Midnight Honor

was in Edinburgh?”
    “She was there as a guest of Major Worsham.”
    “And she helped you write letters?”
    “Four of them. On pink paper, I believe, with little red ribbons binding them. And a most exotic fragrance sprayed across the pages.”
    The blue of her eyes turned dark enough to cause the fine hairs along his forearms to stand on end. “How exotic?”
    “Very exotic. The scent reminded me of a small white flower in India that opens only in the moonlight.”
    “That would be memorable indeed,” she murmured. “And did it inspire anything else to open in the moonlight?”
    “Oh, I am sure it did,” he agreed affably. “But not, unfortunately, for my benefit.”
    “Unfortunately?”
    Angus jerked slightly. He realized her arms were no longer around his neck but, as invigorating and liberating to his soul as these past fourteen days and nights had been, there was still something decidedly imprudent about a lady having her hands up a man's kilt in the middle of a public tavern.
    That the two of them were temporarily alone was little comfort. There was no lock on the outer door, and an occasional scuffling sound marked the tavern owner's presence on the other side of a thin partition. The corner was dark, but the candle threw enough light to cause the flown wisps of Anne's hair to glow like a fiery red halo, and to cast a shadow on the wall beside them, mirroring the deliberate up-and-down movement of her hands.
    “I assure you,” he whispered, “you have nothing to be jealous about. Adrienne was just helping me out of a rather sticky situation. Stop that, minx,” he added with a shaky grin. “Someone could come through the door at any moment.”
    “Someone could,” she agreed, glancing over her shoulder. “But are you not the one who just said you wanted to start taking a few risks?”
    “Well, yes, b-but—”
    She pursed her lips by way of cautioning him to silence, then lowered her head.
    “Dear … sweet… Jesus,” he gasped. His hands were in her hair, but seeing what she was about, he moved them, sending one to grip the edge of the table, the other the back of the bench. His jaw clenched around a sound that was half shock, half pleasure, and despite the chill in the air, smallbeads of moral turpitude popped out across his brow. Every muscle in his body tensed into bands of iron, and because there was nothing he could do to prevent it, he felt the heat surge into his loins and pump into his chest, the blood pounding loud enough to drown out every last voice of reason. To his horror, he became dimly aware of the door opening and someone coming through, stamping the snow off his boots, but it was too late to do more than shoot out his hand and smash it down over the guttering candle. Soft white beads of wax spattered across the table and he groaned inwardly, steeling himself even as he clamped his fingers around the tallow shaft and squeezed it into a misshapen mass.
    He remained that way, unable to move or even sweat for several exquisitely torturous moments. When he could, he sucked in a huge mouthful of air and glared accusingly at Anne, watching her as she rearranged the pleats of his kilt and slipped up onto the bench beside him. Demurely, she wiped her chin and took a sip of ale from his tankard; when she looked at him, he could see she was a breath away from laughing. Her eyes were still bright, but not with jealousy or envy. They shone with the lush certainty of a woman who knew exactly who her husband would be thinking about each night they were apart.
    “Two can play such games, madam,” he promised softly. “And you shall pay dearly for that bit of mischief.”
    “Is that a promise, sir?”
    His hand slid up her thigh and he waited for her smile to lose some of its impudent edge.
    “More of a warning, I should think. The promise, my dear, is that you shall not get one moment's sleep tonight.”

Chapter Eighteen
    Inverness
    T he retreat from Falkirk began on February 1, the day after a courier brought the startling news that Cumberland had unexpectedly moved the army out of Edinburgh and was marching to Linlithgow. The Jacobites decamped before sunrise; by noon, there was only trampled snow and a few broken carts mired in the garbage-strewn mud of Bannockburn to show they had ever been in the vicinity. In St. Ninians, the departure had not gone quite as smoothly. A careless spark had set off a series of explosions in the village church where the Jacobites had stored