Jennifer Roberson (36 page)

“So I will.” Colin went out of the room, following Cat as she headed down the stairs. Where Una, taut-faced, waited at the bottom.

“Catriona—”

“ ’Tis decided,” Cat said. Then, more gently, “I must go, Una. But if you feel you must come to give me chaperonage—”

“I will not,” Una said sharply. “You’ve proved yourself without honor. Nothing I do can buy it back again.”

It hurt worse than expected. Cat clamped her teeth shut and went out into the dooryard.

Colin set her trunk down on the bench beside the door. “I’ll fetch a garron for you. And I
will
write our father—I’ll tell the tale more kindly than Jamie would.”

That was true. Cat put a hand on his arm. “Colin—why?”

He smiled. “Because I’ve never seen you want a thing so badly as this. And you have always demanded whatever there was to have.”

It made no sense. “Colin—”

“You love him,” he said.

Cat’s belly tautened. “As much as I am able to love anything in this world.”

“Aye, well . . .” Colin shrugged awkwardly; such truth came hard to him. “You’ve never hoarded your passions, Cat. You share with everyone what is in your heart . . . and you’ve the words in your mouth, and wit enough, to make it sting! ’Tis what makes you gey hard to be with. ’Tis what angers Jamie so.” He smiled crookedly, the best of all of them: a man who would permit her the freedom to be whom she needed to be. “But if
he
will have you, MacDonald or no, ’tis his to deal with. ”

She was not certain if that were flattery or insult, but she did not ask an explanation. She would take what was offered, gratefully, and remember him in her prayers.

Cat smiled through tears as Colin walked away.
At least one of my brothers is worth them!

 

Dust rose from the parade ground as the soldiers with their prisoners rode into Fort William. It was midafternoon of the fifth day since Captain Fisher reported the attack on the
Lamb;
excellent time had been made in the apprehension of the Scots involved.

Governor Hill, accompanied by his aide, stood before the officer’s quarters as the prisoners, summarily halted, were ordered off the shaggy Highland garrons dwarfed by the larger, heavier military mounts of his soldiers.

Against the uniforms and rigid discipline of Major Forbes’s troops, the Scots were supremely barbaric in appearance. Bare of foot, naked of knee and leg, swathed in gaudy tartan, there was nothing about them that suggested civility. And yet Hill knew better. The lairds were not savages but often highly educated men who, Highland-born, chose to remain in their wild country, to live by the most rigorous code of all, shaped by tribal loyalty and the sacred law of hospitality despite clan rivalries that bloodied the gorse and heather. Their sons were taught the same.

And now Hill held two of them: the heir to the Appin Stewarts, and one of MacIain’s cubs.

Another man might rejoice. But Hill thought it unfortunate, if providential, that imprisonment was required. He did not know of a single Scot who adapted to captivity, any more than African lions did to the Tower of London.

According to Captain Fisher’s description, Hill sought out the Stewart and MacDonald. One was not difficult: Stewart was indeed a powerfully built young man despite his lack of height, and he carried himself, even in iron, with an arrogance wholly unmitigated by his circumstances. He stood planted squarely beside his garron and stared straight at Hill, a mocking smile discounting bonnetless head, heavy shackles, and the grime on his face.

The other was another matter. MacIain’s son was identifiable by the signal gray in his hair, but also the grim concern on the faces of the clansmen who wore the MacDonald badge. He did not stand on his own but was supported by two soldiers. Dried blood stained the cloth of his shirt, crusted his hair, smeared one side of his face as if he had tried to tend himself, and failed. Hill recognized immediately the unfocused look in the eyes, the minute unsteadiness, the overly careful carriage of an injured head. MacDonald was conscious, but not fully cognizant of his surroundings. Or he hurt too much to care.

Forbes came forward at once, saluting smartly. He gave his report succinctly and without excess comment: Robert Stewart and certain clansmen arrested in Appin lands, as well as certain MacDonalds from near Glencoe, and Alasdair Og MacDonald.

MacIain’s younger son, not the heir. Hill looked past Forbes at the dazed prisoner. Under scrutiny, MacDonald stirred in the soldiers’ grasp and attempted to stand unaided. Iron chimed as he pulled himself upright. The lurid beginnings of an ugly bruise bloomed on his swollen jaw. He met Hill’s gaze and raised his head, disdaining the pain of movement. But Hill saw it in the rigid mask of his battered face, the pallor of bitten lips.

Anger flared; he would not countenance unnecessary brutality. “How was that man injured, Major Forbes?”

“Sir—”

“I did it.
”Robert Stewart took a step forward before a soldier barred his way. He checked, sent the soldier a mocking, sidelong glance, then looked Hill in the eyes. “I did it, aye?—’twas an issue twixt the two of us, and naught to do wi’ you.” His English was good, if accented thickly with Highland dialect. “ ’Tis for Scots, no’ Sassenachs. Ye wouldna understand.”

Hill repressed a smile. “Do you know, young sir—do you ‘ken’ it?—that if the Scots just once ceased killing each other long enough to unite and meet the Sassenachs in true battle, you might very well succeed in regaining your independence. After all, Dundee did a proper job of it at Killiecrankie. A military genius; pity he was killed.”

Stewart blinked his surprise. Belligerently he said, “Would your pawkie king no’ accuse ye of treason for saying that?”

“My pawkie king is not present to hear it,” Hill answered. “And yours, I fear, is no closer to hear what you do in his name. We are left to our own devices, sir—and to our own war.” He looked back at Forbes. “Major, you will escort these prisoners to the stockade, and secure them. Put Robert Stewart and Alasdair MacDonald in one cell, the rest in another. And have the physician in; I’ll not give MacIain any more cause to hate us.” He was aware of MacDonald’s unnatural stillness; of Stewart’s start of surprise, and turned to look at them. “Gentlemen, be assured that while we await the king’s pleasure in this matter, you will be treated with such hospitality as I am able to offer. I only regret it must be extended under such circumstances.”

Neither young man believed him, nor the Highlanders with them. For that, Hill grieved. If the world were his to remake, he would have men trust one another.

Even Scots and Sassenachs.

Even Robert Stewart and Alasdair Og MacDonald.

I
t was an alien land, although Cat knew its character, even knew its names. The Big and Little Herdsman. The Devil’s Staircase. Cliff of the Feinn. The Pap of Glencoe. She had been raised on the tales of the land, of feuds and killings, of cattle raids and field games. No Highlander was ignorant of his geography, and she no more than men.

Rannoch Moor fell behind, of the bogs and twisted trees; the memory of a hanging. Into the glen she rode, the lush and fertile valley cut through by the River Coe, cradled by a stark and desolate beauty jealously warding secret splendors: craggy cliffs cut apart by waterfalls, tumbling into burns that carved the softer braes into setts, like the warp of tartan cloth; the wild, hurling power of a river halving the glen from end to end; the upthrustings of rock bursting free of tree-clad hills; the rills in the valley floor, the meanderings of creeks flowing down to Loch Linnhe beyond the ferry at Ballachulish.

It was not a soft place, Glencoe, but hewn by hasty hands, then shaped by the ages. Its strength lay in its ruggedness, its rigorous demands; its splendor in survival. It was here Dair had been born, here Dair had been raised, here where the giant, MacIain, made a home for his people, tending their welfare with all the cunning and strength of a robust personality well matched to a massive body. MacIain was Glencoe, his bone knit of its stone, his blood milked of its burnwater, his pride of the cliffs and crags. And it was she, an enemy’s daughter, who would have to tell the father what had become of his son.

Cat allowed the garron to pick its way stolidly, requiring no haste. She had departed Glen Lyon certain of her course, urged on by the need to carry word of the truth and her own desire to go. But now she was here, in the womb of Glencoe with the Pap overhanging, where hatred of Campbells was bred from conception.

Her shoulders ached with fretting. It was all she could do not to halt the horse, to turn it back, and leave. Who was she to ride in unaccompanied with word of the laird’s son: taken by Sassenachs from the house of a Campbell, from the bed of Glenlyon’s daughter?

They none of them knew her. Only
of
her, if that; a drukken man’s lass, meant to marry Breadalbane’s son. But even in that she was repudiated by Duncan’s elopement with his Marjorie; and though she approved of it, wanting nothing of him for herself, to others it was dishonor. A man had refused her to reject his father’s wealth.

The garron plodded on. Cat shut her eyes. Sweat stung in creases and hollows, tension in breasts and groin; despite the languor of summer she felt urgency, and apprehension.

‘Come home with me to Glencoe
. ’Well, she had come. But he was not here.

“Are ye ill?” a voice asked.

Cat’s eyes snapped open. A man stood beside the track, reaching out to catch the garron’s headstall. With him, clutching his kilt, was a young lad.

She snatched at reins, hastily scraped a lock of hair out of her face, tried to regain even a trace of composure. “I’ve come to see MacIain.”

He arched a dark eyebrow beneath silvered hair. “Oh, aye? I would have said you came to see his son.” He smiled to mitigate the deliberate irony. “I am John MacDonald. Alasdair’s brother.” He dropped a hand to clasp the crown of the boy’s head. “And this wee sprat is
my
son, Young Sandy.”

It escaped her mouth before she could jerk it back. “Dair said that was why he called himself that: too many men were Sandys.”

“Oh, aye . . . but here he is Alasdair. Alasdair Og. Though none that I ken would mistake him for our father.” His eyes, like Dair’s, were brown, the bones of his face similar. His smile was his brother’s, kind and very bonnie. “No one in the world would mistake anyone for MacIain. Certainly not his sons.”

“He’s been taken,” she blurted abruptly, and wished it back badly. This was not how she had planned it. “Sassenach soldiers. They’ve taken him to Fort William, with Robbie Stewart.”

John’s smile vanished. He glanced briefly at his small son, then looked at Cat again. For all he disclaimed any portion of his father, Cat in that moment saw MacIain in his heir, a predatory stillness in brandywine eyes. “Is he injured?”

Not by Sassenachs
—
not yet
—“He and Stewart had a scuffle.”

“He and
Robbie?
”And then the surprise faded. “Ah. Aye, well . . . I kent that would come. But the Sassenachs didna harm him?”

“Not yet. But they put him in irons.”

John’s mouth flattened; the eyes were again predatory. “Come with me,” he said quietly. “I’ll take you to my father.”

His father. Dair’s father.

To her, the roaring giant who had frightened a lass so very badly ten years before. And who, by his thunder, by abject arrogance, had set Dair to gentling, with bonnie smile and honesty, Glenlyon’s furious daughter.

There was a past between them, as well as what bound their bodies. And she would not permit MacIain to devalue any of it.

She climbed down from the garron; if MacIain’s heir would walk—and
his
heir walk—so would she.

“I am Cat,” she said. “Glenlyon’s daughter.” There. Truth. Confession. She waited for reaction, prepared, she hoped, for hostility, to keep it from hurting her.

“Oh, aye,” he said matter-of-factly. “My mother had hoped to meet you
_.
”

Cat froze. Somehow, suddenly, the prospect of Dair’s mother was far worse than Dair’s father.

John MacDonald laughed. “She willna bite, I swear it—but will even a Campbell refuse Glencoe’s hospitality?”

No Highlander would, nor would he abuse it. It was a sacred trust. Cat scowled at him. “I will not.”

“Come along, then, aye?” He scooped up Young Sandy and set off with the lithe, long-legged grace she had seen in his younger brother.

 

Dair awoke when the door latch rattled. A moment later a soldier stepped in briefly to set a covered tray on the floor, then stepped out again without saying a word. The bolt was shot again, and the lock clanked shut.

Disorientation lasted only a moment. He knew where he was, why he was there, and who was there with him. None of the conclusions pleased him.

Two narrow barred windows permitted the sun to enter, but the day died into gloaming and the light went with it. Within half of an hour they would be swallowed wholly by darkness with neither lamp nor fir candle to pass a night grown longer and gey blacker for their captivity.

He heard the ringing of chains. Slitted eyes showed him Robbie moving to the tray, stripping back the cloth cover. Two mugs, bread, meat, and cheese. “A feast,” Robbie muttered in sour derision. He squatted by the tray and cast a penetrating glance at his fellow prisoner. “Is it alive after all?”

Dair dimly recalled being brought to the cell. He also recalled, equally dimly, that he had managed to reach the pallet on the floor before losing consciousness once again. He did not recall stretching himself out upon his back with his chain-weighted arms crossed peaceably over his ribs, as if he were a corpse. He doubted very much it was Sassenach doing.

“Will it eat?” Robbie asked.

It was hungry, but it knew better. Its belly was not yet settled, and its head ached abominably. But it doubted it could chew anyway with its very swollen jaw.

Dair tongued his teeth on the side Robbie had struck with shackles and chain.
Aye, loose . . .
If he were lucky, he would keep them. He ceased examination; even the slightest pressure sent a jolt of pain through his jaw into a skull already sore. “—bastard,” he murmured.

“Ah, it speaks!” Iron chimed. “D’ye want food, MacDonald?”

“Water.”

Robbie brought a mug and sat down next to the pallet, legs crossed comfortably as if he hunkered around a mellow fire with pipe-song in the air. His face was dusty and bruised, his hair a wind-tangled cap of golden curls. Gilt stippled his jaw; Dair did not doubt his own, through the bruises, required a razor as well.

He hitched up on an elbow, then stilled utterly. Sweat broke out on his flesh, sheening his face. He wanted very much to release a string of vile oaths, but it hurt too much to loose the barrage with the appropriate vehemence.

“Here.” Robbie brought the cup closer. “D’ye want help?”

With his free hand Dair took the mug. He was weak and shaky, but managed to hold the rim to his mouth. The water was cold; it set his teeth to aching. He wanted to gulp, but didn’t; his belly’s temper was chancy.

“Done?” Robbie accepted the empty mug. “D’ye want more? There’s mine.”

Dair managed a scowl. “You near broke my head, aye?—d’ye mean to drown me, now?”

In waning light, Robbie eyed him critically. “
You ’re
in poor temper.”

“Christ,” Dair muttered, levering himself to the pallet again. He put a filthy, rust-speckled hand to his forehead and gently massaged the flesh in an attempt to ease the ache. “D’ye expect me to forgive you? To forget? You near killed me, Robbie!”

Stewart’s tone was curiously flat. “Then we each of us has something to forgive the other for.”

Dair froze, then lowered his hand in a rattle of iron shackle to look at Robbie. The Stewart’s expression was as colorless as his voice, and wholly eloquent in ambiguity.

“D’ye blame me?” Robbie challenged.

He wanted to. He could not. Kindling anger was snuffed on the bitter breath of acknowledgment. “No,” he said finally. “I deserved it, aye?”

“You did.”

Dair smiled barely; a faint twitch of his mouth in wry self-contempt. “And I’d have done the same.”

“Well, then.” The relief was subtle, abetted by satisfaction; the issue, for now, was settled. Robbie reached for and pulled the tray over. “D’ye want food, MacDonald?”

He tongued his swollen cheek. “Not unless you chew it for me first.” “Och, no . . . I think not. Forgiveness doesna go that far.” Robbie slapped cheese and beef onto a slice of bread and began to eat. “I’d have killed you, then; I wanted to, that moment. But a clean death, aye?—and for a sound reason. Not hanging for the Sassenachs because we lifted a pawkie boat.”

Robbie’s perspective had always differed diametrically from his own. Despite the ache in his jaw, Dair could not repress a breathy gust of laughter. “You should have used a dirk.”

“Och, well—they’d taken mine, already.” He chewed meditatively.

“I did feel a wee bit better when you dropped like a felled stirk—only then the lass began to skelp me, and I forgot all about you in worry for myself.”

Dair opened his eyes.
“Cat
skelped you?”

“Tried. Took the Sassenach to pull her away.” He gulped water from his mug. “Fitting name, aye?
Cat.
She did all but claw me.”

Under the circumstances, considering the company, Dair could not think of an adequate response.

“A raukle fool,” Robbie said lightly, “to trade a Stewart for a Campbell.”

Dair waited tensely, but nothing more was offered. Robbie finished his meal, his water, then settled himself across the cell with his spine against the wall.

Darkness came down, and with it came a silence neither of them broke.

 

Lady Glencoe, Cat discovered, had bred more into her sons than MacIain. They had a portion of his height—John more than Dair—and the early graying of his hair, but there the resemblance ended. It was their mother’s eyes in their heads, her elegance of feature, the quiet grace in movement.

Most of all they claimed her smile, and the warmth of her welcome. She was not a young woman, but withal a friendly one.

Cat was nonplussed. She did not see how Dair’s mother could show her such kindness, despite the requirements of hospitality. There was nothing forced in her manner, no tension in her demeanor. She offered drink, food, a chair, then carried the conversation as John, still lugging Young Sandy, went out to find MacIain. But she spoke of inconsequentialities beyond determining Dair was not seriously injured, until Cat left off answering and sat in stiff silence. She was hideously aware of Lady Glencoe’s studied assessment, and not for the first time wished there were less of her to assess.

“Do you have the mirror, Cat?”

It shocked her. Hastily Cat drew the tartan bundle from her belt and set it upon the table, carefully folding back the edges until the contents were displayed: rope, mirror, bonnet. She took up the mirror and held it out, trying to still the minute trembling of her hands.

Lady Glencoe smiled. “Och, Cat, I dinna want it back. I only wanted to be certain he gave it to you.”

She was, for possibly the first time in her life, utterly bereft of speech.

The thought was fleeting:
Jamie would be pleased, aye?

Desperately self-conscious, Cat took up the bonnet in place of the mirror and tended it with singular absorption, pulling the wool back into shape, grooming the eagle feather. When it was done, when she could delay no longer, she set it on the tartan and stared at the badge.

“What is the rope?” Lady Glencoe inquired.

Astonished, she met his mother’s eyes—
his
eyes—and gave her honest answer. “I cut it from the tree. I couldna leave it there, you ken . . . I wouldna give my father the pleasure of seeing what he had done.”

It shook the woman profoundly. She had not anticipated any such answer. Color flowed from her face, aging her instantly; the heavy white threading in faded brown hair was abruptly more pronounced, and the fit of her skin over the contours of her fine skull slackened.

Cat bit into her lip, damning herself for an overbrutal tongue. “Forgive me—”

Dair’s mother reached out to catch one of Cat’s hands. “There is naught
to
forgive. You are not your father, Cat—and you saved my son’s life. For that alone I bless you, but there is more.” She looked at the items: her French-made mirror, her son’s blue bonnet, the rope a Campbell laird had used against that son. “Men dinna understand. They canna. They use the name to stir the blood, like war-pipes and a pibroch. MacDonald. Campbell. MacGregor, and Stewart. In names there is power, but also blood, and killing—and men forget too often there are more important things than how a man calls himself, or the slogan of his clan.”