Page 23 of Midnight Honor (Highland Wolves #3)

22

A lexander Cameron reneged on his promise to be back at Moy Hall within the week; he was gone more than a fortnight. Fort Augustus had surrendered after a two-day siege when one of Count Fanducci's well-aimed cannon shells had struck the powder magazine. Fort William proved to be more stubborn, however, and the talents of the gunners less daunting than those of the excitable Italian. They remained locked in a stalemate at Fort William for two full weeks, returning frustrated and short of temper, having squandered a good deal of shot and patience trying to outgun the fort's determined commander.

The Duke of Perth, meanwhile, had completely routed Lord Loudoun's forces, chasing them out of Easter Ross and up into the hills of Skye. Another large contingent of prisoners was marched back to Inverness, and once again the prince, turning a blind eye and a deaf ear to the fact that most would break their parole—meaning they would only have to be caught and defeated again—released them.

In Cumberland's camp, the question of broken paroles was moot, for the option of laying down arms on a promise not to fight again was never offered. Nor were prisoners treated in accordance with any rules of honorable warfare. Most were beaten and starved, their wounds left to fester untreated. Many were hanged without benefit of a trial; many more were simply loaded onto transport ships and never seen again.

Prince Frederick of Hesse, whose six thousand crack Hessian soldiers had come north with Cumberland, was appalled at the treatment the captured Jacobites received under the duke's command. The prince was Germanic. Nobility and honor were codes he held above all else, and he warned the English duke that his Hessians would not fight without those codes in place.

Cumberland's response was to immediately hang three prisoners who had been caught attempting to escape. True to his word, Prince Frederick ordered his men to Pitlochry and refused to acknowledge any further dispatches from Cumberland's headquarters.

March slipped into April with little more than skirmishes to mark activity in either camp. Charles, who had been ill since the night of his narrow escape at Moy, insisted his fevers were to be conquered if they could not be cured, and ordered days of hunting, fishing, and shooting. He appealed to the ladies of Inverness to organize balls, and for these special evenings he moved from Culloden House to Drummuir House as the guest of the Dowager Lady MacKintosh.

Angus was able to visit Moy Hall two more times. On each occasion, it was Anne who chided him for his recklessness even as she took full, shameless advantage.

“A month ago,” he said, “when you were begging me to stay with you in Falkirk, I had a dozen good reasons why I should go. Here, tonight, with my hands on your breasts and my body held hostage between your thighs, I cannot think of a single one.”

Anne sighed and rolled her hips slowly forward and back, feeling his response stretch deep inside her. She sat astride his naked, splayed body, her hair strewn about her shoulders, her hands braced on his chest. A cluster of candles were lit on the bedside tables so that not one flicker of reaction went unnoticed on either face.

“The dozen good reasons I had for ye to stay all seem so selfish now. This one, for instance—” she arched her back and rose up on her knees, withdrawing her heat almost to the engorged tip of rigid flesh. “And this...” She settled back over him with a sinuous thrust of her hips, and Angus clamped his hands around her waist, the muscles in his arms bulging as he strove to retain some measure of control.

He had been deathly afraid of touching her, of hurting her, of rushing into anything physical too soon after the miscarriage, and for the first two visits he had been content just to lie alongside her and watch her sleep in his arms. This time, however, he had not made it through the bedroom door before she was under his clothes with roving hands and an avid mouth that made short work of his noble intentions. He had, at the least, insisted on her assuming the superior role so that she could control their movements and stop at any time if it became painful. After the fourth joining in as many hours, however, it was proving to be far more of a trial for him than for her. Judging by the deliberate slide of her hips, the flaring and tightening of all those wicked little muscles, she knew it, too.

“Each time ye come here, I find it that much more difficult to let ye go back,” she said, withdrawing her heat again, hovering, then sliding down to absorb his full length. “But I suppose the prince needs your help more than ever now.”

“I was under the distinct impression,” he said through clenched teeth, “your opinion of the royal progeny had dipped somewhat since Falkirk.”

“But my opinion of Lord George has not. Nor that of Lochiel or Lord Drummond, or any of the men who are still willing to risk so much for the sake of honor.”

“‘ These deeds ,’” he murmured through a shiver, “‘ these plots, this ill-conceived folly born of midnight honor … ’”

She slid to a halt, intrigued. “What did ye say?”

“Oh, dear God,” he rasped, “do not stop again; you will kill me.”

“No, before that.”

“A quote. It was just a quote. Something that popped into my mind. I cannot even recall who said it.”

She smoothed her hands over his chest, ignoring his shivered urging to resume the sleek, rocking friction. She bowed her head and caught a nipple between her teeth, leaving it and the surrounding flesh well laved by her tongue. Her fingers combed through the dark swirls of hair on his chest, following the line down onto his belly. After a brief flirtation with the hard bands of muscle that made for such an inviting seat, she reached around and trailed her fingers up the insides of his thighs, teasing the robust treasures she found nestled there until she heard him growl and felt him rise up beneath her like a volcano on the verge of erupting. She leaned farther back, inviting his torso to come up off the bed, and when he obliged, she shifted her feet forward, locking them firmly around his waist so that they each sat with their legs crossed behind one another's back.

Angus rested his head on her shoulder a moment, hoping to catch his breath, to steady his nerves before the next onslaught.

“You want something else, I know you do.”

“I do,” she agreed softly, “and I am getting it now.”

She forced him to tip his mouth up so that she could ravage what remained of his sanity. The heat of her tongue lashed at him, while the moist silkiness of her body began to draw him in with bold, greedy strokes that were tight enough he could feel his foreskin sliding back and forth along his full length. The pressure soon had him groaning again, had him cupping his hands around her bottom and bringing her harder, faster against him.

Nothing shy of gunfire would have stopped either one of them this time, and Anne rode the heady waves of her release with her head flung back and the sound of wondrous joy quivering in her throat. Angus held her and poured himself inside her. His hands, his body, his entire being shook with the intensity of his climax; even so, he waited until the very last possible instant before grunting the air out of his lungs, knowing it would be several moments before he could suck in enough to replace it. Anne continued to shiver against him, around him, keeping herself pressed so close, the evidence of their pleasure ran warm and wet between them.

“The original terms of our agreement stand,” he gasped at length. “No battlefields, no skulking about the countryside in the dead of night, no guns—although I am beginning to believe that not any manner of promise, oath, or pledge can keep you out of trouble, madam.”

“The encounter with Blakeney's men was not my fault,” she protested. “I was only attempting to defend my home. ”

“By sending fifteen men out to fight fifteen hundred?”

“It was not by choice. Just as it was not your choice to have to bow to Duncan Forbes's blackmail.”

She said it so quietly it took a moment for Angus to raise his head and meet her eyes. When he did, he saw a world of mixed emotions reflected there: anger, confusion, pride, defiance, admiration, condemnation. There was not much left to choose from.

“MacGillivray talks too much.”

“It was not John who told me; it was young Douglas Forbes. He thought it would cheer me to know how brave and honorable my husband truly was, sacrificing so much in order to guarantee the safety of his wife and clansmen. Frankly, it only made me want to hit ye. And not just because ye took it upon yourself to bear the burden of all this righteousness alone, but more because ye did not tell me.”

“And what would you have done if I had?”

She took his face between her hands, and Angus sucked in a breath as her hips wriggled against him again. “This is what I would have done,” she whispered. “I would have loved ye ten times more than I did already.”

“And then you would have hit me?”

“Then I would have hit ye,” she agreed with a grin.

He continued to gaze deeply into her eyes, offering up his own small, uncertain smile. “Perhaps I should bare my soul completely, then, and have done with all my confessions.”

“There are more?”

“Only one, though it is somewhat related to the other.” He swallowed to ease the dryness in his throat, but before he had a chance to elaborate, a low, distant rumble broke into the cocooned silence of the bedchamber. It was followed a few seconds later by a distinct rattling of the glass windowpanes and the trinkets on the mantel. Even the wine in the bedside decanter shivered in the glow of the candles.

Angus untangled their legs and left the bed to cross over to the window. He raised the curtain and peered outside, expecting to see gray skies and the roiling clouds of a thunderstorm. But the sun was shining, the blue of the sky almost painful after the subdued romance of the candlelight. Then he remembered.

“Eneas said they were going to commence blowing up Fort George today. I gather the English left more than enough powder in the magazine to do the job properly, and there will be no lack of volunteers for the job. Many of the men have been guests there at one time or another; many more have seen fathers, brothers, sons locked away for months on end without justification. I expect Fearchar would have been in the fore, lighting the first fuse, for was he not a guest of various administrations over the last century?”

When Anne did not answer, he dropped the curtain back in place and returned to the bed. She was fast asleep, snuggled into the nest of pillows, blankets, and tumbled sheets. He drew the covers gently over her glorious nudity, then slipped back into bed beside her, listening as yet another distant rumble shook the windowpanes.

The explosions that eventually reduced Fort George to rubble stopped abruptly on April 14, when the shocking news reached Inverness that Cumberland's army had been on the move for a week. It had, in fact, already crossed the River Spey in three places, unchallenged by the brigades Lord George had set in place to guard against such a thing. The news could not have come at a worse time, for there were no more than a thousand of the prince's troops in Inverness; most were away either securing positions or foraging for supplies.

Food and fodder had become perilously low, and Murray of Broughton, a wily and inventive quartermaster throughout most of the campaign, had fallen ill and been replaced by John Hay, who knew even less about procuring field supplies than he did about guns. The one time he had discharged a pistol, he had shot off his big toe. When he sent men out foraging, he sent them to all the places that had already contributed more than they could spare, with the result that most wagons came back empty or not at all.

Several hundred men had, therefore, been dispatched to investigate a rumor of a Hanover supply train on the road to Nairn and returned instead to report they had seen the duke's army marching along the coast road, a rippling sea of red coats. The royalists had marched eighty miles unmolested, in relative secrecy, and by nightfall of the 14th were camped less than half a day from Inverness.

It had happened so quickly, the escort removing the Cameron women to Achnacarry departed from Loch Moy at dawn and turned left along the Inverness road, while their men turned right and rode hard toward the city. Anne had been at the knoll to see them off, mounted on her gray gelding as usual, but this time there were few smiles. She had come to like and admire Catherine Cameron, and she was not entirely sure she could have survived her own dreadful ordeal without the quiet, calm support of Deirdre MacKail.

“I feel so terribly sorry for them,” she said to her cousin Eneas when they had ridden quickly back to the Hall. “It will take days, weeks for any news to reach Achnacarry.”

“I suppose it would do no good if we were tae suggest ye take yersel' up intae the caves f'ae a few days?”

“The caves?” She pulled back so hard on the reins, Robert the Bruce reared up in surprise. “Why on earth would I do that?”

“Because Cumberland's whole bluidy army is half a day's ride away? Because Moy lies right in his path an' ye'll have no one here tae defend the place if he takes it in his heid tae circle round an' attack Inverness on both sides?”

“I will not be here at Moy,” she said. “I will be wherever my clan is.”

Eneas reached up and scratched his hand through his hair. “Och, Annie … ye ken The MacGillivray will have sparks shootin' out his arse if he sees ye near anither battlefield.”

“John is not here to say me nay or yea,” she said quietly.

“Weel now, as a fact, he is. He an' his bride arrived back at Dunmaglass yesterday, an' he's up ayont waitin' on ye now.”

Anne followed her cousin's reluctant gaze and pointed finger. A group of clansmen were gathered out front of Moy Hall, and since MacGillivray stood a head and half a shoulder above most of the others, he was easily recognizable.

Anne and Eneas rode up the drive, where a hostler was waiting to take the reins when they dismounted. When The Bruce was led away, most of the men acknowledged a look from MacGillivray and drifted away, moving discreetly out of earshot.

Anne had not seen him since the night he brought Angus from Easter Ross. She heard he had left Dunmaglass that day and had been in Clunas helping his future father-in-law, Duncan Campbell, dislodge a small nest of government troops from the area. She had not heard he had married.

“I understand congratulations are in order,” she said with genuine pleasure. “Eneas told me ye wed Elizabeth.”

“It was time. Besides, she liked the damned flowers so much she didna wait until we were alone an' her father found us on the brae an' thought it was past time I made an honest woman of her.”

He looked different, somehow. More at ease. There was still a perilously dangerous air about him, but some of the tension seemed to be gone, and if Elizabeth had managed to do this for him, then Anne was pleased. Lying abed, steeped in the tragedy of losing her baby, losing the steadfast Robert Hardy, she had come to realize how much John's friendship meant to both her and Angus. She was determined nothing would spoil that.

“Ye'll make a fine husband, John,” she said, smiling as she kissed his cheek. “The very finest there could be.”

“I plan to do ma best.”

“Will ye take a drink with me? To toast the nuptials?”

“Another time, aye, I will do. For now I've only come to collect yer cousins an' the rest o' ma men. We're needed in Inverness.”

“Of course. I was not thinking. I will just fetch my things.”

She started past him, up the wide steps to the front door, but he reached out and caught her arm, halting her.

“Ye might be better off stayin' here, Annie. There is little ye can do in Inverness.”

“There is a great deal I can do if there is a battle brewing. I can be with our men.”

“If there is a battle brewing? Turn yer nose into the wind, lass, ye can smell the fear from here.”

“We have beaten them twice before when all odds were against us doing so.”

“Aye, an' both times Lord George was commandin' the army. He'll not be leadin' it now, however, because the prince has relieved him of his command.”

“Relieved him of command! Has the prince gone mad?”

MacGillivray shrugged his big shoulders. “He heard the general was invited to a parley with Prince Frederick. The German prince offered his services to negotiate a peace with Cumberland, an' naturally The Stuart took it to mean Lord George was out to betray him. O'Sullivan were whisperin' in his ear all the time helpin' to convince him.”

“Someone should have shot that damned Irishman a long time ago.”

“Suggest it to any one o' the two thousand men freezin' their ballocks off on Drummossie Moor an' ye'll have no lack o' volunteers.”

“Drummossie? What are they doing at Drummossie?”

“Waitin' on Cumberland,” he said dryly. “An' have been since dawn, though ma men tell me the duke is in no hurry to roll his guns out o' Nairn.”

“All the more reason for us to stop wasting time here,” she said. “Ye can argue until ye're blue, John MacGillivray, but I've not come this far just to run and hide now. You, of all people, should not even think to ask me such a thing.”

He studied the firm set to her jaw and shrugged. “Gilles wagered good coin on the likelihood of ma ears gettin' boxed, but ye have to admit it was worth a try.”

She glanced over at the stocky Highlander and saw that MacBean was grinning, rubbing his thumb and fingers together to acknowledge his winnings.

“Give me five minutes,” she said, and dashed up the steps.

“Ye've got one.”

The roads leading out of Inverness were clogged with people, animals, and wagons. The latter, hastily packed with household possessions, were being trundled behind frightened townsfolk who had heard the battle for control of the Highlands was imminent.

Anne had changed into her trews and blue velvet short coat. Sparkling white lace foamed at her throat and cuffs, an incongruous contrast to the two long-snouted brass pistols she wore strapped to her waist. MacGillivray rode at her side; MacBean and the Farquharson brothers flanked them, with about a hundred clansmen jogging along the road behind, muskets and targes slung over their shoulders, their faces grim, their strides determined. They were met on the crossroads outside the city by an open carriage bearing two occupants. One wore the black cassock of a priest, but Anne drew a deep breath, bracing herself for another verbal battle when she recognized the dour countenance of Lady Drummuir. Her fears were groundless, however. The old woman had tears in her eyes when Anne rode up to the carriage. From a huge basket on the seat beside her, she took a white cockade fashioned out of ribbon, decorated with a sprig of whortleberry, and pinned it to her daughter-in-law's breast just below the cameo locket that held Angus's portrait.

“Mind ye stay well back, Daughter. I heard what happened at Falkirk, an' ye'll have me to deal with this time if ye dinna listen to The MacGillivray.”

“Ye're a fair one to talk,” Anne murmured. “He tells me ye've refused to leave the city.”

“Bah. I'm too old to lift ma skirts an' run. If it should come to that, I'm too old for anyone to think o' rape when they come bangin' on ma door. But you, ye old bastard—” she raised her voice and glared at Fearchar, who rode pillion behind Robbie Farquharson. “Where the devil d'ye think ye're goin'?”

“I'm goin' where I'm goin', ye old dragon teat, an' never think a scowl will stop me.”

It only took a glare, however, for Robbie to nudge his horse to the side of the carriage. After the dowager fastened a cockade on each man's breast, she reached behind the younger man and grabbed the gnarled old face between her hands, kissing Fearchar squarely on the mouth.

“Try to at least stay awake,” she chided. “An' keep yer plaid up around yer ears or ye'll catch yer death afore ye even reach the moor.”

MacGillivray, MacBean, and nearly every other man was called forward by name to have the sprig and cockade pinned to their plaids, then to bow their heads for a benediction from the priest. When the last of the clansmen had moved off down the road, Lady Drummuir remained standing in the open carriage, her lips moving silently in prayer.