Midnight Honor

cousins, all of them. They used you to get to MacGillivray, for there was no other earthly way he would have broken his oath to me.”
    She felt another shiver, one that had nothing to do with the cold and everything to do with the frost in his eyes.
    “As to that,” he asked quietly, “was it not enough to have humiliated me by taking control of the clan? Did you have to fashion horns for me at the same time?”
    “Horns?” Her voice was a bewildered tremor. “I don't know what you—”
    “That was quite a touching scene I just witnessed between you and MacGillivray. It must have been so much more convenient for the pair of you while you were living with him at Dunmaglass.”
    A second log caught fire, throwing more light across his face, and for the first time Anne saw that there was more than just anger rendering his face gaunt and tight. There was pain as well. Deep emotional pain, so naked and vulnerable on a man who prided himself in his composure that she felt her heart begin to wither and crumble into a heap of dust.
    “Angus … John has never been anything other than an absolute gentleman in my presence. Not by word or deed has he ever sought to offer more than his hospitality and friendship. I moved out of Moy Hall and into Dunmaglass, yes, but only as a guest and only to avoid having any taint that might become attached to my name or actions spill over to yours. Dunmaglass was as much an army camp as Bannockburn is now, and I sorely doubt we could have found a private moment together to do so much as touch hands, let alone touch anything else, even if we had been so inclined. Which neitherof us was. I never forgot I was a married woman, and neither did he.”
    “That did not seem to be the case a few moments ago. Not when you had your heads together at the end of the path. And not by the way you said his name when you opened the door just now.”
    She bit the edge of her lip. She hadn't realized she'd gasped out John's name, just as she wasn't completely sure what she would have done had it been he and not Angus standing on the threshold. But it was Angus who was here before her now, with more than just his husbandly pride bruised. She had gone behind his back and she had usurped his authority within the clan, but what choice had he given her? What choice had he given his clansmen? It was obviously one they had not wanted to make, for she had seen reports as well. There were spies and couriers going back and forth between the enemy encampments like a trail of ants. Angus had left Inverness with six hundred clansmen, but by the time they arrived in Edinburgh, most of them had quietly slipped away and either gone back home or crossed over the moor to join the prince. But she would not throw that in his face. As for his assumption that she had moved into Dunmaglass so that she and MacGillivray might carry on some wild and passionate affair…!
    “I have had far too much wine tonight,” she admitted shakily, “and I am really not strong enough to do battle with you, Angus. I am certainly not strong enough to lie to you. If you choose not to take my word for it, then you are going to believe the worst and nothing I can say or do will change your mind. But I swear I have not been unfaithful. I'll not insult either one of us by saying I have not had thoughts and dreams … some of them vivid enough to keep me awake through the night. I will also freely confess that I have been lonely and frightened and perhaps even a little desperate to have someone hold me and treat me like a woman. I have feelings for John, yes, but I don't know what they are and I have never acted upon them. What you saw outside was a man putting his heart into my hands and my refusing it because I care too deeply for another. Simply that and nothing more. As for the rest, I am only too well aware that Fearchar used me as ameans of getting what he wanted, but so has everyone else at some time or another, including you.”
    “Me? How the devil have I used you?”
    “Oh, please, Angus. Why else would you have agreed to marry me if not because you hoped it would win Fearchar's support away from Cluny MacPherson as clan chief? Why else, if not because you thought that marrying a Farquharson would prevent the clan from splitting apart, exactly as it has done now?”
    A shadow flickered briefly behind his eyes. “That was not why I married you.”
    “It never occurred to you, not even when you hesitated at the altar and it was so