Midnight Honor

act as if nothing had happened.
    Her head was throbbing like an over-swelled bladder, and the novelty of fresh air no longer held any appeal. Guessing she could easily have counted to several times more than fifty by now, she retraced her steps to the library. The latch on the French doors proved to be stubborn, and she had just cursed it into place, had barely stepped clear of the alcove, when she was stopped cold by the sound of voices in the outer hallway. The footsteps were brusque and purposeful, making their way toward the library door.
    Anne glanced quickly around, but there was nowhere to hide. There was nothing but a bank of windows behind her, with a two-foot section of wall on either side forming the arch.
    Without stopping to think about it, she reached quickly for the gold ropes that held the curtains swagged to either side. The heavy crimson folds fell across the opening of the alcove, closing it off from the main room. Desperately, Anne caught the fabric and steadied it, then retreated against the French doors, feeling open and exposed to anyone who might glanceout an upper window. Beyond the flimsy wall of velvet, the voices and footsteps marked the introduction of several men into the library. The outer doors were closed, followed by the sound of more serious, forthright steps bringing someone over to the desk.
    “I will feel a damned sight better when these are locked away,” came the gratingly familiar voice of Duncan Forbes. “I suppose one must admire the resolve of a courier who has been given specific orders to deliver a dispatch directly into the recipient's hand, but a damned inconvenience nonetheless.”
    “You were inconvenienced?” Lord Loudoun's laughter was coarse. “The very delightful Miss Chastity Morris's teats were practically in my hands, and I suspect she would have willingly placed them there in another moment had Worsham not come to fetch me away.”
    “Your pardon, my lord. I have no doubt you can regroup and reacquire.”
    “Only if you agree to lead a diversion to keep my wife distracted elsewhere.”
    Polite laughter indicated there were at least two or three more men present who had accompanied Duncan Forbes into his study. Anne glanced around the shadowy alcove again, distressed to see how the smallest slivers of light sparkled off the gold threads in her frock. Worse still, her farthingale consisted of a series of descending hoops that held her skirts out in a graceful bell shape. Crushed as she was against the glass panes of the door, the hem was thrust out in front, the outermost edge almost teasing the length of velvet curtain.
    As carefully as she could, she gathered the folds of silk and inched them back out of harm's way.
    “Any word from Hawley?” asked a sober voice in the group. “Is he sending reinforcements from Edinburgh?”
    “General Hawley has but two thousand men and orders to hold Falkirk, Perth, and Stirling. I doubt he could spare a stableboy at the moment.”
    “If there is any truth in the report we received yesterday, there are only five thousand men in the whole of the prince's army. Ill-equipped, demoralized …”
    “We have underestimated their resolve before,” Worsham interrupted in his quietly insidious voice. “And it would not behoove us to do so again. Major Garner, I understand your dragoons were amongst the first to engage the rebels at Colt's Bridge, and again at Prestonpans?”
    Anne put a face to the English officer's name. Hamilton Garner was tall, blond, and arrogant, with the cold green eyes of a cobra. His dragoons had run away from the Highland army at Colt's Bridge without exchanging a single shot. At the battle of Prestonpans, slightly more than three thousand Jacobites had defeated General Sir John Cope's army of twice that number in a morning ambush. Major Garner had been among the shamefully few to stand and fight, but he had been captured. Eventually, because the prisoners vastly outnumbered the victors, he and the others had been released on their own parole, promising not to take up arms against Prince Charles again. Garner had broken that parole the instant he was free. He had ordered the cowards under his command to be flogged within an inch of their lives, and testified against five officers hanged in the public square.
    There were rumors suggesting the major's fight was not just with the prince, that he bore a personal vendetta against one of the prince's most daring and successful captains, Alexander