The Pride of Lions (30 page)

“Some.”

“It doesn’t look it. You look, in fact, downright miserable for a man who has come back to the bosom of his family after half a lifetime away.”

Alex sighed and raked a hand through his hair. “I am seriously beginning to think we should have stayed away. Or at least come home by sea.”

Aluinn grinned and nodded. “Maura was in to see me earlier. She could hardly speak of anything but your
lovely new wife. Should I say ‘I told you so’ here, or should I wait a few minutes?”

“Wait. You’ll undoubtedly find more reason to say it.”

“There is more?”

“Glengarron. Struan MacSorley is all for forming a raiding party and going after what is left of Gordon Ross Campbell.”

“What does Lochiel think?”

“He has sent for Iain’s father. It will be up to Old Glengarron which reprisals there should be for young Iain’s death, if any. My guess is that Donald will caution him to wait. He may get his chance to kill more Campbells than he ever dreamed.”

“That sounds like Lochiel is expecting the clans to rise for Prince Charles.”

“I’m afraid my brother is caught with his breeches halfway down. If he pulls them up and buckles on his swordbelt, he keeps his dignity and his self-respect, but he will have to bear the pain of knowing he has accomplished nothing. On the other hand, if he drops them all the way down, he reveals his strengths and weaknesses for all the world to see, and the relief would only be short-lived at best. It is
my
considered opinion that the English want this rebellion almost more than Scotland does, if only to crush us once and for all and stake their claim on our land in a way that can never be questioned again.”

“The eternal pessimist.”

“The eternal fool, you mean. Was it so wrong to hope we could just come home and blend into the background somewhere?”

“You, my fine legendary friend? The
Camshroinaich Dubh
—the Dark Cameron—fade away with a wife and a brood of drooling children?”

“It was just a thought. And who mentioned wives and children?”

“It was just a thought. If you fade without a whimper, who will be around to fulfill the old prophecy?”

“What old prophecy?”

“The ravens will drink their fill of Campbell blood three times off the top of Clach Mhor,”
Aluinn quoted. “It seems the Duke of Argyle is a superstitious man and believes, because of you, the ravens have drunk twice already.”

“I had almost forgotten that old fishwife’s curse.”

“So had I until Archie reminded me. Rumor has it the Duke wakes up out of a sound sleep, frothing at the mouth because he swears he has seen you standing over his bed with a dripping
clai’mor
in one hand, Malcolm Campbell’s head in the other.”

“If he chooses to believe the two-hundred-year-old ravings of a lunatic, who am I to enlighten him?”

“Allow me to enlighten you, in that case. Something else Archie told me: Gordon Ross Campbell is Malcolm Campbell’s bastard son.”

“His
son
?”

“Sort of changes the perspective a little, doesn’t it?”

“It sort of makes me feel as if the curse is on me, not them,” Alex muttered. “That makes two men I should have killed when I had the chance, but spared out of a blind sense of Christian charity.”

“Two men?”

Alex thought of Hamilton Garner and the corner of his mouth pulled down, “Maybe I’m just getting old and soft. I should have aimed my sword true, used my fists harder … and taken my peace of mind when it first tempted me.”

Aluinn had no doubt the common factor in all three instances had long blonde hair and violet eyes. “What are you going to do about Catherine?” he asked quietly. “I am loath to dwell on the obvious, but you are going to have to do something one way or the other, and soon.”

“I wasn’t aware there was an ‘other.’ ”

“Isn’t there?”

The silence stretched out, broken only by the faint ticking of a clock somewhere in the shadows.

“You only think you can read my mind, old friend,” Alex said. “And this time you’re dead wrong.”

Aluinn leaned back and half-closed his eyes. The candlelight was not kind to the smears of fatigue under his eyes or the bloodless cast to his lips. “Dead wrong, eh? If you say so.”

“I say so.” There was another lengthy pause. “Even if it were possible …”

“Yes?”

“It could never work.”

“Why? Because you are infallible as well as legendary? Because you expect everyone to have the same thickness of armor around their hearts as you do?”

A tic shivered in Alex’s cheek. “You don’t understand.”

“You are right, Alex. I don’t understand. For fifteen years you have been killing yourself on the inside, blaming yourself for what happened, and I don’t understand.”

“Aluinn, for Christ’s sake—” The sudden creaking of the door interrupted what he was about to say and he turned, the look on his face so shockingly stripped of all defenses that it sent Deirdre’s hand fluttering up to her throat.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I did not mean to intrude.”

“No intrusion,” Alex said quickly. “Please, come in. I was just about to leave anyway. Aluinn … I’ll look in on you later; try to get some rest.”

“Alex—”

But he had already brushed past Deirdre and vanished into the darkness of the hallway.

“I m-mustn’t stay,” Deirdre stammered and backed toward the door. “I’ve left Mistress Catherine in her bath and—”

“Please,” Aluinn said wearily, rubbing his temple. “Don’t go. Sit with me for just a few minutes. Talking to
Alex these days is like … seeing how long you can hold your hand over a flame without pulling it away.”

“I know what you mean. My mistress’s temper is as short as a fuse.”

She had agreed so readily, Aluinn looked over and smiled. “Please, won’t you come all the way in?”

“I … I really shouldn’t. I only came to see if … if you wanted for anything while I was in the kitchen. I was going to get some broth for Mistress Catherine and … and …”

“Actually”—his gaze darted to the nightstand—“I
am
a little thirsty. There is water in the jug, if you wouldn’t mind.”

The glass, she saw, was within easy reach, as was the pitcher, but she walked to the side of the bed anyway and poured it for him.

“I confess I am a little surprised you would care one way or another for my well-being. Pleasantly surprised, to be sure, but still …”

“I was only wanting a chance to … to thank you properly for what you did yesterday,” she said quietly.

“What
I
did? As I understand it, I should be the one thanking you for keeping me from bleeding to death.”

“It would not have been necessary if you hadn’t thrown yourself after the brute who tried to snatch me off my feet.”

“Well …” He remembered and offered up a mock frown. “I suppose you do deserve a mild scolding at that. You were supposed to stay inside the coach.”

“I am not one to cower with my hands over my head, just for the sake of a few ruffians. Eight brothers I have, and not a one able to pull my hair or knock me down in a fair fight.”

“I can believe that,” he mused, prodding the faint bruise on his jaw. “You have a damned fine left hook.”

She warmed under his smile, then, remembering the glass she was holding, offered it to him, uncomfortably aware of the tremors in her hand. Even worse, the gray
eyes were staring at her hard enough to drain away all the sensation in her fingers.

“Do you want the water or not?”

“I want it,” he murmured. He closed his hand around the glass, engulfing her icy fingertips at the same time, and although she tried to balk at the contact he held firm.

“Will you sit with me awhile?”

“I mustn’t. Truly. My mistress is waiting for me.”

“Just for a few minutes. Please. The last request of a dying man.”

She extricated her hand and smoothed the folds of her apron. “You shouldn’t joke about such things. They could come true.”

Aluinn smiled and took a sip of the cool water. The effort seemed to drain his reserves, and he closed his eyes.

Deirdre found herself holding her breath. With his long, bronzed lashes and sand-colored hair, he was almost beautiful. His tanned skin was smooth and stretched evenly over high Celtic cheekbones. A faint stubble of fair bearding covered the angular jaw and led down to the reddish-gold cloud of hair that exploded across his chest. The muscles beneath were hard, the skin supple, with bands of precisely molded sinew narrowing to a trim waist and flat belly. Below that, below the line of the blanket, it was left to her imagination to surmise what might be seen there, but she had no difficulty envisioning the long legs, steely with muscle, furred with the same fine coppery hairs as his wrists and forearms.

With eight brothers she had indeed thought herself immune to the mysteries of a man’s body, but the one lying before her now was so overwhelmingly seductive, it made her mouth dry and her palms damp. She could no longer believe he was evil. Dangerous, perhaps, but not evil. And not a cold-blooded murderer. Not him, and not Alexander Cameron.

“What did you mean when you said he had been killing himself on the inside for the past fifteen years?”

The gray eyes opened slowly.

“I was not eavesdropping deliberately,” she said. “But I was fully through the door before I could do anything about it. You needn’t tell me if it’s a great dark secret, it’s just that … well, it might help if one or both of you stopped treating everyone as if they were your enemies.”

“For the past fifteen years everyone
has
been our enemy. Moreover, Alex is a very private man; he does not find it easy to offer up his trust at the best of times. Neither do you, for that matter.”

Deirdre laced her fingers together and studied them. “You have not given anyone any reason to trust you. You have forced my mistress to compromise herself. You have dragged us both across half the length of Britain against our wills. You very nearly were the cause of getting us all killed yesterday, and goodness knows what might happen between here and home again—if we are ever allowed to go home again, that is.”

“Alex gave his word, and I have never known him to break it. If he has promised to send you and your mistress home, and if you still want to go, he will see that you get there.”

“
If
we still want to go?” she queried softly.

“People change their minds.”

“Not my mistress. She has it firm in her mind that Mr. Cameron is a spy and a murderer, and so far he has done nothing to defend himself against either charge.”

Aluinn watched the long, delicate fingers twining and untwining, “Tell me something, Deirdre, If you went back to Derby tomorrow, and if Lord Ashbrooke asked you what military preparations you saw and heard while you were traveling through Scotland—would you tell him?”

“Of course I would. It’s my duty, both as a loyal servant to my mistress and as a loyal subject to my king.”

“King George?”

The brown eyes sparkled. “He is my sovereign.”

“Ah, but what if you believed your sovereign to be unjustly exiled in Italy? What if you believed King James
Stuart to be the rightful king of Scotland and England—and please”—he held up his hand to forestall the protest forming on her lips—“I do not want to argue politics or semantics or who is right and who is wrong. I just want you to offer me a straight and honest answer to the question. If you believed James Stuart to be your king, if your family had fought and died for that same belief, would you still look upon Alex and me as spies simply because we rode through England with our eyes and ears open?”

“Under those circumstances …” Her eyes sought his and she frowned. “Probably not. But loyalty to one king over another does not explain away a charge of murder.”

“No, it doesn’t. And there are two murder charges over Alex’s head, neither one worth the spit it would take to deny them.”

“He murdered
two
men?”

“It would have been three but for a small fluke of nature: The third bastard survived his wounds.”

Deirdre’s hands fell still. “You sound almost proud of the deed.”

“I am. I only wish I had been with him at the time. I would have made sure there were no flukes of nature to get in the way.”

A cold, hard edge had crept into his voice, and Deirdre was not sure she liked it. She was trying to understand, truly she was, but not only was he admitting the murders, he was condoning them.

“It happened the week of Donald and Maura’s wedding,” he explained, his head falling back as he stared up at the patterns the candlelight threw on the ceiling. “She is a Campbell. Her father and the Duke of Argyle are brothers. She met Donald while on a tour of France, and even though I’m sure they both did their damnedest to prevent it, they fell hopelessly in love.

“I should say here that the Campbells and the Camerons have been snapping at each other’s hindquarters for generations. Lochaber is a nice rich plum of land the Campbells
would dearly love to absorb into their own territories. But since our clan has always been blessed with either warriors or diplomats for chiefs, the glen has remained in Cameron possession.

“At any rate, the wedding took place as planned, here at Achnacarry. As a gesture of goodwill a large party of Campbells was invited—an attempt to calm the troubled waters—including Maura’s cousins from Argyle: Dughall, Angus, and Malcolm Campbell.”

Aluinn paused, his features darkening as the memories crowded back.

“The ceremony went smoothly. Maura’s father, Sir John Campbell of Auchenbreck, had become genuinely fond of Donald by then and was actually supporting the union in hopes of making peace between the two clans. Argyle did not want that, of course, and took it as a personal affront, especially since he had previously chosen Dughall Campbell to be Maura’s groom. Have I managed to totally confuse you yet?”

Deirdre unconsciously moved closer to the bed. “Who is this Duke of Argyle? He sounds very important.”

“He is unquestionably the most powerful ally the Hanovers have in Scotland. He personally commanded the army that all but finished it for the Jacobites in 1715 at Dunblain. He is power-hungry, land-hungry, and not above a fair amount of cheating, scheming, and backstabbing to get what he wants—namely, the position of Prime Minister of Scotland when and if we come completely under English rule.”