Page 12 of Midnight Honor (Highland Wolves #3)

11

N inety miles directly to the southwest, Angus Moy had such a foul taste in his mouth, no amount of claret, whisky, or French brandy was proving able to remove it. It was not the lingering effects of the meal he'd had earlier, for the salmon served that evening at Holyrood House had been succulent, the venison tender enough to cut with a fork. It was the company that was wearing on his patience, souring his disposition, a condition that seemed to be becoming increasingly frequent with each passing day. Even with his own men, he found himself snapping their heads off with little provocation other than a sidelong glance or a heartbeat of hesitation. He had, to his utter personal disgust, even ordered a man flogged for failing to groom his horse properly the day before.

The harshness of the penalty had, perversely, won him respect from another quarter. General Henry Hawley was a seasoned campaigner, a veteran of the wars in Europe. He was a particularly cruel commander, a harsh disciplinarian beloved by no one, respected only by those who shared his penchant for floggings and hangings. Every day without fail there were entries made in the Order Book, names of men sentenced to the lash who received any number from the minimum of twenty-five strokes to the maximum of three thousand. Gibbets were one of the first structures erected when Hawley made camp, and the more prominent the location, he reasoned, the better for maintaining the proper morale. In Edinburgh, he had chosen the town square, for his occupational powers were not limited to soldiers; there were a number of townspeople he felt were deserving of lessons in constancy.

Businessmen known to have willingly provisioned the Jacobites with weaponry or munitions were fined into bankruptcy and locked in public stocks to be spat upon and pelted with rotted garbage. Those found guilty of participating in acts of sabotage or suspected of causing general mischief were either lashed to within an inch of their lives or hanged by way of example alongside soldiers accused of cowardice or sedition. Women fared little better. Doxies who stated their preference for men in kilts were treated to the whirligig; they were strapped into a chair and raised off the ground, then spun at such length and with such vigor, the nausea and vomiting lasted for days.

Following Cumberland's example, Hawley had forbidden gambling and banned women from the company tents. A man with an urge had to either ease it with his own hand or risk the lash by bribing his way outside the picket lines to the wagons of the camp followers—none of whom suffered a lack of steady custom despite the restrictions.

Naturally these rules did not apply to officers. Many of them traveled with wives or mistresses, and to judge by the resplendent array of silks, the glittering splash of jewels, the sweeping décolletages and seductive come-hither smiles, one would be hard-pressed to believe the country was in the midst of a rebellion. No common barracks for these fine officers, either. The lavish homes of the burghers and bankers had been appropriated as billets, the wine cellars and pantries accessed freely, with only the vaguest promises of compensation.

Angus had been assigned a lovely gray brick home with a spectacular view of the spires and steeples of the ancient royal city. From an upper window he could watch the effects of the sunrise against the massive edifice of Edinburgh Castle, the battlements braised gold and orange, shrouded in sea mists that gradually burned away to reveal the glinting mouths of the cannon that looked down over the streets. Old Colonel Guest had stubbornly refused to surrender the castle throughout the three months of Jacobite occupation, and had even threatened to fire his heavy guns on the city should any attempt be made to breach the walls. Fortunately for the townspeople, Charles Stuart had no siege cannon in his possession at the time, and the castle was left unmolested.

Upon the hasty departure of the Jacobite forces, the gates had swung open with great pomp and ceremony to welcome General Hawley when he reclaimed the capital city. Hawley, in turn, had relieved the beleaguered troops and paraded Colonel Guest from the inner courtyard of Crown Square along the Royal Mile to opulent lodgings at Holyrood House as if he had single-handedly preserved the crown's possessions in Scotland.

Since Angus was, in effect, a bachelor during this sojourn, he had been billeted with Major Roger Worsham. He had little doubt the pairing had been on purpose, so that his comings and goings could be closely monitored. To that end, Worsham was, if nothing else, efficient to a fault. If Angus went for a stroll, he was afraid of stopping too quickly lest the major walk up his heels.

As far as his personal habits went, the man was a lecher and a boor. He had convinced Adrienne de Boule to come away from Inverness, and while she was officially housed in another area of the city, there were nights Angus could hear them laughing and carrying on in Worsham's room at the end of the hall. Several mornings, whether by accident or intent, he had emerged from his room to find Adrienne in various stages of undress, either accompanying the major down to breakfast or trying to entice him back to bed. The first couple of times she had seemed genuinely embarrassed. After that, she only laughed at his shocked expression.

Angus, on the other hand, had not heard from Anne since he had left Inverness. She had not written, had not even troubled with the courtesy of informing him she had left Drummuir House. Indeed, he might not have known at all had his valet, Robert Hardy, not let it slip that he had sent for some of Angus's personal possessions and been informed by the housekeeper that not only had Anne left the dowager's house, she had removed her things from Moy Hall and taken up residence at Dunmaglass as a guest of John MacGillivray .

When he had first heard this, Angus had been dumbfounded. He had known she was upset over his departing for Edinburgh, but he had not foreseen the possibility of her being so repulsed she would move out of his home and into that of another man.

Generally speaking, his insights into the workings of a woman's mind were limited, but with Anne, who never saw any reason or use for pretense, he felt reasonably sure he knew where he stood in her estimation at any given time. If anything, it had been her inability to conceal any of her emotions that posed the greatest threat to her safety these past months. The daggers in her eyes were real; anyone foolhardy enough to earn her wrath was impaled on the first glance. Angus himself had felt the flashing darts on many an occasion, but she had always stopped short of letting him bleed to death. She loved him; he knew she did. And more times than he was proud to admit, he had used that love to defuse a potentially explosive situation, for every man in the clan respected and admired Rhuad Annie and at times her opinions carried as much weight as those of her revered grandfather.

Angus's vulnerability was his love for her, and as much as he wanted, needed, craved to shout it from the tallest mountain peak, he could not let anyone else see it. He could not, for instance, let Forbes or Loudoun have the faintest suspicion that he would have forsaken everything, his clan, his titles, his wealth, his very life in order to protect her from harm.

The major had not mentioned the incident at Drummuir House again, but it was clear he had not believed for an instant that Angus and John MacGillivray had been drunk together that or any other night at Moy Hall. Whether or not he believed Anne had merely been walking off a cramp in the hallway was doubtful as well, but without proof he could do nothing more than speculate over who had stolen the dispatches and how they had eventually made their way into Lord John Drummond's hands. It had been an astonishing coup by the Jacobites, and part of Angus was as yet unable to grasp the fact that his wife had been singularly responsible for sending six thousand crack Dutch troops back to Holland.

There had been further rumors that the Farquharson trio had been riding around the shire attempting to foment rebellion within the clan, and reports that MacGillivray and MacBean had been raiding the quartermaster supplies at Fort George, but again there was no proof, and half of what the Jacobites had accomplished thus far—including the panic over the imminent landing of a massive French fleet—had been achieved by fabrications and rumors. Until the actual retreat from Derby, the government had not even had a clear idea of how many Highlanders had marched into the heart of their country. Lord George Murray had been adept at subterfuge and confusion, sending out patrols ahead of the advancing army to warn the towns and cities in their path that a great hoard of ravenous Highlanders was descending on their countryside. Twenty and thirty thousand troops had been reported at various times, sending the population fleeing before them and allowing the few thousand Jacobites to enter the English cities unmolested.

The retreat had been as much of an embarrassment to the Hanovers as to the Jacobites, for when the news spread that there had never been more than five thousand Scots in the prince's camp, the Elector's generals were a laughingstock.

One would think they had learned a hard lesson, but General Hawley sat idling away his days and evenings in Holyrood House while the prince's forces regrouped and re-supplied, growing stronger each day. The Stuart's main army was back to full strength at Glasgow, while Lord Lewis Gordon was welcoming fresh contingents to Aberdeen every day.

Despite receiving daily—sometimes hourly—reports of increased activity, Hawley appeared unconcerned. Angus suspected the general's own arrogance dictated that he wait until there were sufficient numbers to make opposing them worthwhile. How, he had been heard to proselytize, could sending his eight thousand troops to quash a disorganized rabble of twelve hundred be regarded as anything more than a hollow victory? Even twenty-five hundred posed no real threat. Charles Stuart was preparing to decamp from Glasgow and march to Stirling; defeating him there would be a worthy challenge.

Angus listened to Hawley's boastings and only thought him the greater fool for his arrogance. He had surely read the reports after the battle of Prestonpans, wherein the officers stated that the sheer terror evoked by the sight and sounds of a Highland charge had scattered most of their men into a retreat without their having fired a single shot. The blond, pike-faced Hamilton Garner had been on the field that day. If anyone should be tugging on Hawley's ear, it should be Garner, for he had been among the few who had stood their ground and met the bloody onslaught, but at an appalling cost of over half the dragoons in his regiment.

“Ah, there you are, MacKintosh.”

Angus cursed inwardly and took another sip of brandy. At the conclusion of the evening meal, he had removed himself from the smoke-filled drawing room and had hoped to steal away from Holyrood House before his absence was noticed. Waiting for the distraction of musicians and pretty women to take effect, he had temporarily taken refuge in the portrait gallery, a long, arched affair of marble and gold gilding.

“Admiring one of the royal ancestors, are you?” Major Worsham came up beside him and tilted his head to study the painting Angus was standing under. The walls were hung with tapestries and life-sized portraits depicting the royal house of Stuart in all its former glory; the one Angus had gravitated toward was of the prince's great-great-grandmother, the Stuart queen known as Bloody Mary.

She had been a strikingly handsome beauty in her youth, and the artist had not spared the power of his brush to portray her. Her hair was as red as flame, her throat smooth and long, her eyes as blue as sapphires where they gazed seductively down from their lofty perch.

“There is certainly much to admire,” Worsham conceded, “despite her penchant for murder and intrigue. I can see why you would choose her to contemplate over the others: the resemblance to your wife is quite startling … around the eyes and the mouth in particular.”

Angus turned, surprised and vaguely unsettled at the sight of another scarlet-clad officer standing behind him. It was Major Hamilton Garner, with the sloe-eyed Adrienne de Boule on his arm.

“I am afraid I do not quite see it,” Garner said affably. “But then I only had the pleasure of making your lady wife's acquaintance the one time.”

“There are some vague similarities,” Angus admitted, giving his voice an edge of boredom. "Very vague."

“Come now,” Worsham argued with an airy wave of a hand. “The hair, the eyes, the fulsome shape of her … upper form. The likeness is there. I am driven to inquire if you have ever had the Lady Anne sit for a portrait?”

“I have suggested it several times, but she always manages to find an excuse. She imagines too many shortcomings which might lead to exaggerations on the canvas.”

“Shortcomings? I was not aware of any aside from the sharpness of her tongue.”

Angus shrugged. "She thinks she is too tall. And she believes her nose is violently crooked, whereas I have assured her it only tilts … ever so slightly … to the left.”

“Gad. Most married men would not be able to tell you if their wives had blue eyes or brown. Never say that you find yourself missing her company, sir.”

Angus caught himself and smiled wanly. “I confess there are times I miss the diversion.”

"Ah, well, if it is a diversion you require, I have no doubt Mademoiselle de Boule could invite a friend or two over to share your company."

Angus glanced at Adrienne, as he was invited to do. Her hair was piled high and powdered as white as her skin, of which there was no lack on display. She was a tiny, slender creature to begin with, but her waist had been pinched even smaller, and her breasts pushed so high there were two faintly pink rims of nipple showing above the rich burgundy silk of her gown.

She saw him staring and smiled.

“Your wife,” Garner said casually. “I understand she has been diverting more than her fair share of attention these days.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“I gather you have not read today's crop of dispatches?”

Angus looked into the jade green eyes and had the sensation of being lured out onto ice that was too thin to bear his weight. “I have been conducting musket drills in the field with my regiment all day, and I confess the thought of a hot bath was more appealing than wading through a small hillock of parchment.”

“Then you know nothing of your wife's activities in your absence?”

“You make it sound as if she has stormed London and taken the king hostage.”

Garner's laugh was a brief exhale from the back of his throat, as phony as the air of friendly camaraderie. “I would suggest, sir, that this is no jest. It seems your wife has been making quite the spectacle of herself. We have it on good authority that she has been gadding about the countryside in secret, aspiring to incite rebellion amongst your clansmen. To be more precise, she has declared for the prince and spent the last three weeks collecting signatures on a petition that would give her the necessary leverage to assume leadership of the clan in your absence.”

Angus stared at him in genuine astonishment. “I don't believe it.”

“The source is reliable,” Garner added, watching Angus's face intently. “Lord Loudoun himself questioned a man they recently arrested and who was … persuaded … to reveal what he knew about a flurry of rumors we had been hearing for the past fortnight. In all honesty, it must be said there was a suspicion in some quarters that you might have sanctioned, even encouraged her activities, but—" he held up a hand with the arrogant negligence of someone accustomed to offering insults without fear of reprisal— “Lord Forbes has personally vouched for your loyalty and has assured the general your commitment to King George is firm.”

Angus set his glass on a nearby table and clasped his hands behind his back. “My commitment to Scotland is firm, sir. To do what is best for her and her people.”

“An admirable sentiment, but as you know there can be no room for sentiment on a battlefield. As a fellow officer I am more concerned with knowing that when my dragoons charge the field, your infantry will be behind us to give support.”

“So long as your men are charging in the right direction, Major, you have no need to concern yourself over the whereabouts of me or my regiment.”

The green of Garner's eyes darkened, and Angus could feel the ice cracking beneath his feet.

“You take liberties with my humor, sir,” Garner said stiffly.

“You take liberties with my country, my family, and my good name. I do not know who this ‘reliable source’ of yours might be, but I doubt very much that my wife is gadding about the countryside. She is in Inverness, the guest of my mother the dowager Lady MacKintosh, and if there are rumors, I suggest they are unsubstantiated at best, unmitigated folly at worst.”

“And you can offer proof she is at Drummuir House?”

Angus's eyes cut swiftly and coldly to Worsham. “I should not have to prove any such thing, sir.”

“But if you did,” the major countered, his eyes glinting.

“If I did,” Angus said, “I have letters from both my wife and my mother. Long, boringly detailed letters about how they have been spending their long, boring days. How can you be certain the woman riding about the countryside creating havoc is my wife?”

“Various reports have mentioned a tall, red-haired woman in the company of John MacGillivray,” Garner said. “They place her at his house as well, at Dunmaglass.”

“Various reports swore the prince's army was fifty thousand strong. If the proof you offer is that this woman has red hair, I suggest you try to find a farm, a village, a city tavern lacking someone who fits the same description. At the very least, I would suggest you make the acquaintance of John MacGillivray's fiancée—a very tall, very striking woman with a veritable cloud of long red hair—before you offer insults against my wife.”

Garner's eyes narrowed and Angus thought he looked like a lizard preparing to strike. It was a safe bet the major had not met Elizabeth Campbell, or even if he had, that he would not remember she was short and dark-haired. In any case, Angus braced himself, wondering where his best chances lay in a duel—with sabers or pistols.

But it was Adrienne de Boule's much-put-upon sigh that ended the tense standoff. That and a snap of her fan that sounded like a gunshot in the silence.

“Come now, gentlemen,” she scolded prettily. “Must we spoil a perfectly lovely evening by scowling at each other? Captain MacKintosh, you promised me a set, and I can hear the musicians tuning.”

“You will have to forgive me if I find I am suddenly not in the mood for dancing.”

“That was the excuse you used last night and the night before.” She gathered the folds of her gown and moved daintily over to stand by his side, draping her free hand through the crook of his arm. “Refuse me again, my lord, and I shall be left with no alternative but to toss myself out of a window in despair.”

Angus frowned down at her. His first instinct was to offer to open the nearest pane of glass. His second, arrived at when he felt the points of her nails dig into his arm, was to acknowledge the warning gleam in her eyes.

“Naturally,” he said haltingly, “I should hate to be responsible for such a waste.”

“Bien!” She smiled at Garner and Worsham. “If you gentlemen will excuse us, then?”

The two scarlet-clad officers watched them walk along the length of the gallery and Angus could feel the heat of their glares burning between his shoulder blades.

“Do you have a death wish, Captain,” she murmured when they were out of earshot, “or are you just an idiot?”

He started to draw to a halt but she maintained her grip on his arm and kept him moving forward.

“The pair of them would like nothing better than to goad you into a fight. Garner, in particular, is as bloody-minded as they come, and Worsham … well. He attempts to compensate for his shortcomings in other areas by strutting around like a bandy cock.”

“Mademoiselle de Boule, while I appreciate your stepping in to defuse the situation—”

“The green-eyed one would cut you down without expending a bead of sweat,” she said bluntly. “He is a master swordsman and I have heard he toys with his victims as a cat toys with a mouse, and when he tires of the game, he ends it. As simply as that.”

“Your opinion of my fate at his hands is heartening,” he said dryly.

“I am a realist, m'sieur. I have seen you practicing in the exercise yards. You would not last beyond a minute or two. ”

“Now see here—”

“No. You listen to me. You have no idea how close you have come on several occasions to being arrested. The only reason you have not been before now is that although the major is convinced you are passing information to the Jacobites, he has not been able to catch you at it. Until he does, he would not dare go against the guarantee Lord Forbes has proffered on your behalf.”

“How do you know about that? And why the devil would they think—?” He stopped as they entered the ballroom and Adrienne's skirt was snagged on the saber of a passing officer. First and always a flirt, she assured the handsome young man there was no damage, then for the two full minutes it took for the guests to assemble and form lines for the dance, she teased him about the size of his weapon and the hardness of his blade.

The music commenced and she came forward, bowing in front of Angus, low enough for him to whisper urgently over the top of her head.

“Why the devil would they think I have been passing information to the Jacobites?” he hissed.

“Because your wife is one of them, m'sieur, and I saw the look of longing on your face when you were studying that portrait in the gallery.”

“Politics aside, Anne has better sense than to involve herself in something so dangerous.”

Adrienne straightened and gave him an odd look, then swirled away in a graceful circle, the burgundy silk of her wide, ruffled skirts flaring out in perfect symmetry with the dozen other colorful skirts on either side. When they were close enough again, she smiled and barely moved her lips as she spoke. “You foolish man. Do you really believe she is languishing at Drummuir House?”

“I do not know what you are implying, but—”

“You really do not know?”

“Of course I bloody don't!” They parted, and Angus had to bite his tongue until the next pass. He was completely confused as to what was going on here, but he had to be convincing in his ignorance.

“Your wife is a day's ride from Aberdeen,” Adrienne said, sweeping forward to execute a graceful measure. “She has brought eight hundred of your clansmen with her, all armed, all wearing the Stuart cockade.”

Angus stumbled. He bumped into the gentleman beside him, who accepted his hastily murmured apology before the couples parted and moved into the next pattern of intricate steps.

Eight hundred men!

That could not possibly be true!

Good God, if it was … What was she thinking? No, obviously she was not thinking at all, but… eight hundred men! He, the chief of Clan Chattan, had barely managed to muster six hundred to his command, and by the time he had arrived in Edinburgh, all but forty had melted away into the night, refusing to raise arms against the prince.

Adrienne swept back in a crush of burgundy silk. “They have even accorded her a rank,” she said sweetly. “They call her Colonel Anne. She has appointed officers to serve under her, of course; most notably Captain John Alexander MacGillivray.”

This time Angus came to a full stop. His hands hung limp at his sides and he was oblivious to the stares and hissed rebukes of the surrounding gambollers. The vast amounts of alcohol he had consumed throughout the evening seemed to catch up to him all at once, swamping his senses, leaving him light-headed, his mouth dry, his palms wet. Seeing the color drain swiftly out of his face, Adrienne quickly took his arm and guided him through a set of open doors that led out onto a stone terrace.

At her prompting, he took several deep gulps of cold air, which helped considerably. At least he was in no danger of dropping to the floor like a sack of grain. Adrienne disappeared for a few moments, then was back pressing a glass of undiluted claret into his hand.

“Drink it,” she ordered. “All of it.”

“How do you know these things about Anne? How do you know they are true?”

“My sources are better than Hawley's,” she said simply. “As soon as your Colonel Anne arrives in Aberdeen, it will be difficult to convince anyone that she is at home writing letters.”

Angus rubbed his temple. “I… have no idea what happened. I mean, I know she is spirited and headstrong, but this … this goes far beyond anything she has done before. ”

“Yes, well, we all of us do things from time to time that go far beyond anything we have done before, especially in times like this. Sometimes we even surprise ourselves by pretending to be something we are not. By pretending, for instance, that we enjoy being pawed and fondled when we can barely endure the touch of a man's hand. That particular man, at any rate.”

His frown deepened as he looked at her. “Worsham?”

“He is a pig, m'sieur. A cruel, mean pig, and I scrub myself raw each morning after I have been with him.”

“Then why …?”

“Because he is a poor reader,” she said, smiling slyly. “He has to sound words aloud to understand the letters that he sees on the paper. And this he most often does at night in his room, when none of the other officers can see him and perhaps laugh at his inability. At first he was careful in my presence and only moved his lips, but then he found something he thought would entertain me and when I told him it only bored me and put me to sleep, he started doing it just to annoy me. It amuses him, you see, to annoy and torment. The more I ignored his dispatches and charts and memoranda, the more he began to read aloud, and because I have a very good memory, I am able to write down these same words later and pass them on to men who know how best to use the information. It is not as valiant as donning a sword and riding about the countryside calling men to arms, but my talents are severely limited. Specialized, even, you might say. This was something I could do, and do well.”

“You are a spy?”

“I prefer to call myself a loyal Jacobite, m'sieur. And perhaps the next time you see me in the hallway coming down to breakfast, you will remember the extent of my sacrifice and not scowl quite so darkly?”

Angus was speechless, but she only laughed and shook her head at his naiveté. “Now then, my bold captain—whose confidence I assume I may trust—these letters from your wife that you spoke so gallantly of, I do not suppose they truly exist?”

“Surely Worsham will not ask to see them.”

“No. But he will have your room searched, you may count upon it. ”

He spread his hands in a gesture of impotence.

“Long and boring?” she asked with an exaggerated sigh. “ Bien , I have a maid, Constance, who enjoys talking so much she forgets to take a breath. I shall sit her down with a quill and a sheaf of paper and by morning, you shall have your letters. Dozens of them, for she is creative enough you could well end up with a penny novel. Be sure you read them, in case you need to know what they contain.”

“Is that not a horrendous risk to your own safety?”

"The horrendous risk was confiding in you, m'sieur, knowing you could expose me to the major as a spy and win enormous favor with the English duke.”

"And yet you took that risk."

Her smile seemed to turn sad. "As I said m'sieur, I saw your face when you looked at the portrait and thought of your wife. To betray me you would also betray her and I think you would not do that at any cost."

She rose up on tiptoe and put her mouth to his ear. “And besides that, when I deliver the letters to your room, you shall owe me an outrageous favor in the future.”

Her lips brushed his cheek, then she was gone, stepping back inside the ballroom with a coy snap of her fan.