Yes, I probably will, thought Beth, thinking of the distance between Edinburgh and London, and all the battles that could be fought between here and there. And of all the opportunities that Alex was going to face to be killed, or so badly injured that he had no wish to live…
By the time the battle was over, the tents were erected, supplies unpacked, all spare clothes scrubbed within an inch of their lives regardless of whether they were dirty or not, and Beth had mastered two new songs, four new variations of the Highland reel, and, finally, the rudiments of knitting.
* * *
It was not until the day after the battle that the men came back to Duddingston. The women had already known which way it had gone the day before, from scouts and villagers who had seen the dragoons fleeing in panic, some towards the refuge of Edinburgh Castle and others over the Lammermuir hills, soon to be followed by those of the infantry who had succeeded in escaping the lethal onslaught of the Highland charge.
It was obvious that the result was cause for celebration; but the women still had no idea how many had fallen, or their names, and so they held back from open jubilation until they heard the pipes in the distance, heralding the return of their menfolk.
It seemed to Beth and Maggie to be an eternity before they glimpsed their husbands among the throngs of smiling, bedraggled men. In fact it was the sight of Kenneth, head and shoulders above the others, that alerted them to the return of the MacGregors. Alex was walking with Angus, whose face was so white it was obvious he had been injured in some way, although as he was both walking unaided and laughing too, Beth surmised that it could not be serious. Duncan was directly behind chatting with Iain, then Dougal, Alasdair…
Beth did a quick count. They were all there, all of them. The relief was so great that for a moment the world spun. And then she was running, skirts flying and tangling round her legs, threatening to trip her, and Alex grabbed her as she stumbled into him, lifting her high into the air and swinging her round as though she were a child, before crushing her to his chest and submitting her to a long whisky-scented kiss that drove all the breath from her body and reduced her limbs to jelly. He did not release her after that as she had expected, but kept hold of her, running his hand down her back, cupping her bottom and almost lifting her off her feet again as he pulled her hard against him, while he smothered her face and neck with kisses.
She could feel his arousal, hard and urgent even through the layers of cloth between them, and managed with difficulty to rouse herself from her answering passion to note that although the men were thinning out, they were by no means alone, and that he seemed not to care. His dark blue eyes were smoky with desire, oblivious to everything but the soft willing curves of the woman he held. In a moment he would take her on the grass, heedless of witnesses.
“Not here,” she managed to murmur. “The tent…”
His eyes focussed, saw the flutter of canvas and then he was lifting her and running clumsily across the grass. They barely made it into the tent before he was on her, releasing her breasts from the low-cut bodice, kissing and caressing them while with his other hand he lifted her skirts impatiently. She tore at his shirt, wanting to feel his bare flesh against hers, and then he bore her to the ground and was inside her almost before she had managed to spread her legs wide enough to accommodate him, driving into her with a frenzy that she had never known before and which roused an answering urge in her that caused her to wrap her legs around him, pulling him deeper into her and matching the rhythm of his thrusts until sensation overwhelmed her and she arched against him, crying out as she felt the liquid heat of his release.
Afterwards he shifted position slightly so that his weight would not crush her, and then they lay for a time in silence, watching the sunlight as it filtered through the brown cloth of the tent. All around them, beyond the fragile walls of their shelter, life was going on. Pans clattered, men and women laughed, snatches of conversation drifted to them as they lay half on and half off the mattress. She was sore, and her left buttock was burning. A smell of crushed grass rose from beneath them.
“Are ye alright?” he asked softly after a while. The first words he had spoken to her in four days, and not at all what she had expected them to be.
“I think so,” she said. “Although I’m a bit sore, and I think I’ve got a friction burn on my bottom.” She laughed, a light, joyous sound that set his mind at rest.
“I couldna help myself,” he said. “I didna mean to…ye ken. No’ straight away, at any rate. I meant to talk to ye about the battle, but when ye fell into my arms, I lost myself…did I frighten ye?”
“No,” she said. “It was unexpected, that’s all. But it was nice, too. It was the right thing, I think.”
It had been the only thing. An affirmation that he was alive, uninjured, in full possession of all his faculties. He would wager good money that every other man with a woman to hand had done the same thing, or similar. It was what made soldiers rape, what made whores flock to battlefields in droves. The animal desire to express your intense relief at surviving the bloody brutality of hacking and butchering other human beings by indulging in the other primal instinct of man, the urge to procreate.
“Aye,” he said simply.
“Do you always feel like that after a battle?” she asked.
He thought for a moment, of how to put it so as not to make her feel used. It hadn’t been that way at all, although it could sound so, if he wasn’t careful.
“I always have a lot of energy after a battle, aye. It’s an exhilaration that ye’ve survived. A lot of us feel it. Some men go to whores, or take the local women, willing or no. I wouldna do that. With you it was more than just a release, ye ken that, d’ye no’? It was a celebration that I’m still alive to love ye.”
She smiled, and kissed the side of his neck, watching with delight as he stirred again.
“Of course I do,” she said. “I feel the same, to some extent.”
“Ye do?” he said, surprised.
“Yes. I’ve been waiting for four days, not knowing whether you were dead or alive, whether I’d ever see you again. When I did, I just wanted to hold you and never let you go. I hadn’t realised how much more I wanted until you instigated it, but I think I’d have dragged you into the tent myself after that first kiss if you hadn’t saved me the trouble. And yes, I would like a second helping, please.”
He glanced down at the offending member and grinned boyishly.
“I thought ye were sore,” he said.
“I am,” she replied. “But I’m also very, very pleased to have you home.”
Afterwards they dressed each other slowly, and almost ended up not leaving the tent at all as a result. But they finally managed to surface, as the sun was hovering low over the horizon.
“What do men do when there are no women to hand?” Beth asked as they made their way down to the MacGregor campfire.
“Various things,” said Alex. “Some of them drink themselves into a stupor. Some go looting, if there’s any to be had. And some,” he added, eyeing his brother, who was bending over the fire to cut a piece of meat from the sheep they were roasting, “dance such a vigorous Highland fling that they fall into rabbit holes and put their shoulders out on a rock.”
“Oh thank ye kindly, a bhrathair,” said Angus, straightening. “I was all ready to win your bonnie wife off ye wi’ tales of my bravery in battle, and now ye’ve spoilt my plan entirely.”
“I’ll vouch for your bravery in battle myself,” replied Alex. “It was your stupidity afterwards that was the problem. Ye’re lucky ye didna break your leg.”
Angus looked down at his badly skinned shin.
“Och, I’m fine,” he said nonchalantly. “Yon’s just a wee scratch, and my shoulder’ll be healed long before I need to use it again.”
His left arm was tightly strapped to his side, but otherwise his colour was normal now, and his eyes sparkling. All the men’s eyes were sparkling. They were obviously eager to talk about th
e battle, but they waited until their chieftain and his wife were comfortably seated by the fire and had been provided with food before they began. Before the conversation could turn to tales of near misses, bravery and jokes, Alex outlined the basic events for the benefit of Maggie and Beth, who were the only women accompanying his clansmen.
“When we got there on Friday, Cope had set his men up near Prestonpans, and he’d chosen his battlefield well,” he said. “There were the walls of the parks on one side, and on the other side between us and the redcoats was a marshland.” He drew a quick sketch in the dirt with a stick, which Beth looked at with interest. “At first we thought we had real problems, because we couldna get across the marsh, and Cope was ready wi’ his artillery to cut us to pieces if we went round it. The prince called a meeting to see what could be done, and then the son of the laddie who owned the marsh tellt us that he kent a way across it, and would lead us over.”
“There’d been a few wee exchanges of muskets and suchlike, but once it got full dark we all stayed there, quiet as a mouse,” said Duncan. “We didna light a fire, or even a lantern, and we didna talk, either.”
“It must have been hard, waiting,” said Beth. She looked at Iain and Maggie, sitting close together on the other side of the fire, Iain’s arm resting on his wife’s shoulders, her hand on his knee. Whatever sexual problems they’d had since the miscarriage had clearly been completely resolved now. Waiting had its positive side, it seemed.
“No, not at all,” said Kenneth. “Most of us tried tae get some sleep. The rest of us amused ourselves by watching the redcoats getting jittery in front of their campfires. They had nae idea what we were up to, because they couldna see us or hear us. I’ll wager most of them didna shut their eyes the whole night.”
“Anyway, a couple of hours before dawn we set off across the marsh. We left the horses behind, because we didna want them to snort or whinny and alert the redcoats,” continued Alex. “By the time they saw us, it was too late, really. Cope tried to wheel his forces to face us, but he didna have time to arrange them properly before we were on them.”
“Of course the dragoons were the first to run away, again. They’re damn good at that,” spat Dougal contemptuously. “It’s a shame about Gardiner, though.”
“Gardiner?” said Beth.
“Aye, he was the colonel of one of the dragoon regiments, and he carried on fighting even after his men had turned tail and run. He was a Scot, and an honourable man, too, if a wee bit misguided. He was killed by one of the Camerons.”
“What surprised me, though,” mused Angus,” was that when we got close in to fighting wi’ the infantry, not one of them had a sword. No one I saw, anyway. I wasna expecting that. They all had their bayonets screwed on tae their muskets, but they didna have a hope at close quarters against broadsword and dirk wi’ just a bayonet.”
“What did they do?” asked Maggie.
“The only thing they could,” said Alex. “They ran, or turned their coats to show they’d surrendered. But a lot of them were trapped by they high walls I tellt ye about earlier.” He pointed with his stick. “We killed or wounded hundreds of them, wi’ only about twenty or so of our own killed. Cope got away, but I wouldna be him for anything, having to explain what happened in London.” He laughed.
“Ye must have been awfu’ tired, after all that fighting,” said Maggie. “Is that why ye didna come back yesterday?”
“No,” said Iain. “We were ordered to muster at Musselburgh, to find out our losses, sort out the wounded, prisoners and suchlike. The battle itself only lasted about fifteen minutes or so.”
“Fifteen minutes!” said Beth disbelievingly. “I thought you must have been fighting all morning, at least! The prince must be ecstatic. Did you spend the whole night celebrating?” She remembered Alex’s whisky-flavoured kiss this morning and assumed they must have been carousing all night.
“No,” said Alex. “Charles was upset about all the killing, although he knew it was necessary. He wouldna allow us to celebrate, not loudly, anyway. His view is that all of us, friend and foe, are his father’s subjects and that there was nothing to celebrate in the death of a great many of his people, misguided though they were. He sent for doctors to treat their wounded, too, and insisted we take prisoners rather than kill, where we could.”
“Do you agree with him?” Beth asked Alex, seeing the sea of disapproving male faces to either side of him.
“He’s very humane,” said Alex carefully. “And he’s in a difficult position, because he wants his enemy to think well of him, so that they’ll join him.”
“And do you think they will?”
Alex shook his head.
“No. I’m feart the soldiers’ll think he’s soft. And the rest of the public will never find out. It isna in Whig interests to make it known that the prince is merciful and caring, that he’s paying for his food and lodgings, or that the Highlander as a rule has a respect for women and disdains rape. The newspapers and journals will already have us all down as heathen butchering savages, intent on rape and pillage. They’ll pillory Charles, whatever he does. His attitude is verra admirable, but he’d do better to be a wee bit more ruthless, when the need arises. He shouldna be releasing the prisoners we’ve just taken, especially the officers, accepting their promise that they willna fight for George again. Of course they will, and they’ll tell as much as they can about our numbers and weapons, too. He should keep them prisoner until all this is over. Time enough for mercy when he’s Regent.”
“Did you kill a lot of men?” asked Beth, and immediately wished she hadn’t.
“Three,” said Angus immediately.
“I dinna rightly ken,” said Alex. “It doesna matter. It’s over. We won, without either artillery or cavalry. And now Charles needs to plan his next move carefully, because if they didna take us seriously before in London, they will now.”
They did. Even though the Hanoverian press tried to play the catastrophic defeat down, reporting in as few lines as possible that the king’s troops had been defeated and had retired to Lauder, within days the whole of London was buzzing, in spite of the fact that the promised details of the battle, to be published when known, never were. Everyone was talking of nothing other than the fact that it seemed an ill-disciplined, badly-armed bunch of exotically-dressed barbarians had defeated the cream of His Majesty’s Army in Scotland. What was to stop them marching straight for London, the panicked inhabitants were starting to ask themselves, and each other.
Something had to be done.
King George ordered for more troops to be sent over from Flanders, and began to contemplate whether he should also send for his youngest son to come and lead them against this increasing threat to a crown he no longer really wanted himself, but was nevertheless loath to give up. Not after holding it for all this time. And not to an upstart twenty-five-year-old Papist bastard from Rome.
CHAPTER THREE
Thomas Pelham, Duke of Newcastle, looked at the papers littering his desk, then carefully folded his arms on the table, laid his head on them, and closed his eyes.
He would have remained in this apparently relaxed state for some time, had not the door opened and a discreet cough announced the presence of one of his clerks. The duke raised his head wearily.
“Ah, Benjamin,” he said. “Get me a brandy, would you?”
As it was only ten o’clock in the morning, this request told its own story. Benjamin moved over to the walnut cupboard where the duke kept his supply of alcohol.
“I take it that Lord Winter was unable to provide any further useful information?” he asked as he poured.
“No one has provided any useful information to be furthered,” said the duke. “I have spent two days learning nothing whatsoever about the man known as Sir Anthony Peters, and I am heartily sick of it.”
“Who have you interviewed so far, my lord?” asked the clerk.
“So far,” said Newcastle, “I have interviewed the whole of the Cunningham fa
mily, with the exception of the brother, who is in Flanders and will be examined by his colonel; Lord and Lady Winter, the Fortesques, the Earl of Highbury and his son, and Mr and Mrs Harlow.”
“Surely somebody must know something about him?” said Benjamin.
The duke leaned over and picked up a wad of papers.
“Indeed they do. I now know, to the smallest detail, every outfit Sir Anthony Peters has ever worn. I know he favours violet cologne and oddly-shaped patches. I know how he wears his makeup, and that he wears it so thickly in order to hide the terrible scars of smallpox which he suffered as a child, presumably before he died at the age of five. I know he likes claret, but is not partial to champagne. He does not take snuff. Nor does he smoke tobacco. All of which is utterly useless!” He ended the sentence almost shouting and thrust the wad of papers at the clerk, who took a seat and examined them for a moment.
“Don’t you think he may have been hiding smallpox scars?” he said after a time. “Everyone seems to think so.”
“Maybe. But then maybe not. I think it far more likely that he was hiding himself, and, let me say, he has done it spectacularly well. Here is the useful information I have gleaned from the interminable drivel I have had to listen to.” He picked up a single sheet of parchment.
“Height; between five feet ten inches and six feet three inches. Age, anywhere between twenty-five and forty. Well-made. Blue eyes.” He stopped.
There was a pause in which the clerk waited for the duke to continue.
“That’s it, as far as physical description goes,” said the duke. “Now you see why I am exasperated. People have been so dazzled by his ridiculous clothes and flamboyant attitude that they have failed to notice anything relevant about the man whatsoever. Harlow was the most helpful. He’s raging mad that he could have been so duped and his career put in jeopardy by someone he considered to be a friend. From him I learnt that Sir Anthony is an excellent swordsman, that he is probably well acquainted with smugglers, judging by the silks he has managed to acquire, and that although he was a man of fashion, he never wore heeled shoes. Which tells me he was probably at the upper end of the height range I have here, and trying to disguise the fact. One other thing I know for certain, now I have talked to so many of his acquaintances.”
The Storm Breaks (The Jacobite Chronicles Book 4) Page 7