Jennifer Roberson (2 page)

He said nothing of her damp state, though plainly he saw it. He smiled. “Little Campbell,” he said, with no derision in it, “my father’s a harsh-speaking man. But he means nothing hostile by it, being more intent on the reason for coming to Glen Lyon, and to the house of his enemy.”

“
His
choice,” she stressed, raising her chin defiantly. “Tell him to no’ send his men out to steal our cows.”

His smile widened. “Well, I will, then, for you—though I doubt ’twill do much good. We’ve been at it for years and years, ye ken . . . and Campbells returning the favor.”

She knew it to be true, no matter what she felt. Her kin and his had traded black-coated cattle for years, albeit unwillingly, and in the dark of countless Highland nights with only the moon to see.

He sat down on the bench beside the door, linking hands over one bent knee. She lingered, irresolute—this man was a
MacDonald;
after a moment, discarding the opportunity to leave, she sat down beside him, pointedly keeping her distance. She ignored soaked braids exuding rivulets of water. “You’re MacIain’s son?”

“Second son,” he elaborated. “Alasdair
Og
, as I’m younger, but you should call me Dair. I much prefer it to Sandy. Too many men are Sandys.”

She nodded emphatic understanding. “Too many girls are Catriona, and so my father calls me Cat.”

“Cat Campbell.” He grinned. “Aye, a cat, not kitten; I’ve seen your claws unsheathed.”

“There was need for them,” she told him plainly. “He was rude—and shouting, besides.”

He nodded, unperturbed by the bluntness that disturbed so many others. “MacIain rarely whispers. Even to his sons.” White teeth glinted briefly. “Though he’s more quiet with his grandson.”

“You have a wife?” She thought him young for it. Then again, not; he was at the very least sixteen. He was man, not lad.

He grinned again, unhindered by his knowledge of who he was, or what
she
was: Glenlyon’s daughter. The flesh crinkled at the corners of his eyes. “Not I; my brother, John. There’s no woman in my house.” He looked down at her. “And have they promised you yet?”

The curl of humiliation twisted in her chest, dug deeply into her belly. But her tone gave him nothing save scorn for ignorant people. “Not
me
. . . who’d be wanting—” But she broke it off; she would no more put a
sgian dhu
into his hand than into the hands of her brothers, who would happily prick her with it. After all, she knew very well what she was; those same brothers had made it plain.

Weary of dripping braids, Cat squeezed out excess water. The fingers that worked the hair were long, large, bony, and the thin pale flesh, where it wasn’t scabbed over, displayed blue veins. The braids themselves, when dry, were a vivid, flamboyant red; wet, a bloody auburn. Her father once had said there was nothing subtle about her, in spirit or coloring. She had asked him what he meant by the word
subtle,
not knowing what it was, but he had laughed and merely said she’d know it herself, one day.

Cat did not know it, yet. She wondered if MacIain’s son did, weighing her with inner words she could not comprehend.

Suspicious, she slanted him a glance. His expression was free of beguilement as he looked straight back at her, offering no answer, neither disagreement nor confirmation.

For all he was a MacDonald, he had sense. He offered no falsehoods by naming her beautiful, or promising a handsome husband. But he was, after all, a MacDonald; perhaps it was intended as a different kind of torment. Perversely she appreciated it, for truth was important to her. She hated idle falsehoods, no matter how well intended.

He studied her as critically but not unkindly, unlike her father once a year on her birthday, when he despaired aloud of ever finding a husband for Glenlyon’s plain-faced lass; unlike her brothers, who did it happily out of spite.

Alasdair Og—
Dair
—MacDonald smiled faintly, as if he understood what was in her mind. “Not a beauty, no,” he said quietly at last, “not now. But you’ll grow, Cat Campbell, and what you hate about yourself now may well be different when you’re older.”

She scoffed, mimicking the rude sounds of her brothers, who mimicked the tacksmen, which widened his smile.

He exchanged one paramount knee for the other and leaned nonchalantly against the wall. Sunlight glinted wanly on a silver clan badge. “It happened to me.”

“To you?”

“I was early in my birth, and a wee bairn for so long they despaired of my life.” He shrugged elegantly. “I stayed small for fourteen years, Cat—so small for so long men began to say amongst themselves perhaps I was a changeling, and not MacIain’s son at all.”

“Changeling! ”

He grinned, slanting a bright glance her way. “You’ve seen MacIain. Nigh on seven feet, he is . . . and John is three fingers over six.”

She eyed his folded body up and down, calculating its length. “You’re not so small now.”

“I grew. ’Tis respectable I am, six feet even.” The corners of his eyes crinkled again. “But it came late, verra late, long after I feared to be a runtling all my life.”

She caught a bedraggled braid and shut it up in one hand. “You’re saying I might do the same?”

“I’m saying you will.” Brown eyes were warm. They were cider-bright, and whisky-dark, and something else her father called brandywine, glowing rich amber-gold. He had showed the drink to her once, before gulping all of it down. “But the truth of it is, they’ll be finding someone for you no matter what happens. Glenlyon’s lass is worth something.”

Glenlyon’s lass isna.
But she didn’t voice it to him. “Why have you come to this house?”

“MacIain wants a truce.”

She was a deflating bagpipe, expelling it abruptly. “With
Glenlyon?
”

He nodded ruefully. “We’ve a problem with MacGregors.”

Cat was only ten years old, but in the Highlands ten was not so young to know the business of adults. She had been raised on Campbell history, and the histories of others. The MacGregors as a clan had been broken years and years before by Letters of Fire and Sword, proscribed by the Crown, which took everything from the MacGregors: houses, cattle, crops, clan holdings, even their very name. Those remaining lived like bandits where and as they could, in secret, little more than animals. Many of them lived on Rannoch Moor, the bog-strewn barrier between Glencoe and Glen Lyon. But some of them lived very near Glencoe, stealing MacDonald cattle.

Cat almost laughed. The MacDonalds, who stole Campbell cows, wanted to enlist Campbell aid against MacGregors who stole
MacDonald
cattle.

MacIain’s son, seeing her amusement, nearly laughed as well. But it was a wry, crooked, bonnie smile, white teeth a’gleaming, that bespoke his awareness of irony; almost at once, despite her inclination, despite his name, and
hers,
Cat was vanquished by that smile, the face, and the eyes kindling in it.

But he was still Enemy; she daren’t give in to him.

Red-faced, Cat frowned, seeking words to remind him of who they were and where he was, speaking to Glenlyon’s daughter. “Your hair has
speckles
in it.”

At once he put up his hand, fingering the faint silver hoarfrost amidst the near-black beneath his bonnet. “Eighteen and near to gray,” he said ruefully. “’Tis a family trait.”

“Not so much,” she assured him, enmity melting away in the face of his resignation; she well knew what it was to hate one’s appearance. “Most ’tis nearly black.”

“But I’ll be white-headed before I’m forty.” His smile was back, full-fledged, working its magic on her. “Especially treating wi’ Campbells.”

His lilting Scots came and went, sometimes very strong, sometimes suppressed by nuances of another accent she didn’t know. She studied him more closely. A Scotsman, aye, and Highland-born, in the shadow of the Devil’s Staircase west of Rannoch Moor. He wore tartan breeks like the tacksmen, forgoing a kilt, pinned plaid thrown over one shoulder, and a bonnet with badge and heather crest; no different from anyone else. But there was something more to him.
He’s no’ like the others.
“Have you been in England?”

He shook his head, smiling. “In the land of the Sassenachs? Och, no—
France
, last year, and I’m due to go again.” The wry twist of his mouth showed itself. “MacIain has a surpassing fondness for refinement, when he can get it; he sent John before me to Paris, and now Alasdair Og.” He shrugged. “I’ll be back soon enough.”

“
If
you survive the MacGregors.”

He grinned engagingly; he lacked none of
his
teeth. “Oh, I think I will. We’re bonnie fighters, lass . . . and I’ve a mind to live forever.”

Something cold touched her spine. “No one lives forever.”

“Scotland will, my lass. Have ye no’ heard it on the pipes?”

Cat grimaced. “My father plays the pipes. Whenever he’s
fou.
”

Dair MacDonald laughed. “Sober, the pipes are difficult—
drunk,
impossible! ”

“A bag of hooting, honking wind, like the geese gone over the lochs.” Cat sighed forlornly. “Auld Robbie the Red died last year—he was our clan piper—and since then we’ve had naught but my father’s noise.”

Alasdair Og nodded his sympathies, though his mouth twitched. “Then come to Glencoe, my lass, and hear our Big Henderson. He’ll wrench the tears from your eyes.” He leaned down toward her, brushing her shoulder with his, speaking warmly and very softly. “You’ve bonnie eyes, my lass . . . all bluey-green and bright. The sort of eyes a Highlander likes to come home to.”

Cat smiled sweetly. “
After
a cattle raid?”

He threw back his head and laughed out loud, much as his father had done. But the thick locks beneath his heather-sprigged bonnet were black instead of white, with only a frosting of gray.

The door was opened then and a tall MacDonald showed his face, framed by dark hair more generously salted with silver. “Alasdair,” he said, “you’re wanted. What are you doing out here?”

“Passing the time wi’ a sharp-tongued Campbell lass.” With a secret smile for Cat, Dair rose with indolent grace. “She was right to take him to task, John; ’tis no’ our father’s house.”

Cat barely glanced at MacIain’s heir. Instead she looked at Dair standing before her door, wanting to say something to him, to thank him for his kindness and understanding. But what she meant to say fell away; something entirely different slipped out between her teeth. “Dinna steal our cows no more.”

John, astonished, stared. But Dair, understanding, laughed aloud again, setting brown eyes alight in a face dark as a Spaniard’s. And then he told her good-bye and with his brother went into the house,
her
house, and shut the door behind them, leaving her alone.

Wishing he’d come back out.

Even if he were a MacDonald, and she Glenlyon’s daughter.

 

Memory was vivid. Cat sighed atop the wall that was bridge over the moat, recalling the introduction with exquisite clarity; she had dreamed of him every night since.

—a bonnie, bonnie prince, wi’ silver in his hair . . .
The serpent-bridge was quiescent as Cat negotiated its treacheries. Not so many steps left to her now.—
bonnie, bonnie lad
. . . He lay beyond, in the castle. She had only to cross the moat, to break the bonds, and spells—
“Cat!”
Robbie bawled, from just behind.

The serpent-bridge was banished, as was her balance. Cat wavered atop the wall. Jamie, Dougal, and Colin, seeing her state, jeered and hooted, grasping her ankles to shake them.

Dignity, too, was dismissed, coordination utterly vanquished. Cat fell, landing awkwardly in dirt and turf and manure square on elbows and buttocks, which only gave her brothers more fodder for their gibes.

She blinked back tears of embarrassment and glared at them all. Robbie grinned, baring the gap in his teeth. “No more MacDonalds,” he said. “Or shall I dunk you in the barrel again to wash them out of your head?”

She scrambled up, prepared to flee. “They’ve more manners than you!” She thought of Alasdair Og; of the bonnie, bonnie prince with silver in his hair.

“Oh, have they?” Robbie, at fifteen, was the eldest of them all. They were all of them red-haired, though Cat’s the most vivid; the boys took after their father, with more yellow in the red. “We’ve heard naught from you but MacDonalds, MacDonalds, MacDonalds since MacIain was here last week!”

“What of it?” Cat swatted dirt from the seat of her trews, hoping they would not notice the flush that burned her cheeks. “We’ve sworn an alliance, now—we’re no more enemies!”

“No more?” Jamie jeered. “Then what of the cattle they lifted last night?”

“Last night?” Cat stared. “Last night?”

Dougal nodded. “They came across in the moonlight and lifted fourteen cows.”

“They didna!”

“They did!” Four faces scowled back at her. Robbie’s was the blackest. “Go ask Father, then, ye bizzem; he’ll tell you the truth of it.”

“They swore a truce, Father and MacIain!”

Robbie scoffed. “Shows you what their oaths are worth, then. Go ask him, Cat.” His expression altered, fading from belligerence to momentary disgust. “If he’ll take his mouth from the whisky glass long enow to tell you.”

I’ll no’ listen to their muckle-mouthed jabbering.
Cat turned her back on them.
They’re naught but moudiworts.

“He was
with
them!” Robbie shouted as she stalked toward the house. “One of the tacksmen saw him!”

She did not ask. She would not give them the satisfaction. Nor did she need to ask. She knew whom he meant. She knew all too well.

It infuriated her, that they could use it to hurt her; that she had invented the weapon. But far worse was the pain, the regret, the grief in the knowledge that Glenlyon’s own daughter was foolish enough to permit herself the conviction that a MacDonald spoke the truth.