Page 14 of Midnight Honor (Highland Wolves #3)

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A fter her initial gasp of surprise, it took a further moment to recognize the shadowed figure who stood in the entryway. The collar of his cloak was up, his hat was pulled low over his brow, and the weak lamplight barely touched on the shape of his nose or the grim, flat line of his mouth.

“Angus!”

He reached up and pulled the bonnet off his dark hair, and if not for the fact she was still clutching the door, she might have crumpled to the floor with the shock. As it was, she was thankful she had something to hold on to, to support her for the ten seconds it took to blink the whirling black dots out of her vision.

“Angus?” she whispered. “Is it really you? Where … where on earth have ye come from? How did ye find me? Good God, ye look like a block of ice! How long have ye been out there?”

“I am not sure. A couple of hours, I suppose.”

“A couple of—? But… where? Why—? How—?”

She knew her questions were incoherent as well as incomplete, but her tongue did not seem able to catch up to the wild tumbling of her thoughts. Flustered, she pulled him inside, only thinking at the last moment to glance out into the darkness before she pushed the door shut.

“No one saw me,” Angus said. “I was careful. ”

“But where have ye come from? How did ye find me?”

“I have come from the English camp at Falkirk,” he said. “And, in truth, it was Robert Hardy who found you.”

“Hardy? The houseman?”

“He came away from Moy Hall with me. He convinced me it might not be prudent to be seen roaming around the enemy camp asking for my wife. Besides, I was not entirely certain I would be welcome.”

“Not welcome? Ye're my husband, of course ye would be welcome.” The lie almost sounded convincing, especially since she had just been debating having another man in her bed. Then, as if her mind was just catching up with the previous answers, she released his gloved hand and withdrew a step. “Falkirk? Ye're here with the king's army.”

It was not a question and it did not require an answer. Now that he had loosened his cloak and lowered the woolen collar, she could see the blazing red of his tunic, the blue facings on his collar and cuffs.

He saw her staring and blew out a soft breath by way of a wry explanation. “Not particularly wise to be seen leaving the government camp out of uniform, either. The bonnet and cloak were the best disguise I could manage.”

Her eyes locked briefly with his before cutting away to the droplets of melting ice on his face and hair.

“Come.” She backed up toward the hearth. “Sit and warm yourself by the fire. It will only take a moment to build it up hot again. Or … can ye not stay?”

“I can stay. For a little while.”

Anne turned away, a tiny sliver of panic running down her spine. Her husband was here. She had not seen him in nearly a month, and the last time they had been together at the dowager's house …

The whole ugly scene came crashing back in a series of disjointed images and angry echoes. They had not parted on happy terms and since then, she had openly thumbed her nose at his authority both as a chief and a husband.

She pushed the memory out of her mind as best she could and bent over the fire to add fresh, dry wood to the bed of glowing coals.

“Are ye faring well?” she asked lamely, glancing over her shoulder. “ Ye look thinner.”

He had not moved from the doorway. Had not moved at all except to take off his gloves and comb his fingers nervously through the dark waves of his hair.

“I am well enough. And you? You look … fit.”

She followed his gaze to her trews and tall knee boots, the thick bulk of her doublet and shortcoat, the casually plaited coil of her hair where it hung over her shoulder.

“Please,” she said, pointing to a stool beside the hearth. “Come closer to the fire. Warm yourself.”

He seemed to hesitate, as if by admitting he was indeed chilled to the bone he would be admitting some other inadequacy.

Anne rubbed her hands together to warm them. “I've just come in. We were at the tavern. We only arrived in camp this morning.”

Now she was talking just to make noise. Beside her, the dry tinder caught and a flame flared along the lengths of the fresh logs, crackling loudly enough to make her jump. To cover her nervousness, she fetched a bottle of uisque from the table; after filling two tin cups halfway, she added some steaming water from the kettle that hung over the grate.

Angus moved stiffly, grudgingly, but he took the offered cup, wrapping his fingers around it to warm his hands. After another awkward moment, he accepted her invitation to sit, lowering himself gingerly onto a stool while Anne sat back on her heels beside him.

She took a single sip to unstick her tongue from the roof of her mouth, but set the cup aside almost immediately, not wanting to risk numbing her wits more.

“When I saw ye standing there, I thought… well, I hoped …”

“You hoped I had finally come to my senses and decided to join you?”

“Something like that, aye” she acknowledged softly.

“Well, I haven't. Come to join you, that is. I have, however, come to ask you what the bloody hell you think you are doing. You and those damned cousins of yours. ”

He asked the question so casually, kept his voice so mellow and low, they might have been sitting in front of a blazing fire at home discussing the next crop of apples.

“None of us made the decision lightly,” she began. “Or entered it in haste.”

“No. No, I understand it took you nearly three weeks to gather the signatures of enough fools willing to follow you to Aberdeen. Oh, yes, I have heard all about your petition. I can even tell you who signed it. That is how good Cumberland's information is. What I do not understand is why you cannot see that they are using you—Fearchar, your cousins, all of them. They used you primarily to get to MacGillivray, for there was no other earthly way he would have broken his oath to me.”

She felt another shiver, one that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the frost in his eyes.

“As to that,” he asked quietly, “was it not enough to have humiliated me by taking control of the clan? Did you have to fashion horns for me at the same time?”

“Horns?” Her voice held a bewildered tremor. “I've not—”

“That was quite a touching scene I just witnessed between you and MacGillivray. It must have been so much more convenient for the pair of you while you were living with him at Dunmaglass.”

A second log caught fire, throwing more light across his face, and for the first time Anne saw that there was more than anger rendering his face gaunt and tight. There was pain as well. Deep emotional pain, so naked and vulnerable on a man who prided himself in his composure that she felt her heart begin to wither and crumble into a heap of dust.

“Angus … John has never been anything other than an absolute gentleman in my presence. Not by word or deed has he ever sought to offer more than his hospitality and friendship. I moved out of Moy Hall and into Dunmaglass, aye, but only as a guest and only to avoid having any taint that might become attached to my name or actions spill over to yours. Dunmaglass was as much an army camp as Bannockburn is now, and I sorely doubt we could have found a private moment together to do so much as touch hands, let alone touch anything else, even if we had been so inclined. Which neither of us was. I never forgot I was a married woman, and neither did he.”

“That did not seem to be the case a few moments ago. Not when you had your heads together at the end of the path. And not by the way you said his name when you opened the door just now.”

She bit the edge of her lip. She had not been aware of gasping John's name, just as she was not entirely certain what she would have done had it been him and not Angus standing on the threshold. But it was Angus who was here before her now, with more than just his husbandly pride bruised. She had gone behind his back and she had usurped his authority within the clan, but what choice had he given her? What choice had he given the lairds who had been ordered to follow him? It was obviously not a choice they had made altogether eagerly, for she had seen reports as well. There were spies and couriers going back and forth between the enemy encampments like a trail of ants. Angus had left Inverness with six hundred clansmen, but by the time they arrived in Edinburgh, most of them had quietly slipped away and either gone back home or crossed over the moor to join the prince. But she could not, would not throw that in his face.

As for his assumption that she had moved into Dunmaglass so that she and MacGillivray might carry on some wild and passionate affair…!

“I have had far too much ale tonight,” she admitted shakily, “and I am not strong enough to do battle, Angus. I am certainly not strong enough to lie. If ye choose not to take my word for it, then ye will believe the worst and nothing I can say or do will change your mind. But I swear I have not been unfaithful. I'll not insult either one of us by saying I have not had thoughts … some of them vivid enough to keep me awake through the night. But those thoughts have only been about you. I will also freely confess that I have been lonely and frightened and perhaps even a little desperate to have someone hold me and treat me like a woman. I have feelings for John, aye, but I have never acted upon them. What ye saw outside was a man putting his heart into my hands and me refusing to take it because I care too deeply for another. Simply that and nothing more. For the rest, I am only too well aware that Fearchar used me as a means of getting what he wanted, but so has everyone else at some time or another, including you.”

“Me? How the devil have I used you?”

She smiled softly with no accusation in her voice. "Why else would ye have agreed to marry me if not because ye hoped it would win Fearchar's support away from naming Cluny MacPherson as clan chief? Why else, if not because ye thought that marrying a Farquharson would prevent the clan from splitting apart, exactly as it has done now?”

A shadow flickered briefly behind his eyes. “That was not why I married you, Anne.”

“It never occurred to ye, not even when ye hesitated at the altar and stared at me as if I was a farmer's dray horse clompin' up the aisle? It was obvious ye wanted to be anywhere else, with anyone else but me, that ye were doing it strictly for the good of the clan, that it was just another thankless duty, another tiresome and unwanted burden ye inherited along with the title.”

“Obvious to whom?” He was genuinely appalled. “Because I never thought that. Not once.”

She passed a hand in front of her eyes as if the lie was of little consequence. “Granda' told me he had to all but threaten ye to honor the agreement. He also told me that you, in turn, demanded the dowry money because ye knew he did not have it, and he would have had to forfeit the contract if he could not raise the stipulated amount in time.”

“It was five thousand pounds,” Angus murmured. “And had I truly not wanted to go through with the marriage, Anne, I would not have been in that chapel at all.”

She started to turn away, clearly disdainful of his efforts to patronize her, but he quickly set his cup aside and caught her shoulders, forcing her up onto her knees before him, bringing their faces so close she had no choice but to look into his eyes.

“While Fearchar was telling you these fables, did he happen to mention where he came by the money for the dowry?”

“He said he was forced to sell off a valuable parcel of land.”

“Valuable?” Angus snorted. “It was a stretch of bog along the edge of Meall a'Bhreacraibh that sits under three feet of water for nine months out of the year. ”

“Meall a'Bhreacraibh? But… ye have land adjoining that moor.”

“Aye, and my agent thought I was mad for buying more at such a ridiculous price, but he did as he was told and paid for it in gold coin and never told Fearchar who the simpleton was who paid so much for something so worthless.”

“You? You gave him the money?”

“Call me the bigger fool for doing so, if you will, but I thought the price well worth it.”

Her lips parted slowly, and her shoulders lost some of their stiffness. “Ye did?”

“Then—" he seemed to stall over the words for a moment— “and now. I have never regretted my decision for a moment, Anne. And if I appeared to hesitate in the church that day, it was because I was afraid if I moved, I might wake up and the dream would shatter. You see, I knew even then that MacGillivray would have been the man you married had you been given the choice. Fearchar told me you and he were lovers—”

“No! We were never lovers,” she protested.

“As I discovered on our wedding night," he said, having the grace to flush slightly. "And I will not lie by saying I was not relieved to make that discovery—solely because of the terror I was feeling that you might think me an inadequate lover compared to John.”

Anne felt the particles of dust in her chest stir and begin to take shape again. “Yet ye married me anyway?”

"I have a small confession to make." He brought his hands up from her shoulders to cradle each side of her face, then bent his head forward until their brows touched. “I had seen you out riding on that great beast of yours and I swear my heart stopped from the sheer beauty of the moment. Your hair was wild, your skin was flushed from the wind, and your laughter …” His hands tightened and his eyes closed. “I thought if I could just hold that moment in my heart forever, it would be enough. But then I found the betrothal papers, and I knew I could hold so much more.”

Anne said nothing; she just stared. His lashes were dark against his cheeks, and his mouth looked so grim it took all of her willpower not to simply fling her arms up around his neck and crush his lips beneath hers.

"The things ye said in the library...at Culloden House...?"

"The most difficult words to ever leave my mouth. But I could not let them think for a single moment that I harbored such a weakness as love. They would have used it against me without a qualm. I had to convince them it was just a marriage of convenience, that I was 'tolerating' the situation in order to gather information from the prince's sympathizers."

"So... ye're not weary of your wife's … various energies?" she asked softly.

He winced at his own words and shook his head. "On the contrary. I have craved those energies every moment of every day we have been apart."

Anne raised her hands slowly and touched his cheek. She brushed aside an errant wave of hair, then threaded her fingers deep into the silky brown locks. She tipped her mouth up to his, her eyes wide open, her body edging closer, and felt the tremors in his hands as they slipped down to her neck, then her shoulders again, and for the length of two, three pulse beats they shared each other's breath and bathed in the love shining in each other's eyes.

His arms went around her and gathered her close, so close she could feel his heart thundering within his chest. The air was driven from her lungs on a shivered plea and his mouth was there to capture it. He brought her up hard against him, and Anne responded with pure joy. It trembled through her arms and quivered the length of her body, turning her blood to liquid fire.

A rough curse brought him swiftly to his feet, lifting her with him. His mouth stayed fastened over hers but his hands flew down to tug at her coat, to tear aside her doublet, to fumble with the knots in the laces that bound her shirt, and finally, with a curse that voiced his impatience as well as his lust, to rip the garment from neck to hem in his haste to expose her flesh to his hungry lips. Anne arched her head back, the passion coursing hot and fast through her body when she felt the suckling heat close around her breast. He started to pick her up, to carry her to the bed, but she stopped him with a hoarse cry.

Wide-eyed, panting lightly through swollen lips, she pushed out of his arms and backed up against the wall. When she could retreat no farther, she unbuckled her belt and kicked her way out of her boots and trews, then stripped off the loosened upper garments, all save for the torn shirt, which she left hanging open over her breasts.

“Take me here,” she said huskily. “Right here. Against the wall.”

He was not entirely certain he grasped what she was asking. “Right here?”

“Here.” She nodded. “I have a demon that needs exorcising, my lord husband, and I want to burn this into my mind so that when I close my eyes, this will be all that I see and feel.”

Something in the timbre of her voice turned Angus's bones to jelly and his flesh to iron. He had not planned on this, not at all. In fact, when he had seen her standing out under the starlight with MacGillivray, the pair of them exchanging whispers like lovers, he had almost walked away and not looked back.

Now there she stood with her coltish long legs bared, her body lush and ripe, challenging him to take her in a way that sent the blood pounding into an erection that was already perilously close to causing him permanent damage.

“You will not mind if I remove some encumbrances first,” he murmured, his voice low and fierce, his cloak already hitting the floor. He ripped at the brass buttons on his tunic and waistcoat, tearing them off as one garment, casting them aside without a care as to how close they came to the fire grate. Toe to heel he removed each boot and kicked it aside. His shirt was tugged free of his breeches and pulled over his head; the buttons over the panel in his breeches were released, an action that caused his flesh to surge forward, rigid and tall against his stomach before the unwanted garment was shoved below his hips.

Anne stood perfectly still against the wall, her body drowning in alternating waves of heat and icy anticipation. Her eyes were all that moved, avidly devouring the glorious lines of his naked body. There were some subtle changes, she noted. The muscles in his arms seemed to be more defined, his thighs thicker with sinew, and there were more distinct ridges of power sculpted into the lean bands across his waist and belly.

“Ye've not been sitting idly around the barracks these past weeks,” she said, as breathless as if she had been running .

“There are a few muscles I have not had the opportunity to exercise,” he murmured, beginning to close the gap between them.

Because she could not help herself, she stared openly at his erection. “They do not appear to have suffered.”

“Believe me—" he drew a breath and exhaled it slowly— “they have suffered.”

He stopped just shy of touching her and let his gaze roam down the torn seam of her shirt. It was as bold as a physical caress and Anne felt the cloth quivering to echo her body's needs. She moistened her lips and saw his eyes flicker upward, saw his flesh take a small leap even as his hands came forward and slowly, deliberately peeled the edges of cambric aside. The fingers of one hand skimmed upward to capture a breast, the other went lower, brushing lightly over the tangle of coppery curls before slipping between her thighs.

Anne pressed her head against the wall. She was trembling, slippery with the heat of wanting him, and she heard him suck in a slow breath at the discovery. He stroked again, deeper this time, his finger tracing along the folds of her flesh, probing the silky rifts until he heard her imploring whimper and felt her thighs tighten around the intrusion. He moved forward again so that it was no longer his fingers sliding to and fro into the wetness, no longer just a teasing threat.

When her hips started to curl upward to meet him, he bowed his head, his mouth nuzzling her neck, his tongue painting rivers of fire along her throat and across her shoulder. His hands smoothed over her breasts, his thumbs toyed with the stiffened peaks of her nipples, making short work of the rest of her patience.

Cursing softly, Anne brought herself up onto the tips of her toes, pressing her bared breasts against him. She reached down and grasped hold of his flesh at the base, refusing to let him thrust forward again without knowing some of the torment he was evoking. A groan brought him sliding into the tight sheath of her fist, his flesh hot and sleek with her moisture. She squeezed her fingers and held him there, rubbing herself over the smooth, engorged head until the pressure became unbearable and his hips bucked with his own urgency.

“I do not think,” he gasped, “you should do that again.”

By way of responding, she stroked her hand along his flesh and guided it between her thighs.

The teasing was over.

He brushed her hand aside, growling with a hunger that elevated desire to raw lust. Greedy for the feel of her, he lifted her and settled her over his flesh in the same fluid motion that saw him thrusting upward as deeply as the angle of penetration would allow. At his ragged command, she hooked her legs around his waist and locked her ankles behind. He bent his knees, putting all his power into the next upward thrust, reaching a depth even he had never dreamed possible before.

Anne's head rolled side to side and she cried out. He stopped on a panted oath, fearing he had hurt her, but her hands clawed into his back and her nails gouged into his skin and her body strained so greedily against him that he did not hold back again.

Anne's pleasure was explosive. Her orgasm began at the first stroke of his flesh and did not relent until long after he had shuddered through his own release. Even then there were shivers and tiny quaking spasms of pleasure that kept her arms locked tightly around him. She doubted she could have moved anyway, for he still held her braced against the wall, his legs trembling, his chest heaving in a fearsome effort to catch and hold a breath.

Anne did not care if they remained there forever. Nothing mattered, not the war, not the prince, not the fact she was pinned against the mudded timbers of a small, dusty cottage. All that mattered was that she was in her husband's arms, that those arms were still shaking with the force of his pleasure … and wi th the startling, surprising sound of his laughter.

“Sweet God above,” he gasped. “Grant me mercy and tell me why, tell me how you manage to do this to me. I was ever such a sane man. Sane, confident, noble, dignified. Look at me now.”

Languid and drugged on passion, her thighs running slick with the proof of his fall from grace, Anne took his face between her hands and kissed him. “I do not have to look, my lord husband. I can still feel ye inside me and I detect no lack of dignity there.”

“And how fares this demon you sought to exorcise?”

“He is well and truly gone.” Anne assured him as she drew his mouth back down to hers. “But just in case …”

Anne was wakened by the sound of a foot thumping gently into a boot to seat it. She raised a hand to rub her eyes and saw a shadowy figure searching around in the gloom for missing articles of clothing. He had found his breeches and his boots, but his shirt seemed to be eluding him.

“What are ye doing?”

“Dawn is not far off,” Angus said. “I should have been back in Falkirk long before now. Hawley's pickets are a nervous lot.”

She pushed herself upright. “Ye're going back?”

He glanced over, then glanced away again as if the question caused physical pain.

“Angus—?”

“Please do not ask me to do something I cannot do.”

“But why?” She sat up and curled her legs beneath her, heedless of her nudity. “Just tell me why. I know your heart is not with the English. I know it.”

“Ahh, there it is.” He snatched up his shirt and shook out the creases before shrugging it on over his head. A quick tuck into his waistband left wads of uneven linen here and there, but he donned his waistcoat anyway and buttoned it snug to his torso. His fingers served as a comb between adding layers of clothing—and as a means of avoiding having to look at the pale figure on the bed.

He could not believe he had allowed himself to fall asleep. Neither could he believe he had permitted himself to be lured to such recklessness by soft breasts, softer lips, and silky thighs. Robert Hardy would be beside himself, thinking his master had been captured. At the moment, with Anne sitting there in a waterfall of tousled red curls, it did not seem such a bad notion, but Angus pushed the thought aside and reached for his tunic.

“Just tell me why,” she said again, softly.

“I have told you a dozen times. I have given my word, my oath as an officer of the crown.”

She watched him struggle to fasten the row of brass buttons.

“Ye promised me not so long ago that ye would never lie to me,” she said evenly.

“I am not lying; I have given my word. Can you see my gloves anywhere?”

The air of cold efficiency was back. His movements were calculated and sure, his jaw squared against any suggestion that a few hours of exhaustive lovemaking could have changed the way the earth spun on its axis.

Anne looked down at her hands, for her world had once again been sent on a spin. “They are on the chair, under your cloak.”

He grunted his thanks and swung the enormous wool cloak off the seat and settled it around his shoulders. He stood there a moment staring at the top of Anne's head, at the white slope of her shoulders, at the lushness of her body. He actually started to pull on one of his gloves before he turned, suddenly, and threw both of them across the room. He would have liked to pick up the chair, the stool, the kettle of simmering water and hurl those as well, but there was enough chaos in his mind already without adding more.

“I came here last night with every intention of taking you away with me. Of ordering you, as my wife, to come away with me. If I had done that, what would your answer have been?”

She replied without hesitation. “I would have refused.”

“And what reason would you have given me? What possible reason could you give for disobeying your husband, the man to whom you made a solemn vow to honor and obey? You would have said you had a previous, binding oath to honor, one that had nothing to do with love or marriage vows, and for some unfathomable reason you would undoubtedly have expected that to be all the explanation I would need. Why, then, I would implore all the saints in heaven to give me the strength to understand, is it not enough of an explanation for you? Is your word worth more than mine because you happen to think your cause is more just? Or do you not see the contradiction, the pretension, the irony of your asking me to break an oath when you yourself would not consider doing so for an instant?” He spread his hands and dropped them in frustration. “You cannot have it both ways, Anne. Either I am a man of my word, or I am not. Which is it to be?”

“Loyalty to the Stuart king should come first,” she argued softly. “Your grandfather was a member of his council. Your father fought in The Fifteen.”

He expelled a breath and sat on the edge of the bed. The mattress was stuffed with thatching and hung on ropes stretched across a plain wood frame, all of which protested loudly, each in its own manner. During the night creaks and rustlings had amused them, now it grated on the nerves and made their surroundings seem cheap and tawdry.

“Anne … look at me.” He waited a moment, then took up her hand and raised it to his lips. “I have never sworn an oath to the Stuart king. Never. Not here, not in Italy, not in France. My grandfather did, my father surely did, and perhaps my brothers too at one time, but I never swore allegiance to James Francis Stuart or his son, not even in absentia. Not even in a secret toast to the king over the water.”

“What about loyalty to Scotland? Do ye want to see our country under English rule forever?”

“What I want and what is likely to happen are two very different things. Hawley has brought eight thousand crack troops to Falkirk. Well-armed, well-fed, eager for revenge. If there is a battle in the next few days—and I cannot see any way of avoiding one shy of having the prince surrender under a white flag—the whole damned conflagration will be resolved one way or another, and my greatest fear is that this … this reckless courage, this … incredibly valiant display of honor and loyalty will all have been for naught. The prince will return to France, his army will go back to their farms and clachans, and in another twenty years we will have to go through it all again.”

She was quiet, but at least she did not pull away from his touch as he smoothed a shock of red hair off her cheek and tucked it behind her ear.

“Please. Will you come back with me?”

Her eyes were large and grew fiercely bright as she fought against the hot sting of tears.

Sensing that she could not speak, he shook his head. “I had to ask,” he said helplessly. “Can you not see I am terrified to the bone at the thought of you being anywhere near a battlefield?”

“MacGillivray has already threatened more violence than I would encounter in a battle with the Devil if I do not stay well behind the lines with the prince and his royal guard."

It was the best he could hope for. “And you will keep your word? To him and to me?”

“And you?” she asked in a whisper, her eyes growing even rounder, wetter. “You will be in the front line, will ye not?”

“I will be with my men, yes.”

She closed her eyes and leaned forward, burying her face in the curve of his shoulder. She bit her lip against the hot rush of tears, but the night had been too emotional, the pleasure too intense, the loss she might sustain too horrific to stanch the two wide streaks that flowed down her cheeks. Her arms went around his shoulders and she pressed her body against him, ignoring the scratch and bite of wool and buttons. For his part, Angus held her as close as was humanly possible without crushing her half to death.

“Will you not, please, for pity's sake, reconsider and come with me?”

“Will ye not reconsider and stay?”

Angus held her a moment longer, then stood with great reluctance. Half blinded by something stinging in his own eyes, he walked quickly over to retrieve his gloves. Knowing there was nothing more to say, he went out the door into the predawn chill and walked hurriedly toward the nearby woods.

His thoughts and emotions were in such turmoil that he did not notice when a tall, tartan-clad figure with the golden hair of a lion stepped out of the shadows, cocked two steel-butted pistols, and aimed them dead center at his chest.