Midnight Honor

hands. It had been an astonishing coup by the Jacobites, and part of Angus was as yet unable to grasp the fact that his wife had been singularly responsible for sending six thousand crack troops back to Holland.
    There had been further rumors that the Farquharson trio had been riding around the shire attempting to foment rebellion within the clan, and reports that MacGillivray andMacBean had been raiding the quartermaster supplies at Fort George, but again there was no proof, and half of what the Jacobites had accomplished thus far—including the panic over the imminent landing of a massive French fleet—had been achieved by fabrications and rumors. Until the actual retreat from Derby, the government had not even had a clear idea of how many Highlanders had marched into the heart of their country. Lord George Murray had been adept at subterfuge and confusion, sending out patrols ahead of the advancing army to warn the towns and cities in their path that a great hoard of ravenous Highlanders was descending on their countryside. Twenty and thirty thousand troops had been reported at various times, sending the population fleeing before them and allowing the few thousand Jacobites to enter the English cities unmolested.
    The retreat had been as much of an embarrassment to the Hanovers as to the Jacobites, for when the news spread that there had never been more than five thousand Scots in the prince's camp, the Elector's generals were a laughingstock.
    One would think they had learned a hard lesson, but General Hawley sat idling away his days and evenings in Holyrood House while the prince's forces regrouped and re-supplied, growing stronger each day. The Stuart's main army was back to full strength at Glasgow, while Lord Lewis Gordon was welcoming fresh contingents to Aberdeen every day.
    Despite receiving daily—sometimes hourly—reports of increased activity, Hawley appeared unconcerned. Angus suspected the general's own arrogance dictated that he wait until there were sufficient numbers to make opposing them worthwhile. How, he had been heard to proselytize, could sending his eight thousand troops to quash a disorganized rabble of twelve hundred be regarded as anything more than a hollow victory? Even twenty-five hundred posed no real threat. Charles Stuart was preparing to decamp from Glasgow and march to Stirling; defeating
him
would be a worthy challenge.
    Angus listened to Hawley's boastings and only thought him the greater fool for his arrogance. He had surely read the reports after the battle of Prestonpans, wherein the officers stated that the sheer terror evoked by the sight and sounds of a Highland charge had scattered most of their men into a retreatwithout their having fired a single shot. The blond, pike-faced Hamilton Garner had been on the field that day. If anyone should be tugging on Hawley's ear, it should be Garner, for he had been among the few who had stood their ground and met the bloody onslaught, but at an appalling cost of over half the dragoons in his regiment.
    “Ah, there you are, MacKintosh.”
    Angus cursed inwardly and took another sip of brandy. At the conclusion of the evening meal, he had removed himself from the smoke-filled drawing room and had hoped to steal away from Holyrood House before his absence was noticed. Waiting for the distraction of musicians and pretty women to take effect, he had temporarily taken refuge in the portrait gallery, a long, arched affair of marble and gold gilding.
    “Admiring one of the royal ancestors, are you?” Major Worsham came up beside him and tilted his head to study the painting Angus was standing under. The walls were hung with tapestries and life-sized portraits depicting the royal house of Stuart in all its former glory; the one Angus had gravitated toward was of the prince's great-great-grandmother, the Stuart queen known as Bloody Mary.
    She had been a strikingly handsome beauty in her youth, and the artist had not spared the power of his brush to portray her. Her hair was as red as flame, her throat smooth and long, her eyes as blue as sapphires where they gazed seductively down from their lofty perch.
    “There is certainly much to admire,” Worsham conceded, “despite her penchant for murder and intrigue. I can see why you would choose her to contemplate over the others, however; the resemblance to your wife is quite startling … around the eyes and the mouth in particular.”
    Angus turned, surprised and vaguely unsettled at