Midnight Honor (10 page)

“I have never worn knives to a formal dinner,” she snapped.

“Then you have obviously never been looking in a mirror when your temper is roused.” He paused a moment, forcing himself to regain control. “Well?”

“Well, what?”

“I plan to leave here around six P.M.; may I anticipate the pleasure of your company in the carriage, Lady MacKintosh?”

Anne turned and walked toward her dressing room. At the doors that led through to her own bedchamber, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “I expect you will know the answer to that at six P.M. tomorrow, my lord. As will I.”

Chapter Five

A
ngus was in the library when the clock on the mantel struck six. He was dressed in an elegant long jacket of rich hunting green velvet over a skirted waistcoat made of a paler shade of green silk. The latter was embroidered with bands of clustered ivy leaves, while the front facings of the doublet were stiff with ornate scrolls of gold thread, the cuffs folded back to allow a rich display of ruffles about the wrists. The short breacan kilt was red-and-green tartan; his calves were sheathed in hose of dark red wool with green fretting. His shoes were buckled in silver, and a scabbard of soft kid leather chased in gold was draped from shoulder to hip and held his dress sword. As was his favor, he wore no wig, but his hair had been plied with hot tongs at the temples, the length gathered into a neatly bound tail.

He had not seen Anne all day, had not received any messages to indicate whether she would be accompanying him to the party or preferred him to attend on his own and remain there until hell froze over. Despite his excesses of the previous night, he'd had two large glasses of claret in the past fifteen minutes while he paced and watched the hand on the timepiece crawl inexorably toward the twelve. Normally, she strived to be punctual and was more often than not early. Angus had caught a glimpse of her personal maid, Drena,
scurrying down the hallway earlier, but he had deemed it unworthy of him to stop a servant to inquire if his wife was dressed for an evening out, or an evening at home.

He adjusted his sporran for the tenth time in as many minutes and ran a finger between his neck and cravat to ease some of the tightness. His valet, Robert Hardy, had assisted him in dressing, as usual, and while the tall, thin manservant rarely expressed his opinions in words, his mood could generally be gauged by the amount of tension he applied to the neckcloth or the brusqueness in his hand as he brushed specks of lint off the velvet coat.

Tonight he had all but battered Angus's shoulders with the vigor of his brushstrokes, and if the starched linen had been wound any tighter his master's face would have turned blue.

Hardy, a staunch and proper manservant for many years, had initially been affronted to the verge of seeking employment elsewhere when he heard of his master's impending marriage to a red-haired hellion. He had been as disdainful as the rest of the servants, until the day he had found Anne up to her elbows in blood, trying frantically to help one of the scullery maids who had cut herself on a fireplace grating. Not only had quick thinking saved the girl's life, but Anne's knowledge of wounds and stitchery had likely saved the arm. Since most highborn ladies would have been more inclined to scream and faint rather than ruin a silk gown with blood-stains—a servant's blood, no less—Hardy began to view the erstwhile hellion with a grudging measure of respect. He began to communicate, by barely perceptible nods and shakes of the head at first, which forks or spoons were to be used with each course during a long formal meal. Eventually, he laid out an entire, elaborate setting for a formal banquet, explaining each piece and its purpose. This progressed to teaching her how to plan menus, and when he discovered that her education had stopped at a rustic, poorly spelled scrawl, he discreetly arranged for a tutor to visit each day until she was able to copy out full pages of poetry and prose in an elegant script. At her further shy request, he added lessons in elocution, carriage, and deportment. She balked at learning how to embroider or play the pianoforte, but she enjoyed sketching and showed a genuine flair for painting with watercolors.

Hardy, governed by ingrained and unbreakable rules of conduct, had kept Angus apprised of each new accomplishment. The laird, in turn, had discussed other interests she mentioned in passing, so that when the suggestion came from Hardy, she would not feel obligated or guided by her husband's hand in any way.

It was reward enough for Angus just to see the pride shining in her eyes after each new achievement. He had no burning desire to see her transformed into a preened and perfumed chatelaine; on the contrary, he still smiled when he remembered the looks on the faces of several starched visitors when she had come running into the room, flushed and out of breath, her hair scattered around her shoulders, her feet bare and her skirts rucked up to avoid the nipping teeth of the puppy in hot pursuit.

Anne had entered his life like a small storm. The sound of her laughter across the dinner table had left him staring on more occasions than he cared to admit, not because he disapproved of the sound, but because he wondered why it had never been there before. The thought of his mother joking with his father, whether alone or in company, was as foreign to him as the notion that they must have been intimate on at least four occasions through their marriage.

Last night he had gently chided Anne for speaking her mind, but how he envied her the freedom to do so. How he wished he were free to admit how desperately he wanted to be as open and honest with his emotions as she. But the MacKintoshes could trace their lineage back to King Malcolm IV, who reigned in 1153, and there had not been one day in his youth that he had not been reminded of it. Nor had he been allowed to forget that it was the misguided zeal of his grandfather, who had righteously declared for the Jacobites in the ill-fated Fifteen, that had cost the clan dearly in forfeited fines and estates. It had taken nearly two decades and a sworn vow of allegiance to the English king to restore the family titles and position.

Angus had not asked for the burden of becoming clan chief. In fact, there had been some debate among the other lairds that the title should fall to Cluny MacPherson, for they were unsure of a man whose leadership had never been
tested, a man who had spent ten years on the Continent attending operas and studying the ancient languages of dead poets.

Angus Moy would be the first to admit he was a scholar, not a fighter. He appreciated fine art, music, literature. He had been taught to fence by a Spanish master, but had never fought a duel, never wielded a broadsword or fired a pistol in anger. To his secret mortification, he had once vomited at the sight of a beggar's hand crushed to bloody pulp beneath the wheels of a wagon.

He had been appalled the first time the lairds of Clan Chattan had gathered to acknowledge his title and confer upon him the traditional oaths of fealty. Many of them had arrived in velvet and lace, but an equal number had stalked into the hall, their faces bearded and sullen, their
clai' mórs
slung across their backs. He was quick to discover that very little had changed in the decade he had been away, which was to say that nothing much had changed in the past six hundred years of feudal law. While the Lowlands had more or less come to accept the progressive realities of English rule, and were even learning how to prosper by exporting wool and coal and raw iron, the Highlanders still clung to the clan system that had always dominated the mountainous regions. Lowlanders embraced the fair practices of the courts and knew that just because they had been born on a farm did not mean they had to die on a farm. In the Highlands, the crofters could not even marry without the permission of the chief, let alone sell a bale of wheat without giving nine tenths of any profit to the overlord.

Angus had needed no one's permission to marry; he could have nullified the agreement between his father and Fearchar Farquharson with a slash of a pen. Yet he had humored the old gray warrior. He had invited him to Moy Hall and listened to his arguments, knowing all the while exactly what he was going to do.

As it happened, Angus had seen Anne Farquharson before he had even set eyes upon the elegant ivy-covered walls of his home. She had been riding across the moor, her waist-long hair whipping out in a fiery red wake behind her. He had first thought she was on a runaway, for the stallion was huge and
powerful, his hooves thundering through the waves of deer grass like a rampant charger. But then he had seen two men in hot pursuit—her cousins, he would later learn—and he had seen her halt on the crest of a hill to mock, with a crudely up-thrust finger, their paltry efforts at catching her.

The image of her face, as breathtakingly beautiful as the Highlands that rose in untamed splendor around her, had stayed branded on Angus's mind for days afterward, and had kept intruding on his thoughts each time he opened his mouth to argue with Fearchar over the terms of the betrothal. It should not have intruded. It should not have affected the way he thought or acted or even breathed at times—and yet it did.

Even now, after four years of marriage, Wild Rhuad Annie could still leave him stripped breathless. She could render his palms damp and his groin aching with memories of her body sliding hard over his. She could set him pacing in a library, adjusting collars and cuffs, posing in front of a window with an assumed nonchalance every time he heard a footstep out in the hallway.

Angus finished the last warm mouthful of claret and checked the clock again. It was ten minutes past six. The invitation had said seven, though dinner could not be fashionably served until ten. It would take at least an hour to travel the frozen miles to Culloden House by carriage, and while it was the height of bad taste for a guest to arrive on or near the actual stipulated hour, Angus could not reasonably delay his departure much past six-thirty. Seven at the very latest.

He could, of course, not go at all. He had even less desire than Anne to see the smug, pretentious faces of Duncan Forbes and his phalanx of strutting English bloodhounds. But he was trapped as surely as if there were a boot planted solidly at the back of his neck.

He was not aware he had closed his eyes until the faint whisper of silk on wool prompted him to open them. He turned, just his head at first, and by such slow fractions of inches it took several seconds to complete the motion.

More than long enough for the flush to rise in Anne's throat and darken her cheeks.

She was definitely not dressed to remain sitting at home
by the hearth. She shimmered against the darker hallway like the luminous wing of a dragonfly, the bell-shaped expanse of her skirt spreading wide enough to fill the doorway. The bodice of embroidered pale gold silk was cut square, the stomacher molding her waist and descending in a flattering, deep V. Her breasts were pressured upward, rising softly over the upper edge of silk, and although an admiring eye might linger there in appreciation of the creamy half-moons, it was eventually drawn upward to the slender column of her throat, then higher still to the carefully piled extravagance of gleaming red curls.

Angus tried to blindly set his glass on the mantel, missed, and had to take his eyes away from Anne for a moment in order to steady the crystal base on the stone. When he looked back, she had swept inside the room, the slitted panels at the front of her skirt flaring stylishly over the rich layers of petticoat beneath.

“I am sorry I am late. Drena had a deal of trouble with my hair.”

“The delay was well worth it,” he murmured. “You look lovely.”

Compliments, as always, left Anne flustered and she gave her hands a nervous twist in the direction of the side table. “Are we in a dreadful hurry, or might I have a sip of wine before we leave?”

“Of course you may.” He glanced past her shoulder to where Hardy hovered just out of earshot. The elderly valet came forward at once, signaling another servant, who was burdened under an armload of capes, to wait off to one side.

After Angus nodded to indicate he would take another, two glasses of wine were poured and set on a silver tray. The first was presented to Anne, who exchanged a furtive glance with Hardy before taking it. His eyes gave away nothing, no hint that he could detect the harsh bite of Highland spirits on her breath, but her hand was visibly unsteady and her mouth dry as tinder.

Throughout the morning and most of the afternoon, she had been determined to send down a message that she was too ill to venture out tonight. She felt hurt and betrayed, resentful
and not a little confused by the conflicting actions of her husband and the emotions they had aroused. She had sent for Hardy, then waved him away again, sent for him and dismissed him without delivering any messages to anyone but the Almighty, who had heard her cursing fluently once the doors were closed.

Having hardly slept a wink in the last twenty-four hours, her nerves felt frayed, raw. It normally required enormous preparation in her mind and body before she could tolerate her husband's
associates
with any measure of reasonably civil demeanor. Because she interpreted “reasonable” as meaning not spitting in their faces or calling them cowards and traitors, Angus had not often pressed her into accompanying him to formal affairs held at Culloden House or Fort George. By the same token, it was because he
had
spared her the discomfort of enduring all the political bombast and conceits that she had ultimately decided to join him tonight.