Page 30 of Midnight Honor (Highland Wolves #3)

A nne traced her fingers gently over the ugly welt of scar tissue that marred the smooth skin below her husband's ribs. He was lying on his side, asleep, but at the touch of her fingers, then her lips, he stirred and rolled slowly onto his back. He saw the threat of tears in her eyes and he sighed, enfolding her in his arms and holding her close against his chest.

“How many times must I tell you it was not your fault,” he murmured, burying his lips in her hair. “You were in shock, you did not know what you were doing.”

“I knew enough to nearly kill ye.”

“You were blind with rage, and I did not move out of your way fast enough, an error I will not make again, you can be sure.”

“I thought ye were dead,” she whispered. “All that time, when I did not hear from ye, I thought I had killed ye.”

“During that first fortnight, I thought you had, too. MacCardle tells me I was out of my mind with the fever. Then, when I recovered—" he paused and kissed her again, tightening his arms around her so that she was encouraged to slide over and lie directly on top of him— “I was told you were in prison, and there was little that could be done to set you free. I damn near lost my mind again.”

Anne folded her arms across his chest and propped her chin on her hands, content just to look at him, content to feel his hands stroking up and down her back. They had spent the better part of the last ten days in bed, most of it sleeping, eating, bathing, sleeping. Angus slipped away now and then to oversee the repairs to Moy Hall, for the English had come back several times during Anne's incarceration and there was hardly a chair without its stuffing ripped open or a cupboard not smashed to kindling. Most of the servants had returned when they heard the laird had somehow miraculously won his lady's freedom. There were also two hundred clansmen camped around the loch, with more appearing every day, many of them MacGillivray and MacBean men who had no homes left to go to and no one to lead them. Of the twenty-one lairds of Clan Chattan who had stood in the front line alongside MacGillivray, only three had survived the charge, and two of those had died later of their wounds.

The clansmen who found their way to Moy were some of the fiercest fighters who had taken to the field that day, and with Anne standing proud by his side, Angus declared that he would have need of every one of them in the weeks and months to come. There were a thousand fugitives hiding in the hills who would need food and clothing and transportation out of Scotland, and MacGillivray's men were the best smugglers in Caledonia. The English were systematically stripping the Highlands of cattle, sheep, and livestock, hoping to starve the people into submission, but to an exceptional band of reivers and rustlers, what was stolen once could easily be stolen twice.

Angus had received word the previous afternoon from his solicitor that Anne's pardon had arrived safely in his office, along with affidavits from the three royal ministers to whom Angus had shown the forged battle orders. Cumberland had immediately destroyed the copy Angus had taken from Major Worsham's pouch, but the gesture had been theatrical at best, petulant at worst. On its own, there was nothing to prove the order false. But there had indeed been other papers in Worsham's possession, including copious notes taken during the meeting with Cumberland, when it was explained how easy it had been to forge Lord George's signature and add the clause that had led to such unjustified, unconscionable slaughter. Angus had gone to London himself to present the evidence to the First Minister, and to name the only terms on which he would not send copies of all the documentation to the London Gazette.

In the days following the battle at Culloden, Cumberland had been regarded as a valiant hero; he had triumphed over the savagery of a Highland army twenty thousand strong! He had saved England! He had saved his father's crown!

But as the stories of the hangings and brutalities began to seep south, the papers were less enthusiastic in their praise. Prince Frederick of Hesse had returned home with an entire army that had refused to fight under such a primitive butcher, and the people were appalled to learn the reason why. They were also becoming curious to know why, out of the thirty-five hundred rebels currently imprisoned in the Highlands, so few had actually been captured on the field that day. Or why the numbers of dead far exceeded the handful of wounded that survived the day.

The Hanover government knew Angus was in a position to give further eyewitness accounts of the total lack of compassion and honor and the needless cruelty to the dying and wounded. That, plus evidence of the duke's complicity in forging false battle orders would turn the hero into a beast overnight. The triumph would become a shameful disgrace, and in the backlash of sympathy, both in England and abroad, the Scots might well emerge in a stronger position to challenge the throne than before.

In return for his silence, Angus expected the original terms of his immunity agreement to be upheld, and to include the surviving lairds and families of Clan Chattan.

It had taken three weeks for couriers to go back and forth from London to Inverness, but in the end Angus had won. He had appeared before the minister wearing the scarlet tunic and gold braid of an officer in the King's Royal Scots, but he had returned to Scotland wearing the tartan and crossbelts of a man fully in command of his own destiny. Cumberland, in a fury, had arranged for the exchange to take place that same night...along with a plan to ambush and eliminate the troublesome laird and his wife. With the ambush foiled Cumberland was forced to honor all of the terms and now, ten days later, Anne was warm and safe in her husband's arms. She was still terribly thin and her nights were not entirely peaceful, but at least she was sleeping, and eating well again, and she only wept when she was left alone too long to think about all the dreadful losses.

“I have arranged to have John's body moved to Petty, to a small green hill overlooking the firth.”

“He would like that,” she said softly, “being able to look out over the water with the mountains at his back.”

“And MacBean by his side, as always. We found Gilles's body and asked Elizabeth if she minded them sharing the brae together. She said I should be asking the priest instead, for with the two of them in the churchyard, they'll be sure to raise the Devil.”

The shine was back in her eyes, but it came with a smile this time. “Granda' told me yesterday that Elizabeth is with child, so he has not completely left us. There will be another MacGillivray at Dunmaglass.”

“If it is a son, I suppose I will have to give him back his father's bucklers.”

Anne's eyes narrowed beneath a wry frown. “I wondered where ye had come by all that impressive weaponry in the clearing. I almost did not recognize ye as the fastidious gentleman scholar I married.”

“I thought I needed a little of MacGillivray's roguish courage to bolster me.”

“Ye have more courage than it would seem wise or safe to have these days, my lord. Or do ye think Cumberland will forget that ye blackmailed him?”

“He will not forget. But he has already taken his army to Fort Augustus. In a month, when he becomes bored with the lack of opera and swan livers, he will go home to London, and we will not seem quite so significant. Besides—” He rolled carefully onto his side, taking Anne with him; another deft shift and she was beneath him, her eyes round and wide and blue as sapphires as he settled himself between her thighs. “I have more important things to worry about at the moment than the wounded vanities of a fat little tyrant.”

“Ye do?”

He moved his hips forward and savored the heat of her welcome a moment before curling his hands in the fiery silk of her hair and holding her through a long, molten kiss.

“Unless, of course, you would rather talk,” he said against her lips. “Which is what a fastidious gentleman scholar might well do under the circumstances.”

“I think—" her hands smoothed down his waist and grasped his hips— “I prefer to keep my roguish warrior a while longer.”