But it was Adrienne de Boule's much-put-upon sigh that ended the tense standoff. That and a snap of her fan that sounded like a gunshot in the silence.
“Come now, gentlemen,” she scolded prettily. “Must we spoil a perfectly lovely evening by scowling at each other? Captain MacKintosh, you promised me a set, and I can hear the musicians tuning.”
“You will have to forgive me if I find I am suddenly not in the mood for dancing.”
“That was the excuse you used last night and the night before.” She gathered the folds of her gown and moved daintily over to stand by his side, draping her free hand through the crook of his arm. “Refuse me again, my lord, and I shall be left with no alternative but to toss myself out of a window in despair.”
Angus frowned down at her. His first instinct was to offer to open the nearest pane of glass. His second, arrived at when he felt the points of her nails dig into his arm, was to acknowledge the warning gleam in her eyes.
“Naturally,” he said haltingly, “I should hate to be responsible for such a waste.”
“Bien!” She smiled at Garner and Worsham. “If you gentlemen will excuse us, then?”
The two scarlet-clad officers watched them walk along the length of the gallery and Angus could feel the heat of their glares burning between his shoulder blades.
“Do you have a death wish, Captain,” she murmured when they were out of earshot, “or are you just an idiot?”
He started to draw to a halt but she maintained her grip on his arm and kept him moving forward.
“The pair of them would like nothing better than to goad you into a fight. Garner, in particular, is as bloody-minded as they come, and Worsham … well. He attempts to compensate for his shortcomings in other areas by strutting around like a bandy cock.”
“Mademoiselle de Boule, while I appreciate your stepping in to defuse the situation—”
“The green-eyed one would cut you down without expending a bead of sweat,” she said bluntly. “I have heard he toys with his victims as a cat toys with a mouse, and when he tires of the game, he ends it. As simply as that.”
“Your opinion of my potential skill is heartening,” he said dryly.
“I am a realist, m'sieur. I have also seen you practicing in the exercise yards.”
“Now see here—”
“No. You listen to me. You have no idea how close you have come on several occasions to being arrested. The only reason you have not been before now is that although the major is convinced you are passing information to the Jacobites, he has not been able to catch you at it. Until he does, he would not dare go against the guarantee Lord Forbes has proffered on your behalf.”
“How do you know about that? And why the devil would they think—?” He stopped as they entered the ballroom and Adrienne's skirt was snagged on the saber of a passing officer. First and always a flirt, she assured the handsome young man there was no damage, then for the two full minutes it took for the guests to assemble and form lines for the dance, she teased him about the size of his weapon and the hardness of his blade.
The music commenced and she came forward, bowing in front of Angus, low enough for him to whisper urgently over the top of her head.
“Why the devil would they think I have been passing information to the Jacobites?” he hissed.
“Because your wife is one of them, m'sieur, and I, too, saw the look of longing on your face when you were studying that portrait in the gallery.”
“Politics aside, Anne has better sense than to involve herself in something so dangerous.”
Adrienne straightened and gave him an odd look, then swirled away in a graceful circle, the burgundy silk of her wide, ruffled skirts flaring out in perfect symmetry with the dozen other colorful skirts on either side. When they were close enough again, she smiled and barely moved her lips as she spoke. “You foolish man. Do you really believe she is languishing at Drummuir House?”
“I do not know what you are implying, but—”
“You really do not know?”
“Of course I bloody don't—” They parted, and Angus had to bite his tongue until the next pass.
“Your wife is a day's ride from Aberdeen,” Adrienne said, sweeping forward to execute a graceful measure. “She has brought eight hundred of your clansmen with her, all armed, all wearing the Stuart cockade.”
Angus stumbled. He bumped into the gentleman beside him, who accepted his hastily murmured apology before the couples parted and moved into the next pattern of intricate steps.
Eight hundred men!
That could not possibly be true!
Good God, if it was … What was she thinking? No, obviously she wasn't thinking at all, but… eight hundred men! He, the chief of Clan Chattan, had barely managed to muster six hundred to his command, and by the time he had arrived in Edinburgh, all but forty had melted away into the night, refusing to raise arms against the prince.
Adrienne swept back in a crush of burgundy silk. “They have even accorded her a rank,” she said sweetly. “They call her Colonel Anne. She has appointed officers to serve under her, of course; most notably Captain John Alexander MacGillivray.”
This time Angus stopped. His hands hung limp at his sides and he was oblivious to the stares and hissed rebukes of the surrounding gambollers. The vast amounts of alcohol he had consumed throughout the evening seemed to catch up to him all at once, swamping his senses, leaving him light-headed, his mouth dry, his palms wet. Seeing the color drain swiftly out of his face, Adrienne quickly took his arm and guided him through a set of open doors that led out onto a stone terrace.
At her prompting, he took several deep gulps of cold air, which helped considerably. At least he was in no danger of dropping to the floor like a sack of grain. Adrienne disappeared for a few moments, then was back pressing a glass of undiluted claret into his hand.
“Drink it,” she ordered. “All of it.”
“How do you know these things about Anne? How do you know they're true?”
“My sources are better than Hawley's,” she said simply. “I expect that situation to change any day now, however. As soon as your Colonel Anne arrives in Aberdeen, it will be difficult to convince anyone that she is at home writing letters.”
Angus rubbed his temple. “I… don't understand. I mean, I know she is spirited and headstrong, but this … this goes far beyond anything she has done before.”
“Yes, well, we all of us do things from time to time that go far beyond anything we have done before, especially in times like this. Sometimes we even surprise ourselves by pretending to be something we are not. By pretending, for instance, that we enjoy being pawed and fondled when we can barely endure the touch of a man's hand. That particular man, at any rate.”
His frown deepened as he looked at her. “Worsham?”
“He is a pig, m'sieur. A cruel, mean pig, and I scrub myself raw each morning after I have been with him.”
“Then why …?”
“Because he is a poor reader,” she said, smiling slyly. “He often has to sound words aloud to understand the letters that he sees on the paper. And this he most often does at night in his room, when none of the other officers can see him and perhaps laugh at his inability. At first he was careful in my presence and only moved his lips, but then he found something he thought would entertain me and when I told him it only bored me and put me to sleep, he started doing it just to annoy me. It amuses him, you see, to annoy and torment. The more I ignored his dispatches and charts and memoranda, the more he began to read aloud, and because I have a very good memory, I am able to write down these same words later and pass them on to men who know how best to use the information. It is not as valiant as donning a sword and riding about the countryside calling men to arms, but my talents are severely limited. Specialized, even, you might say. This was something I could do, and do well.”
“You're a spy?”
“I prefer to call myself a loyal Jacobite, m'sieur. And perhaps the next time y
ou see me in the hallway coming down to breakfast, you will remember the extent of my sacrifice and not scowl quite so darkly?”
Angus was speechless, but she only laughed and shook her head at his naiveté. “Now then, my bold captain—whose confidence I assume I may trust—these letters from your wife that you spoke so gallantly of, I do not suppose they truly exist?”
“Surely Worsham will not ask to see them.”
“No. But he will have your room searched, you may count upon it.”
He spread his hands in a gesture of impotence.
“Long and boring?” she asked with an exaggerated sigh. “Bien, I have a maid, Constance, who enjoys talking so much she forgets to take a breath. I shall sit her down with a quill and a sheaf of paper and by morning, you shall have your letters. Dozens of them, for she is creative enough you could well end up with a penny novel. Be sure you read them, in case you need to know what they contain.”
“Is that not a horrendous risk to your own safety?”
“Yes, it is.” She rose up on tiptoe and put her mouth to his ear. “And you shall owe me an outrageous favor in the future.”
Her lips brushed his cheek, then his mouth, then she was gone, stepping back inside the ballroom with a coy snap of her fan.
Chapter Twelve
Three days later a courier arrived at General Hawley's headquarters informing him that the prince had decamped and was heading east. At the same time, Lord Lewis Gordon had left Aberdeen with upward of thirty-two hundred men and was headed west, hoping to unite with the main body of the prince's army before it reached Stirling.
On January 13, unable to ignore the threat any longer, General Hawley sent his second in command, Major-General John Huske, marching from Edinburgh. Two days later, Hawley himself marched, reuniting with Huske's troops outside the city of Falkirk. There he was joined by an additional twelve regiments of Argyle militia, bringing the royalist strength up to eight thousand. For the first time since the conflict began, the numbers were equal on both sides, and both sides were spoiling for a much-needed victory—Hawley to avenge the poor performance of the Elector's troops thus far, Charles to restore the confidence lost on the retreat.
“Will ye take anither dram, lass?” The question was bellowed over the din as Archibald Cameron lifted a freshly opened crock of uisque baugh to his shoulder. “Yer eyes are barely crossed, an' we've still a blather o' toasts tae make tae both yer courage an' yer beauty.”
Anne laughed amidst much banging of mugs and cheers of approval. Her eyes might not have been crossed, but her senses were fuddled—wonderfully, dizzyingly so—and she raised her cup for another splash of whisky and a raucous round of support.
She was the sole female in a tavern filled to capacity with brawny Highlanders who had marched to the heart of England and back; brave men all, who had not only been forewarned of her presence in Aberdeen but knew the role she had played in removing the Dutch from England. The two factions of the army had come together near Stirling; easily half the prince's men had lined the approach to the city to welcome Lord Gordon, doffing their bonnets and spinning them overhead like dervishes.
Anne, for one, had never seen such a spectacle, let alone been part of it. Yet there she was, sitting high and proud on her massive gray gelding, fighting hard to keep her eyes dry and her heart from flying out of her chest.
Riding by her side was the golden-maned John MacGillivray, as fierce as ever a black-eyed giant there was, his hair combed into a tail, his personal body armory of guns and dirks and swords glittering in the sunlight. His lieutenants, Robert, Jamie, and Eneas Farquharson, followed, and between them, his face streaked with unabashed tears of joy, the grizzled old warrior, Fearchar of Invercauld. Gillies MacBean rode at the head of his MacBeans, his pipers competing good-naturedly with pipers from the Shaws and Davidsons, MacDuffs, MacPhersons, and MacKintoshes, all of whom marched in strength behind the standard of Clan Chattan.
Charles Edward Stuart, a princely figure in tartan trews and a blue velvet jacket, had been waiting to welcome them personally. A boyishly handsome man of four-and-twenty years, he had greeted each laird in turn, announcing their names aloud to the throngs of cheering Highlanders. When Anne had come forward, he had stopped her from offering a curtsy and bowed gallantly over her hand instead, addressing her as “ma belle rebelle” and causing such a roar to rise into the crisp winter air that casings of ice on the tree branches overhead cracked and fell to the ground.
Behind her, she could hear her grandfather bawling like a child as she was welcomed with an equally unceremonious hug by Lord George Murray. MacDonald of Keppoch kissed her hand, then chucked her on the cheek. Donald Cameron of Lochiel was looking over her shoulder at John MacGillivray, obviously impatient to meet the fighting men and judge their caliber, but he offered a formal bow and took pains to introduce his brothers, Dr. Archibald and—as if she were not already faint enough from having her heart stop so many times—the man around whom the word “legend” was used with genuine awe, the Camshroinaich Dubh: Alexander Cameron.
Anne had listened raptly to the stories told and retold around the campfires in Aberdeen about the bravery of the Camerons and the MacDonalds and Lord George's Athollmen, and the courageous roles they played in defeating the might of the English army at Colt's Bridge, then later at Edinburgh and Prestonpans. How she had wished Angus could be counted among them, fiercely steadfast in their loyalties, intrepid beyond measure, willing to forsake all—not the least of which was their lives, properties, and fortunes—in defense of their king and country.
And how she wished he could be here now, in this cramped and airless tavern on the outskirts of St. Ninians, a stone's throw from the sacred field of Bannockburn. How she longed to share with him the excitement of the pipers skirling in the background, the clansmen singing and pounding the tables with their tankards, and men like MacGillivray and Alexander Cameron joined together in toasting the prince's future success.
Easily as tall and broad across the chest as MacGillivray, the Dark Cameron had spent the past fifteen years in exile on the Continent fighting other men's wars. He had returned to his beloved home at Achnacarry only to find his country on the verge of rebellion, and since then had ridden at the right hand of Lord George Murray. It was rumored that he had brought an English wife with him, which did not set well with a clan whose elder statesman, Old Lochiel, had been with the exiled court of James Stuart since the failed uprising of 1715. But it was also said that his Sassenach bride had adamantly refused to remain in safety at her English home and had joined her husband when the prince's forces retreated from Derby.
Another roar sent Anne's gaze to the end of the table, where a mountain of a man had been called forward by the boisterous Dr. Archibald Cameron. His name, Anne recalled, was Struan MacSorely, and as she watched in amazement, he lifted a quart-sized pewter tankard to his lips and began to drink. Eight, nine, ten loud swallows were counted off by the men, after which a hearty clamor saw the good doctor clapping him on his back, then issuing a challenge from a pair of narrowed blue eyes to their prey at the opposite end of the table. Anne leaned forward, grinning when she saw Gillies MacBean push to his feet. Jamie and Robbie stood on either side of him, good-naturedly massaging his shoulders, neck, and belly, and when a brimming double tankard was set in front of him, the twins stepped solemnly back and crossed their arms crookedly over their chests, watching him like a pair of half-sodden bear handlers.
Gillies emptied the cup with nary a batted eye and set it down with a flourish. The crowd went wild for a moment; in the next, like magic, bonnets came off heads and wagers were taken from all quarters.
“I would hate to embarrass our compatriots by robbing of them of all their coin on the first night in camp.”
Anne glanced across the table and smiled at the speaker, Alexander Cameron.
“Indeed, sir, I was thinking somewhat the same thing, only wondering what your reaction would be to our stripping you of all your coin our first
night here.”
Cameron leaned back, his midnight blue eyes gleaming. Beside him, his clansman Aluinn MacKail guffawed and fished in his pocket for a gold sovereign. A third gentleman, a flamboyant Italian count in a beribboned doublet and feathered musketeer hat, brought his hand down on the table in a flutter of cuff lace and deposited a second coin just as quickly.
“I'm-a know from-a the first night I join-a this troupe of-a madmen, that you need-a the iron gut to stand-a with MacSorley.”
“As I recall, Fanducci,” MacKail said over his shoulder, “you outlasted him.”
“Ah, sì, sì.” Another flutter of lace brought a modest hand to the count's breast. “But I'm-a no ordinary madman. I was-a given wine before-a the breast.”
MacGillivray, seated beside Anne, dug two gold coins and a fresh cigar out of his purse. When he saw the way the midnight eyes followed the latter rather than the former, he grinned and clamped the one cigar between his teeth while withdrawing a second one and setting it down alongside the coins. “We'll wait an' see who is still standin' at the end o' the hour, shall we?”
Cameron tipped his head to acknowledge the Highlander's wisdom, then withdrew two thin black cheroots from his own breast pocket. The one he moistened and placed thoughtfully between his lips, the other he laid alongside the fatter, more coarsely rolled Carolina.
Gillies and MacSorley, in the meantime, had downed their second full tankard apiece and were both standing rock solid at their respective ends of the long oak trestle. Dr. Archibald Cameron was now up on a chair—which put him on an equal eye level with his champion—and the twins, not to be outdone, dragged an empty keg over for the stocky Gillies to stand on.
“Your wife is very brave to accompany you, sir,” Anne said to Alexander Cameron across the din.
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