was also said that his
Sassenach
bride had adamantly refused to remain in safety at her English home and had
joined her husband when the prince's forces retreated from Derby.

Another roar sent Anne's gaze to the end of the table, where a mountain of a man had been called forward by the boisterous Dr. Archibald Cameron. His name, Anne recalled, was Struan MacSorely, and as she watched in amazement, he lifted a quart-sized pewter tankard to his lips and began to drink. Eight, nine, ten loud swallows were counted off by the men, after which a hearty clamor saw the good doctor clapping him on his back, then issuing a challenge from a pair of narrowed blue eyes to their prey at the opposite end of the table. Anne leaned forward, grinning when she saw Gillies MacBean push to his feet. Jamie and Robbie stood on either side of him, good-naturedly massaging his shoulders, neck, and belly, and when a brimming double tankard was set in front of him, the twins stepped solemnly back and crossed their arms crookedly over their chests, watching him like a pair of half-sodden bear handlers.

Gillies emptied the cup with nary a batted eye and set it down with a flourish. The crowd went wild for a moment; in the next, like magic, bonnets came off heads and wagers were taken from all quarters.

“I would hate to embarrass our compatriots by robbing of them of all their coin on the first night in camp.”

Anne glanced across the table and smiled at the speaker, Alexander Cameron.

“Indeed, sir, I was thinking somewhat the same thing, only wondering what your reaction would be to our stripping you of all
your
coin our first night here.”

Cameron leaned back, his midnight blue eyes gleaming. Beside him, his clansman Aluinn MacKail guffawed and fished in his pocket for a gold sovereign. A third gentleman, a flamboyant Italian count in a beribboned doublet and feathered musketeer hat, brought his hand down on the table in a flutter of cuff lace and deposited a second coin just as quickly.

“I'm-a know from-a the first night I join-a this troupe of-a madmen, that you need-a the iron gut to stand-a with MacSorley.”

“As I recall, Fanducci,” MacKail said over his shoulder, “you outlasted him.”

“Ah, sì, sì.”
Another flutter of lace brought a modest hand to the count's breast. “But I'm-a no ordinary madman. I was-a given wine before-a the breast.”

MacGillivray, seated beside Anne, dug two gold coins and a fresh cigar out of his purse. When he saw the way the midnight eyes followed the latter rather than the former, he grinned and clamped the one cigar between his teeth while withdrawing a second one and setting it down alongside the coins. “We'll wait an' see who is still standin' at the end o' the hour, shall we?”

Cameron tipped his head to acknowledge the Highlander's wisdom, then withdrew two thin black cheroots from his own breast pocket. The one he moistened and placed thoughtfully between his lips, the other he laid alongside the fatter, more coarsely rolled Carolina.

Gillies and MacSorley, in the meantime, had downed their second full tankard apiece and were both standing rock solid at their respective ends of the long oak trestle. Dr. Archibald Cameron was now up on a chair—which put him on an equal eye level with his champion—and the twins, not to be outdone, dragged an empty keg over for the stocky Gillies to stand on.

“Your wife is very brave to accompany you, sir,” Anne said to Alexander Cameron across the din.

“Aye, that she is, Colonel. Brave and stubborn. Not unlike someone else seated at this table.” He lifted his mug in a salute. “And the name is Alex, not sir.”

“Then you must call me Anne. I fear the rank is only for decoration anyway.”

“Would you prefer
‘ma belle rebelle’?
Or perhaps ‘that red-haired Amazon’?”

She laughed and shook her head. The latter appellation had come as a result of a small but vicious skirmish along the road to Stirling. The vanguard of the Argyle militia had crossed Blairlogie just ahead of Lord Gordon's forward guard, and because the latter had consisted mainly of MacKintosh men, Anne had been in her usual place alongside MacGillivray. There had been no time for her to fall back when the Argylemen had attacked, and she had found herself in the thick of things. The Campbells had hoped to slow or
delay the Jacobite column, but instead they had encountered such fearsome opposition, they were lucky to escape with only a handful of casualties. One of the fleeing clansmen had spotted Anne, her bonnet gone, her hair streaming around her shoulders, her magnificent gray gelding rearing as she wind-milled a saber overhead.

Word of a “red-haired Amazon” in the Jacobite ranks had spread like butter on a hot pan, even making its way into a report from Hawley's camp that was intercepted on its way south to London. It only brightened the already glowing aura that had begun with her audacious theft of Duncan Forbes's papers, and it made nearly every man present in the tavern that night want to fill her tankard and offer a toast.

“… Seven … eight… nine …”

The crowd howled and she leaned forward again. Gillies was on his fourth tankard, and while the swallows were coming slower, they were still deep and steady, and the emptied vessel met the tabletop with the same resounding thud of satisfaction as MacSorley's had done moments earlier.

“By Christ's holy beard,” Archibald declared, swaying unsteadily on his perch, “he's that good, is Struan. Mayhap we'll be needin two casks soon—one tae drink out o', the ither tae piss intae.”

“I believe I can lead a full life without witnessing that landmark event,” Anne said, her head already too light by far. She pushed to her feet, bidding the men to remain seated when all would have risen with her. “It has been a very long, tiring day—” She paused as Archibald Cameron pitched forward off his chair and fell unconscious, plunging facedown into a net of waiting hands. “And I certainly would not want my presence to hinder anyone's more manly pursuits.”

MacGillivray, who had not obeyed her instruction to remain seated, settled his bonnet firmly, albeit askew, on his head.

“There is no need for you to leave, John,” she said, laying her hand on his chest.

He glanced down at her hand—as did nearly every other pair of eyes within a ten-foot radius—then smiled the kind of smile that, if seen in polite society, would have sent a bevy of chaperones into a dead faint.

“I'm no' bothered. I've every faith in Gillies. So much so in fact,” he added, leaning over to pluck the black cheroot off the table, “I might as well take this now an' enjoy it on the walk back to ma bed.”

Cameron reached for the fat Carolina. “And I've enough faith in Struan to savor this now and collect another come morning.”

MacGillivray glared down for a moment, then bared his teeth in a wide grin. “'Tis a good thing we're on the same side, you an' I. Ye might vex me enough I'd have to reshape that fine nose o' yourn.”

“And you have far too many teeth for my liking; I'd be bent to put a few of them in your pocket.”

The two men exchanged grins and clasped hands. After bidding all a good night, John led the way through the shoulder-to-shoulder bodies, parting them by sheer brute strength. Outside in the clear, cold air, he set the unlit cheroot between his lips and stretched his arms to the side and back before falling into step alongside Anne. At his insistence she had taken lodgings in a cottage that had been made available for her comfort, and since the entire length of the village was no more than a quarter mile, she preferred to walk rather than force herself up into a saddle again.

“Well?” she asked, drawing her plaid around her shoulders.

“Well what?”

“What do you make of it all so far?”

“I've no' had much chance to weigh
all
yet, but they seem to be a braw lot o' men back there. More than willing to follow Lord George anywhere he leads.”

Anne noted that he did not cite the prince's powers of leadership and wondered at the tension she had sensed herself between Charles Stuart and his commanding general. She was told that in the days following the retreat from Derby, when Lord George's logic had prevailed over the prince's passion, they were barely on speaking terms and communicated through brisk, formal notes.

The situation had hardly improved on the march from Glasgow to Stirling. Indeed, Lord George and two hundred of his Athollmen had left that very afternoon for Linlithgow
under the auspices of intercepting any supply trains bound for Hawley's camp.

“How far is Falkirk?” Anne asked.

“A glen, a ben, an' a bog,” he replied. “About ten miles that way,” he added, pointing off into the darkness.

“Do you suppose the English know we are here?”

“They'd be a ripe daft lot if they didna. I warrant we could climb up the top o' the nearest hill an' see the glow from their fires in the distance, just as they could as like see ours.”

“Do you suppose they are making plans to attack?”

“I doubt they're makin' plans to dredge the river, lass.” They walked in silence, listening to their own footsteps crunch across the frozen ground. The echoes of a dozen pipers reverberated along the throat of the glen, for it was a fine, clear night, the sky blanketed in stars. The surrounding slopes sparkled with a hundred bonfires and tents too numerous to count. They were pitched in a wide swath from here to the meadows of Bannockburn, and even beyond to the banks of the Forth. The camp had been spread thus in the hopes of deceiving the English scouts into vastly overestimating their strength, a ploy that had worked so often in the past, it was almost ludicrous.

“'Tis no sin to be frightened, ye ken.”

Her steps slowed. “I'm not frightened. Not really. Not if I don't think about it anyway.”

“An' if ye do think about it? What then?”

“Then … I feel like the world's biggest coward, because I just want to run and hide somewhere and hope that no one will ever find me.”

“Bah!” He put a gentle hand on her shoulder and, although he had not intended them to do so, his fingers found their way beneath her hair to the nape of her neck. “We all feel that way sometimes. Ye think I've never lain awake at night wonderin' how it would feel to have the wrong end of an English bayonet in ma gut?”

“I don't believe that,” she said on a wistful sigh. “I do not believe you are afraid of anything, John MacGillivray.”

“Then ye'd be wrong,” he said after a long, quiet moment. “Because I'm dead afraid o' you, lass.”

Anne slowed further, then stopped altogether. She became acutely aware of his fingers caressing the back of her neck. She knew it had been meant as a friendly gesture, nothing more, and yet… when she looked at him, when she felt the sudden tension in his hand that had come with the hoarse admission, she knew it was not the caress of a man who wanted only to be a friend.

Perhaps it was the closeness of his body, or the lingering effects of too much ale. Perhaps it was because there were too many stars, or because the skirling of the pipes was throbbing in her blood. Or perhaps it was just because they were alone for one of the few times she'd permitted such a lapse in judgment, knowing all too well how the tongues were wagging about them already.

Perhaps it was for all those reasons and more besides that she reached up and took his hand in hers, holding it while she turned her head and pressed her lips into his callused palm.

“It's yer eyes, I think,” he said, attempting a magnificent nonchalance. “They suck a man in, they do, so deep he disna think he can ever find his way out again. An' it makes him wonder … about the rest. If it would feel the same.”

Anne felt the rush of heat clear down to the soles of her feet, and she bowed her head, still holding his hand cradled against her cheek. An image was in her head, so strong it sent shivers down her spine, of this hand and the other moving over her bare skin, sliding over skin slicked with oil and warmed by his body heat. Another heartbeat put her against that damned wall at the fairground again, and she knew what he had to offer, knew what he could offer her now if she but gave him a sign.

“It would be wrong,” she said softly.

“Aye. It would.”

“I love my husband,” she insisted, not knowing whether she was trying to convince him, or convince herself. “Despite everything that has happened, all the harsh words, the terrible disappointments … I do still love him.”

“Then ye've naught to worry about. Ye need only leave go of ma hand, walk straight the way into yer cottage, into yer own bed, an' we'll pretend this conversation never happened.”

“Can we do that?”

“We'll have no choice, will we?”

Was he asking her or telling her? She tilted her face up, meeting eyes that were black as the night, burning with an emotion she did not even want to acknowledge, for if she did, she would reach out to him with her body and her soul, and they would both lose the battles they were waging within themselves.