Midnight Honor

not a question so much as a painful wrench of emotion, and Anne's first thought was that someone must have died. Someone close to her. Someone whose death her grandfather did not want her hearing from a stranger.
    “Has something happened to Angus?” she asked in a whisper.
    Fearchar scowled and cursed under his breath. “Yer husband is as fine an' fit as he were when he left yer bed two days ago. Fitter than he has a right tae be, ye ask me.”
    “Then what—?”
    “The prince has turned his army around. They're in retreat.”
    “Retreat!” Her mouth dropped open in surprise. “But… but that's not possible! They were only a few days' march out of London—you sent me word of it yourself.”
    “Aye, an' now we're here tae tell ye the army is turned away,” Robbie said quietly. “We're tellin' ye that General Wade is closin' in on their right flank wi' five thousan' men; General Ligonier is on their left wi' another seven thousan'; an' comin' straight up their backsides is the Duke o' Christ-less Cumberland wi' a few thousan' troops he's brought wi' him off the battlefield in Flanders. That puts about twenty thousan' in all between the prince an' London, an' the chiefs decided it were just askin' too much f'ae our brave lads tae try tae fight their way through. Not when they've had no support frae either end—none frae here, none in England. Two hundred men, we were told, is all that joined up since they crossed the River Esk, where they were promised bluidy thousands.”
    “They should have known better than to trust promises,” MacGillivray said from the shadows. “The king of France promised thousands o' troops, an' how many did he send? None. He promised guns an' ammunition an' money as well to pay the men for the crops we'll not be able to plant come the spring. What did we get? More o' nothin'.”
    “Crops?” Fearchar glared angrily over his shoulder. “How can a man think o' crops when his king an' country need him?”
    “When his family is starvin' an' his children are dyin'from the cold, that is all he thinks about,” MacGillivray answered flatly. “He worries if they have a roof over their heads an' if they have enough meat to tide them over the winter. Why do ye suppose so many men on both sides slip away in the night? It's no' because they're afraid to fight or to die in battle. It's because they want to take a coin or a bit o' bread back to their wives. That's all a simple man cares about.”
    “An' you?” Eneas asked. “What dae
you
care about, MacGillivray?”
    “Me?” Someone moved and an errant shaft of lamplight cut across the Highlander's face, revealing a disdainful curve at the corner of his mouth. “I care about what ma chief orders me to care about. Just like the rest o' ye. That's why we're here debatin' the whys an' wherefores o' battles fought an' not fought instead o' bein' out in the fields fightin' them.” His eyes glittered like two chips of black ice as he looked in Anne's direction. “Because we've all been forbidden to do much else, have we not?”
    Anne endured the derision in his eyes as long as she could before faltering and turning away. She was reminded, every single hour of every single day, that men like MacGillivray and Gillies and her cousins would be in Derby now with the prince's army if Angus had not bound them to their oaths. She also knew that if not for so many other lairds like Angus who had chosen caution over passion, the Jacobite army would have been equal to anything the English could muster against them. The five thousand brave men who had followed the Stuart prince to Derby would be ten, fifteen thousand strong and would not now be enduring the humiliation of a retreat.
    “They've not been defeated yet, have they?” Anne whispered. “Just because they are being prudent and returning home to Scotland, that does not mean they do so in defeat.”
    Fearchar rallied somewhat. “No one has said aught about a defeat! As it happens, the prince has sent word tae all the clans that he only plans tae wait out the winter before he strikes south again, an' he's already proved he has the heart an' courage tae dae it. All he needs tae dae is come home an' build up the strength o' his army. He needs tae hold the throne o' Scotland f'ae his father an' drive these
Sassenach
basthardsout o' Inverness an' Perth. He needs”—Fearchar leaned forward for emphasis—“
all
o' his lairds an' chiefs tae believe in him enough tae
want
tae make Scotland