Midnight Honor (37 page)

“Fine,” Deirdre said, ordering Damien to the door with an imperious wave of her hand. “But in the meantime you'll take off those filthy rags and get yourself into a proper hot bath. If Lady Anne will tell me how to find the kitchen, I'll make you a nice hot cup of tea and fetch some bread to settle your stomach.”

“Just tell Drena what you require and she will bring it at once,” Anne said, beckoning to the maid. “In the meantime, I will leave you to rest. Please remember what I said: If you need anything, anything at all, just tell Drena.”

The two women smiled their thanks. Anne hurried back
downstairs, for there were baggage carriers entering the front hall like a row of ants and servants everywhere, some attached to the prince, and others sent by lairds to make requests from the household. The hall quickly filled with noise and confusion, all of which might have grown to unmanageable heights if not for the sudden ominous thundering of a familiar voice.

Anne gratefully located the golden head belonging to John MacGillivray. He was standing in the middle of the foyer, his hands on his hips, his expression promising violence as he directed servants this way and that, dependent upon whether they were making inquiries, bringing deliveries, or were simply underfoot. He must have caught the splash of pale blue satin on the stairs, for he paused to grin up at her—a distraction that cost him in skin and blood as one of the porters scraped his bare calf with the edge of a wooden trunk and sent him dancing up onto one foot.

The prince, true to form, declared himself too feverish to take his meal in the dining room that evening. He begged Anne's pardon, sending his regrets along with a sheaf of dictated memorandums to Lochiel, Ardshiel, and Keppoch, the three chiefs who had been appealing to him to send contingents into Lochaber to oust the government troops from Fort Augustus and Fort William.

They were to get their wish. The prince had decided to dispatch them on the morrow with their respective clan contingents to blow both forts to splinters, if that was what was required to remove the Hanover presence from the Great Glen. Lord George Murray was due in Inverness at any moment and would undoubtedly, in his surly way, demand to know why the prince's forces sat idle. Charles had every intention of assuming command of the effort to take the Highlands, and despite a flurry of responses that came back from the chiefs advising him to wait for Lord George, he stood firm in his decision. Further, he ordered MacGillivray and the men of Clan Chattan to scout the terrain and determine the number of troops garrisoned at Fort George.

“The bastard is gonny put up a fight,” MacGillivray said,
buckling on his heavy leather crossbelts. He had come to dinner along with nearly fifty other lairds, only to see the pinch-faced O'Sullivan handing out the prince's slips of paper. There had been no gracious word of thanks for hauling his royal personage safely through the mountains. No courteous acknowledgment of the trouble Anne was taking to meet his every comfort, or of the risk she was taking just letting him sleep under her roof. There was not even to be a full day's rest for the men, who would have appreciated a small respite after the draining march. “Or does he think Loudoun will just smile and hand him the keys to the gates o' the fort?”

Anne watched him struggle a moment with a knotted thong on his gunbelt, then gently pushed his big hands aside. “Just be careful. We cannot spare any men at the moment to come break you out of gaol if you are caught.”

“I'll be fine. It's you I'm worried about. I'll say it here an' now: I dinna like the idea o' strippin' away nearly a thousand men to send them to Lochaber while ye're left here on yer own.”

“Lord George will be arriving with a thousand more any hour now,” she said, untying the knot and presenting him with both ends of the thong. “And I am hardly on my own.”

John ignored the thong and took her chin between his thumb and forefinger, tilting her face upward. His eyes were so close it was like staring into a bottomless black well, and his gaze was so intense she actually felt a shiver of fear.

“This is no joke, Annie. We're ten miles from Inverness— no' even a hard ride on a good horse. Loudoun's men have not been sittin' idle while we've been away proddin' Hawley up the arse. And aye, ye're as good as on yer own here, with a sick prince, a pregnant woman, an' a handful o' men so tired they can barely keep their eyes open.”

“Lord George is half a day's march away,” she reiterated, frowning slightly.

“A half a day by whose say-so? That bluidy Irish futtrat O'Sullivan? He wouldna ken how to judge how long it would take to walk from here to the loch.”

He let go of her chin and turned his attention back to retying the pouch that held his balls of shot. Anne continued to stare up into his face, distracted by a cut just below his ear
that had not been there earlier in the day. She noticed it now because he must have rubbed it and reopened the wound, leaving a smear of blood on his neck. And she noticed it because it was not ragged, like a scrape. It was clean and even, as if it had been delivered by the slash of a knife … or the point of a sword.

She watched him tying the thong, his fingers still clumsy at accomplishing such a simple thing, and now she could see that the knuckles of his right hand were torn and red-raw, and that he seemed to be favoring the left arm, keeping it tight against his ribs.

“You've been fighting again,” she said quietly.

“I fight every day. It's called keeping the men drilled an' primed for battle.”

She reached out and took his hand into hers, flattening it so the full extent of the scrapes and bruising was evident. “You drill with your fists?” Her gaze flicked over to his ribs. “What would I see if I asked you to open your shirt?”

“A fine, braw stot of a man. What would I see if I asked ye to open yers?” When he saw her surprised glance, he blew his way through a Gaelic oath. “That was a ripe fine foolish thing to say an' I beg yer pardon, lass. It just fell off ma tongue.”

“You're forgiven. As long as you don't lie to me. You were fighting again, were you not?”

His eyes came up to hers again. “'Twas nothing. A wee disagreement.”

“Not with one of our men, I hope?”

He hesitated. When he shook his head Anne knew better than to probe further. In the long march from Falkirk, she had heard of at least a dozen fights MacGillivray had either participated in or broken up. Her cousins had taken their fair share of bruises as well, most in response to an overheard insult or disparaging remark against the absent chief of Clan Chattan. Cameron had thought it best—safer for everyone concerned—to keep Angus's reasons for returning to Edinburgh confined to just a few people. John and Gillies knew. Her cousins and grandfather knew. Everyone else assumed he had done what many other English officers had done the moment they mouthed their parole: arrogantly gone back to his regiment and his command.

MacGillivray and her cousins had closed ranks, hoping to isolate her from the worst of the remarks, but that only made for raised hands and snickers of a different sort. More than once Anne had heard whispered speculation as to the exact nature of the relationship between herself and MacGillivray, and if she had had her full wits about her, she would have kept her distance. But with Angus gone, she desperately needed John's friendship, his strength, his courage. She knew, ever since that night outside the cottage in St. Ninians, that he tried his damnedest never to be alone with her, or if he was, never to allow the conversation to turn personal. But there were times it could not be avoided. There were also times, to her unparalleled shame, it even brought her comfort to know that if she ever cried out in the darkness, he would be there before the breath left her lips.

“Oh, John,” she sighed. “I'm so sorry to be so much trouble. I'm sorry for everything—for getting you into this mess, for laying all my burdens on your shoulders. For everything. I just wish there were some way of going back and doing things differently. I wish—”

He touched a finger briefly to her lips, silencing her. “Wheesht, lass. What would ye wish different? Would ye wish no' to love yer husband as much as ye do? Or for him no' to love you as much as he does?”

“But if you and I—”

His finger pressed harder and his eyes glittered like two black beads. “Never say it. Never put that thought into words, for it's the words we hear and remember, no' the thoughts behind them. A dozen years from now, when ye're plump an' happy with a muckle o' bairns clingin' to yer skirts, ye'll not even remember ye once had a thought o' what might have been had ye done this or that different. But if ye say it aloud, the words will come back to nag at ye. Ye know damned well Angus is the right man for ye. We both know it, an' for all that, it makes it easier.”

He ended his scold with a gentle chuck on her chin before lowering his hand and fussing with his belts again. And she almost believed him.

“What about the fighting?” she asked on a sigh.

“I didna say it makes it easy,” he said with a grin. “Just easier. As for bashin' a few heads, well… I'd do the same if ye were ma sister. Speakin' o' which”—he paused and frowned his way through another soft oath— “ma sister Ruth thinks it's well past time I paid a visit to Clunas.”

“To see Elizabeth?”

“Aye. Gillies thinks I should do it while I have the chance. I think mayhap I should, too, else her father will be after shovin' a musket up ma kilt.”

Anne smiled. “Then you'd best go. 'Twould be a terrible shame to think of you gelded.”

MacGillivray grinned. “Aye. Aye, it would at that. Then it's settled. I'm away to Inverness to peek through the hedgerows an' count bog-bins for the prince, then I'll be off to Clunas a day or so. I'll leave Gillies in charge o' the men. Ye'll be well protected.”

“Don't worry about me. Don't worry about anything. Think about yourself for a change. And take her some flowers. She'll like that and forgive you all your absences.”

“Flowers? Where the devil will I find flowers in the snow?”

Anne laughed and rose up on tiptoes to brush his cheek with a kiss. “That's why she will like it. Much more so than an anker of ale and a sheep's bladder full of blood sausage.”

He did not look convinced, but returned her smile anyway as he crammed his bonnet on his head. “She'll like flowers more than sausage?” he grumbled. “What a strange lot o' creatures you women are.”

Anne was still smiling when she climbed the stairs and made her weary way to bed. Candles had been left burning in the wall sconces for the benefit of the number of strangers sleeping under the gabled roof. Most of the bedrooms on the second and third floor were full, with a few spilled over onto pallets in the drawing room. As she walked quietly along the hallway, she could see by the light of her flickering candle the sleeping forms of servants hunched over in chairs outside their masters' doors.

She went into her own room and stood a moment at the threshold, her gaze going—as it did almost every time she came into the chamber—to the armchair in the far corner. If she tried very hard she could see Angus's ghostly image sitting there, his feet stretched out in front of him, his shirt glowing white against the shadows, a lock of dark chestnut hair curling down over his forehead. Every time she looked she hoped it would not just be an image she saw there. He had surprised her once, appearing unexpectedly. He could do it again, could he not?

If he was alive.

A draft tickled its way across her cheek and caused the candle flame to splutter. The wind was gusting outside, hard enough to cause a backwash in the chimney and send tiny puffs of smoke and ash curling down over the grate. The fire was high enough not to suffer for it; nonetheless the air smelled of pine knots and charred memories.

“Angus.” Her whisper sounded loud in the silence. “Where are you? I know you are alive. I would have felt it if you were not.”

She pushed away from the door and walked into her dressing room, passing through to the adjoining chamber. Obviously Hardy had not thought it necessary to burn any lamps or stoke the fire in his master's room, and Anne's candle cast the only pinpoint of light through the darkness. It seemed even quieter here. Colder. She closed her eyes and bowed her head, and as she drew a slow, deep breath into her lungs, it was there: the faint tang of sandalwood oil.

She felt the tears coming and did nothing to try to stop them. It was all right. She was alone and it was all right for
la belle rebelle
to cry. There was no one here to see her or to judge her, no one she had to impress with her wit or her calm demeanor. Here, she did not have to be strong or brave or have all the answers. She did not have to hide the fact that she trembled inside with fear and felt so helpless at times she just wanted to scream. Nor did she have to hide the fact that she hated herself for the envy she felt for Elizabeth Campbell of Clunas, which was so completely unwarranted and unfair to MacGillivray that she sagged under the added burden of shame.

The candle started to shake, and became so heavy she had to set it aside. Blinded by tears, she crawled up onto Angus's big bed and dragged one of the huge velvet cushions to her breast, hugging it there, holding it there until she cried herself to sleep.

Chapter Nineteen