Midnight Honor (22 page)

Anne glanced around the room to see if anyone was paying attention, but they had kept their voices low enough not to disturb the sleeping forms. She went over to her pallet of blankets and gingerly unfastened the waist of her trews, pushing them down past her hips and sliding them, with difficulty, to her ankles. She was wearing one of Jamie's cambric shirts, the hem of which fell almost to her knees and could be tucked between her legs to spare her more tender parts the worst of the chafing.

MacGillivray scarcely seemed to notice as he fetched the jar of liniment from his saddle pouch and rounded the fire. When she was lying facedown on the blankets, he smeared a healthy dollop in his palms and rubbed them together, warming the oily mess first before he knelt beside her.

His first strokes were gentle, smoothing the slippery concoction into her skin and working it into her thighs and calves. He added more, warming it each time, and when he judged her slick enough, he began to knead the muscles with
the vigor of a biscuit maker. The heat of his hands combined with the heat of the camphor started a not uncomfortable burn down the length of her legs, and when he paused to nudge the hem of the shirt up to the crease of her bottom, she did not object.

“You've not said much about Elizabeth,” Anne murmured.

“Ye havna said much about Angus,” he countered.

“You are going to marry her, are you not?”

MacGillivray's sigh was extravagant. “We have talked about it, aye.”

“Just… talked about it?”

“Aye. I'm a great talker, have ye not noticed?”

Whether she would have pursued the topic or not was cut short on a gasp as he lifted the shirt higher and sent his hands sliding all the way up to her shoulders. Her teeth clamped down over her lower lip and her fists curled tighter around the little hillocks she'd made in the blankets, but the massage felt so good and the heat produced by his big hands was so comforting, she stopped thinking of her bared bottom after the first few strokes.

MacGillivray felt her shock and saw the clenching of her fists, but it was the only way he could think to end the conversation. He did not want to talk about Elizabeth of Clunas, or of his impending marriage, not while his hands were doing what they had ached to do for so many years. The pleasure of feeling her skin all sleek and warm and bared to his touch was so intense, it stirred sensations that had no right to be stirred, arousing needs that had no right to be aroused.

He may well have been half sotted the last time their lips had met, but he remembered all too well how she had tasted, how she had felt, how she made those tiny sounds deep in her throat when he had kissed her. God's truth, he had dreamt of them lying together so many times, he imagined he knew exactly where and how to caress her until she was trembling with the madness of wanting his flesh inside her. And once there … once there, by God, he knew she would be as insatiable as a nymph, rising against him, engulfing him so completely with her own orgasms he would scarcely have need to worry about his own. But of course he would. He would feel her flesh sliding
over his, feel it squeezing him, working him like little fists, and the climax would be cataclysmic.

Wild Rhuad Annie. How many times had he regretted not taking her that day in the fairground? She had been willing. She had been more than ready. She had kissed him as if her soul had been in her mouth, his for the taking. But he had stopped himself, had slapped himself down, not wanting to risk tarnishing her reputation until they were well and properly married. He had known about the betrothal arrangement pledging her to Angus Moy, but when her fiancé had become the vaunted chief of Clan Chattan and it looked as though the agreement might be nullified, he had felt confident Fearchar would accept him, John Alexander MacGillivray, as a worthy alternative. The day—the very bloody day—before he had decided he could wait no longer to offer for her hand, he was told the wedding to The MacKintosh was to proceed as planned.

The day of Annie's marriage, he had gotten so drunk, it had become necessary for Gillies to tie him down to keep him from tearing Dunmaglass apart plank by plank. He had stayed drunk for a month and sought to ease himself on every whore within ten miles of Inverness.

After four years, the ache was still a living thing in his belly. It sent tremors through his arms, down his legs; it sent rivers of heated blood flowing into his groin, swelling him to almost unbearable lengths.

He had helped Anne to her feet a while ago, but who would help him now? Who, for that matter, would stop him if he turned her on her back and plunged himself between her thighs? He could take her and damn them both to hell without a qualm. He had seen her watching him surreptitiously from a window at Dunmaglass, and he had lost count of the number of embarrassed little glances he caught her sending his way ever since. A kiss would silence her. She was vulnerable, aching with a need Angus was not here to satisfy and had been too foolish to see how precious a thing it was.

The tension in John's body became as palpable as the heartbeat thundering within his chest. His hands skimmed downward, slowing when they smoothed around her ribs. His
fingertips brushed against the pillowed curve of her breasts and he bowed his head, cursing his own damning weakness.

Angus Moy was his friend as well as his laird. Not only that, but he had come to Dunmaglass the day before he left for Edinburgh and asked John to look out for Anne while he was gone. He had said he knew his wife was too stubborn to stay at home with her needlework, and if she managed to get herself thrown in gaol for spitting on the Lord President, would John mind blowing up the courthouse to break her out?

The irony had almost choked him then, for had her husband come an hour earlier, he could have seen Anne standing there brazen as brass announcing she was going to call out the clan and march to war.

It choked him now when he thought that if he had gone to Fearchar a day earlier, if he had, indeed, stolen more than a kiss that day at the fair, if he hadn't been so damned arrogant in thinking she was too wild and spirited for anyone else to want to try to tame …?

“Ye'll be the sorry death o' me, lass,” he whispered. “Ye ken that, do ye not?”

When there was no answer, he leaned forward and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. She was fast asleep and he did not know whether he should feel relieved or disappointed.

He straightened her shirt and drew a bundle of blankets up over her shoulders, tucking her in as gently as he would a child. At the last, he could not resist bending over and pressing a kiss into the gleaming red crown of her hair, for he knew it would be the last time he could risk doing such a thing. He loved her far too much to see her hurting any more than she was now, and to put the horns to her husband would surely tear her apart.

He stoppered the jar of unguent and pushed to his feet, glaring balefully down at the enormous bulge in the front of his kilt. There was little likelihood of his being able to sleep himself this night, he thought grimly, not with his body as tense as a cocked pistol and his mind full of what-ifs and why-nots.

He fished a Carolina cigar out of his sporran and bit the
end. While he was leaning over to light a taper he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced sharply at the darkened corner where Glenna Mor made her bed. She was there, sitting back on her heels, her eyes large and round and dark in a face framed by a tousle of curls. How long she had been watching them, John did not know, but as he stared at her now, she tipped her head and raised her hands to her bodice, peeling the cheap wool aside to show him that her breasts were ripe and lush, her nipples hard as beads.

Her hands moved again, sliding down into the juncture between her thighs. She seemed to purr and stretch with the sensation and this time, when she tilted her head, she did so in the direction of the door.

John narrowed his eyes against the flare of the taper. He held it to the end of his cigar and through a thin blue cloud, watched the girl snatch up her cloak and move toward the door.

Once there, she paused and looked back over her shoulder, smiling an invitation before she slipped outside. With wisps of smoke trailing behind him like a Medusa, John stalked after her, but no sooner had he closed the door behind him when another short, stocky shadow loomed up out of the mist.

“I were just comin' tae fetch ye,” said Gillies MacBean. “We found a camp down by the river. Forty
Sassenachs
wi' three wagons saggin' wi' what looks like barrels o' grain an' casks o' ale. The men were thinkin' we might have more need o' such things than Thomas Lobster.”

MacGillivray cast around. There were enough campfires blazing to provide a weak, watery kind of light through the fog, and he could see the girl's silhouette paused by a patch of soft green grass a discreet distance from the house.

“Aye,” he said. “Bring the horses. We could use a little diversion.”

Gillies followed his glance and saw the waiting shadow. “I could take the men out maself if ye've more pressin' needs tae tend tae.”

John stuck his cigar in his mouth and clapped a hand around the shorter man's shoulder. “Ye're a good friend,
Gillies, but ye've likely just saved me from a fine case o' the pox.”

Gillies grinned. “Dinna tell Robbie that. She wrung him out in the haystack no' an hour gaun. He's lyin' there still, drained tae the bone, weak as a saplin', declarin' undyin' love.”

“Love,” John snorted. “Almost as bad as the bloody pox. Let's away. It'll be dawn in a few hours, an' ye've given me a taste for fresh bannocks.”

Chapter Eleven

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 had no siege cannon in his possession at the time, and the castle was left unmolested.