Midnight Honor

manners; will you not step inside and take some tea or a cool drink? I am expecting some ladies from the Inverness Orphan Society at any moment, but I am certain your company, as well as your input as to what aid we might hope to expect from the king's representatives, would be most welcome.”
    Thomas Cockayne wavered. He frowned and chewed his lip, and if not for the second officer who stepped up beside him at the head of a party of armed troops, he might have considered getting back on his horse and riding away.
    “The search party is ready, sir,” the captain said. He was an older man, uglier, with one eye covered in a milky whitefilm. The scarred eye triggered a memory, and although it had been several months since Anne had seen Captain Fergus Blite at the Forbes birthday party, she knew he would not be so easily distracted from his duty as Lieutenant Cockayne. Already his one good eye was flicking past her shoulder, anticipating rooms full of valuable booty, all of which had been proclaimed legal plunder—as much as a man could carry on his back—for soldiers engaged in the dangerous task of searching the homes belonging to known rebels.
    Angus Moy's affiliation with the Scots regiments notwithstanding, there were two hundred men who had volunteered to make the march to Moy Hall knowing they would be returning with their haversacks several pounds heavier. A pink dress and a winsome reference to orphans were no deterrent.
    “I have a copy of the arrest warrant here,” Blite said, producing the document with a flourish. “And if the
lady
will just step aside, we can be about our business.”
    Cockayne was a gentleman and had the grace to flush. “If it please your ladyship, we do have our orders. Hopefully it will all be set aside as a dreadful misunderstanding, but in the meantime—”
    “In the meantime you intend to invade my home, violate my privacy, and steal my possessions?”
    “Aye,” Blite said. “That and take you back to Inverness, where they've a nice cozy gaol cell waiting on you.”
    Anne's blue eyes sparked with fury despite her vow not to lose her temper.
    “Shall I have my horse saddled?” she asked tautly. “Or am I to be dragged along the road in chains?”
    “Nothing quite so drastic, my lady,” Cockayne said hastily. “I am certain it is a formality, nothing more.” He signaled one of his men. “Have Lady Anne's horse brought around. Captain Blite, you have one hour to conduct your search.”
    The captain grinned and waved his eager men forward. They were not fully inside the gloom of the doorway when Anne heard the first cupboard shatter under the butt of a musket stock. They would likely damage a good deal more in the hour they were given, for they would be frustrated to find little of any value inside. Heirlooms, sentimental or otherwise,had already been loaded into boats and rowed out to the tiny island in the middle of the loch. They had been buried and the sod carefully replaced so that no sign of a disturbance could be seen from any point on the shore.
    “Do you have a wife, Lieutenant? A family?”
    “Why yes, I do. A lovely wife and three daughters. They are at home in London.”
    “They would be very proud of you this day,” she said, speaking softly over the crash of glass and porcelain. “Even prouder had they seen you on the moor three days ago, I'm sure.”
    Cockayne's grin faded. They spent the next long minutes in an uncomfortable silence, and when Robert the Bruce was led around from the stables, the lieutenant suffered another pang of indecision, for the gelding was well groomed, unmarked, and would have won praise walking a promenade in London's Hyde Park.
    It was not until Anne was bundled into a warm cloak and mounted on the sidesaddle that he had cause to question his own doubts, for when he gave the signal to the drummer to start the escort moving back toward the road, the magnificent beast raised his head and took up the march as if he were back at the head of an army.
    Anne was taken directly to the Tolbooth, an old stone building with one large main room in which the town magistrates normally held their meetings. The walls were rough, without plaster or paint; the furnishings consisted of a long trestle table and a dozen plain straight-backed chairs. A door at the rear led down a narrow corridor to a cramped labyrinth of cells, few bigger than three paces by two, even fewer boasting a window slit wide enough to let in a meager breath of