Midnight Honor

ancient royal city. From an upper window he could watch the effects of the sunrise against the massive edifice of Edinburgh Castle, the battlements braised gold and orange, shrouded in sea mists that gradually burned away to reveal the glinting mouths of the cannon that looked down over the streets. Old Colonel Guest had stubbornly refused to surrender the castlethroughout the three months of Jacobite occupation, and had even threatened to fire his heavy guns on the city should any attempt be made to breach the walls. Fortunately for the townspeople, Charles Stuart had had no siege cannon in his possession at the time, and the castle was left unmolested.
    Upon the hasty departure of the Jacobite forces, the gates had swung open with great pomp and ceremony to welcome General Hawley when he reclaimed the capital city. Hawley, in turn, had relieved the beleaguered troops and paraded Colonel Guest from the inner courtyard of Crown Square along the Royal Mile to opulent lodgings at Holyrood House as if he had single-handedly preserved the crown's possessions in Scotland.
    Since Angus was, in effect, a bachelor during this sojourn, he had been billeted with Major Roger Worsham. He had little doubt the pairing had been on purpose, so that his comings and goings could be closely monitored; to that end, Worsham was, if nothing else, efficient to a fault. If Angus went for a stroll, he was afraid of stopping too quickly lest the major walk up his heels.
    As far as his personal habits went, the man was a lecher and a boor. He had convinced Adrienne de Boule to come away from Inverness, and while she was officially housed in another area of the city, there were nights Angus could hear them laughing and carrying on in Worsham's room at the end of the hall. Several mornings, whether by accident or intent, he had emerged from his room to find Adrienne in various stages of undress, either accompanying the major down to breakfast or trying to entice him back to bed. The first couple of times she had seemed genuinely embarrassed. After that, she only laughed at his shocked expression.
    Angus, on the other hand, had not heard from Anne since he had left Inverness. She had not written, had not even troubled with the courtesy of informing him she had left Drummuir House. Indeed, he might not have known at all had his valet, Robert Hardy, not let it slip that he had sent for some of Angus's personal possessions and been informed by the housekeeper that not only had Anne left the dowager's house, she had removed her things from Moy Hall and taken up residence at Dunmaglass as a guest of John MacGillivray.
    When he had first heard this, Angus had been dumbfounded. He had known she was upset over his departing for Edinburgh, but he had not foreseen the possibility of her being so repulsed she would move out of his home and into that of another man.
    Generally speaking, his insights into the workings of a woman's mind were limited, but with Anne, who never saw any reason or use for pretense, he felt reasonably sure he knew where he stood in her estimation at any given time. If anything, it had been her inability to conceal any of her emotions that posed the greatest threat to her safety these past months. The daggers in her eyes were real; anyone foolhardy enough to earn her wrath was impaled on the first glance. Angus himself had felt the flashing darts on many an occasion, but she had always stopped short of letting him bleed to death. And more times than he was proud to admit, he had used her obvious vulnerability to defuse a potentially explosive situation.
    That vulnerability was her love for him, and as much as he wanted, needed, craved to see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice, feel it in her body when she shuddered in his arms, he could not let anyone else see it. He could not, for instance, let Forbes or Loudoun have the faintest suspicion that he would have forsaken everything, his clan, his titles, his wealth, his very life in order to protect her from harm.
    The major had not mentioned the incident at Drummuir House again, but it was clear he had not believed for an instant that Angus and John MacGillivray had been drunk together that or any other night at Moy Hall. Whether or not he believed Anne had merely been walking off a cramp in the hallway was doubtful as well, but without proof he could do nothing more than speculate over who had stolen the dispatches and how they had eventually made their way into Lord John Drummond's