Midnight Honor

being such a burden.”
    “Och, ye're no' a burden, lass,” he said, pressing a kiss into the soft crush of her hair. “A trial, sometimes,” he added with a crooked grin, “but no' a burden.”
    Anne did not know how long she had slept, or when the heat had left her side. It was the pipes that woke her. Pipes and theparadiddle of beating drums that called the Highlanders to arms, warning them that Cumberland's army was approaching Drummossie Moor.
    Anne shook herself awake in time to see MacGillivray strapping his great broadsword across his back and fastening the wide studded leather belts that held his arsenal of smaller, lethal weapons, including a brace of claw-butted pistols. Gillies was beside him, kicking awake some of the men who had not yet stirred.
    “Wh-what's happening? What time is it?”
    “Gone eleven,” John said, his voice as raw as his mood. “The first four brigades o' the duke's army are already on the field, with more comin' up behind. Half our men are still dead asleep; the others have wandered away in search o' food.” He looked at the barn door and bellowed, “Is ma horse saddled yet? I'll only need him as far as the moor.”
    Someone shouted back and he acknowledged it with a grunt.
    Anne scrambled to her feet, earning an instant, ominous glare from MacGillivray.
    “Ye're stayin' right here, lass, make no mistake. Try so much as to breathe a quarrel with me an' I'll have Gillies tie ye to the post.”
    “He wouldn't dare.”
    Both men answered in unison, one saying “He would,” the other saying “I would,” and she knew they meant it.
    When the last clansman was rousted, the last sword and musket retrieved from the hay, MacGillivray sent them out on the run. Unable to find his own bonnet, he snatched another from beside the trough and waved it at Gillies as a signal to go on ahead.
    “If things go bad,” he said, cramming the bonnet over his blond hair, “I want ye up on The Bruce an' riding hard for Moy Hall. 'Tis where Lord George has said the clans are to rendezvous if we have to take the prince up into the mountains.”
    “Promise me you will be careful.”
    “Ye could have five thousand men there by nightfall, so ye'd best make preparations. There will be wounded.”
    “Promise me you will not be one of them,” she said, shivering.
    His gaze held hers for a long moment before he turned away.
    He managed two long strides before a curse brought him sharply back. With his hands taking a fierce hold on her shoulders, he dragged her up and kissed her hard and full on the mouth. It was not a friendly kiss, nor could it ever have been mistaken for one. It was a kiss full of passion, exploding with the pent-up hunger of a man who understood he might never have the chance to do so again—not because conscience or morality might stand in the way, but because he knew the odds were not in his favor to leave the battlefield alive that day. He had already accepted the inevitability of death, and he was not afraid of it. Moreover, he had lived his entire life expecting it to come at the end of a musket or sword and, as a fighting man, he would not want to cheat the devil any other way.
    What he could not accept, what he could not have tolerated, was going through all eternity knowing he had been too cowardly to take one last, glorious taste of life.
    “Try to forgive me, Annie,” he gasped against her mouth. “But I do love ye. Know that I've loved ye all ma life, and know that I'll love ye long after ye've forgotten me.”
    He released her then, his eyes being the last to relinquish their hold before he turned and ran out of the barn. His horse was saddled, waiting, and he swung himself up on its back, kicking it into a gallop before Anne could even find the breath to gasp his name.

Chapter Twenty-Five
    A ngus had paced in his tent until he heard the signal drums beating the General Call to Arms at four-thirty. He guessed something had gone terribly wrong with the planned attack; his fears were confirmed when he heard men talking calmly outside his tent on their way to muster.
    Worsham's body had then become a major concern. It was still dark outside, but within minutes the streets would be filled with soldiers filing toward the central parade ground, there to fall in with their company and begin the march toward Culloden. There would be confusion, but not enough to distract from a man carrying a dead major over his back. Nor could he explain the death as an accident or