Midnight Honor

and crossed their arms crookedly over their chests, watching him like a pair of half-sodden bear handlers.
    Gillies emptied the cup with nary a batted eye and set it down with a flourish. The crowd went wild for a moment; in the next, like magic, bonnets came off heads and wagers were taken from all quarters.
    “I would hate to embarrass our compatriots by robbing of them of all their coin on the first night in camp.”
    Anne glanced across the table and smiled at the speaker, Alexander Cameron.
    “Indeed, sir, I was thinking somewhat the same thing, only wondering what your reaction would be to our stripping you of all
your
coin our first night here.”
    Cameron leaned back, his midnight blue eyes gleaming. Beside him, his clansman Aluinn MacKail guffawed and fished in his pocket for a gold sovereign. A third gentleman, a flamboyant Italian count in a beribboned doublet and feathered musketeer hat, brought his hand down on the table in a flutter of cuff lace and deposited a second coin just as quickly.
    “I'm-a know from-a the first night I join-a this troupe of-a madmen, that you need-a the iron gut to stand-a with MacSorley.”
    “As I recall, Fanducci,” MacKail said over his shoulder, “you outlasted him.”
    “Ah, sì, sì.”
Another flutter of lace brought a modest hand to the count's breast. “But I'm-a no ordinary madman. I was-a given wine before-a the breast.”
    MacGillivray, seated beside Anne, dug two gold coins and a fresh cigar out of his purse. When he saw the way the midnight eyes followed the latter rather than the former, he grinned and clamped the one cigar between his teeth while withdrawing a second one and setting it down alongside the coins. “We'll wait an' see who is still standin' at the end o' the hour, shall we?”
    Cameron tipped his head to acknowledge the Highlander's wisdom, then withdrew two thin black cheroots from his own breast pocket. The one he moistened and placed thoughtfully between his lips, the other he laid alongside the fatter, more coarsely rolled Carolina.
    Gillies and MacSorley, in the meantime, had downed their second full tankard apiece and were both standing rock solid at their respective ends of the long oak trestle. Dr. Archibald Cameron was now up on a chair—which put him on an equal eye level with his champion—and the twins, not to be outdone, dragged an empty keg over for the stocky Gillies to stand on.
    “Your wife is very brave to accompany you, sir,” Anne said to Alexander Cameron across the din.
    “Aye, that she is, Colonel. Brave and stubborn. Not unlike someone else seated at this table.” He lifted his mug in a salute. “And the name is Alex, not sir.”
    “Then you must call me Anne. I fear the rank is only for decoration anyway.”
    “Would you prefer
‘ma belle rebelle’?
Or perhaps ‘that red-haired Amazon’?”
    She laughed and shook her head. The latter appellation had come as a result of a small but vicious skirmish along the road to Stirling. The vanguard of the Argyle militia had crossed Blairlogie just ahead of Lord Gordon's forward guard, and because the latter had consisted mainly of MacKintosh men, Anne had been in her usual place alongside MacGillivray. There had been no time for her to fall back when the Argylemen had attacked, and she had found herself in the thick of things. The Campbells had hoped to slow ordelay the Jacobite column, but instead they had encountered such fearsome opposition, they were lucky to escape with only a handful of casualties. One of the fleeing clansmen had spotted Anne, her bonnet gone, her hair streaming around her shoulders, her magnificent gray gelding rearing as she wind-milled a saber overhead.
    Word of a “red-haired Amazon” in the Jacobite ranks had spread like butter on a hot pan, even making its way into a report from Hawley's camp that was intercepted on its way south to London. It only brightened the already glowing aura that had begun with her audacious theft of Duncan Forbes's papers, and it made nearly every man present in the tavern that night want to fill her tankard and offer a toast.
    “… Seven … eight… nine …”
    The crowd howled and she leaned forward again. Gillies was on his fourth tankard, and while the swallows were coming slower, they were still deep and steady, and the emptied vessel met the tabletop with the same resounding thud of satisfaction as MacSorley's had done moments earlier.
    “By Christ's holy beard,” Archibald declared, swaying