Midnight Honor

Gillies MacBean, at least two of her three cousins—the third, usually Eneas since the twins did not like to be separated for long, rode back and forth to Aberdeen conveying messages to and from Fearchar—and never any fewer than twenty armed clansmen bristling with weaponry.
    The wound in MacGillivray's shoulder had healed remarkably swiftly, with no apparent lingering stiffness. If anything, she marveled daily at his strength, watching him practice in mock battles with his men in the mornings, slashing the great steel blade of his to and fro until his face ran with sweat. Afternoons were spent going farm to farm assuring the other lairds he was more than capable of assuming a battlefield command. Evenings he supervised the small armory that had taken over the main room of Dunmaglass. Guns, targes, and swords filled every inch of empty space, with men hunched over long trestle tables day and night working with lead molds to make shot, others with casks of black powder to measure and fill paper cartridges.
    Most men had come into the glen with swords and pikes, some with muskets and Lochaber axes, but there were those who came with just their hearts and their pride, and to supply these men, Anne had emptied the strongbox at Moy Hall. MacGillivray had put each coin to good use, and when there were no more guns or casks of powder to be purchased through his fellow smugglers, he had slipped away in the dead of night with a dozen of his best men, returning beforemorning with wagons filled with kegs and crates stamped with the seal of the British army quartermaster.
    He never seemed to sleep, never even looked tired. If anything he appeared to be more relaxed, as if the weight of the responsibilities he carried now was not half so oppressing as the weight of being able to do nothing at all.
    Anne, on the other hand, came to know exactly how her grandfather felt when the burden of holding her eyelids open for one more moment became a near impossible task. Sheer necessity had bade her move from Drummuir House to Dunmaglass, but it was not a house accustomed to female residents. The furnishings were spartan at best, the only bath a large wooden barrel cut in half. She had clothes sent from Moy Hall, but it soon became evident that skirts and a corset were a definite hindrance. She had not felt a scrap of silk against her skin, nor plied a pair of tongs to her hair since she had departed the dowager's house on Church Street. She was surrounded day and night by burly men who had taken to addressing her as Colonel Anne, and she had begun to answer without pause.
    In truth, the first few days had been exhilarating. Riding out with MacGillivray and her cousins had brought back all the adventurous memories of her reckless youth. But now, a fortnight later, the days had simply become exhausting and dirty. The coarse woolen trews itched at the most inopportune times and in the most inconvenient places, and while men appeared to have no qualms about scratching whenever, wherever, she was forced to suffer in squirming silence. Similarly, she had never given much thought to Angus's reluctance to intrude on her when he was fresh from the stable smelling of horse, leather, and sweat. Now she noticed everything—the smell of unwashed wool when it was wet, the tang of sheep offal on a carelessly placed shoe, the pungent blend of body sweat, peat, and woodsmoke that clung to common clansmen who might think to bathe only once in a twelvemonth.
    That was possibly why she had begun to notice MacGillivray's distinctive scent. While he was by no means as fastidious as Angus with hot water and soap, he was not hesitant to strip down after a morning of exercising with the men and dump a bucket of water over his body to rinse awaythe sweat. Anne had happened by a window once when he was in the process of doing just that, and it had caused her to stare so long and hard her eyes burned from the dryness. The fact there had been a dozen men stripped naked and standing in the snow tossing water at each other had hardly left an imprint on her mind. It had been the sight of John MacGillivray, tall and sleek with muscle, his face tilted upward and his hair streaming golden and wet down his shoulders, that had warmed her cheeks and left her body tingling in all the wrong places.
    It had been equally difficult not to remember how he had looked naked and sprawled out in the candlelight, or how those brawny arms had felt wrapped around her, pinning her to