Authors: Marsha Canham
Doctor? Who needed a doctor?
“J-John?”
“Aye, lass. Aye, it's me. I'm right here.”
He looked dreadful. His hair was stuck straight up in yellow spikes, there was several days' worth of reddish blond stubble on his cheeks, and his eyes had more veins than a wall of ivy.
She tried to moisten her lips, but there wasn't enough spit to do it. A moment later there was a cool, wet cloth pressed over her mouth and she gratefully let the liquid trickle down her tongue and throat.
“Dinna try to speak yet, lass. Drena has gone to fetch the doctor.”
Anne glared as best she could with her head spinning and her temples pounding. “Why,” she rasped, “did you hit me?”
“Hit ye? I didna hit ye, lass. Ye let out a cry like someone cleaved ye in half, then the next I knew ye were bent over double an' not a wit left to tell us what was wrong. Then when I saw all the blood …” He offered up the kind of helpless shrug with which most men excused themselves when delicate subjects were broached. “I carried ye inside an' ye've been here ever since, not movin' so much as an eyelash.”
“Ever since?”
“Four days.” He frowned and thought about it a moment. “Aye. Four days.”
“During which time Mr. MacGillivray has not moved from the side of your bed,” said Deirdre MacKail. She was standing behind John, all but blocked out by his massive shoulders, and Anne realized it had been her voice she'd heard trying to comfort the weeping Drena.
“A-am I dying?”
“Not so long as I have aught to say about it, ye're not,” MacGillivray growled. “So put that thought right out o' yer mind.”
“Wh-what happened?”
He hesitated, and Anne saw him exchange a glance with the Irish girl. “Perhaps ye should wait for the doctor. He is just along the way in Lady Catherine's room—”
“Please, John. Tell me what happened.”
He took one of her hands into his and rubbed his thumb gently across the palm. “Ye lost yer babe, lass,” he said quietly. “Ye miscarried.”
“Miscarried?
But I wasn't even …”
“Aye, ye were. About two months gone, near as the doctor could figure it.”
Anne felt the blood rush out of her head. Two months pregnant? She had been two months pregnant?
Two months ago she had been riding about the countryside gaining signatures for the petition to give her command of the clan. She had ridden to Aberdeen in dreadful damp weather, then to Falkirk …
Falkirk, dear God. She had ridden out onto the battlefield like an avenging Valkyrie, never knowing, never guessing. And afterward, the frigid ride back across the mountains …
How, indeed, could a tiny babe be expected to survive all that?
She turned her head to the side and stared unseeing into the shadows beside the bed. She was in Angus's bed, in Angus's room, and the smell of sandalwood was suddenly, inescapably cloying. She gasped and tried to choke back the tears, the shame, the guilt, for a combination of all three was rising in her throat, swelling her chest, causing her to clench her fists so tightly John clamped his teeth together as her nails cut into his flesh.
“I will see what's keeping the doctor,” Deirdre murmured, touching his shoulder. “When he comes, you should leave for a little while and let him tend to her.”
“No,” Anne cried. “No, please don't leave me, John. Please don't go.”
Stricken, tear-filled eyes sought his, and she tried, weakly, to reach out her arms. MacGillivray took the burden willingly upon himself, bending over and gathering her gently against his chest. He whispered her name and buried his lips in her throat, in her hair, in the sweet drenching scent of her; he held on so tightly his heart was pounding in his ears. “I willna go anywhere lass, I swear it. I'll stay right here by yer side as long as ye need me.”
“Angus,” she cried, her voice broken by sobs. “Oh, Angus, I'm so sorry.”
MacGillivray opened his eyes … then slowly closed them again, squeezing hard enough to stop all but the smallest hint of a watery shine from escaping between his lashes. He held her and stroked his hand down the red tangle of her hair, gently rocking and soothing her until her sobs trembled away to heartbreaking whimpers. By then the doctor was standing by the bed, and John relinquished her grudgingly into his care.
“It's all right, lass,” he whispered, pressing his lips over her ear. “Everything will be all right, I'll make sure of it. Here's the doctor now. Let him help ye with the pain. He'll give ye something to help ye sleep again, an' when ye waken, it will be that much better. I swear it will, on ma name an' on ma honor.”
“You won't leave me?”
“I'll never be more than a heartbeat away, lass. Never more, never less.”
Angus rubbed his eyes, feeling the grit beneath the lids. He was not sure of the time, but he guessed it was well past three in the morning. He was working by the light of a single candle, copying out numbers, names of regiments, commanders, supplies, equipment. It was more of an exercise to keep himself from going mad, since he had no idea to whom he should pass the information now that there were several hundred miles between himself and Adrienne de Boule. She had been his contact in Edinburgh, smuggling out packets of documents he had either copied or stolen from Cumberland's headquarters.
His billet had been in the same house he had occupied
before the ill-fated foray to Falkirk. Roger Worsham was still down the hall, and Adrienne de Boule was once again a regular visitor. She had been taking larger and larger risks, carrying the documents under her corset, passing them on to whoever her contact was in Edinburgh. Twice in the week before he had shipped out, she'd had to find new conduits after the old ones were arrested. The city had turned into one huge garrison, with more soldiers on the streets than citizens, all of them impatient with the weather, the inactivity, the humiliating repercussions of the army's loss at Falkirk.
There were hangings every day, lashings nearly every hour. The city was placed under a military curfew that began at dusk; anyone found out on the street, citizen or soldier, was subject to arrest and punishment.
Angus's return had gone relatively unchallenged; he had simply reported to headquarters with the rest of the released prisoners. He had endured perhaps an hour of intense questioning as to his stay in the enemy camp at Falkirk, most of it conducted by the brooding, ill-tempered Duke of Cumberland and a select number of his senior officers. Garner had been among them, as had Worsham and the ill-fated Blakeney before he was sent north to Inverness. Hawley had been present, but for the most part had sat silent and ignored in a corner.
Round and swelling with fat, Cumberland was a month away from his twenty-fifth birthday. He had spent the last five years fighting wars in Europe, earning himself a well-deserved reputation for success. He had a precise military mind and appreciated order, discipline, and logic—the three things that seemed, to his analytical mind at any rate, to be most lacking in the Jacobite camp.
“I confess I am at a loss, gentlemen,” he had said, fixing his cold stare on each of his officers in turn, “to explain the contradictions I encounter from one day to the next. I am assured by my advisors at every turn that this rabble is unseasoned and untrained, and comes to a battlefield armed with pikes and pitchforks. How then have they managed to humiliate two of my most brilliant”—his voice dripped sarcasm as he crucified Hawley with his eyes—“generals? How do they manage to escape us time and time again? I am told by people
who should know these hills the best that there are no passable routes through the mountains at this time of year, yet my cousin has vanished into the high snowy reaches, apparently unaffected by the same weather that leaves our men gasping and strengthless in the drifts. I am told there are no possible encampments between Atholl and Inverness where more than five hundred men could subsist in a body. Yet Lord George has disappeared into the wilds somewhere with upward of three thousand men and horses, both of whom must have fodder to survive.”
“Lord George knows the lay of the land, Sire; his family seat is Atholl.”
“And my family seat is all of England, Scotland, and Wales, gentlemen. I will prevail over these skirted rebels. If it takes another ten years, I will prevail.”
Angus had felt the bulging toadlike eyes fasten on him down the length of the table. “You, sir. You are related to Lord George Murray, are you not?”
“He is a cousin, yes, by marriage.”
“Your lovely wife and he must have had a fond reunion at Bannockburn.”
Angus had trod carefully there. A bundle of beribboned letters may have worked once to cast doubt on the reports of Anne's whereabouts in Inverness and Aberdeen, but too many captured soldiers had seen her at Falkirk.
“I doubt they met but once or twice before, Sire, and then only at official clan functions.”
“And you, sir? You appear to have been given free rein of the Jacobite camp.”
Angus had smiled as slyly as he dared. “The prince himself took my parole, and that once given, aye, I was allowed to keep company with my wife. I was able to move about with relative freedom, and was often invited to dine with the other lairds, some of whom, either through carelessness or misguided assumption, discussed matters with an unguarded tongue.”
“Unguarded enough,” Major Garner had said at that point, “to have let slip some vital information I intend to act upon within the hour. If it is true the Jacobites have stockpiled a
vast quantity of weapons and ammunition at Corgarff Castle, its capture could seriously impair the Pretender's ability to re-supply his army. I plan to lead the assault myself, Your Grace, and you can be sure I will not return without a solid victory to report.”
Garner had then raised his glass in a toast to credit Angus's cleverness. As Cameron had predicted, after Angus mentioned he had been in the company of the
Camshroinaich Dubh
, Major Hamilton Garner had turned from skeptic to guarantor almost in the blink of an eye.
“Indeed, a victory is much needed,” Cumberland agreed. “Another humiliation would make us more of a laughingstock than we already are. All the same, if I were a suspicious man, Lord MacKintosh, I might question such blind faith in your information, not to mention your motives for leaving your beautiful wife and returning here to us.”
Angus did not have twenty-two generations of noble blood in his veins for naught. He had returned the duke's stare with an icy detachment and an eyebrow arched with just enough arrogance to mock the very notion of collaborating with such obviously inferior outcasts.
“I came back because I am a realist, Your Grace. I know it is only a matter of time before you catch up with the Pretender, and for the final denouement, I would prefer to be on the winning side.”
“And your wife? What does she prefer?”
“It would seem she prefers to play games and raise havoc, but in the end, she will simply return home to her tapestries and embroideries and remember this as nothing more than a grand adventure.”
“We are told she actually took part in the battle.”
“Yes, I have heard the tales about the red-haired Amazon who took to the field in full battle dress”—Angus had paused to offer a disdainful smirk—“and if your men believe them, then the Jacobite dissemblers have done their work exceedingly well, have they not? I was with her less than an hour after the first shots were fired and I can assure you, Sire, she was comfortably ensconced with the other wives of the officers, drinking chocolate and laughing over the little gold
braiding on her bodice that denotes her so-called
rank
. Better, I think, to put one's faith in the reports that may be proven true than in those designed to defy all logic and credibility.”
Cumberland's eyes had narrowed and Angus had held his breath, for it all came down to whether or not they would believe his accounting of the events, or the vague reports of a handful of released prisoners, most of whom gave such varying descriptions of Anne he would have been hard-pressed to recognize her himself. In his favor, Alexander Cameron had given him the information about the cache of Spanish arms and ammunition the Jacobites were storing in Corgarff Castle. The fact that most of the guns were rusted and the ammunition was of so many different calibers it was more bother to haul than store would not be immediately apparent. With the news sheets in London depicting Hawley running from Falkirk with his napkin still tucked into his collar, the duke was almost desperate to put his faith in someone other than the incompetents who had failed him thus far.
And in the end, he had. Major Garner led an attack against Corgarff Castle and returned to Edinburgh with a dozen wagons full of muskets and barrels of lead shot. Within the week, the
London Gazette
was depicting the triumphant Duke of Cumberland poised atop a mountain of weaponry that could have supplied the continental armies for a dozen years. Assured of his loyalty, Angus had found himself onboard the
Thames Rose
within the week, bound for Fort George with orders to aid Lord Loudoun in his defense of Inverness.
Angus rubbed his gritty eyes again. The ship had been struck by a hellish storm and they had arrived in port battered, bruised, and a mere hour before Lord Loudoun declared he was abandoning the city. It had been decided to ferry the entire garrison across the Moray Firth to Easter Ross, which was under The MacLeod's control and relatively friendly to the Hanover government. Lord George took Inverness without firing a single shot, and although Loudoun watched hopefully from the opposite shore of the firth, Fort George capitulated shortly thereafter without the anticipated explosion of the powder magazines or storerooms.
Railing once again at the Jacobites' uncanny ability to root out a trap, Loudoun had moved his forces to Easter Ross,
and that was where Angus found himself now, in a draft-ridden stone building that shook with every gust of wind, his fingers cramped and his back aching, less than twenty miles from Moy Hall but unable to do anything about it. Following Cumberland's example, Loudoun had imposed a curfew over the town, with standing orders to arrest civilians and soldiers alike if they were found out of doors after dusk. Anyone suspected of deserting was shot out of hand by armed patrols that roved the streets searching for violators.