Midnight Honor

half expected him to, she covered her face with her hands and slowly shook her head, cursing her tongue for its impetuousness.
    But Angus had indeed pushed himself out of the chair and was halfway to the dressing room before he thought better of it and stopped. He could see her through the lighted crack between the door and the frame, and his jaw clenched hard enough to set the muscles in his cheek shivering.
    “I… have never forbidden you to see your grandfather— or any member of your family, for that matter,” he said after a long moment. “I only hoped you would see the need for discretion.”
    “I saw a greater need to take some food and warm clothing for the children. Do you know they all fear for their lives and must live in a cave now? Eneas says the little ones are brave and they do not complain, but it's bitter cold most of the time and they both have heavy chests and … and Mairi suffered a miscarriage last month. She slipped on some rocks …”
    Her voice trailed away and Angus watched her lower her hands. She folded them over her belly as if she were feeling the tearing loss herself and her face crumpled to expose a terrifying vulnerability. He took a halting step forward, then another, but by the time he had convinced himself she would not slam the door on him, the opportunity was lost.
    “I am … genuinely sorry to hear about Mairi,” he saidgently. “But at the moment, it is your health I am more concerned with. The water in the bath should still be warm. Hardy has been adding fresh buckets every half hour or so. I … can have him bring more, if you require it.”
    “No. Thank you. It is fine.”
    He looked up as she passed before the narrow slice of light again, her hair streaming down her back like a red silk curtain. As he watched, she gathered fistfuls of the curls and twisted them into a haphazard pile on top of her head, catching all but a few straggled wisps between a pair of mother-of-pearl combs. That left her neck and shoulders exposed, and, when she turned slightly, the pale white swell of her breast.
    Anne emerged a short time later, her body rendered shapeless in a thick chenille robe. Risking a glance into the corner, she saw that her husband was still there. His head was leaning back against the upholstery and he was staring up at the ceiling, seemingly engrossed with the patterns the firelight made on the ornate plaster moldings.
    She unfastened the combs from her hair and started working out the tangles. It was still damp from the melted snow, and the first few strokes of the hairbrush proved stubborn as always, but she was grateful to be doing something that did not require conscious thought. The long ride to Dunmaglass and the meeting with her grandfather had left her more exhausted than she cared to admit, and she was down to her last reserves of strength. She had half hoped Angus would have retired to his own chamber by now, for she was as confused as she was tired, and did not think she could withstand any more confrontations.
    More important, she had never deliberately lied to Angus and did not particularly want to start now, so she prayed he would not ask her for any more specific reasons why Fearchar had called her out on such a cold, bleak night. She could scarcely believe the irony of it herself, being asked to lead a rebellion within the clan when she had worked so hard to dampen the rebellious streak within herself.
    Anne's hand faltered in the middle of a brushstroke.
    She had tried, she really tried hard to be a good wife, to learn the manners and demure behavior that would notembarrass her husband in the company of his peers. She struggled daily to erase the harsh edge from her brogue, to learn to walk and talk with the proper decorum; she fought a constant battle to curb her emotions, to be more like the frosty, aloof women whose faces were in danger of cracking if they laughed out loud.
    She used to laugh a great deal, the sound hearty enough that it often won a reluctant smile from her more reserved spouse—and not just the smile he gave out so freely and falsely in company, but the slow, lethally sensuous smile he usually reserved for the privacy of their bedroom.
    Sighing, she rested the brush in her lap for a moment.
    Despite the circumstances surrounding their wedding, he had never given her any reason to question her ability to please him as a woman, nor had she ever given him any basis to suspect she went to his bed each night merely to fulfill