Midnight Honor

to Lochaber with their clans, but they have stumbled in here one at a timeinsisting they can be of help. There are a handful of servants who have perhaps
cleaned
a gun at one time or another, and two maids who come from a family of poachers.” She laid down the one weapon and picked up another, standing it on end while she measured powder down the barrel, added the patch and shot, then tamped the lot in place.
    Her hair tumbled loose around her shoulders as she did so, catching sparks of light from the score of candles that had been arranged in an arc around the table to render the working area nearly as bright as daylight.
    “You are staring, Mr. Forbes.”
    He stammered another apology and quickly picked up an over-and-under double-barreled snaphaunce. “I just cannot conceive of there being so few men left to guard the prince. Where is his army? What madman sent them to Lochaber?”
    “That madman would be the prince himself,” she said wryly. “But I am curious to know what brought you riding out here tonight, Douglas. Surely the madness is not contagious.”
    “It was not a decision rashly made, my lady. I think my heart was ever more for an independent Scotland than it was for the pleasure of bowing to King George's court. My only regret is that I took so long to fall off the fence.”
    “Well, you will be bruised and bloodied soon enough,” she said cheerfully. She cocked the last weapon to check the action of the hammer, then signaled to the two Highlanders to gather up the loaded weapons and follow her outside to where Fearchar Farquharson sat on an overturned bucket, giving instructions to the men and women who showed up in pairs or threes asking what they could do to help.
    “Well, Granda'?” Anne looked around as she stepped out into the torchlight. “What is the count?”
    “Ye've got twelve men on the road wi' Jamie an' Robbie, anither ten or so in the bushes ayont, an' mayhap the same in the house an' up on the roof. Half o' those are wimmin, more like as tae blow off their ain teats as soon as hit a sojer in the dark.”
    Anne leaned over and kissed his wrinkled brow. “Perhaps you should go inside and get behind the barricades, where you can watch them to ensure such a thing does not happen.”
    “Bah! I'm no' afeared o' any bluidy
Sassenach
sojers. I'llstay right here, never ye mind, an' ye'll see: Nowt a one will get past me. Nowt a one.”
    “Yes,” Anne said grimly. “Not even if they are on our side.”
    “It were dark!” he declared. “He looked like a bluidy
Sassenach.”
    “Corporal Peters
is
a bluidy
Sassenach,”
Anne said gently. “And you recognized him easily enough this afternoon when he brought you a bag of sugared dates. It was only tonight, when he volunteered his help, that he damned near lost an ear.”
    Douglas Forbes was staring again. “Did you say … Peters? Corporal
Jeffrey
Peters?”
    “Yes. Do you know him?”
    “No. But apparently Colonel Blakeney does. He said they had a spy placed very close to the prince, and according to him it was a Corporal Jeffrey Peters who told him the manor house would be undefended tonight.”
    “There ye go,” Fearchar snorted. “I told ye I didna trust the barstard. No' wi' them wee skrinty eyes always lookin' at the
Camshroinaich Dubh's
wife like as he could lick the skin clear off her bones. Where is he? Where is the barstard, I'll blow him open masel'!”
    Anne looked out into the darkness, in the direction of the tall craggy peaks that rose above the tops of the fir trees. “Dear God, he's with them. He's with the prince and Catherine and the others.”
    Fearchar pushed to his feet. “Well, dinna just stan' there gawpin', lass! Get some horses. Get some men—!”
    The rest of her grandfather's orders were silenced by the sudden popping of distant gunfire. It was sporadic at first, then came in volleys that echoed from side to side down the length of the glen.
    “It's the English,” Anne gasped. “They're here.”

Chapter Twenty
    J ohn MacGillivray rubbed the nape of his neck, but the irritating prickle would not go away. If it were summer, he would have suspected an insect had crawled under his collar and was enjoying a feast of warm flesh, but it was the dead of winter and even the lice were too cold to forage.
    He drew on his cigar and watched the last of the king's cattle being herded into the narrow chasm. The glen on the other side was a natural bottleneck, with a wide, grassy basin surrounded by