The Blood of Roses (41 page)

“I doubt if Angus Moy sees it as courage. He is a very honest and conscientious man, and takes his responsibilities as Chief of Clan Chattan very seriously. His father was a Jacobite and he lost two uncles in the last rebellion. It had to have been a hard decision for him to make to turn his back on us now—harder still when he hears his wife has thumbed her nose at his authority.”

“I still think she is brave.”

“Because she followed her heart and not her head? If we all did that, where would we be?”

“Probably right where we are now,” she said impertinently, rising on tiptoes to kiss him.

Alexander’s scowl returned. “You think rather highly of your own cleverness, don’t you?”

“Uh-huh. And I have the perfect example to follow in you, my lord husband.”

“Then, perhaps, I should keep the surprise to myself awhile longer, to see if you are clever enough to discover it for yourself.”

“Surprise?” she asked, her interest piqued at once. “What surprise?”

“Oh … just something I stumbled across early this morning. But the more I think on it, the less deserving you appear to be. Besides”—he scratched pensively at the stubble of black beard on his jaw—“you may not be all that pleased to see him.”

“See him? See who?” she demanded.

Alex stepped back and slowly raised the flap of the tent. A man stood a few feet away, his hands cupped over the lower half of his face, the gaps between the reddened fingers venting steam as he tried to warm them with his breath. The color ebbed from Catherine’s face for a moment, then was restored to a full flush as she ran past Alex with a joyous cry.

“Damien! My God, Damien!”

Damien Ashbrooke spread his arms wide to catch his sister, spinning her around in a half circle as he did. When they came to a halt, they hugged each other fiercely, laughing, crying, trying to speak simultaneously.

“What are you doing here?”

“Where did you come from?”

“Harriet?”

“In London, she’s fine—”

Catherine waved her hands for order. “Damien … what are you doing here? Where is Harriet? How did you get here?”

“Harriet is in London.” He laughed. “And I almost didn’t get here in one piece. And what the devil are
you
doing here? Half the haystacks in Derby have been overturned, looking for you.”

“I … had to leave. I had to come here with Alex. Damien … you’ve left Harriet alone in London? Does she know where you are? Does she know
what
you are, what you are doing?” She frowned suddenly and held him at arm’s length. “What
are
you doing? Why are you here in Scotland?”

“I’m doing what I should have done long ago, and yes, Harriet knows what I am doing and why I have to do it. She sends her love to you as well as a haversack full of letters which I had to promise you would open one by one and answer in order. Imagine my surprise when I stopped off at Rosewood Hall to deliver them and confess my terrible, traitorous inclinations … only to be informed that my sweet, innocent sister was being sought to answer questions of treason, collaboration, and
murder!”

Catherine’s smile vanished. “You heard about Lieutenant Goodwin?”

“Heard about him? You thought you were the gossips’ delight following your marriage to the elusive Raefer Montgomery? It is a wonder your ears have not been singed to nubs even at this distance. What the deuce happened?”

“It was self-defense. We had no choice.”

“We?”

“Deirdre and I. We were alone in the house, and … and …” Her eyes burned with the remembered horror, and Damien did not need to see the warning look on Alexander’s face to quickly change the subject.

“Not only did I arrive at Rosewood Hall to find my sister had vacated the premises, but did you know, Mother has fled to greener pastures? Taken it into her head to abscond with a chap by the name of—”

“Lovat-Spence.” Catherine nodded. “Yes. I know. We spoke together before she left, and she seems content with the decision. She probably should have done it long ago, if you ask me, but I gave her both our blessings and told her I would explain everything to you when I saw you.”

Damien’s look of incredulity deepened. “Either the air is thinner here in the mountains and my mind has been affected, or you and I are in dire need of a long, uninterrupted conversation.”

“Your mind has been affected for years, brother mine,” she said mockingly, and slipped her hand into his. “But I shall attempt to straighten it out for you … assuming you are free to join Deirdre and me in our little cart. It’s not exactly a coach-and-four, but it’s cozy. Alex?”

“By all means, spend as much time as you like together—” A solemn gleam in the indigo eyes confirmed a private conversation between the two of them later. “We haven’t anything more troublesome than a mountain pass to conquer today.”

Catherine ran back and gave him a quick hug, “Thank you for the wonderful surprise.”

“You’re quite welcome. I’ll collect my reward later.”

“Indeed you will,” she promised huskily.

Alex watched them walk away, hand in hand, following a path worn in the rutted snow and frozen peaks of mud.

“Where the hell did you find him?” Aluinn asked casually and moved forward to stand at Cameron’s side.

“A better question might be, how the hell did he find us?”

Startled, Aluinn glanced over, but there was no hint of what was lying behind the question—curiosity, or suspicion.

An hour later Aluinn and Alex were still studying the maps Colonel Anne Moy had provided. The topmost one was a diagram of the city of Inverness, complete with roads feeding in and out of the town, the location of bridges and rivers, rough estimates of distances between local landmarks: Fort George, Culloden House, Moy Hall.

“Culloden House,” Alex mused. “I don’t imagine we will find the Lord President in residence when we get there.”

“Colonel Anne seems to think Duncan Forbes would be feeling a good deal safer behind the battlements of Fort George. Loudoun is holed up there already with about two thousand troops, armed and supplied for a siege.”

“A siege?” Alex snorted. “We can only hope that by failing to take Stirling Castle after three weeks of useless and pointless stalemate, the prince has learned his lesson.”

“Aye, and hopefully he’ll not be so quick to trust O’Sullivan with bombarding anything bigger than a beehive.”

“Lord George seems to think our regent was simply testing his powers of command. Hell of a way to do it: throw away a potential rout at Falkirk, then waste time, manpower, and ammunition trying to assault a fortification that could hold out against them for a hundred years, if it had to. Conversely, he thinks nothing of leaving a handful of men to hold off the entire might of Cumberland’s army.”

Alex did not bother to check the bitterness in his voice, nor was Aluinn surprised to hear it. They had received word only the night before that the men they had left behind to hold the garrison at Carlisle had finally signed a capitulation, after holding out against the government forces for nine days. From the two officers who had escaped to carry the news, it was learned the entire contingent of prisoners had been thrown in chains and were slated for execution. Four dragoons who had deserted to the prince after Prestonpans and who had volunteered to join the Manchester Regiment had been hanged on the spot, cut down while still alive, their bellies and joints slit open, and their bodies torn into quarters, by way of an example of Cumberland’s policy toward traitors.

“We should reach Invernesshire sometime in the next two days, weather permitting,” Alex said. “We will have to take the city if we are to have any hope of holding on to the Highlands over winter. We need the food and supplies in her warehouses and we need to keep at least one damned port open on the off chance a ship from France manages to break through the Royal Navy’s blockade. If only we had retaken Edinburgh …”

“It is the ‘if onlys’ of the world that choke a man to death,” Aluinn declared sagely. “If only we had done this instead of that; if only we had gone here instead of there; if only I had married ten years ago, I would have been a happy man ten years sooner.”

“That isn’t what you thought ten years ago. And certainly not what I ever thought I would hear you say, old friend.”

“Oh? The voice of wisdom and experience, is it? You were so eager for wedding vows yourself?”

“God, no. But at least I wasn’t falling in love every five minutes, either—or thinking I was in love.”

“I like to look back on it as … preparatory research. Nothing at all like the real thing, of course, but a more pleasant way to spend the evenings than glowering at shadows. Not as shocking to the equilibrium to give up either.”

“Are you, in your inimitable fashion, making a point here?”

“Heavens, no. You appear to have made the transition from rake to respectability without a hitch, as far as I can see. Far better than I might have predicted. You might even excel at it, given a few years of country living.”

The dark sapphire eyes searched for an explanation for the poorly concealed smile on MacKail’s face and came away frowning.

“What in blazes
were
you and Catherine talking about?”

“Oh … the weather, her health.” “Her health? Is there something the matter with her health?”

“Not a thing. I just thought she looked rather glowing these days and decided to mention it to her. A nice change from the way she looked when she first joined us, don’t you agree?”

Alex straightened slowly. He still felt the muscles in his belly constrict whenever he thought of what Catherine— and Deirdre—had suffered at the hands of the British. The bruises had taken weeks to fade, the haunted look in her eyes, almost as long.

“You should try complimenting her now and then,” Aluinn suggested blithely. “Tell her she looks as good in men’s breeches as she ever did in a Paris gown—not that she wouldn’t look good in a burlap feedsack if she chose to wear one—but you would be amazed at the small things that twig in a woman’s mind. And that, good friend,
is
the voice of experience.” He leaned over and began collecting up the maps. “Now, shall we join the others, or should we wait until they collapse the tent over our heads?”

MacKail adjusted the woolen scarf he wore around his neck and led the way out of the tent, grimacing as he looked up into the graying sky. There would be more snow before the day progressed much further—good news, insofar as it meant Cumberland would be locked in at Edinburgh; bad news for the men, who had to march through the blowing, drifting white stuff.

The two men had not walked very far in the direction of their waiting horses when their attention was drawn to a group of approaching riders. In their lead, sitting proudly astride an enormous dappled gray gelding, was Lady Anne Moy, Colonel Anne of the Clan Chattan regiment. Her husband Angus was The MacKintosh, chief to the clan of that name as well as to the dozens of small clans that had amalgamated to form the powerful Clan of the Cats. Unfortunately, with The MacKintosh serving under Lord Loudoun’s Highland regiments, and Lady Anne pledging her support to Prince Charles, the power of Clan Chattan was greatly reduced. What might well have been a contingent of over two thousand men, united behind the single standard of the Cats, was reduced to less than four hundred.

As much courage as it had taken for Lady Anne to go against her husband’s orders, it would take a great deal more, should she ever find herself facing her husband and clansmen across a battlefield.

“Ahh, MacKail,” she said, greeting the men with a smile and a wave. “Alasdair. I hope the maps prove to be of some use.”

“They are excellent, thank you.”

Colonel Anne was neither beautiful in the classic sense of the word nor delicate—two qualities considered essential in women of the aristocracy. She was tall and statuesque, with the steely, long-limbed grace of a Highland lass raised among the heathery moors and wild mountains. She met a man’s gaze directly and openly scorned any attempts to patronize her gender; only twenty years of age, she had personally ridden from clan to clan, eliciting support for Prince Charles, falling only three signatures short of the one hundred required by clan law to lead the men into battle herself. As honorary colonel, she had chosen John Alexander MacGillivray for her captain, an equally rawboned, intelligent, and articulate leader. They were usually together, to the delight of the rumormongers, and this morning was no exception.

“MacGillivray,” Alex said, extending his hand to the laird as he and Lady Anne dismounted. “You managed to sober up, I see?”

“Ach, I’ll have tae have a wee talk with yer brither,” MacGillivray replied, wincing through a handsome grin. “I ken his stillman must be doin’ somethin’ mines is na. Powerful stuff, that. Medicinal, Archie calls it? More like poison f’ae what disna ail ye.”

Lady Anne laughed, a delightful sound in the crisp, clear mountain air. “We’ll be riding on ahead, Cameron of Loch Eil. The prince has accepted ma offer to lodge at Moy Hall until the rest of the army arrives in Inverness. Ye shouldna be more than a day or two behind us, and by then MacGillivray will know how things stand in the city—assuming he sobers enough to see straight.”

“You will take no initiative on your own, I trust,” Alex cautioned. “The MacLeods and the Grants have reinforced Lord Loudoun’s troops, and they will have had plenty of warning about our approach.”

“MacLeod.” She spat derisively. “I carina believe ma own husband would keep company with a soft-gutted traitor like MacLeod. Mind, I still carina believe Angus would ever raise a sword against Bonnie Prince Charlie, so there ye go. It’s fair justice we fill Moy Hall with good, honest Jacobites. Ye’ll both be joining us with yer wives? Ye ken ye canna keep a proper lady from a soft bed and a hot bath too long, or she starts to look like me.”

“I could think of worse fates,” Alex said admiringly, earning a blush and a self-conscious laugh from Anne Moy. Her glance was directed sidelong at John MacGillivray, and Alex could not help but share the speculation as to whether their relationship had progressed further than the chart tables.