Midnight Honor

than she and a fourth son, not destined to inherit more than a comfortable livelihood. It was a union that would bring together two of the largest clans amongst the dozen that had amalgamated to form the powerful Clan of the Cats. It was also probable that Angus's father had agreed to the arrangement only because he assumed—or hoped—the pug-faced, barefooted toddler would succumb, long before she came of an age to marry, to one of the many childhood diseases that ravaged the Highlands.
    No one could have anticipated Lachlan MacKintosh's own death a few brief years later, or that those same indiscriminate childhood diseases would remove, one after another, his three eldest heirs in line of succession. With theswiftness only fate can deliver, the title and estates were conferred upon Angus, who, having had no thought of inheritances or weighty mantles of responsibility, had been living on the Continent. He had been absent for so long, in fact, and was so far out of touch, it took nearly four months for word to reach him that he was the new Chief of Clan Chattan.
    The tall, elegant gentleman who arrived at Moy Hall was not like any of the rawboned, braw lads who had been flirting shamelessly with Anne and stealing kisses behind the haystack. He was reserved and articulate, a scholar and a brilliant mathematician who was so thorough and businesslike, he startled the dust out of countless ledgers and tally books throughout Invernesshire. The MacKintosh estates, which had been run haphazardly for a decade or more, came under a stern and caustic pair of pewter gray eyes—the same shrewd eyes that uncovered the articles of betrothal negotiated by Fearchar Farquharson and Lachlan MacKintosh nearly two decades before.
    He was not shy in his attempts to have the agreement voided, since it was hardly a suitable alliance for a powerful clan chief. In an effort to arrive at an agreeable compromise, he arranged for a meeting with Fearchar and they had remained closeted in the library at Moy Hall for eight long hours. Fearchar proved to be a worthy opponent. Not even the demand to honor the original dowry of twelve thousand merks—an astronomical sum to a man whose greatest asset was his word—bowed the gnarled old warrior and within the prescribed time he returned to Moy Hall bearing a pouch of coins in the full amount.
    Anne had entered the church in Aberdeen with a sinking heart and leaden feet, aware that the vows she was about to take would not only bind her to a man who did not love her and did not want her, but also condemn her to a life of whalebone stays and frilly petticoats.
    She had been fully halfway to the altar before she saw her husband for the first time. The sunlight, streaming through a stained glass window, had lit the chestnut waves of his hair like a gleaming crown. Wearing a blue grogram coat over a satin waistcoat richly ornamented with embroidery and goldlace, he had been dressed in the formal
breacan an fheile
. A tartan of green-on-black plaid had been draped over his shoulder, pinned with the silver-and-cairngorm brooch bearing the clan crest and motto. The light had flared blue along the shaft of the dress sword he wore at his side, and the air had sparkled with a million floating dust motes, all of which seemed to pour around his shoulders like a silver stream.
    Angus Moy was, quite simply, the most beautiful human being she had ever set eyes upon, his face so perfectly sculpted that no one feature overawed another. His mouth, his nose, the metallic gray of his eyes had surely been fashioned by the faeries to stop a woman's heart, and Anne's was no exception. How long she had stared through the crystalline silence, tongue-tied and wooden-limbed, she had no way of knowing.
    The groom had not moved either, but it was to be suspected it was more because of horrified surprise, for Anne was no petite, fine-boned flower trembling at the thought of being plucked. She was tall and amply proportioned, with a tautness in her legs and arms that had been honed by years of riding and swaggering about with her cousins. Her face was freckled from the sun, and although her hair had been tempered by pins and combs into a semblance of respectability, the wind had played havoc with a few fiery strands that dangled down her back and over her shoulders.
    Eneas actually had to prod him into moving forward to take her hand, and when they had faced the minister, they both seemed paler for the experience.
    “I am