Midnight Honor

by Marsha Canham

  “A thousand pardons for disturbing your evening, goodwife,” Anne said in Gaelic. “We were told your glen had a sweet burn running through it that would lead us right the way to the river. Unfortunately, we could not find the burn in the mist and were afraid our wagons would find the river without any warning. We smelled the smoke from your fire, and …” She waved a hand to indicate the natural progression of events, but the woman just stared.

  “I ken who ye are,” Rose whispered, her initial awe over their guests replaced by the more practical emotion of fear. “An' I ken why ye're here. Ye've come tae take ma Colin awa' tae war.”

  “No,” Anne said carefully. “We've not come to take him away. He is free to join us if he wishes, but we will not force any man to come with us. Each must listen to his own heart and decide the best way to serve his family, his clan, his honor.”

  “Aye, well.” The girl bit her lip and glanced down at the wooden cradle. “Ye put it that way, he'll no' be able tae refuse, will he?”

  She turned her back, startling the two smaller children into scrambling to reposition themselves as she leaned over to pick up the fussing baby and settle it back over her hip. “Will ye have broth, or a mug o' ale? There's rabbit stew as well. Glenna can fetch it f'ae ye, if ye're of a mind.”

  “A cup of broth would be very welcomed, but I do not want to put you to any trouble.”

  “'Tis too late f'ae that now.” She paused and glanced past Anne's shoulder as MacGillivray ducked his head beneath the low lintel and came into the cottage, followed closely by the Farquharson twins. “Ye've brung the trouble wi' ye.”

  Seeing the handsome trio, Glenna Mor showed a reaction for the first time, straightening and squaring her shoulders so that her breasts pushed round and full against her bodice. There was an inordinately large amount to push, and the twins' gaze stalled there long enough for John to give them both a clout on the shoulder.

  “Like I said,” the wife muttered. “Looks like ye've brung the trouble wi' ye.”

  Anne had been determined to repress all memories of the incident in MacGillivray's bedroom. The kiss had meant nothing. Nor had it in any way been a conscious effort on his part to seduce her. He had still been half drunk from the previous night, scarcely accountable for his actions. Yet it was difficult to ignore the effect his presence had on other women. The trull, Glenna Mor, all but fell over herself to serve him his ale and ladle the choicest bits of meat into his wooden bowl. The lacings on her bodice miraculously loosened from one turn to the next so that each time she leaned forward, he had an impressive view of her breasts. And being a hot-blooded male, he noticed. More than once, Anne caught him staring unabashedly at the succulent offerings, his one brow slightly raised in speculation, his mouth curved in a lopsided grin. Robbie was less circumspect. He practically had to keep his hands in his lap to prevent his kilt from tenting each time she brushed his shoulder or gave him a sly wink. While Anne had no right to be angered by the innocent flirtations, she felt as bristly as a hedgehog and found herself wanting to reach across the table and slap them all silly.

  It wasn't fair. She might have been able to abide the sloe-eyed glances and smiles and swaying hips with somewhat more tolerance had her husband been beside her. As it was, each time the girl's bodice gaped, she felt her own breasts chafing against the constraints of her cambric shirt; each time the wench ran her fingers through her hair and flirted openly with John or the twins, Anne thought of the tremors she had felt in Angus's hands when he'd taken the brush and stroked it through her own hair, the movements slow and sensual, the effect as thrilling as the tiny crackles of static the motion produced. She thought of his body, hard and straining into hers. She remembered the heat of his skin, the warm smell of him, the way his head arched back and his eyes smoldered with pride when she shivered around him time and again and refused to let him go.

  He had lied for her. He had not exposed her part in the theft to Forbes or Loudoun or Worsham, but what did that mean? What exactly did that mean? If he cared for her enough to put himself in such a precarious position—surely he would have been arrested and treated to the same prison hospitality as Anne, had they caught him in the lie—why had he not swept her into his arms at Drummuir House and told her so? Why had he deliberately kept himself at arm's length?

  No, it wasn't fair. And it wasn't fair to be in the constant company of a man who seemed to know she was not always squirming and red-faced because her trews itched.

  “Ye look as if ye've fought a battle already, lass.” MacGillivray's quiet voice came over her shoulder, startling Anne into looking up from the fire. She had moved there when Robbie had started laying pats and pinches on Glenna Mor's bottom and the girl's incessant giggles had begun to shred Anne's last nerve. She wasn't sure how long she had been staring at the low ripple of flames, but there were snores coming from the family pallet, and more than one figure lay bundled in plaid on the dirt floor.

  She was seated on a three-legged stool, and without waiting for an invitation, MacGillivray lowered himself onto the floor beside her, sitting cross-legged, cradling a cup of whisky in his hands.

  “'Twas a long day. We started out before dawn, did we not?”

  “Aye, that we did. An' we'll start out afore dawn on the morrow, too, so ye shouldna be squanderin' what little time ye have to rest by thinkin' on things that have no answer.”

  She studied his firelit profile for a moment before scowling. “You cannot possibly know what I am thinking, John MacGillivray.”

  “No? Then I'll gladly apologize if I'm wrong, but ye've the look of a wife worryin' after her husband.”

  She just stared until he looked up and grinned gently. “Tis a look we've both seen often enough these past weeks, each time a man kisses his wife an' bairns an' promises he'll be back after we've driven the Sassenachs back to England.”

  “Even so, I will accept your apology,” she said archly, turning her gaze back to the fire, “for you are wrong; I wasn't thinking of Angus at all. He made his choice, I made mine, and we both knew we would have to live with the consequences. In truth, I wasn't thinking of anything at all. I was just enjoying the sensation of having warm toes and fingers.”

  She was aware of his smile, but since she did not feel like compounding her foolishness by having her bluff called, she did not look his way again.

  In the end, he sighed affably and stretched his hands toward the heat. “A worthy pleasure,” he agreed. “For the rest of the body as well.”

  She watched his hands as he turned them this way and that, noting the width of the callused palms, the length of the strong, blunt-tipped fingers. Angus's hands were smoother, far more elegant than they were powerful, more comfortable holding a quill than a clai' mór. They were gentle and tentative when they reached for her, and she could not imagine for a moment Angus Moy lifting her against a wall at a public fairground and threatening to take her there and then before God's eyes if she did not give him a kiss.

  “Jesus God and all the saints,” she whispered, bowing her head with a small shake, wondering what it would take to rid her mind of such unwanted images.

  “Ye have need of a special prayer?” MacGillivray asked.

  Unaware she had invoked the heavenly powers aloud, she felt all the more foolish for it and smiled wearily. “An exorcism, perhaps. But you were right. I should make my bed while I have the chance.”

  She started to shift forward, to push herself off the stool, but her legs had become locked in the folded position and refused to budge.

  John's grin came back, tempered by a cluck of his tongue. “Did ye not use the unguent I gave ye, lass? It will ease the stiffness out o' yer muscles each night an' let ye ride in comfort in the mornin'.”

  “It smells dreadful, like camphor and turpentine and something else I cannot fathom.”

  “A virgin's piss gathered fresh in the mornin'.” He laughed when he saw her startled expression, and sprang to his feet so easily she wanted to kick him. Reaching d
own, he grasped her around the waist, bringing her up slowly, letting her legs straighten and uncramp with a minimum of strain. It took a full minute or more, with Anne's hands resting on his chest all the while, her fingers splayed over the solid bulk of muscle beneath. His head was bent forward, bringing the musky scent of smoke and whisky closer than was probably wise at that precise moment, but his next suggestion nearly sent her toppling backward.

  “Drop yer trews for me, lass: I'll ease what ails ye in no time.”

  Her eyes, blue and huge, locked with his long enough for the smile to fade from his face and his complexion to grow ruddy.

  “I meant the salve,” he murmured. “Ye need to rub it in hard for it to work best.”

  “I can manage it on my own.”

  “Aye, of course ye can.” He lifted one of her arms above her head and snorted when she did not have the strength to hold it there without wincing. “Now get on over to yer blanket, drop yer breeks, an' cover whatever ye dinna want me to see.”

  Anne glanced around the room to see if anyone was paying attention, but they had kept their voices low enough not to disturb the sleeping forms. She went over to her pallet of blankets and gingerly unfastened the waist of her trews, pushing them down past her hips and sliding them, with difficulty, to her ankles. She was wearing one of Jamie's cambric shirts, the hem of which fell almost to her knees and could be tucked between her legs to spare her more tender parts the worst of the chafing.

  MacGillivray scarcely seemed to notice as he fetched the jar of liniment from his saddle pouch and rounded the fire. When she was lying facedown on the blankets, he smeared a healthy dollop in his palms and rubbed them together, warming the oily mess first before he knelt beside her.

  His first strokes were gentle, smoothing the slippery concoction into her skin and working it into her thighs and calves. He added more, warming it each time, and when he judged her slick enough, he began to knead the muscles with the vigor of a biscuit maker. The heat of his hands combined with the heat of the camphor started a not uncomfortable burn down the length of her legs, and when he paused to nudge the hem of the shirt up to the crease of her bottom, she did not object.

  “You've not said much about Elizabeth,” Anne murmured.

  “Ye havna said much about Angus,” he countered.

  “You are going to marry her, are you not?”

  MacGillivray's sigh was extravagant. “We have talked about it, aye.”

  “Just… talked about it?”

  “Aye. I'm a great talker, have ye not noticed?”

  Whether she would have pursued the topic or not was cut short on a gasp as he lifted the shirt higher and sent his hands sliding all the way up to her shoulders. Her teeth clamped down over her lower lip and her fists curled tighter around the little hillocks she'd made in the blankets, but the massage felt so good and the heat produced by his big hands was so comforting, she stopped thinking of her bared bottom after the first few strokes.

  MacGillivray felt her shock and saw the clenching of her fists, but it was the only way he could think to end the conversation. He did not want to talk about Elizabeth of Clunas, or of his impending marriage, not while his hands were doing what they had ached to do for so many years. The pleasure of feeling her skin all sleek and warm and bared to his touch was so intense, it stirred sensations that had no right to be stirred, arousing needs that had no right to be aroused.

  He may well have been half sotted the last time their lips had met, but he remembered all too well how she had tasted, how she had felt, how she made those tiny sounds deep in her throat when he had kissed her. God's truth, he had dreamt of them lying together so many times, he imagined he knew exactly where and how to caress her until she was trembling with the madness of wanting his flesh inside her. And once there … once there, by God, he knew she would be as insatiable as a nymph, rising against him, engulfing him so completely with her own orgasms he would scarcely have need to worry about his own. But of course he would. He would feel her flesh sliding over his, feel it squeezing him, working him like little fists, and the climax would be cataclysmic.

  Wild Rhuad Annie. How many times had he regretted not taking her that day in the fairground? She had been willing. She had been more than ready. She had kissed him as if her soul had been in her mouth, his for the taking. But he had stopped himself, had slapped himself down, not wanting to risk tarnishing her reputation until they were well and properly married. He had known about the betrothal arrangement pledging her to Angus Moy, but when her fiancé had become the vaunted chief of Clan Chattan and it looked as though the agreement might be nullified, he had felt confident Fearchar would accept him, John Alexander MacGillivray, as a worthy alternative. The day—the very bloody day—before he had decided he could wait no longer to offer for her hand, he was told the wedding to The MacKintosh was to proceed as planned.

  The day of Annie's marriage, he had gotten so drunk, it had become necessary for Gillies to tie him down to keep him from tearing Dunmaglass apart plank by plank. He had stayed drunk for a month and sought to ease himself on every whore within ten miles of Inverness.

  After four years, the ache was still a living thing in his belly. It sent tremors through his arms, down his legs; it sent rivers of heated blood flowing into his groin, swelling him to almost unbearable lengths.

  He had helped Anne to her feet a while ago, but who would help him now? Who, for that matter, would stop him if he turned her on her back and plunged himself between her thighs? He could take her and damn them both to hell without a qualm. He had seen her watching him surreptitiously from a window at Dunmaglass, and he had lost count of the number of embarrassed little glances he caught her sending his way ever since. A kiss would silence her. She was vulnerable, aching with a need Angus was not here to satisfy and had been too foolish to see how precious a thing it was.

  The tension in John's body became as palpable as the heartbeat thundering within his chest. His hands skimmed downward, slowing when they smoothed around her ribs. His fingertips brushed against the pillowed curve of her breasts and he bowed his head, cursing his own damning weakness.

  Angus Moy was his friend as well as his laird. Not only that, but he had come to Dunmaglass the day before he left for Edinburgh and asked John to look out for Anne while he was gone. He had said he knew his wife was too stubborn to stay at home with her needlework, and if she managed to get herself thrown in gaol for spitting on the Lord President, would John mind blowing up the courthouse to break her out?

  The irony had almost choked him then, for had her husband come an hour earlier, he could have seen Anne standing there brazen as brass announcing she was going to call out the clan and march to war.

  It choked him now when he thought that if he had gone to Fearchar a day earlier, if he had, indeed, stolen more than a kiss that day at the fair, if he hadn't been so damned arrogant in thinking she was too wild and spirited for anyone else to want to try to tame …?

  “Ye'll be the sorry death o' me, lass,” he whispered. “Ye ken that, do ye not?”

  When there was no answer, he leaned forward and looked at her face. Her eyes were closed, her lips slightly parted. She was fast asleep and he did not know whether he should feel relieved or disappointed.

  He straightened her shirt and drew a bundle of blankets up over her shoulders, tucking her in as gently as he would a child. At the last, he could not resist bending over and pressing a kiss into the gleaming red crown of her hair, for he knew it would be the last time he could risk doing such a thing. He loved her far too much to see her hurting any more than she was now, and to put the horns to her husband would surely tear her apart.

  He stoppered the jar of unguent and pushed to his feet, glaring balefully down at the enormous bulge in the front of his kilt. There was little likelihood of his being able to sleep himself this night, he thought grimly, not with his body as tense as a cocked pistol and his mind full of what-ifs and why-nots.

  He fished a Carolina cigar
out of his sporran and bit the end. While he was leaning over to light a taper he caught a movement out of the corner of his eye and glanced sharply at the darkened corner where Glenna Mor made her bed. She was there, sitting back on her heels, her eyes large and round and dark in a face framed by a tousle of curls. How long she had been watching them, John did not know, but as he stared at her now, she tipped her head and raised her hands to her bodice, peeling the cheap wool aside to show him that her breasts were ripe and lush, her nipples hard as beads.

  Her hands moved again, sliding down into the juncture between her thighs. She seemed to purr and stretch with the sensation and this time, when she tilted her head, she did so in the direction of the door.

  John narrowed his eyes against the flare of the taper. He held it to the end of his cigar and through a thin blue cloud, watched the girl snatch up her cloak and move toward the door.

  Once there, she paused and looked back over her shoulder, smiling an invitation before she slipped outside. With wisps of smoke trailing behind him like a Medusa, John stalked after her, but no sooner had he closed the door behind him when another short, stocky shadow loomed up out of the mist.

  “I were just comin' tae fetch ye,” said Gillies MacBean. “We found a camp down by the river. Forty Sassenachs wi' three wagons saggin' wi' what looks like barrels o' grain an' casks o' ale. The men were thinkin' we might have more need o' such things than Thomas Lobster.”

  MacGillivray cast around. There were enough campfires blazing to provide a weak, watery kind of light through the fog, and he could see the girl's silhouette paused by a patch of soft green grass a discreet distance from the house.

  “Aye,” he said. “Bring the horses. We could use a little diversion.”

  Gillies followed his glance and saw the waiting shadow. “I could take the men out maself if ye've more pressin' needs tae tend tae.”