Midnight Honor

clumsy lout who gave you a broken glass and I'll thrash him myself.”
    “It was no one's fault but my own,” Anne said coldly.
    “An' ma son's,” Lady Drummuir added, casting a narrowed accusation in Angus's direction. “If she hadn't been so distracted wonderin' where ye'd taken yerself off to, she might have seen the glass was cracked.”
    “You were looking for me?” Angus glanced at Anne.
    “No. I mean yes. I… I wanted to tell you I was leaving. I have a dreadful headache and I wanted to tell you I was going home.”
    “Home?” Forbes frowned like an indulgent father. “Nonsense. You will stay here the night. I'll have a chamber prepared at once, and—”
    “No!” Anne shot to her feet. “I mean … no, thank you. I would prefer just to go home. There is no need for Angus to leave,” she added. “I will be perfectly fine on my own.”
    “Don't be absurd,” Angus said. “Of course I will take you home.”
    In desperation, Anne turned to appeal to her mother-in-law. “Please—?”
    Lady Drummuir frowned, but bustled forward at once to take charge of the situation. “All this blather over a few wee cuts. There's surely no need for anyone to work themselves into a turn: It's not as if the lass is in peril of bleedin' to death. I was of a mind to find ma bed anyroad, so Annie will simply come home with me. Angus, ye can come fetch her from Church Street in the mornin' if ye're of a mind. Or ye can come away now if ye dinna trust me to see her safe, but I'll warn ye I've been in a fair mood all night to clout someone over the head, so ye'd be takin' yer chances if ye do.”
    Aside from a small tic that shivered in Angus's cheek, he had no recourse but to offer his mother a small bow of compliance. Anne had no choice either; she had to take his arm when he insisted on escorting them to the front door, but there was not one step taken when she did not fear the next would bring shouts and a demand for her arrest. By the time the servants had fetched their cloaks and brought Lady Drummuir's coach to the door, she could feel the dampness between her shoulder blades, and her head was so light she was not even aware of Angus kissing her on the cheek or murmuring his promise to see her first thing in the morning.
    And then she was in the coach. The door was closing, being latched. They were pulling away from Culloden House and she could see Angus silhouetted against the torchlights, his arm raised in farewell. The purloined dispatches were a lump against her thigh—almost as obtrusive as the one in her throat.
    Obviously whoever had been in the library with her had decided to play a cat-and-mouse game of his own.

Chapter Eight
    I canna believe ye took such a risk,” Lady Drummuir said, shocked almost beyond speech. Once they were through the gates she had demanded explanations, and because Anne desperately needed to confide in someone, she spilled out everything that had happened since her meeting with John MacGillivray in the library. “I canna believe ye had the ballocks to break open the Lord President's desk. With a hairpin, ye say?”
    “It was a rather simple lock.”
    “Still an' all, Miss, 'tis not exactly the kind of talent one expects in a laird's wife.”
    “I was the granddaughter of a reiver first,” Anne reminded her.
    “Aye, an' that alone would have justified clappin' ye in irons on the spot. The real surprise if, as ye say, ye think someone saw ye, is that no one has released the hellhounds on ye yet.”
    The “yet” hung between them a moment, twisting this way and that in the silence to impart all manner of unpleasant consequences in the minds of both women.
    “Why do ye suppose that is? Why do ye suppose ye're not riding in the company of a dozen redcoats right the now?”
    Anne bit her lip in genuine confusion. “I don't know. When I saw Forbes in the parlor with Angus just then …”She had lost a year of her life in that single moment, and still could not believe she had been allowed to walk away from Culloden House without an escort of lobsterbacks.
    “Ye have no idea who might have been watchin' ye in the library?”
    “No. I was certain everyone had gone. At one point, I thought I might have heard …”
    “Yes? Ye thought ye might have heard what?”
    Anne shook her head. “I thought I heard a footstep, or a creak on the floorboard, but I was so distracted and angry and confused … then I saw the mouse, and—”
    “And ye cried out an' near stomped it to