Jennifer Roberson (28 page)

Robert Stewart, sprawled inelegantly across battered turf with his head propped on a braced elbow, offered detached consternation. “You are shaking, MacDonald . . . and verra black in the face.”

It took effort not to shout. And that made him shake all the more. “I dinna care
what
color my face is, and I am shaking because I’d as lief put a dirk in Breadalbane as spend another night on his land.”

“Fletcher land, once,” Robbie observed mildly. “A Campbell stole it from them. . . but I wouldna say
now
’tis so much to claim; there is no more roof, or walls against the wind.” He swung a boiled-leather bottle in the general direction of the castle ruins. “He’s no cause to thank you, has the pawkie earl.”

“To thank
MacIain,
” Dair clarified. “You and I were in Glen Lyon when they burned Achallader.”

“Aye, so we were, collecting cows and other plunder.” Stewart hoisted the leather bottle. “Usquabae,” he explained. “By your face, you need it.”

“I dinna want
whisky,
”Dair said plainly, “I want the truth of you. Did you agree to sign the treaty?”

Robbie sat up. In firelight his hair shone gold. “ ’Tis a Stewart concern,” he said. “I thought you were MacDonald.”

Dair spared a glance for Robbie’s men. They looked at him briefly, then away to the fire, to their whisky, to their comrades, avoiding his eyes entirely. He knew most of them; they had gone on raids with their laird’s son, gone to war with their laird’s son. They would defend his life, but they knew Dair MacDonald; they would let him say what he meant to say and keep themselves out of it.

“MacDonald,” Dair said. “So I am, aye? Robbie—” He sat down abruptly, too angry to stand without taking action, and accepted the proffered whisky. With some violence he tilted the bottle to his mouth, drank much of the contents, then glared at his friend. “How could you, man? He is of two tongues, is Breadalbane, promising a thing to one man, and a second thing to another.”

“I havena sworn for him yet.”

Dair looked at him sharply. “He said you had.”

Robbie muttered an imprecation and gestured; one of his gillies tossed over another boiled-leather bottle. “ ’Tis precipitate of him—but aye, I think I will put my name to this treaty. D’ye see a way out of it?”

“Aye—dinna
do
it!”

Robbie drank deeply, then wiped a glistening smear of liquor from his upper lip. “ ’Tisn’t so easy as that.”

Dair swallowed whisky, welcoming the burn. “No? You dinna
sign,
Robbie; that doesna seem gey hard.”

Stewart eyed him assessively. “Have more. Dinna spill it, now; you’re still shaking, man.” He grinned in delight. “ ’Twas always you telling
me
no’ to be so angry. . . Christ, MacDonald, ’tis a shame we’re no’ in battle! You’d hew down a hundred men!”

“Fifty,” Dair said darkly. “Dinna exaggerate.” Then the anger boiled up again. “Christ, the bluidy Campbell. . .” He wanted badly to speak of Cat, of Breadalbane’s deliberate insults, to share his rage and the true reason for it. But he did not because he knew better, even in his anger: Jean’s brother would hold no sympathy for a man who was upset because of another woman. “I’m unfit for company. . .” He held the bottle out. “Here, have it back, aye?—I’ll go.”

“Sit,” Robbie said. “What will MacIain do?”

“MacIain?” It distracted him. He relaxed muscles tensed to rise, settling back onto his buttocks. “He isna pleased by this meeting.”

“Well, no, I wouldna think so,” Robbie agreed mildly. “Not MacIain, aye?—he’s no love of Grey John Campbell.”

“Have you?” He had drunk too quickly with no food to mitigate it; the fire in his belly now threatened his head. “Has any man here cause to love Breadalbane?”

“Och, the Campbells might. . .” Robbie grinned and made a placating gesture to ward off sputtered protest. “But it isna a question of love. ’Tis survival.” Humor dissipated; his expression was pensive as he set aside his bottle. “There is that fort at Inverlochy. . . and an army in the hills—”

With withering disdain, “I have eyes, ye ken, and I live in Glencoe; I’ve seen it for myself.”

Stewart judiciously chose to overlook it. “Then ye ken what we’d face, were we to go against William’s forces.”

Dair raised his bottle. With deliberate derision he said, “Those are no’ the words of the man who was at Killiecrankie.”

Robbie brightened. “You want to
fight
me—!”

“Not you specifically. But someone, aye; you seem the most fit for it . . . and God in Heaven kens I’ve wanted to before! ’Tis time we learned who is the better man.”

Stewart was delighted. Blue eyes kindled. “You would lose.”

“I dinna think so.”

“
Fou
or sober, you’d lose.”

Dair smiled with careful condescension. “I dinna think so.”

“ ’Tis the usquabae.”

“Does it matter?”

“Och, but it lies, does usquabae . . . it convinces a man of his own superiority.” Robbie laughed at him. “I’d prefer you sober. I’d want you to remember the beating I gave you.”

Dair set down the bottle. His thighs tingled with tension. He trembled again, but no longer from anger. His body demanded release; if it was through a fistfight rather than lovemaking, he’d not debate the issue. “Well?”

“Tempting as it may be”—blue eyes were speculative—“no.” Robbie sighed and settled back on his elbow. “We are here for the purpose of peace.”

In deep disgust, Dair said, “Dinna sound so pious; you havena the makings of a priest, or a kirk minister either.”

Stewart grinned briefly, but it died away. “Killiecrankie is over. ’Twas two years ago. There is a fort now, near to Glencoe—and Appin isna so far from it, either.
Think,
man; which clans would see Livingstone and his army first? Which clans would meet with Governor John Hill first?”

“Robbie—”

“Let be,” Stewart said briefly. “Whatever the earl said, ’twas said of a purpose. Would you let him win? ’Twould be something of which to boast, to rouse Alasdair Og.”

Dair glared at him blackly. “Will you sign, then? For Appin?”

Robbie’s expression was solemn. “Before you shout at me—aye, I can see ’tis in your mind—you’d best ask your father what he intends to do. Then you may be shouting at us both.”

Dair shook his head. “He willna sign.”

“He has said so?”

“Breadalbane hasna spoken to him yet.”

“He told
you
he wouldna sign.”

“He told me he will hear what William’s lapdog has to say; ’tis why he came, after all.”

“Ah.” Robbie considered it. “Then by this time tomorrow night you may be telling me how sorry you are for your words.”

It provoked, as Stewart intended. “Glengarry isna so quick to agree, either, aye?”

“He told me that. The earl.” Robbie frowned, taking up his bottle again. “Appin isna so large—”

“Neither is Glencoe! D’ye think that would keep MacIain from following his conscience?”

Robbie sighed. “MacIain does as MacIain wants. . . I ken that, aye?”

Dair’s tone was deadly. “I never thought you were a sheep.”

The Appin Stewarts stilled; this promised a fight. But Robbie, notorious for his temper, remained unprovoked. He grinned. “You are surly when you are
fou
.”

“Christ, Robbie. . .” The anger had died; his temper never lasted. In its aftermath was a certain laxity of limb he attributed to whisky. Dair sighed and let himself go slack, stretching out on cool turf. “I canna believe him. Breadalbane. I canna believe his promises.” He gazed up at whisky-blurred stars. “I think MacIain is right: he is Willie’s man in Edinburgh, and Jamie’s in the Highlands.”

Robbie laughed. “MacIain says that?”

“He does.”

“Aye, well—his tongue has always been sharp as his dirk.” Robbie uprooted turf idly. “What d’ye mean to do with Jean?”

It was wholly unexpected. Slackness fled, replaced once more by tension. “Jean?”

“My sister,” Robbie reminded with elaborate precision. “The one you left in Glencoe.”

Dair shut his eyes. There were things he meant to say, but he could say none of them. His brain was muddled with whisky, his tongue too thick; what he needed to say, the explanation he wanted to make, required clarity. Robbie Stewart was not a man another man faced full of whisky. “Naught,” he said at last, knowing himself a coward.

Robbie grunted. “Aye, well. . .” He heaved himself to his feet. As Dair moved an elbow preparatory to rising, Stewart waved him back down. “No, no—dinna go. I’m only meaning to piss.” He poked a toe at Dair’s bottle. “Have more usquabae; your temper’s improving.”

Dair sat up as Robbie departed, intending to rise and go despite the invitation, but the world moved slowly around him in ways it was not meant. “No’ fit,” he muttered, as one of the Stewarts laughed.

Not fit at all. And Cat deserved better than a man in his cups swearing himself to her; she had seen that in her father. He would not offer the same.

Dair lay down again and draped a crooked arm across his face, shutting out the Highland moon. “Christ,” he murmured, thinking of Breadalbane; of Glenlyon, and a tree, and a rope around his neck.

Thinking also of Jean, and of Glenlyon’s daughter.

 

With cordial greetings dispersed like alms as he walked, and with only a few stops along the way to clap shoulders, grasp forearms, or to pass along a warm word, the Earl of Breadalbane moved steadily among his gathering to the fire in the lee of the hill. There he found the ragged remains of a beef haunch hanging lopsidedly on the wooden spit, and his son, but not his cousin’s daughter.

He paused at the edge of light. “Where is she?”

Duncan Campbell of Breadalbane, plaid stippled shiny with dollops of grease, was perched atop stone and turf with a horn cup clasped in equally greasy hands. He smiled blandly around a mouthful of meat. “Up there.”

The earl waited patiently; this was Duncan’s game.

“In the ruins.” Eventually Duncan swallowed and waved in casual indication toward the hill behind them. “She said she was of a mind to see the handiwork of a man who defeated you.”

Breadalbane sighed inwardly. In the midst of negotiations for a new Scotland, the ill-mannered daughter of an insignificant drunkard cousin, little more now than a bonnet-laird with so much of his lands owned by Murrays, was proving more troublesome than she had any right to be. “She was to remain here. I sent her to you.”

“She wasna of a mind to remain here.” Duncan, redepositing grease across one cheek by scratching at a midge bite, was clearly amused by the whole matter. “She arrived, scowled at me—she has a verra fierce scowl, ye ken, near as black as yours!—then went promptly away to the castle.” He glanced over his shoulder at the charred, skeletal remains looming atop the hill. “I never liked this castle. The MacDonalds did well by it.”

Breadalbane surpressed a comment that would mark him undignified. “Was there anything
else
she said?”

“Oh, aye. She called you a pawkie bastard.” Duncan grinned in unmitigated pleasure and gulped more whisky.

Now the earl was irritated. And also hungry. The remains of the beef haunch still laggardly dripping fat into a hissing and snapping fire set his belly to griping. “Where is Sandy? Has
he
gone up to the ruins?”

“Making water.” Duncan wiped away grease and whisky on the back of his wrist. His linen shirtsleeve was crusted. “Does he need your permission for that, too?”

“Duncan—” But the earl contained himself. “She will come back. She has no choice.”

“Och, I judge her a woman who will make a choice for herself even when there isna one.” Duncan shifted closer to the sizzling fire; it was the cusp of August, but nights were cool. “You treat us both as fools.”

“You
are
fools, the pair of you. Left to yourself, you would marry Marjorie Campbell of Lawers, who brings naught to the earldom—”

“Glenlyon’s daughter does?”

“—and Catriona Campbell, left to
her
self, would sleep with a MacDonald.” He was pleased to see that comment earned his son’s attention. “Aye, a Glencoe-man; ’twas why I sent her here, to save her from dishonor.”

“A MacDonald,” Duncan echoed thickly. “Which MacDonald?”

“Alasdair.” With his gillie not present, the earl made shift for himself. He took up a silver cup brought expressly for his use and poured it full of whisky, then knelt and drew his dirk to carve off a chunk of beef.

“No, not MacIain—Alasdair Og. His youngest son.” Breadalbane bit into his cooling meat, absently grateful he still had most of his teeth. Other men his age were not so fortunate. “But a MacDonald all the same, and of Glencoe.”

“ ‘The Gallows Herd,’ ” Duncan murmured. He was clearly astounded, which pleased the earl; it was not always a simple task to get honest emotion of his heir. “What was she doing with him?”

“Allowing herself to be seduced.” Breadalbane chewed meticulously—it was why he still had teeth, he believed—then washed it down with whisky. “Naught has come of it; you need no’ fear he bedded her before you.”

Duncan recoiled. “I dinna
mean
to bed her!”

“You dinna?”

“I mean to bed Marjorie. And I have.”

The earl dug out a meat string from his molars, studied it briefly, then flicked it into darkness. “Is she breeding?”

“I dinna ken!”

“Well, it doesna matter now. I will settle some silver on her if there’s a bastard.” He made himself more comfortable on a length of wool brought for the purpose of keeping his kilt unsoiled. “I’m to speak to Glencoe at dawn, and Glengarry. . . we’ll be finished here by tomorrow night. Then we’ll go back to Kilchurn—I’ll have to go on to London, to the queen and the Privy Council, and then on to Flanders to give the king and Stair my report—and you’ll wed Glenlyon’s daughter.”