Jennifer Roberson (24 page)

“I expect—I expect . . .” He set both hands into his hair and stripped it back from his face. “I
dinna ken
what I expect . . . only that perhaps you’ll see why I love her, and why I canna love you.”

It was a most peculiar hope. Cat stood very still while the water warmed on her ankles. “Does it matter?”

“John said—”

She did not let him finish.
“John
said; I thought you didna care what your brother did or said.”

Duncan sighed and closed his eyes. A trickle of perspiration made its way down one temple, until he wiped it away impatiently. “John said I could say what I would to my father, but I’d no call to be rude to you.”

She could not suppress the irony. “Then ’tis no surprise why they prefer him to you; he has sense, does John.”

He scowled at her. “I thought you would want to marry me no matter how I was . . . that you would want to be countess. But you say no, and I think perhaps if you met Marjorie you might understand—”

“—and then I wouldna be ‘difficult’ when you asked the earl for a release from the agreement.” She was no longer disposed to laugh, nor to provoke; he was not, she understood, so very different from her. “There is no need. I told you earlier: I dinna mean to marry you.”

“But—” His perplexion was manifest. “Then what will you do?”

Cat turned slightly, gazing at the horizon as the sun slid below it. It was clear to her, abruptly, utterly clear, as if God had cracked open her skull and put a thought into it. This was opportunity if she chose to accept it. Duncan did not know it, but he held out a weapon, or offered her a key; she need only decide which one she wanted, and the manner in which she desired to use it.

A chill breathed across her flesh, until the blood beneath warmed it to burning and chased the chill away.
This is how Breadalbane treats with others ..
. and Argyll also, and any number of other men who aspired to higher places.

It was power and promise. Cat tasted it for the first time and discovered its appeal, the subtle seduction of its traps, the sweet cruelty of its potential. She understood at last.
This is what men are. . . This is how some men think.
She smiled across the loch. ’
Tisn’t so large a step, when the man whose back you muddy is deserving of the muck.

Cat slanted a glance at Duncan. “You ken my father has debts . . .”

“I ken.”

“You ken he is in the army now, but will still have debts; there are dice with the soldiers, and he’ll no’ stop now.”

His tone was less certain. “I ken that.”

“Then you’ll ken also that your father can hardly be expected to send me on my way with no payment for my trouble; ’tis an insult you’ve offered, and there are costs to be paid.” She turned to face him squarely, unmindful of splattering water. “I dinna want it for me. I’ve no need of it. But the earl has ignored Glenlyon’s need for two years.”

Duncan stared mutely, blind to subtlety. She understood in that moment why his father despaired of him. Her calculated approach was suddenly consumed by emotion: Breadalbane had failed her father, failed her house, failed her.

“We are Campbells, aye?—and deserving of better! He is head of the house of Glenorchy . . . and ’tis time he served those Campbells in need of his aid!”

The color departed Duncan’s face. “ ’Tis blackmail!”

Ice trickled down Cat’s spine, though the flesh of her face burned. “I tend my house,” she said tautly. “I tend my father in it. Now I tell you to tend
your
father, to tend
your
house, and put Marjorie Campbell in it.”

After a lengthy moment of crackling silence, Duncan Campbell laughed. “Christ!” he cried. “You’re a match for my father!”

Cat glared at him.
’Twould be easy to scoop up a handful of mud and daub his face with it!
But she let the impulse die. She had purposely set out to grasp the earl’s methods; the intent was wholly successful.

“Well,” she said finally, “that may be taken as insult, or also flattery; dinna tell me which—you’re no’ a respectable party to tell me unbiased. I suppose what matters is that we will between us sort things out so we both get what we want. If that makes me a match for the earl, then I’ve no cause to complain.”

Duncan, sorting
that
out, eventually grinned. Cat, turning away, was pleased she could offer him such happiness at so little cost; and Glenlyon’s debts paid, also.

 

He stood slantwise in the doorway, left shoulder set against the jamb, spine hidden beneath linen and tartan plaid, barefoot in summer warmth. Jean Stewart knew Alasdair Og well enough to understand he was not as detached as he seemed; that, in fact, he was acutely aware of the movements she made, as always, but steadfastly refused to acknowledge them.

She supposed it was not necessary that he acknowledge such movements; after six years, no matter how many respites, they knew one another’s bodies as well as their thoughts, and the intentions of both.

His intention, at present, was to ignore her; hers was to seduce him from intransigence.

There was Achallader, of course; it was his excuse, offered for days. And it was not wholly untrue, because nearly every man in Glencoe prepared to accompany MacIain to Breadalbane’s meeting.

He had taken some time and care laying out his things, leaving her with no task. She had looked on such duties as a private, personal thing, the tasks a woman undertook for her man, who was more often than not pleased to have her tend such things as the shining of his metal, the folding of his clothing. For years, when she was present, he had allowed her to do such things, but this time, this first time, he did them for himself.

She had been up the glen to his brother’s house, spending time with Eiblin, but that was no excuse. He would have waited; he always had before. But this time he had not, and she came home from her visit to find herself with nothing to tend but his melancholy.

But there be cures for that, aye?
. . . And he as much as most answered to the healing in a woman’s body. But she had seen something in his eyes, an unfamiliar taint in the whisky-warmth of them, that kindled her apprehension.

He turned from her mutely to stand silhouetted in the doorway of his stone, slate-roofed house, gazing out across the glen instead of into her eyes.

Her belly knotted. For the first time in her life Jean did not know what to do. As a girl she had been pretty, and men responded; as a woman beautiful, and men responded. She did not know what they needed, save her body; they none of them, prior to Dair MacDonald, suggested there was anything more a man
might
desire.

She could not play chess. At backgammon she lost, and he preferred a challenge. She sang indifferently, had no skill upon the harp, sewed, wove, dyed, and cooked as well as any woman in the glen, if no better than most. Her skill was in her company, her wisdom in her bed; if a man desired neither, there was nothing left to offer.

By his detachment he did not insult her, but stripped her of her purpose. While some men beat their women, Jean Stewart was wholly diminished by a man’s indifference to her.

She went to the bed and turned the covers back. She had set fresh herbs beneath the pillow to lend a sweeter scent. With care she took off her belt, unpinned her brooch, unwound her arisaid, then set all aside. The ankle-length tunic was loose now, unbound, and shifted against her flesh with a seductive caress. But tunic she shed also, so that she stood within his house utterly naked.

Jean unplaited her braid, then shook the loosened hair across shoulders and breasts. “Alasdair,” she said.

He turned halfway. Then fully, beginning to speak, “I’ll be going up the glen to MacIain’s house . . .” And then let it fall into silence, heavy as a wall between them.

“I am twenty-five,” she said plainly, “and as ripe tonight as ever I was. Will you deny it?”

He smiled faintly. “I am no’ a blind man, aye?—and there is light to see by.”

“You dinna need the light. You never have before.”

But there
was
light, soft light, glinting on brooch and badge, and he did not move to extinguish it, or to kindle a new flame.

“Dair,” she said.

He came then, left the doorway, but did not shut the door. He came to her and put his hands on her shoulders, her bare, French-scented shoulders, and told her she was beautiful, that even a blind man would know it.

“And one who sees?” she asked. “Alasdair Og MacDonald?”

“I see,” he said, “and I am suitably humbled.”

Jean laughed a little. “I dinna want
that
!”

“You always have,” he told her.

She did not care to debate the issue with him. “Will you come?”

“Not now.”

He had never, ever said such words to her. “ ‘Not now,’ ” she echoed. “Not now?”

“I mean to go up to MacIain’s; there are plans to be discussed.”

Jean lifted her chin. There were all manner of words in her mind; words meant to deny, to entice, to argue, to disparage, but she brought none of them out of her mouth. “I want you now,” she said only, “as I never have before.”

“Jean—”

She was as warm now in her face as she was between her thighs. “Is it old?” she asked. “Has it grown stale? D’ye want me to beg, then, to offer or invent a way we’ve never tried?”

“Christ, Jean—”

“Tell me,” she said, “and I will do it for you. I will do it to you.”

His hands were yet on her shoulders. He moved them now, sliding them down, not up; not up to cradle her face as he did so often, or had; but down to her elbows, clasping them slackly. “ ’Tisn’t that, Jean. I’ve things on my mind.”

She put her hand on his kilt and shifted wool, grasping him skillfully, but knowing now what he would not tell her.

Desperately she said, “A man has two minds: the one in his head, the one atop his ballocks . . .” She did not know a man in all of Scotland who could remain slack at her touch; she did not know a man in the Highlands who would not harden at her glance.

He took his hands from her. “I will come back before dawn.”

She watched him turn, watched him move away, watched him pause long enough to pull the door closed, so she would not share her nakedness with all of Glencoe.

Jean laughed aloud. She strode to the door and snatched it open, crossing the threshhold to stand in the dooryard where anyone with eyes might see what bounty she offered.

“Alasdair Og!
”She thought she might yet seduce him; she had never done this before.

But he was gone, did not come back, and it was all for naught.

 

T
hey are hunting hounds,
Cat decided,
come up to prove themselves .
.. all a’bristle with Lochaber axes, bows, muskets, and claymores, and spike-orbed targes, poking about their persons like hackles across the shoulders.

They came from all over the Highlands, leaving behind familiar dens to mark new territory with elaborate care and precision, a wary new kennel overrun with multiple pedigrees, waiting in tense anticipation for the kennel-keeper to come.

—But he is here already. . .
. And so he was, Grey John Campbell of Breadalbane, walking through the rubble of split and blackened stone lying in tumbled heaps now time-dusted and grass-corroded; of the fire-ravaged masonry corners, still erect as
menhirs,
the standing stones of the Celts, left to loom stark as a skeleton’s ribs on the grassy hilltop. He was smiling, always smiling, offering only serene blandishments and careful courtesy, speaking nothing of the wreckage and the insult done to Glenorchy, to Clan Campbell, to himself.

Within two days the kennel settled, having got through the first meeting, and now they gave themselves over to lesser responsibilities, recalling they were not hounds but Highlanders, and men. Pipes skirled
ceol beag,
the little music of strathspeys and reels; and
ceol meadhonach,
the jigs and airs; and more rarely the
ceol mor,
the big music, but not of marches or rants leading them into war. They had come instead for peace.

There was usquabae for drinking, dice and backgammon for wagering, chess for challenge, field games such as stone-hurling, and
camanachd,
or shinty, quick-footed sword dances, and much feasting on beef—though none asked from whose lands the cattle were driven for fear they had been lifted, and such topics as that, the earl made clear, was not what they had come for.

Cat did not know why she was there, save the earl desired his heir to know her better; and Duncan was disinclined to spend any time with her when there was Marjorie instead, who had come over from Lawers with a clutch of Campbell kin. Duncan gave Cat no warning, he was simply gone one day, lost among the forest of colorful tartan and glittering steel in place of needles and pine knots, and when she looked for him in the mass of bonneted, bare-legged men she saw those who resembled him, but none of them who
were.

In the midst of an army of Highlanders, albeit they did not gather to fight a common enemy save their own suspicions of the kennel-keeper, Cat found herself oppressed. And so she turned away and made her way through the unkempt cornfield where horses had not grazed, or men had not trampled.

Up. Away. Apart. Where she might think in peace, and not shy from it despite the name it wore, despite the sett of its tartan, the motto in its mouth, the heather on its bonnet with the single eagle feather.

With silver in its hair, and white teeth a’gleaming.

 

The Earl of Breadalbane played genial host and arbiter in the midst of his gathering, turning aside the occasional hostile glance and wary stares with ease and courtesy. It was expected that the chiefs would hold him in some doubt, and by some of them in disrespect; he was, they all knew, the other half of Clan Campbell’s powerful dual houses, Glenorchy and Argyll. The Earl of Argyll was William’s man almost by default; Stuarts and Stuart supporters had seen to the execution of Archibald Campbell’s father and grandfather, and he would have no love of them. His loyalty to William then, even politically motivated, was inviolable, and no Jacobite could trust him.

Yet it was trust he needed, if not absolute respect, and trust he asked for, knowing precisely how to phrase it to win it. For now he let them be Highlanders, revelling in the raucous companionship and friendly rivalry of other clans, often enemies, now allies in the earl’s name; let them think of peace as they feasted on Campbell cattle and drank Campbell whisky; let them recall their ancestors in the words of the bards and the music of pipe and harp, ignoring the occasional lapse into
ceol mor,
the war marches, which the clan harpers would occasionally summon to stir the hearts once more.

Above all he let them be content in their names, in their blood, in the essence that made them Highlanders and subject to Highland laws: the sacred trust of hospitality that no sane man would break, under which sworn enemies might sup together despite blood drawn but moments before, and which all men understood and did not question.

It was that hospitality he offered now in the shadows of Achallader’s blackened brickwork, with MacDonalds sitting amidst the destruction they had caused. He was born of Highland blood, of Highland pride, and felt his own measure of the bone-bred affinity for the past and its traditions. But he was ambitious and brilliant and knew it, knew also how to use his brilliance to further his ambitions, so he might yet be more than
of
Clan Campbell, but its head in place of Argyll, who was a man of whom it was said Scotland owed much.

Och, I am of them, but wiser, aye?
. . . And he would use them as he must to change the face of Scotland.

For now the land and its future yet lay in their trust, which he could not easily win. But he knew that the greatest strength of all lay in unity, and that if he permitted them to use that unity against him as they had used it against Hugh Mackay at Killiecrankie, he would lose.

Unity perforce must serve me in another way.
And to make it so he would destroy it.

 

Robbie Stewart grovelled in dirt. Dair, much taken with the unlikely posture, grinned mutely, arms folded against his chest; it would be well if Robbie’s grovelling bespoke humility, but its genesis was a desire to brag, not to ask absolution.

He himself did not kneel or grovel but watched from above. He had been there; he knew the formations, recalled the words, remembered perfectly the outcome of the battle—even, more intimately, the pain of his wound.

But Robbie did not dwell on such things as wounds or on such men as Dair MacDonald, but on himself, his Appin Stewarts, on Dundee’s strategies.

There were men who had not been at Killiecrankie for this reason or that; none would ask why, in courtesy, and no explanation was offered. But there was interest, taut and sharp, in what they had not shared, and Robbie had never been a man for hiding pride in accomplishments. The young heir of Appin had been part of the victory, and he saw no sense in saying nothing of it.

Dair scratched an eyebrow, biding his time watching Appin’s heir cut lines in the turf with his dirk.

“Here,” Robbie said. “Here on the braes of Craigh Eallaich—and there the Pass of Killiecrankie, over which Mackay, the muckle-gabbed moudiwort, brought his Sassenachs and Lowlanders . . .”

And something else was added to it, vulgar and uncomplimentary; the men around him laughed and suggested punishments for Mackay.

“They came down so—”

The dirk tip carved a line . . .

“—and we came down
so
—”

Another line . . .

“—and the pipes were ranting, and Dundee speaking of what we are, and who we were, and how we were Gaeldom’s heirs . . .”

And more, lewdly eloquent as always, with Robbie, of no small effect if with little of absolute truth in it; Appin knew how to tell a tale in the way to hold a man.

From above, carved out neatly in dirt, Killiecrankie was much easier to bear. And convincing in the extreme of Dundee’s genius, his heroism, and the courage of the clans. The knot of young men gathered around Robbie were much impressed, as they would be, though they said little more than an occasional comment or question.

A young man next to Dair chewed at his bottom lip, rapt in Robbie’s tale. Dair smiled faintly; he shifted just enough that setting sun sparked off his brooch and caught the young clansman’s eye, who looked from Stewart’s war to a man who had been in it.

Dair’s expression was assessed and found wanting. Blue eyes narrowed. “Were ye there, that ye doubt him?”

It was challenge, but only slightly belligerent; he was much taken by Robbie’s tale and personal bravery, and did not think well of a man who stood beside another and smirked.

Dair was diffident. “Oh, I dinna doubt him; I
was
there. But he tells it from a Stewart eye.”

That got Robbie’s attention, who did not like having his listeners distracted. “Then what if from
yours?
Better than mine, d’ye say?”

“Depending on which is your clan,” Dair retorted dryly.

Robbie offered his dirk hilt first. “Here, then. Instruct me, aye?—
and
them.”

“ ’Tis your tale, Robbie.”

“Then I’ll thank ye no’ to interrupt it.” The sulfurous glare cleared as he bent again over his carvings. “We were here, d’ye see—”

The young clansman next to Dair did not look back immediately. “And where were you?”

“With MacIain,” Dair answered, “as any Glencoe-man should be.”

The other grinned.
“Per mare per terras.
”

The MacDonald motto . . . “Ah?”

“Keppoch.”

Dair nodded. “Have you come down with Coll of the Cows?”

“I have. Though I dinna ken if ’tis worth the journey; no Campbell I ever kent offered hospitality.”

Robbie’s voice intruded. “Will you learn from this, young MacDonald of Keppoch, or will you listen to a man who owes me his life from Killiecrankie?”

It was impressive, as Robbie meant it to be. Every eye fixed on Dair, who sighed. “There is much to be learned from a man so brave as Stewart of Appin. You’d all do well to listen.”

“I thank you.” Robbie went back to drawing.

The young Keppoch MacDonald grinned privately at Dair. “Coll could teach him a thing or two.”

“I dinna doubt it. But I’d best hold my silence, lest he use that dirk on my tongue.”

And so he held his silence, losing interest in the recounting but disinclined to move away. His attention wandered; Robbie’s voice faded into the background as Dair cast a glance across the encampment. A piper had begun the
ceol mor,
if lament in place of war rant. Another took it up. The field below the ruined castle glowed like burning water, pocked throughout with cookfires. He smelled roasting beef, and whisky, and the underlying tang of tense, active men who had met summer’s warmth in linen and wool.

There were women as well, though not so many; and they stayed in clusters near the fire to tend the cooking. But his eye was caught by one who strode forthrightly out of the throng as if of a mind to escape it even as others gathered. She was very tall, long of limb, and moved more like man than woman with no compromise in her strides. Braided hair glowed brilliant as coals in the setting sun.

“Holy Christ—” Dair blurted, staring; he was cold, and hot, and rigid with memory, with shock revisited: the last time he had seen her was on a hilltop on Rannoch Moor, with a rope against his throat.

“Here, then.” It was Robbie. “MacDonald—’tis your turn. I wasna the only one there, ye ken . . . you’ll have your say.”

But Dair was no longer interested in Killiecrankie. “ ’Tis you who tells a better story, aye? . . . I’ll let you go on with it.”

“I canna take
all
the credit—”

“Why not? You usually do . . .” But the gibe was feeble; his mind was not on it. It was on the woman, the red-haired woman who strode so easily through the crowd and was lost; and on the flesh of his throat that burned with the memory of hemp, and a tree, and the Campbell laird with a claymore.

“I do no such thing,” Robbie declared. “Have I no’ said you killed your share of Mackay’s men?”

But Dair did not look again at Robbie or the dirk-drawings in the dirt. He turned from those who waited and walked away into the sunset, seeking Glenlyon’s daughter to thank her for his life.

If he could find her.
If she will listen
. . . If a Campbell could ever believe the words of a MacDonald, even in gratitude.

Here, perhaps she would. In the spirit of Breadalbane’s peace.

 

Breadalbane moved among the chiefs and found them one by one, isolating them from other chiefs, from gillies and tacksmen, from rivals, from comrades, until one by one he spoke to each alone, saying what he would of his pride in his Highland birth and blood, and his desire for triumph over the Williamite forces.

And when they questioned him and claimed him William’s man, as he anticipated, he denied it. He said he was a chief even as they were, and therefore responsible for his people in all the ways a chief must be. If it served his people now to keep them from battle that would only injure them, he would do so by claiming what was required . . . and if it meant misleading Stair and the Dutchman into believing him one of theirs, a Williamite at heart, when in truth he served James Stuart, well, let it be so; he was a Highlander, a Campbell, a man of their own flesh and spirit, and he would do no harm to Scotland albeit cost him his life.

To Coll MacDonald of Keppoch, who had long opposed him, the earl offered his truth from his perch atop a scarp of lichen-frosted granite. “I will ask of you no oath, as to do so would forswear the one of Dalcomera to King James, sealed in the blood of Killiecrankie, but instead a truce: peace until October. No more than that of you, Coll, and your people; is it so much?”

Coll of the Cows sat likewise, hunched upon a stump in the fir wood near to the ruins. His plaid in summer warmth was but loosely draped over arms folded tight against his chest as he considered carefully, staring hard at the ground. The sett of the tartan was black cross-hatching on a crimson field, with the faintest stripe of blue showing itself occasionally. He wore as did all of the MacDonalds, regardless of their lands, a sprig of heather in his bonnet; and also the three eagle feathers to which he, a chief, was entitled.