Midnight Honor

release with her head flung back and the sound of wondrous joy quivering in her throat. Angus held her and poured himself inside her. His hands, his body, his entire being shook with the intensity of his climax; even so, he waited until the very last possible instant before grunting the air out of his lungs, knowing it would be several moments before he could suck in enough to replace it. Anne continued to shiver against him, around him, keeping herself pressed so close, the evidence of their pleasure ran warm and wet between them.
    “The original terms of our agreement stand,” he gasped at length. “No battlefields, no skulking about the countryside in the dead of night, no guns—although I am beginning to believe that not any manner of promise, oath, or pledge can keep you out of trouble, madam.”
    “The encounter with Blakeney's men was not my fault,” she protested. “I was only attempting to defend my home.”
    “But sending fifteen men out to fight fifteen hundred?”
    “It certainly was not by choice, I assure you. Just as it was not your choice to have to bow to Duncan Forbes's blackmail.”
    She said it so quietly it took a moment for Angus to raise his head and meet her eyes. When he did, he saw a world of mixed emotions reflected there: anger, confusion, pride, defiance, admiration, condemnation. There was not much left to choose from.
    “MacGillivray talks too much.”
    “It wasn't John who told me; it was young Douglas Forbes. He thought it would cheer me to know how brave and honorable my husband truly was, sacrificing so much in order to guarantee the safety of his wife and clansmen. Frankly, it only made me want to hit you. And not just because you took it upon yourself to bear the burden of all this righteousness alone, but more because you did not tell me.”
    “And what would you have done if I had?”
    She took his face between her hands, and Angus sucked in a breath as her hips wriggled against him again. “This is what I would have done,” she whispered. “I would have loved you ten times more than I did already.”
    “Then
you would have hit me?”
    “Then I would have hit you,” she agreed.
    He continued to gaze deeply into her eyes, offering up a small, uncertain smile. “Perhaps I should bare my soul completely, then, and have done with all my confessions.”
    “There are more?”
    “Only one, though it is somewhat related to the other.” He swallowed to ease the dryness in his throat, but before he had a chance to elaborate, a low, distant rumble broke into the cocooned silence of the bedchamber. It was followed a few seconds later by a distinct rattling of the glass windowpanes and the trinkets on the mantel. Even the wine in the bedside decanter shivered in the glow of the candles.
    Angus untangled their legs and left the bed to cross over to the window. He raised the curtain and peered outside, expecting to see gray skies and the roiling clouds of a thunderstorm. But the sun was shining, the blue of the sky almost painful after the subdued romance of the candlelight. Then he remembered.
    “Eneas said they were going to commence blowing up Fort George today. I gather the English left more than enough powder in the magazine to do the job properly, and there will be no lack of volunteers for the job. Many of the men have been guests there at one time or another; many more have seen fathers, brothers, sons locked away for months on end without justification. I expect Fearchar would have been in the fore, lighting the first fuse, for was he not a guest of various administrations over the last century?”
    When Anne did not answer, he dropped the curtain back in place and returned to the bed. She was fast asleep, snuggled into the nest of pillows, blankets, and tumbled sheets. He drew the covers gently up over her glorious nudity, then slipped back into bed beside her, listening as yet another distant rumble shook the windowpanes.
    The explosions that eventually reduced Fort George to rubble stopped abruptly on April 14, when the shocking news reached Inverness that Cumberland's army had been on the move for a week. It had, in fact, already crossed the River Spey in three places, unchallenged by the brigades Lord George had set in place to guard against such a thing. The news could not have come at a worse time, for there were no more than a thousand of the prince's troops in Inverness; most were away either securing positions or foraging for supplies.
    Food and fodder