Jennifer Roberson (27 page)

It verged dangerously too close on honesty unfettered by misdirection. Obscurity was easier,
dis
honesty much safer. “We owe one another naught.”

His laugher was quiet, but no less telling for its softness. “Dinna lie to me, Cat.”

Intimacy, and impasse. She stared at him even as he stared back, and found herself counting the silver threads in his hair—many more than there had been, when she was but a lass; marking the creases beside his eyes—carved deeper than before; the oblique slant of cheekbones, the fit of his nose to the arch of his brow, the kindness in his mouth so perfectly balanced with maleness.

Cat backed away hastily. There was no grace in her movements, only jerky, awkward retreat. It was escape, nothing more, and he could not but see it.

He did. “Why?” he asked. “Why
now?
”

“Because—” She caught her breath, then laughed. Then caught her breath again. “You dinna understand.”

“Then tell me. You shared a wee bit of your heart with me ten years ago. . . can ye no’ trust me now?”

“I canna.” It was definitive.

“Why not?”

“Because I am no more a wee lass, and you—and you—”

He waited. Smiling. Patient beyond bearing.

She said it all at once in a tumbling rush of confession. “Because I am trying verra hard not to kiss a MacDonald!”

His
words, though the name was changed, and he knew it. He remembered.

His grin, in its birth, was dazzling. “Then dinna try so hard, aye?”

“Oh
Christ,
”she said in disgust.

Dair began to laugh. In its noise was nothing of ridicule, no suggestion of unkindness, but a wild and glorious sound of realization and elation.

And then the laughter died. He held out his hand and waited.

Fingertips at first, the merest brush of flesh on flesh. But it was enough, it was always enough; there was no room for denial, no more wish for escape. She put her hand into his.

“Come with me,” he said. “Come home with me to Glencoe.”

 

The knot of men around Robert Stewart of Appin were very young, which told Breadalbane something as he returned from his meeting with Keppoch: Stewart himself was not so much older and would undoubtedly appeal to others of a similar age, who were impressionable and quick to rouse, eagerly giving ear to one of their own who shared the councils of men greater than they.

He quietly joined the clutch surrounding Stewart, making deprecating motions when a few recognized him and fell away, giving him room to see the complex drawing in the dirt. “Who is who?” Breadalbane asked diffidently as Stewart took up his dirk as if to put it away. “I wasna there, you see. . . I am interested.”

It was a blatant admission no one expected from him, and therefore proved most effective. They all knew Glenorchy Campbells had stayed out of the conflict at the earl’s behest, and had undoubtedly spoken derisively of cowardice and weak spines, of blood thinned with water, and Williamite politics. But to his face they offered nothing now but unpracticed masks swept clean of all save wariness, and confusion, and the curiosity of the young. He was Breadalbane, after all, and Glenorchy, and Campbell.

Stewart indicated with dirk the positions of various clans, and Dundee himself, and succinctly explained how Hugh Mackay had brought his men down through the pass into defeat.

Breadalbane watched the dirk with half an eye; his true attention was almost entirely taken up in an assessment of Robert Stewart, though he did not divulge it.

Not a fool, Robbie Stewart
. . . But neither a man who understood patience, nor politics, nor the need to accommodate himself in whatever fashion he might that served his personal interests.
Pride will cost him, yet.

When the Appin heir finished his explanation, the earl nodded avuncular approval. “Dundee was a military genius, much as his ancestor Montrose was. I dinna doubt he could hae done as much for the Highlands as Montrose, had he lived.”

Stewart’s mouth hooked down. “And lost
his
head, too?”

Breadalbane met the challenge with a bland smile. “ ’Tis better to die on the field, in honor, than under an executioner’s ax.”

“Aye, well. . .” Stewart glanced around at the clutch of young clansmen; he had lost their attention. He rose and sheathed his dirk as a few drifted away toward the other fires and other tales. “So, have ye come to tell me you are Jamie’s man?”

No subtlety in this one. . .
The stragglers instantly departed. Breadalbane smiled again. “Will you drink whisky wi’ me?” He gestured elegantly. “I’ve a fire back there, near the ruins, and a gillie to serve us. Or we might walk through Black Duncan’s trees.”

The firelight gilded Stewart’s hair. He was not tall but compact, and his neck was warded either side by pronounced tendons. Linen-clad shoulders were wide beneath the diagonal swath of plaid. “I’ve a mind to stay here,” he said, “and have you say what you will say without snooving amidst the trees.” He jerked his head toward the scattered fires where lairds and clansmen gathered. “You’ve taken them all aside, one by one; d’ye think I’m blind to it, and why?”

“Not you. You proved your mettle there.” The earl glanced pointedly down at the map drawn in dirt. “And I’ve a mind to ken you better.”

“You ken me well enow. You ken what I am. But I dinna ken what
you
are—save a Williamite.”

Breadalbane demurred, deflecting the barb easily. “I am a Scot. A Highland Scot. And I love my people.”

A hint of a curl in the lip. “Enough to inflict a Dutchman upon them.”

William of Orange was also a Stuart and the grandson of another, but the earl did not remind Appin’s young laird-to-be; such was not the point, and he did not care to split hairs as decisively as James’s reign and subsequent exile had split Scotland. “Such afflictions can be cured.”

“Ah.” Stewart nodded; the lip’s curl was more pronounced. “Wi’ Jamie’s return, I dinna doubt?”

The earl did not hesitate. “He is the rightful king.”

Stewart barked a disbelieving laugh. “I’ve no’ heard you say so before!”

“A man says many things.”

“So he does.” Young teeth were bared in a brief, mocking grin. “And what does this man say?”

“That he would do much to restore his land.”

“How?”

“By making a peace.”

“How?”

“By giving her lairds such things as they require.”

Softly Stewart inquired, “Such things as silver?”

As softly Breadalbane answered, “There is enough for all.”

One sandy eyebrow lifted. “Even MacDonalds?”

Breadalbane permitted himself a smile. “Ask Coll of the Cows.”

Robert Stewart’s humor dissipated instantly. “Keppoch has agreed?”

It pleased the earl to shrug as if none of it mattered. “Earlier. Keppoch and his tacksmen.” They were straight-worded now, dancing no dances; there were no swords beneath their feet, albeit honed edges under the tones. “And others. Many others.”

“Glengarry.”

“Not yet.”

“Glencoe.”

“Not yet.”

The grin came back. “Not ever.”

It was wholly honest, and clean as a blade. “I came to speak to Appin. Last I kent, he was a
Stewart
—not a MacDonald.”

The dirk struck home. A wave of hectic color rose from the coarse-muscled throat to stain the flesh of his face. Blue eyes glittered balefully. “So is he
still
a Stewart. . . but he is welcome in Glencoe, which isna said of Campbells.”

Breadalbane waited a beat. It would not do to lose his temper. “In time, the world changes. Old enmities are settled. Shall we settle ours?”

In the silence between them pipe music skirled more loudly. It was
ceol mor,
but not a battle pibroch. A lament instead, of old ways treasured, old ways altered, old ways lost.

Roughly Stewart said, “You do ken ’tis to the Earl of Argyll that Appin owes loyalty. Not to Glenorchy.”

And so now only two are left
. . . “This is not about loyalties within Clan Campbell, and those from older times owed of Stewart to such as I. This is not about Clan Campbell at all. This is about Scotland. There is a fort at Inverlochy with guns on the walls, and soldiers in the foothills, and a patrol boat in Loch Linnhe, and frigates off the Isles. D’ye believe we can win?”

“What I say is: do you?”

“I do not. But there is hope for peace. What is required, for now, is no more than a treaty, and your name upon it. No oaths sworn; I’ll no’ ask you to break your honor. A truce only, until such a time as James gives you leave to swear a new oath to William.”

Stewart’s expression was taut. “Is he a fool, our Jamie, to give over such men as might win him his throne back?”

“I would ask another question.”

It provoked, as intended. “Oh, aye?”

With careful precision the earl said, “I would ask myself if I were a fool, to let my clan be broken in the name of an exiled king who doesna have the faintest notion of Highland ways, or Highland honor.”

Indolence was banished. The compact body stiffened. “You would ask that?”

“I would. I have.”

“Jamie’s man wouldna.”

“Jamie’s man would do better to ask himself if he might profit more from peace than from war.”

“Jamie’s man might. So might William’s.”

Robert Stewart, the earl decided, was too young to know when he was beaten. By dawn, he would see it. But for now there was another whose aid might yet prove invaluable, if Breadalbane could procure it.

The earl smiled. “I thank you for your time. I’ll no’ press a man for what he willna give willingly.”

And as he walked away he took care that his shod feet scuffed into disarray Robert Stewart’s detailed map of what might be, all too plainly, the final Jacobite victory.

The flesh of his hand warmed hers. MacDonald flesh. MacDonald hand. Upon a Campbell woman.

He repeated the words. “Come with me.”

She wanted it to be so. Needed it.

“Cat.”

She gripped his hand.
Could I do it? Should I?

“Come home with me to Glencoe.”

And then a man came up in the darkness, firelight sparking off brooch. “Would that be your price,” Breadalbane asked, “to bring MacIain to heel?”

F
rom a distance it had been innocent enough: MacIain’s second son extending a hand to a woman, his expression in moon- and firelight one of taut expectancy. It was an eloquent tableau with pockets of fire gushing about them and
ceol mor
haunting the air, and one no man might misunderstand who had ever desired a woman.

Initially it meant nothing at all to Breadalbane save it was oddly if distantly touching, a reminder of his youth when he bedded a woman for his body’s sake instead of the sake of his house. Until the earl realized who it was MacDonald seduced.

Anger quickly replaced startlement. Then anger dissipated into preternatural calm.
There is something to be gained of this.

Glenlyon’s daughter broke the handclasp first. She clutched against her skirts an object that flashed briefly, blindingly silver, and said nothing at all, neither in shock nor in explanation; was wise enough, or shamed enough, in this discovery, to hold her silence.

MacDonald, seduction diverted, grace dismissed, turned at once, abruptly. Color stained flesh, underscoring the symmetry of a face that was, unlike his father’s, innocent of beard. His features, to the earl’s eyes, were unremarkable if cleanly formed, and not so handsome as other men hailed for their appearance; nor was he as overwhelming in presence and personality as Glencoe’s towering laird.

But he is at peace with his body
. . . and was, the earl realized, supremely content with his place in the world. That of itself made him more than an arrant pup meant to be kicked aside by a casual foot.

Breadalbane’s reassessment was rapid. He needed this lad as much as Robbie Stewart, or John MacDonald. He knew very well that by stirring argument within the sons he might well defeat the fathers.

The earl flicked a glance at his cousin’s daughter. Her eyes were empty of enmity, too busy with implication. They were both of them stunned by his presence, but MacIain’s youngest son mustered self-control more quickly than she.

“My father,” he said plainly, “isna a
hound,
aye?—to be made to come to heel.”

Breadalbane froze into stillness, but managed a bland smile. This meant something. This was significant. It made Alasdair Og more important than anticipated: he could discern the object beyond obfuscation.

“Oh, I think he is,” Breadalbane said lightly, “but we are all of us hounds, ye ken, fighting over the bone some men would also call Scotland.”

“Scotland,” MacDonald affirmed, “but no’ this woman.”

The earl raised his brows. “And why not? Is she not worth it?” He looked pointedly at her. “You risk a treaty for her.”

Her face was taut and white, but the eyes were not subdued. He saw her father in her—and perhaps her mother; he did not recall Helen Campbell—save her strength of will was greater.

“You willna do this,” she declared. “Not to me.”

He smiled, intending her to see it; she was no fool despite her parentage, but she understood nothing of politics. She comprehended only emotions, as all women did, especially those emotions the MacDonald had recently roused. She thought in terms of herself and of newfound appetites, and now of MacIain’s son.

Steadily he said, “I will do it to anyone, ye ken, be he man or she a woman. ’Tis for Scotland, aye?—and I am a man who considers his country worth it.” It silenced her, as expected; free of the woman, he turned again to MacDonald. “He is gey stubborn, is MacIain. He’ll no’ take my silver, I ken, and he’ll no’ take my word that what I do now is done for Scotland.”

“Is it?”

“In all I do.” He glanced again at Glenlyon’s daughter, who lingered yet despite implied dismissal. “Go to Duncan,” he told her flatly. “He is expecting you.”

Flags of brilliant color suffused her face. MacDonald moved, reaching, even as she turned in rigid retreat. “Cat—”

But she was gone before he could stop her, walking straight-backed into shadow. His hand fell to his side in a futile, eloquent slackness.

“Now,” Breadalbane said, “let us speak of Glencoe.”

“And Campbells?” It was derisive, but clearly it required effort for MacDonald to forget Cat and speak of other things. “If you will speak of Glencoe,” he said plainly, “speak to Glencoe.”

The earl offered an inoffensive smile. “So your brother said.”

“He is wise, aye?” MacDonald retorted dryly. “And
he
will be MacIain; you’ve no need to speak to me.”

“I speak to any man who may have a say in Scotland’s future.”

MacDonald’s answering smile was thin. “The future I would speak of is no’ a country’s at all, just at this moment. This particular moment.”

There it was: risk after all, if on a highly personal level. He did not shirk the truth, nor attempt to underplay what the earl had witnessed. It lay between them, bright and sharp, and full of consequences.

Breadalbane did not easily lose his temper, but he thought now of the ramifications that had nothing to do with preferment and even less with politics. “She is bonnie, aye? . . . and as unlike her father as a woman might be. Strong where he is weak. Determined where he is malleable. Fully cognizant of her pride.” He waited, sure of his course. “But more: she is a Campbell. And is wholly subject to Campbell authority. My authority, aye?”

MacDonald was, the earl thought, indistinguishable from other men save for the incongruity of prematurely graying hair—and except when he chose to be someone altogether different, even as he did now with a subtle shifting of posture, of assessment of the enemy.

Breadalbane was instantly alerted. He had seen this in dogs. Such intangibles as these set the pack leader apart from the pack.

“She is not my price,” MacDonald declared, “as you would have it, aye? Because there is no price. Not for Scotland. Not for a woman. What I do, I will do. What my father does, he will do. Have you a thing to say of MacIain, say it
to
MacIain.”

“I see the old fox bred true.” He paused. “You are more eloquent than your brother.”

Teeth were bared briefly. “I am not the heir, aye? It affords me latitude.”

“The latitude to seduce a woman meant to wed my son?”

If MacDonald had known, he had forgotten. Ruddy color stained his face, then drained slowly away. Even his lips were white.

The earl smiled coolly. “You have lifted our cattle,” he said, “with impunity much of the time, though your neck might argue it; oh aye, I heard the tale. But you will no’ lift our women.”

It roused a tangible anger; the self-control was no longer suppressed, nor its presence overlooked. “Is this how you court MacIain?”

“But you have made it clear I canna do it through his son.” The earl paused. “I breed deerhounds. Did you ken it?”

MacDonald clearly did not, and as clearly did not know why it should matter that he did.

Breadalbane said, “The bitch I have in my kennel is meant for a better dog.”

MacDonald’s hand went to his dirk. “Good
Christ
, Campbell—” But the taut hand moved away again, albeit the fingers trembled; he was as angry as a man might be, as the earl had intended, but was cognizant of his place, of his name, of the name of the man who baited him, and decidedly disinclined to start a fight that would lead to a war his clan could not win. He would not risk Letters of Fire and Sword, and the breaking of MacDonalds as the MacGregors had been broken.

“There is little to lose,” the earl said, “of what is left to win. Glengarry. Glencoe. How will either of you stand against a united Scotland?”

“United under William? Or James?” The fury had passed, or was better controlled; MacDonald’s eyes were steady. “Or does it matter? To you.”

“It matters. But it will not be under kings.” The young man’s presumption had angered the earl more than he knew; he offered honest emotion in place of diplomacy. “Under the Master of Stair. Under the Earl of Breadalbane.”

The fine mouth curved. “The Earl of Argyll might have something to say of that, aye?”

“
He
is not here. I am. It is I who make this treaty.” The earl paused delicately. “Which all the chiefs have signed, as promise of an oath, save Glengarry and Glencoe.”

“Appin,” MacDonald blurted, and Breadalbane knew he had won.

“Ask,” he suggested, in perfect courtesy.

 

She sat under the light of a bloated moon, surrounded by the ruins of Achallader Castle. Time had softened the edges; grass overtook fallen bricks, lichen cloaked the cobbles, strangers had carried off anything of value so that only the bones remained. The flesh had fallen away in the aftermath of the raid. All that remained standing were three of four corners.

Her seat was a pile of brickwork, tilting slope-shouldered to one side. It was not a comfortable seat, but Cat did not want comfort; she was angry, very angry, wishing she were a man who might say what she thought, who might, in fact, challenge the man who injured her so.

She wanted very much to shout at the earl and tell him what she thought of men who used women, who relied upon a woman’s presence to manipulate other men. She had seen his eyes, heard the steel beneath the tone. Within his words, ostensibly of Scotland and of loyalty to his king—whichever king it might be—was a wholly separate conversation intended mostly for Dair MacDonald with a little left over for her, enough to punish her for presumption, to remind her of her place. She was angry for herself, but angrier for Dair.

And cognizant of a loss far greater than there should be, for something just begun.

Just begun? No
. Indeed, it had existed in her girlhood, in her childish dreams; in the memories of kindness, of gentleness and compassion, freely offered the enemy. In even the dismay that he had seen her as Robert Stewart presented her, sodden with mud and horse-piss, with the smell of whisky about her from that which she had spilled so she need not serve MacDonald.

Need not serve
him;
but had she known it was he, she would have served him gladly. He was deserving of that, even as MacDonald, for being honest with the lass.

And now? Loss. The ending of something not so newly begun, though perhaps it was new in
his
eyes; he was a man, and grown, and with lasses aplenty, no doubt; he had said something of that, of experience. And that experience had seen she was different that day before the shieling, when he had wanted to kiss a Campbell.

An ending, before a proper beginning. An ending to girlhood dreams and the beginning of adulthood, now stolen from her in the blade of Breadalbane’s words.

Dair knew, or had once known. She had told them in the shieling, Alasdair Og and Robert Stewart: that she was on her way to Kilchurn to visit Breadalbane. It had been Stewart who pieced it together, who declared she must be meant to marry one of the earl’s sons. Not John, he had said, because John was already wed. Therefore Duncan, whom Breadalbane detested despite his pedigree; but
then
it had not mattered what Dair MacDonald thought. There was nothing between them then but an enmity shaped of tradition, except what they overlooked. What they chose to overlook, because it was easier.

And overlooked it they had, choosing to do so, in spirit if not in words, though neither of them would acknowledge it to themselves or to one another.

It made a cruel sense, the ending. There was no future in it, no purpose to the madness. There could never be anything more than what their clans had sown, and the crop of acrimony was what she and Dair must reap.

There. It was said. Her loyalty declared.

Cat yet held the mirror. She raised it, turned it, looked into its glassy surface. The night behind her was dark; there was little illumination save the diffused glow of distant campfires and the moon overhead. The woman in the mirror was nothing more than a collection of blurred features leached stark and pale by tension, and the false brilliance of unshed tears.

It had not just begun, what Breadalbane ended, and was not easily reconciled. She could count the days, the years, all the meetings between them, and knew in no way did their infrequency influence significance.

She lowered the mirror and stared blindly at the encampment as tears ran down her face. “You pawkie bastard,” she said. “I am
pleased
they razed your castle.”

 

Dair wanted to go to Cat at once, to find her and tend her chancy temper as well as explain himself; he had invited her home to Glencoe without thought, without preparation, reacting to his heart and the tension of the moment. In this it was
his
thought, his will, not Jean’s, who wanted him then as he came first to Castle Stalker. . . as he wanted Cat now, in the ruins of Achallader, if for different reasons. For deeper, more honest reasons as well as requirements; companionship of the spirit as well as of the body.

But he knew he must not go to Cat. Not now, not so soon after the earl’s interruption. It was what Breadalbane no doubt expected, what Breadalbane probably planned for, and was therefore far too dangerous for Dair in his present mood. He did not anger easily, but the fire burned hot as Robbie Stewart’s once fully kindled.

But there was yet another thing for him to discuss, and with another man. Dair set out to broach it.

He wound his way through clansmen clustered around fires in tartan-clad companionship and went directly to the Appin Stewarts. They were snugged against the slope, content to pass the evening in talk and usquabae.
Ceol mor
had at last given way to subtle music, piping down the night.

Dair came to a halt at the fire. “Did you agree?” he demanded without preliminaries; without an invitation to bide a wee with them. “Good Christ, Robbie—did you
agree?”