Jennifer Roberson (29 page)

Duncan’s sullen face closed itself like a fist. “She doesna want me. I dinna want her. But even if we loved one another, you’d see to it we couldna wed.”

The earl looked at him in surprise. “Why should I be so perverse as that?”

“Because.”

“Because?”

“Because you
are
.”

 

Broken brickwork clinked. Cat looked up quickly, tucking the mirror beneath her arisaid. Irrational hope kindled abruptly; was mirrored by fear, by nervousness, by something to do with need—but all were damped immediately as she saw him. It was not Dair, could not be Dair,
would
not be Dair. Not now.

“A bonnie sight.” Robert Stewart moved out of the shadow of an aborted column into lucent moonlight. “Campbell. . . and MacDonald.” His tone was exquisitely ironic. He wore no bonnet; uncombed sandy hair, backlighted by distant fires and the moon overhead, glowed a pale, night-burnished gold. “Soft words, were they? In the spirit of Breadalbane’s peace?” His teeth flashed briefly as he walked; Cat was put in mind of a snarl in place of a smile, especially as he had not shaved and stubble sparked gilt on his jaws. “Aye, well, I canna blame him. . . a man might choose to warm himself at a Campbell fire, was it offered in the winter.”

He paused indolently, letting her think; one bare foot was propped on a broken lintel stone. The ankles, like his wrists bared by cuffs turned back, were thick with corded muscle. The purposeful pose, if less languid than he intended—he lacked the frame for insouciance—reminded her unpleasantly of her father on a hilltop with a claymore in his hand.

Damn you, you bluidy Stewart
. . . She could not see why Dair valued him; could not imagine what bond they had forged, save an affinity of opposites. And perhaps that was it. Perhaps they balanced one another. She could well believe that for every good thing Dair MacDonald did, every kind thought he considered, Robert Stewart would see a way to pervert each deed and every thought into a childish humiliation.

Irony was exquisite.
—no’ so different from my brothers, when it comes to it!
Except they had teased in ordinary if unpleasant fashion, had sought to humiliate her only as they did one another, if with greater effect because she was a lass and therefore subject to different whims. She believed Stewart truly looked for weakness to exploit it, meaning to destroy the spirit housing it.

Cat drew in a very deep breath, stirred as always, by him, to intense dislike and apprehension. She struggled not to show it. “ ’Tis summer,” she said lightly. “If
you’ve
come hunting a Campbell fire, you’d best look elsewhere for it.”

“Because another man kindled the spark?” Stewart picked his way once more through turf-clad, tumbled stone. He was as unlike Dair as could be, in frame as well as temperament, but grace was not lacking in him. It was simply housed in a different frame. “I’ve been honest all my life in the appetites of the flesh. . .”

Cat held her tongue. She would give him no opportunity, no specifics he might target.

He moved steadily now, unhindered by poor footing. “But I have some understanding of a woman’s sensibilities; no doubt you’re wishing now I were Alasdair Og of Glencoe instead of Robert Stewart of Appin.” The moon was kind to his face; by day his features were harder, and far less sanguine. “Did he tell you of Jean?—but no, he wouldna. . .” He grinned. “Few women long to hear another woman’s name when they’ve bedding in their minds.”

He stood close to her now, very close; it took immense effort not to rise. She gave him power by remaining seated, surrendering precedence in height and posture, but to stand suggested fear, and that triumph she would not offer.

“Jean,” he said with careful precision. “Stewart. My sister. With whom he has shared a bed for six years.” His smile had faded partway through; there was an edge now to his tone, and a glitter in his eyes. “D’ye think you’re woman enough to wean him from her?”

She recalled an image etched in memory: Robert Stewart handing Dair her mother’s kettle, bidding him give Jean something of Glen Lyon. But Dair had not; he had, if secretly after the others were gone, returned the kettle to her.

And gave Jean himself instead
—Cat clamped her jaws shut. She knew very well what Stewart meant to do. In his own way he was as bad as Breadalbane, if for different reasons; they each of them guarded intent with whatever weapons necessary, cutting with tongue if steel were judged inappropriate. But this attack was ill-advised; had it not been Robert Stewart here before her, slicing with his tongue, it might have proved successful. But she knew his moods, knew his methods, knew intimately to what he would stoop.
There is no horse-piss here. . . what will you use instead?

She wondered if Stewart knew what Breadalbane had said. Surely he had seen her with Dair at the MacDonald fire, or he would not have come here with a honed dirk in all his words and the wherewithal to use it. But she had the advantage, such as it was: the earl’s efforts had already blunted Stewart’s blow. It was not so much a victory when the enemy was already felled.

Before him,
because
of him—and because of Breadalbane—she was empty of grief, of rage. What was left in aftermath was a powerful desire, a calculated intent, to defeat Robert Stewart in the only kind of battle Cat knew she could win.

God grant me the wit and tongue of other women!
Perhaps even of Jean herself.

Cat retrieved the silver-backed mirror from the folds of her arisaid and held it up before her face, ostensibly studying the insignificant curve of a mostly level eyebrow. “If you mean me to look to you in his absence, you might find softer words,” she suggested with purposeful idleness. “And if you mean me to hate him for bedding your sister, well. . .” She shrugged, deftly tending an eyebrow. “He isna a priest, aye? I wasna expecting him to claim he was celibate.”

Beyond the mirror, Stewart smiled thinly. “Och no, not Alasdair Og—
I’ll
swear he is no priest. So will my sister swear it . . . she has naught better to do, waiting in Glencoe.”

She lowered the mirror and appraised him. She supposed some women answered such boldness, responded to sly, insidious cruelty; even she, who disliked him intensely, was aware of something in his posture, tightly leashed and unnamed, yet waiting impatiently for release like a hound prepared to leap.

She was put in mind abruptly of Killiecrankie, and countless cattle raids. He would make a formidable enemy——
or a formidable ally
——and in that instant she understood that men’s thoughts worked differently, that they did not weigh others in the same balance as women did; that in fact the need itself determined a man’s decision-making and response, wholly independent of emotion.

Lastly, perhaps most significantly, she realized that if he were friend—or brother—intent on guarding her, she would be grateful for it. Dangerous men, in dangerous times, had their uses.

“Were I your sister,” Cat said, “I wouldna count the days of my future by the days of my past.”

“Because he put out his hand to you?” Stewart glanced briefly at the hall corner near which she sat, then turned his brilliant stare back on her. “A man might look,” he explained, “and a man might ask, and a man might take what is offered—only a fool wouldna!—but it doesna mean he will put the woman in his home out of his bed while he woos another into his plaid while he is out on the heather.”

She knew better; she knew
him,
but her throat was so tight it ached. It took effort not to shout imprecations at him. She was sick to death of pawkie bastards and their pawkie ways. “Is there a woman in your plaid?”

His intensity was tangible. “Not this night. Nor in my house, when it comes to that; the last one I put out of it.”

Cat let the mirror drop to her lap. Softly she asked, “Are you lonely, then?”

A glint of teeth and anticipation; a hand pressed against his plaid in the vicinity of his heart. “Gey lonely, lass.”

She thought of her brothers and recalled their habits, their crude speech, their lewdness. Her own childhood mimicry of it had earned a few skelpings until she learned to hoard the knowledge away, whispering it in her mind, or muttering the insults to animals who were disinclined to regard her with proper respect.

“Aye, well. . .” She stood up, aware he watched her avidly. The brick beneath her feet gave her added inches, though with him she needed none. “Oh—” She affected surprise. “I forgot. . .” She hitched her shoulders in idle regret. “They do say a man’s height is the measure of his cock—” Her eyes assessed him neatly, even as he had assessed her. “—and I dinna think after all there is enough of you for me.”

The Earl of Breadalbane was content in several things, immediately and most significantly the assuagement of his hunger, and in the approaching culmination of his grand scheme. Scotland was very nearly his, if vicariously—it was William who would rule in name, if not in reality—and would be wholly his in short order. There remained only Glengarry and Glencoe to convince, a momentous task another man might count impossible, but one which he was certain he could successfully accomplish. He was not a man who accepted failure, and he had worked too long to bring this to fruition to see it falter now.

Meanwhile there was his heir, whose management should be infinitely less difficult than the clans, but which so far had proved eminently more frustrating.

Duncan, sated on whisky and beef, had collapsed against the slope into an indolence most inelegant: flat on back and buttocks with bent knees elevated and feet squarely planted. It tented his kilt skyward and left markedly visible the underside of his thighs. It was, the earl felt, a supremely undignified posture, which was undoubtedly the reason Duncan assumed it. That, or he was too
fou
to care.

He studied his son with suitable objectivity.
He is a weak-willed youth easily misled, regrettably plain in appearance, whose time is taken up by too many thoughts of how to annoy his father.
Breadalbane did not see how such a thing could come to be; he had labored assiduously to educate Duncan in the responsibilities of an earldom, but his heir remained stubbornly devoted to intransigence. The earl could not even predict how much was a natural if inappropriate contrariness—which, while annoying, was not a permanent affliction and often passed with the assumption of responsibilities—and how much was stupidity.

Equally sated if more circumspect in his habits, the earl sat back against the earth, separated from turf by the length of good wool blanket. “It has been six days,” he observed, “since the Highlands as a whole came to live in Campbell lands. What have you learned of it?”

Duncan wobbled his knees back and forth in idle self-amusement. “That so many pipers together make a dreadful noise.”

Breadalbane bided his time by meticulously cleaning his dirk.

Duncan was himself not so good at waiting. “That
camanachd
can be a dangerous game; I near had a leg battered into pieces by the sticks.” He tapped one shin. “See the bruises?”

The earl did, but said nothing of them. He inspected the dirk blade, then slid it home into his belt.

Idleness was not Duncan’s virtue. “That no one is quite certain what you get of this, nor why you should concern yourself with an oath to William if you are Jamie’s man.” He sat upright, striking the tented kilt as he crossed his legs beneath him. “What
do
you get of this?”

“Peace,” the earl answered. “And power.” He repositioned the dirk so its stag-horn handle lay in easy reach. “Tell me how.”

“A lesson, is it?”

“You should have learned one. You should have learned several, but one will do—provided it is the right one.” The earl did not smile. “Tell me how.”

Duncan shrugged, shaking his head. “Power is easy enough; the man who offers Highland peace makes William take notice of him.”

“Aye?”

“And peace is the means to win that notice.”

“It is.”

Duncan scowled into darkness, looking across the encampment. At distant fires men laughed and talked, trading jests and stories; the bards held sway for many. “They dinna trust me, the chiefs. I am a Campbell of Glenorchy, and Grey John’s heir.” He looked back squarely at his father. “You have a gey supple tongue and the wit of a fox; which king do you serve?”

Breadalbane did not shirk the truth. “The one who can hold Scotland.”

“But that could be
either
of them, William or James.”

“Aye, so it could be.”

Duncan was perplexed. “The Jacobites want James, but the Sassenachs dinna. They prefer William.”

It is so obvious; are you my son, truly? Or merely passed off as mine?
“Then one must weigh whether the Jacobites are strong enough to win.”

Duncan muttered an imprecation beneath his breath. “ ’Tis the only thing that matters to you. Winning.”