Midnight Honor

unsteadily on his perch, “he's that good, is Struan. Mayhap we'll be needin two casks soon—one tae drink out o', the ither tae piss intae.”
    “I believe I can lead a full life without witnessing that landmark event,” Anne said, her head already too light by far. She pushed to her feet, bidding the men to remain seated when all would have risen with her. “It has been a very long, tiring day—” She paused as Archibald Cameron pitched forward off his chair and fell unconscious, plunging facedown into a net of waiting hands. “And I certainly would not want my presence to hinder anyone's more manly pursuits.”
    MacGillivray, who had not obeyed her instruction to remain seated, settled his bonnet firmly, albeit askew, on his head.
    “There is no need for you to leave, John,” she said, laying her hand on his chest.
    He glanced down at her hand—as did nearly every other pair of eyes within a ten-foot radius—then smiled the kind of smile that, if seen in polite society, would have sent a bevy of chaperones into a dead faint.
    “I'm no' bothered. I've every faith in Gillies. So much so in fact,” he added, leaning over to pluck the black cheroot off the table, “I might as well take this now an' enjoy it on the walk back to ma bed.”
    Cameron reached for the fat Carolina. “And I've enough faith in Struan to savor this now and collect another come morning.”
    MacGillivray glared down for a moment, then bared his teeth in a wide grin. “'Tis a good thing we're on the same side, you an' I. Ye might vex me enough I'd have to reshape that fine nose o' yourn.”
    “And you have far too many teeth for my liking; I'd be bent to put a few of them in your pocket.”
    The two men exchanged grins and clasped hands. After bidding all a good night, John led the way through the shoulder-to-shoulder bodies, parting them by sheer brute strength. Outside in the clear, cold air, he set the unlit cheroot between his lips and stretched his arms to the side and back before falling into step alongside Anne. At his insistence she had taken lodgings in a cottage that had been made available for her comfort, and since the entire length of the village was no more than a quarter mile, she preferred to walk rather than force herself up into a saddle again.
    “Well?” she asked, drawing her plaid around her shoulders.
    “Well what?”
    “What do you make of it all so far?”
    “I've no' had much chance to weigh
all
yet, but they seem to be a braw lot o' men back there. More than willing to follow Lord George anywhere he leads.”
    Anne noted that he did not cite the prince's powers of leadership and wondered at the tension she had sensed herself between Charles Stuart and his commanding general. She was told that in the days following the retreat from Derby, when Lord George's logic had prevailed over the prince's passion, they were barely on speaking terms and communicated through brisk, formal notes.
    The situation had hardly improved on the march from Glasgow to Stirling. Indeed, Lord George and two hundred of his Athollmen had left that very afternoon for Linlithgowunder the auspices of intercepting any supply trains bound for Hawley's camp.
    “How far is Falkirk?” Anne asked.
    “A glen, a ben, an' a bog,” he replied. “About ten miles that way,” he added, pointing off into the darkness.
    “Do you suppose the English know we are here?”
    “They'd be a ripe daft lot if they didna. I warrant we could climb up the top o' the nearest hill an' see the glow from their fires in the distance, just as they could as like see ours.”
    “Do you suppose they are making plans to attack?”
    “I doubt they're makin' plans to dredge the river, lass.” They walked in silence, listening to their own footsteps crunch across the frozen ground. The echoes of a dozen pipers reverberated along the throat of the glen, for it was a fine, clear night, the sky blanketed in stars. The surrounding slopes sparkled with a hundred bonfires and tents too numerous to count. They were pitched in a wide swath from here to the meadows of Bannockburn, and even beyond to the banks of the Forth. The camp had been spread thus in the hopes of deceiving the English scouts into vastly overestimating their strength, a ploy that had worked so often in the past, it was almost ludicrous.
    “'Tis no sin to be frightened, ye ken.”
    Her steps slowed. “I'm not frightened. Not really. Not if I don't think about it anyway.”
    “An' if ye do