Midnight Honor

Robbie before continuing. “No one is sayin' any such thing about The MacKintosh. He's a good man, a fair man; he must be, or ye would have run a dirk across his throat long ago.”
    The demand to hear the unspoken reservation came through clenched teeth. “But?”
    “But… he hasna proved he's the leader this clan needs him tae be. Oh, aye, he can tally sheep an' count rents, an' he can hold a pretty audience when two crofters are fightin' over the boundaries o' their land. But he disna listen tae the hearts o' the men. They want tae fight, Annie. They would fight the devil himself if they had a leader willin' tae take them intae battle. And if he's no' the one tae do it, they'll look elsewhere f'ae a sword tae follow.”
    She looked slowly from one cousin to the next, then from Gillies MacBean—who studiously avoided making eye contact—to The MacGillivray. By then, all the fine hairs across her nape had prickled to attention and the skin along her spine felt as if spiders were skittering up and down it.
    “That's why you've called this meeting, isn't it? You're planning to break from the clan,” she whispered. “You're planning to break your oath to Angus and you're going to join the prince.”
    “I'll no' lie by sayin' we havna been thinkin' about it,” Eneas admitted. “Trouble is, three or four men willna make a lick o' difference. On the other hand, if we had three or four thousand—”
    “You'll not get three
hundred
clansmen to follow you, Eneas Farquharson! You may be able to frighten and bully them into holding secret meetings and sticking a sprig of thistle in their bonnets, but asking them to break clan laws isanother matter altogether. They would lose their homes. They would be men without a badge, without honor.”
    “They would be fightin' f'ae their king, f'ae their faith, f'ae their pride.”
    “Their pride would be fleeting. The glory would pass and they would be looked on as men who could not be trusted to uphold their word. Oh, not right away perhaps, for in victory there is always benevolence. But there would come a time when it would be remembered that they broke their oaths when so many stayed firm, and it would be held against them.”
    “There are some willin' tae take that chance.”
    “Are you one of them? Are you willing to forfeit your home? To lose everything your family has fought so hard to build? Are you willing to have your names struck from the kirk registry, and your children denied their birthrights?”
    “Better ye should ask me could I bear tae look in ma wife's eyes if I kept ma sword buried under the thatch instead o' raisin' it by the prince's side,” Eneas said quietly. “Some things are worth fightin' an' dyin' f'ae, Annie. Mayhap ye would understand that better if ye were a man.”
    She shot to her feet with enough vehemence to nearly tip the chair into the fire. “My not being a man has nothing to do with what I feel in my heart. I would walk onto the battlefield beside the lot of you if that was what my laird commanded. I would fight as hard and kill as many
Sassenachs
as the rest of you, and I would spill their blood just as proudly, never dare say that I would not!”
    “We dinna doubt yer loyalty f'ae a moment, Annie,” Fearchar said, having been startled awake by the crash of the chair against the iron grate. “In fact, it's the fire in yer eyes an' the courage in yer heart that we want.”
    “You have always had my heart, Granda'. You have never needed to ask for it.”
    “This time we do. Too many o' the lairds willna break their oath f'ae the very reasons ye said, but they might if they had a leader. Nay, nay”—he scrubbed his hand in the air as if erasing words from a slate—“that's no' right either. They blessed
all
want tae be leaders, an' tae that end, they'll fightthemselves bluidy before they're ever out o' the glen. What they need is someone who is as cunning as Forbes, as shameless as Loudoun when he offers rewards o' land an' gold to any man who signs the roster, someone they can trust who has the power tae bring them back intae the clan again regardless who wins an' who loses.”
    Anne could think of no one who could fill such an overwhelming charter, but then she frowned and looked at MacGillivray, the tall golden lion of the Highlands, and once again her breath left her lungs on a gust. “You, John? They've asked you to do this?”
    Before he answered he drew his legs in and sat straight in the chair. He rose slowly,