Midnight Honor

almost beyond their limits when he saw the woman perched high upon its back. She wore tartan trews and a green velvet short coat trimmed with gold lace. Her hair was red as hellfire, braided into a long tail that snaked over one shoulder, and on her head a bonnet with an eagle feather pinned on the crest. At her waist she wore a brace of claw-butted dags and, slung across her lap, glinted the metal barrel of a Brown Bess.
    Colin's jaw dropped farther.
    Word had spread throughout the bens and glens that Lady Anne MacKintosh had taken it upon herself to raise her clan to fight for Prince Charles. No sooner had her husband departed for Edinburgh to fight for the English than she was riding about the countryside, carrying her petition to every laird within the confederation of Clan Chattan.
    His gaze flicked to the pulsating orange and yellow glow behind her. There were three more riders, two of whom held torches aloft, the flames causing the suspended droplets of mist to sizzle and hiss. He looked at the two bearded faces, identical in almost every way, and surmised they must be the infamous lady's cousins from Monaltrie. The third man, the great blond giant who halted his steed alongside Lady Anne's, needed no introduction either, and Colin felt a ripple of raw excitement flare through his loins.
    “Colin Mor?”
    “Aye,” he rasped. “Aye, that I be.”
    “You know who I am?”
    “Aye.” Awe rended his answer all but inaudible.
    “We have been riding since dawn, Colin Mor,” Anne said. “And we would be grateful for your hospitality if we could camp in your pasture for the night.”
    Colin's chest swelled with pride. “God's truth, an' thehonor would be mine, Colonel Anne. I've nae much tae offer, but there's stew left frae supper—hot an' hearty—an' a cask o' ale, fresh brewed.”
    “Our men have food enough,” Anne said, smiling her thanks. “But if you could spare a seat by your fire until the tents are raised, I would not refuse the warmth.”
    The crofter shed his timorousness upon the instant and hastened forward, wiping his palms dry before he took hold of the gelding's bridle. “Ye'll nae sleep in any paucy tent this night, ma lady. No' while I've a roof an' a bed tae offer. Aye, an' there's room on the floor f'ae the rest o' yer men, sure.”
    The MacGillivray swung his leg over the saddle and dismounted. He strode toward Colin, his hand outstretched, and the clansmen felt his fingers crush together, his knuckles crack with the heartiness of the greeting.
    “Ye've room for six hundred men on yer floor?” he asked with a leonine grin.
    “Six …?”
    MacGillivray laughed at the crofter's stunned expression and turned long enough to bark an order to make camp. The order was relayed mouth to mouth, traveling back like an unending echo.
    Colin Mor could count no higher than the twenty-three sheep he penned each night, and even that required using some imaginative appendages for keeping track, but he thought, by the sound of it, he might have to crack open two kegs of ale.
    MacGillivray reached up to assist Anne out of the saddle. Though she would have torn her tongue out by the root before admitting it, her rump felt like lead and her thighs ached so badly she prayed she did not humiliate herself by walking with permanently bowed legs. They had been on the road for two days, battling every element nature could throw at them: high winds and bitter cold in the mountain passes, rain and mud on the moorlands. The mist had started closing in an hour ago, and for the past mile or so, they'd been riding blind, guided only by sheep tracks leading through the glen.
    Through it all, the men sang and laughed and jokedamongst themselves. At each crossroad, each cairn they passed marking the miles from Inverness, there were more men waiting to join them, all eager and spoiling for the long-awaited chance to fight for Scotland's honor.
    With MacGillivray by her side, Anne had carried her petition to every laird within Clan Chattan. A few were understandably reluctant to openly defy their chief, but in the end, she had come away with ninety-seven signatures, shy of the requisite hundred by only three. Scores of tents and campfires had littered the open fields around Dunmaglass, for MacGillivray's stronghold had become their headquarters and gathering place. Out of necessity, Anne had left Drummuir House and taken up residence at Dunmaglass, surrounded and protected by a personal guard that included John,