Midnight Honor

his hand with his objection, she eased his jacket open, fitting the makeshift bandage snugly beneath his waistcoat. His shirt was already dark with blood; some of it had started to seep through the brocade vest.
    “You have to leave and get this tended to before you bleed to death.”
    “Aye, I will do. But I thought I should warn ye first.”
    “Warn me? About what?”
    “There were another set o' tracks leavin' the glen. Two men. They followed you an' yer cousin Eneas most o' the way to Moy Hall.”
    “Most
of the way?” she parroted.
    “Ma lads lost all the tracks after ye crossed Moy Burn. Did Eneas keep to the water for a bit?”
    She nodded. “I thought he was being overly cautious, but—”
    “There will be no such thing as over-cautious from here on out, lass, not unless the thought of a gibbet appeals to ye.”
    “It does not.” Anne shivered and glanced back at the house. “He asked me if I had been out riding on the moor last night.”
    “Who did, the fancy major with the ghostie eyes?”
    She nodded. “Angus laughed it off. He said I was with him all night. Whether or not the major believed him—” She shrugged. “There are not too many places our tracks could have been going, other than Moy Hall.”
    “Aye, but his men dinna know who they were followin', do they?” he asked quietly. “Ye were not exactly wearing yer silks an' laces.”
    “Yes, but…”
    “But nocht. If they truly suspected it were you, ye'd haveirons clapped around yer wrists by now. An' if ye say Angus covered for ye…” He paused, as if her husband's actions surprised him as much as they had her. “Was he no' in Inverness last night?”
    “He came home early. He was waiting for me, in fact, when I returned. Needless to say, he was not happy to discover I had been out.”
    “He didna raise a hand to ye, did he?”
    Anne looked up, startled to hear a sudden change in John's voice. “No. No, of course not. Angus has never even raised his hand to swat a fly in anger, not in the four years I have known him.”
    He said nothing, but after a long moment, she heard his teeth chatter through an involuntary shiver.
    “You have to leave here at once,” she said. “Come, I'll see you safely to the door.”
    “Now that truly would be a foolish idea. Stay here. Count to fifty or so before ye go back inside, an' have a care no one sees ye leave the library. Go back up the stairs an' find Angus. Stay fast by his side an' he'll see ye through the rest o' the night until ye're home safe.”
    “What about you? Will you be all right?”
    He looked down to where her hand rested on his forearm. “It would take more than a pea-sized ball o' English lead to bring me down, lass. Ye mind what I said, though, an' stay close by yer husband.”
    “Be careful.”
    He held her gaze a moment, then crossed the terrace and vaulted over the low stone balustrade. She heard the crunch of his shoes on the frozen ground for a minute more, then it was lost to the sounds of the party on the floor above.
    MacGillivray had been shot, and she had been followed. There had been English troops in the woods at Dunmaglass, and if they had been watching The MacGillivray's home, they must have known Fearchar and her cousins were inside.
    But had they followed Fearchar to Dunmaglass, or had they been watching Dunmaglass all along? If it was the former, it would mean her grandfather wasn't as wily an old foxas he fancied himself to be, and he could be arrested at any time.
    If it was MacGillivray who had fallen under government scrutiny, it might be because the English were anticipating the very thing that had brought Anne out in the middle of the night: plans to split the great Clan of the Cats into two factions. They would be justifiably alarmed; Inverness was in the heart of MacKintosh territory, and the prospect of a thousand sword-wielding clansmen taking to the hills, men renowned for their ability to stage bloody raids and vanish into the night, would surely cause the latrines within the garrison walls to overflow. Loudoun and Forbes would do anything within their power to prevent such a division, even if it meant arresting the clan chief without proof of any wrongdoing.
    The silent progression of logic brought Anne's fingers pressing against her temples, and it took every last scrap of willpower to keep from following MacGillivray over the stone wall.
    But of course she could not. John was right: She had to go back upstairs, find Angus, and