The Campbell Trilogy (93 page)

The smile that curved his mouth was about as warm as the icy mountaintops of the Cairngorms that surrounded them in the dark of winter. “Some things never change,” he said matter-of-factly.

But he had.

She stared into the face that was at once heartbreakingly familiar and completely different. The youth had become a man. If anything, the passage of time had only served to make him more attractive—something she
would have thought impossible. The black hair and blue eyes had always been a striking combination, but with age his boyish features had become more sharply defined and chiseled. He wore his hair shorter now—the soft waves that had fallen to his jaw had been cropped to just past his ears. The deeply tanned skin had been weathered by the elements and nicked by war, yet it only served to make him more brutally masculine—imposing, almost dangerous.

Despite his undeniable appeal, nothing stirred inside her. Looking at him she didn’t feel anything. He’d killed what was between them long ago.

“We don’t have much time,” he said. “The shot will have been heard.” He shook his head. “I can’t believe you shot me.”

He was trying not to show how much pain he was in and his mouth was quirked, revealing the dimple in his left cheek. She sucked in her breath, stunned by the aching familiarity. By the reminder. Her heart pounded in a hard panic as the force of everything she had to lose by his return came crashing down on her. “Why are you here, Duncan?”

“I came back to prove my innocence.” He looked at her. “I need your help.”

He held his face impassive, but she knew how much those words had cost him.

“Why would I help you? I thought I betrayed you?” She couldn’t keep the twinge of bitterness from her voice.

Nothing flickered on his expression. “And I thought you claimed otherwise?” he challenged.

He sagged backward, falling from his knees to the ground, but she made no move toward him. Any compassion she might have felt for shooting him paled beside the danger his return could bring. He’d nearly destroyed her once before, he would never have the opportunity to do so again.

And now it wasn’t just her life at stake.

Her eyes narrowed. “Now you wish to listen to me?” She laughed harshly. “You are ten years too late for that. You should never have come back, Duncan. The only thing waiting for you is a noose. And I’ll be happy to help them put it around your neck myself.”

Ten Years Earlier

Stirling Castle, Stirlingshire, late summer 1598

Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Jeannie Grant stood between her father and aunt in the middle of the great hall of Stirling Castle, feeling the tension gradually ease from her neck and shoulders. A short while later she even found herself smiling—
really
smiling—at one of the courtiers she’d been introduced to and realized that she was actually having fun.

Had she worried for nothing?

When her father, the Chief of Grant of Freuchie, had insisted she accompany him to answer King James’s summons, she’d resisted, anticipating the worst. Veiled looks. Sly remarks. Whispers like the ones that had followed her when she was a girl.

But her mother’s fall from grace had happened eight years ago and many, many scandals ago. With the inevitableness of dawn, new misfortune had risen to take its place. Indeed, they’d arrived earlier to find the castle buzzing about one of the queen’s ladies in waiting who’d been sent from the court in disgrace.

Jeannie didn’t know the circumstances, but she could never take pleasure in another’s pain. She’d spent almost half her life living under the shadow of her mother’s scandal. Janet Grant had run off with a “BloodyEnglishman”
(her father didn’t separate the two) when Jeannie was just nine years old.

She’d learned all too well how scandal and gossip engulfed everyone they touched in misery—even the innocent. Especially the innocent.

With her father and aunt locked in conversation with an old acquaintance, Jeannie took advantage of the free moment to catch her breath. She looked around the glittering hall, the massive room crammed to the wooden rafters with colorfully clad courtiers—a veritable feast of silk and satin for the eye. Her mouth twisted. So much for the “small gathering” her father had promised.

She gazed toward the crowd at the far end of the room, still waiting for her first look at King James and Queen Anne. But thus far she’d been unable to catch a wide enough opening between the silk wall of hooped skirts and puffy slops worn by the courtiers surrounding Scotland’s royal couple.

Above the din of voices she could just make out the gentle strum of the lute and the haunting melody of her favorite song—despite being written by an Englishman—“Greensleeves.” The familiar words floated through her head:

She fluttered her fan a few times in front of her flushed cheeks, stirring the stagnant, warm air. Four enormous chandeliers hung from the ceiling, laden with masses of candles, casting a magical glow across the room. But as beautiful as all those candles were, they also made the room hot. Still, the heat and noise only added to the feeling of excitement surging through the hall.

“And this must be your daughter,” a man said.

Automatically, Jeannie turned to greet the newcomer; her gaze meeting the twinkling gray eyes of a distinguished-looking gentleman of middling years, perhaps a few years older than her father’s eight and forty. He was short, not much taller than her handful of inches over five feet, and built like a barrel. His white hair had thinned and receded up top, but he more than made up for the loss on his face. His impressive mustache was long and thick, curling up into two perfect points on the ends. He reminded her of a sea lion, albeit without the gruffness. The jovial smile on his face belied any thought of that.

“Aye,” her father said. “My eldest daughter, Jean.” Her father turned to her. “Daughter, I’d like you to meet an old friend, the Laird of Menzies.”

Menzies. Castle Menzies was in Perthshire, near where her mother had grown up.

“Not so old that I can’t admire a beautiful lass,” the laird said with a chuckle, taking her gloved hand and offering a gallant bow. He shook his head and said softly, “I’d recognize that hair anywhere.”

Instinctively, Jeannie stiffened, bracing herself for what was coming next. A comment about her hair was invariably followed by a knowing shake of the head and the inevitable, “just like her mother.” As if red was some kind of mark for a spirited and adventuresome—if occasionally ill-conceived—temperament.

The Laird of Menzies’s remark had not just affected her; her father tensed as well.

But to her surprise, rather than a subtle barb, the old laird said, “Your mother could light up a room with her beauty and her smile. Such energy, such light. She was a breath of fresh air, your mother.” He smiled with a wistful shake of his head. “I was sad to hear that she was gone.” He met Jeannie’s gaze and the crinkle around his
eyes deepened. “I’ve never seen her like since, but I see you have some of that energy about you as well.”

Jeannie could detect no animus in his voice to suggest a different meaning. When she looked into his eyes all she could see was kindness.

She blushed and mumbled a quick thank you. It had been so long since someone said anything nice about her mother that she was at a loss as to what to say. So often reminded of the bad, she forgot the good.

The memories of her mother were faint, coming to her only in flashes. The tinkle of her laugh. The scent of rosewater and the French wine of Champagne that she loved. The thick auburn hair so like Jeannie’s own blazing red in the candlelight. The beautiful ball gowns that would have made England’s Queen Elizabeth curse with envy.

Janet Grant had loved the young King James’s court at Holyrood Palace and disliked returning to the inhospitable “wilds” of the Highlands—so she avoided it. She’d been like a beautiful butterfly flitting in and out of Jeannie’s life.

Flitting, that was a good word for it. Her mother never followed a path, only where her fancy led. She fancied herself in love with Grant, the Laird of Freuchie, so she’d married him. Four children later, with the husband she’d loved no longer dancing attendance on her, she fancied herself in love with the BloodyEnglishman—for he had no other name in their household—so she’d run off with him.

For Jeannie, the pain of her leaving never lessened. It didn’t help that her mother had quickly regretted it. The damage had been done. Donald Grant refused to take her back. The love he bore his wife could not stand in the face of the blow she’d dealt to his pride. Despite their Norman forbearers, her father was every bit a
proud Highland chief and forgiveness was not in his vernacular.

Her beautiful, impetuous mother had died less than a year later in a carriage accident—the result of a madcap drunken wager—leaving Jeannie, the eldest, to pick up the pieces and burdened by a legacy of the danger of impulsivity.

“Jean is nothing like her mother,” her father said sharply.

Realizing his misstep, the Laird of Menzies stammered an apology and moved away.

Jeannie had heard the note of defensiveness in her father’s voice and tried not to let it upset her. Her father might have insisted that she stop hiding in the countryside and join him at court, but it didn’t mean he wasn’t worried about the prospect of setting her free in the environment her mother had loved so much. The presence of her dour aunt as chaperone attested to that.

She did not doubt that her father loved her, but sometimes she would catch him watching her and she would see something in his gaze. It was almost as if he was holding his breath, waiting for her to make a mistake.

Worse, she knew that his fear was not completely unfounded. When an idea struck her, she felt it so strongly it was hard to dislodge. It always seemed right at the time. Like when she’d hidden that horrid Billy Gordon’s clothes when he was swimming in the lake so he was forced to walk home naked or when she was six and decided to walk to Inverness because there was a shop that sold confections she liked or the time she’d served her father’s best claret to her poppets and the hounds had passed out drunk.

But she didn’t do things like that anymore.

She wanted to ease the worried look on her father’s face, to assure him that he spoke true, that she was nothing
like her mother. That nothing would ever induce her to be so rash.

But doing so would only cause him more pain, so Jeannie kept her promises to herself and changed the subject.

The wait was at an end. The Laird of Grant had arrived.

Duncan Campbell eyed the crowd that had spilled out into the courtyard, effectively blocking the entrance to the great hall. But it did not deter him. Though he’d rather muck the castle stables than suffer through another evening of court entertainment—which too often meant the drama taking place off the stage and not on it—he had a job to do.

He forged his way through the throng as purposefully as a
birlinn
cutting across the waves. More than one young woman saw him coming and stumbled “accidentally” into his path, murmuring apologies while casting him an inviting glance. That a few looked at him with something more than a dalliance in mind was a new experience for him. News traveled swiftly at court, and word of his being named captain of his father’s guard and keeper of Castleswene had not escaped notice. Apparently for some, his new position was enough to blur the stain of his birth.

But no manner of enticement, no matter how bold, would steer him from his course. He’d spent the past few days cooling his heels, waiting for Grant to arrive and now that he was finally here Duncan was anxious to proceed. His father, the powerful Campbell of Auchinbreck, had sent him to court to persuade the Chief of Grant to join forces with the king and the Campbells in the impending battle with the Earl of Huntly. His father was giving him a chance to further prove himself, and Duncan had no intention of squandering the opportunity.
So he disentangled himself with a polite smile, before purposefully continuing on his way.

Upon entering the hall, a wave of heat and the sickly sweet stench of sweat masked with too much perfume hit him hard. He grimaced. What he wouldn’t give for a fresh breath of heathery Highland air.

He scanned the room, searching for Grant. As on the battlefield, his prodigious height proved useful and his gaze traveled unobstructed over the sea of swarming courtiers.

His younger brother Colin dragged up beside him, having had a bit more difficulty in navigating through the crowd. “Damn it, Duncan, slow down. Gad brother, you must be blind. Lady Margaret’s lovely breasts were wedged so firmly against your arm, she was practically serving them up on a platter.”

Duncan’s gaze slid down to his brother’s. At eight and ten few things interested Colin more than a pair of lovely breasts. Hell, at one and twenty Duncan wasn’t altogether disinterested himself. He arched a brow. “I saw them.”