Jennifer Roberson (31 page)

She burned with shame, with anger. Who was he to treat her so? How dared he suggest in any fashion that she did not, could not, rouse him?

Jean stilled abruptly. She had said it to him plainly, too plainly, perhaps: twenty-five, she said, admitting her age. Was she too old for him?

Have I lost my beauty?
Had she, in complacence, in neglect, damped the fire between them?

Dair owned no mirror; she had used his eyes, and those of other men, to know her appeal. But those eyes were gone, and the others of men who rode to Achallader with MacIain, and the glass she used otherwise was home at Castle Stalker.

“Lady Glencoe,” she murmured. “The mirror MacIain gave her, brought back from France.”

A small mirror, a lady’s mirror, meant to hang from a cord around a woman’s waist. It would do.

Jean Stewart got out of Dair’s bed and began to dress herself. By the time the sun was up she would look into the mirror and know again if she had won, or if she had lost.

 

Cat stared after Duncan, then looked beyond to the hoof-churned dust clouding the air, the detritus of departure.

MacIain was leaving. And taking with him all of his men, including his youngest son.

‘
Come with me
,’ he had said. ‘
Come home with me to Glencoe.
’ He had meant it. She was certain. She knew little of men save her brothers, her drunkard father and ambitious Breadalbane, but Dair MacDonald had never offered her anything save honesty and kindness.

Their enmity was banished. They had buried it between them by the fire the night before, in the skirl of
ceol mor
snooving into hearts and souls to root out the bone-bred hostility of Campbell and MacDonald—

And Robbie Stewart in the moonlight, speaking to her of his sister waiting for Dair in Glencoe.

Cat caught her breath, recollection shattered as abruptly and irreparably as her mother’s mirror. That Dair had replaced.

But Robbie Stewart was there yet, laughing at her in the darkness with bare feet planted and wide shoulders thrown back, the thick column of his throat rising inviolable from summer-soiled linen.

His sister in Glencoe. And Dair inviting her.

Stewart had made it plain:
‘A man might look, and a man might ask, and a man might take what is offered. . . but it doesna mean he will put the woman in his home out of his bed while he woos another into his plaid while he is out on the heather. ’

What did Dair mean to do? Set them at odds, her and Jean, and bed the winner? Grief rose up, and bitterness. It hurt so badly she choked. “Pawkie bastard,” she said. “God-cursed, pawkie bastard.” But even in her bitterness, even in her shame, Cat could not be certain which man she meant. It applied to all of them, equally: Breadalbane. Robert Stewart. And to Dair MacDonald.

 

Around John and Dair the tacksmen gathered, forming MacIain’s tail. It was for his sons to do as well, with no protest uttered. The laird himself, incongruous on his small garron, was setting out already. It was expected everyone else of Glencoe would follow immediately. Their only loyalty lay with their laird.

Certainly not with a Campbell, be she woman or no.

It was bitterly painful. “John—”

“Dinna do it, Alasdair.”

“I can catch up.”

“No.” John grasped his arm again and jerked him back roughly. “Christ, man, I ken what you’re feeling—but would you shame him before them all? Before Breadalbane?”

“I canna just
go
—”

“If she has any sense at all, she’ll ken what has happened.”

She had sense, aye. And wit. And the tongue to use it. But she was a Campbell, and deserving of explanation lest she believe him lying to her.

A gillie brought up two garrons. John took the reins and thrust one set into Dair’s hands. “Dinna be a fool,” he snapped, and swung up onto his mount with a flare of kilt and plaid. “You are Maclain’s son.”

It was honor or indictment, depending on one’s view. Bitterly Dair arranged his reins and hurled himself onto the garron’s back, not caring of the disarray in plaid and kilt, nor the testiness of his head. The bottle was empty; he tossed it toward a gillie. “I’ll go to Chesthill,” he declared. “Into Glenlyon’s lands, if ’tis what it takes.”

John’s mouth jerked flat. “He hanged you once,” he said. “Will you give him a second chance?”

Before Dair could answer, the heir to all of Glencoe set his garron after their father. But John knew nothing of temptation, nothing of the conflict, the desperate, newborn yearning. His Eiblin was home in Glencoe. Cat Campbell was here, with the earl.

Dair slammed bare heels into the garron’s ribs so hard the animal started in surprise. “Christ,” he muttered viciously, “he’ll have me castrated, aye?—so as not to soil his seed with the taint of Campbell blood!”

Maclain, his son knew, could spill Campbell blood. But he would not welcome it as a woman, and Breadalbane’s niece, in MacDonald lands.

 

Cat stood at the remains of the MacDonald fire. Burned-out now, burned to ash in the daylight, as impotent as her anger. But she did not doubt buried beneath was a glimmer of ember that could be coaxed to kindle again into flame, even as her anger might flare again into grief.

They were gone, the MacDonalds, vacating Achallader and the promise of peace. Breadalbane had his treaty, though lacking two signatures.

Cat looked up.
Just
gone, the MacDonalds, so recently departed they left dust in their wake, settling now to the ground, drifting on the draft of air caused by hasty horses.

She could see naught of them save the glint of their weaponry, the colors of their tartan bleeding together into distance. And heard the piping of
ceol mor
fit to raise the spirits of men setting out to war.

A single horse, abruptly, burst free of the encampment, scattering clansmen who, in their startlement, damned the rider to hell. And then Cat saw it was not a single rider, but two on one horse; and the one riding pillion clutched the man in the saddle while her lank yellow hair tumbled down around her shoulders.

Marjorie Campbell of Lawers. And Duncan in the saddle, riding hastily after MacDonalds.

Or not
after
them, as an enemy. Nor to join them as a friend. But to appear as two tardy MacDonalds riding hard to catch up to the others.

How better a way to elope with a woman underneath the imperious nose of the man most definitively opposed?

“Oh, Duncan,” Cat murmured, watching the flag of Marjorie’s hair. And then she began to grin. “Aye, ”she said, laughing, “Poke a stick in his eye for us both!”

But the laughter died away as Duncan abruptly hesitated, reining in frenziedly as a mounted MacDonald wheeled and broke free of the others. The confrontation was immediate—and as immediately dismissed. The lone MacDonald, no woman riding pillion, came at full gallop toward the ash-clotted fire. Beyond him Duncan went on with Marjorie clinging still.

She knew the eyes, the face; loved the bonnie grin, with white teeth a’gleaming.

He scalped himself of his bonnet and tossed it to her even as he reined the gape-mouthed garron to a haphazard halt. “No proper Scot goes out without his bonnet,” he declared. “I’ll be back for it, aye?”

And left her standing there in the dust of his delivery, clutching the hostage bonnet as he spun the garron around and galloped back again toward his father.

Home, to Glencoe.

 

On the thirtieth day of June in the year 1691, according to the copy John Hill read repeatedly, all save two of the lairds meeting with Breadalbane signed the Treaty of Achallader. It was but a temporary measure, the governor knew, and would not result in the lasting peace King William desired. What it did, in fact, was give credit to Breadalbane for bringing about the very thing Hill had argued for—but also time in which such men as the Master of Stair, who was with the king in Flanders, to prepare for rebellion.

The balance was delicate, too delicate for Scotland. In ignorance, a foreign-born king sought to use such men against those he perceived as enemy; in full knowledge, men such as Stair, as Breadalbane sought to pervert the strength, the wild and stubborn courage that defined Scotland’s heart.

Hill knew he had failed. It was a matter of time before he was removed; he suspected his appointment would last only so long as Stair and Breadalbane paid lip service to peace.

It was not a new thought. He was a disposable man with no connections of any substance, no familial grace. He could die in the Highlands and no one would know—or he could kill in the Highlands, and have his name cursed forever.

He looked again at the copy of the treaty sent the day before. Simple words of complex promise, and signatures that bound souls. But only so long as such men as Coll MacDonald of Keppoch and Robert Stewart of Appin, intemperate and arrogant both, agreed to be bound by empty promises and equally empty purses.

MacIain had sworn nothing, nor had Glengarry. And Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, thinking twice and thrice, had withdrawn his support.

They would honor no conditions. To them, there was no treaty. It gave them the freedom to do as they would, and would in fact create the reason for William to levy such punishment as he desired.

As he was
told
to desire, by Stair and Breadalbane.

 

The blow, when it came, split his lip, cracked a tooth, and set Dair’s head to ringing even as he staggered. Sunlight filled his vision, too much sunlight all at once, and then the second blow landed with enough selective force to knock him off his feet. He measured his length on the ground, aware vaguely of a rock grinding into his spine, but more aware of the silence surrounding him save for his father’s breathing.

He had expected it. He had known from the moment he decided to risk the hasty delivery of his bonnet what the result would be. So he did not immediately rise again but sat up slowly, blinking away the shards of blackness floating in his vision.

Dair discovered his nose was bleeding sluggishly. He spat out blood as well as a piece of tooth and chanced a glance at his father.

The imperious gesture from outstretched hand brooked no hesitation. Dair got to his feet.

“Are you contrite?” MacIain asked.

A wise man might say aye. But Dair was not so much unwise as he was honest. “I am not.”

“Fool,” MacIain declared and knocked him down again.

Dair might have preferred the punishment in private, but its cause was not a private matter. He had defied his father before all of the others, and thus they were entitled to witness the beating so they might understand even a laird’s son was subject to punishment when he transgressed MacIain’s wishes.

There was no shame in it, no humiliation. Dair might have wished it otherwise, but accepted the consequences. It was a duty to accept without question the discipline of his laird, as any other MacDonald would accept whatever the laird decreed.

He also might have wished MacIain’s fists were smaller.

Dair rolled painfully onto a hip and shoulder and spat again. Whisky would clean the cuts. Time would heal them. For the moment, he had to suffer whatever his father meted out.

“Up,” MacIain said.

Dair hesitated a moment, then got to his feet again. He was aware of all the eyes, but no man made a sound save beyond the clink of metal and tumbled stone as he shifted against the wind.

Beneath thick brows, MacIain’s eyes glittered. “Were you a lad, I’d skelp you,” he said. “I’d raise such weals on your arse you’d not sit for half a month. But you’re a man grown, aye?—and you make your own decisions. Even when ye ken what the result will be.”

Dair held his silence; it was expected of him. But he was supremely aware of everyone who watched, including his mother. They had come home to Glencoe from Breadalbane’s Achallader folly, and the public punishment of Alasdair Og was the first order of business.

Cat herself was not the primary reason for punishment, nor was her identity. That he had left his father’s tail to return, however briefly, to Breadalbane’s encampment was tantamount to treason, and worth a skelping. But his behavior, if not the beating, would cause talk regardless, and word would go around that the laird’s youngest son had eyes for a Campbell lass.

To Glencoe lasses, it was insult. In that lay more punishment, that he dared to waste himself on a Campbell when there were MacDonald women.

Dair grimaced.
And meanwhile a Stewart in my bed
. . . He had looked for Jean as the first blow fell. Surely she would be there. Unless she had slipped away as soon as the beating began, desiring an explanation of his own mouth instead from those of others.

He would sooner take the beating than explain the truth to Jean. And that, Dair knew, was the true punishment.

“Faugh!” MacIain, in deep disgust, turned on his heel. It was the signal; those who had gathered began to disperse, men meeting wives, lads meeting lasses, children reunited with the clansmen all come home. Even John deserted him, catching Young Sandy into his arms as he walked back with black-haired Eiblin toward the house he had built.

It left Dair, and his mother. Who waited until all were gone, then came to him in silence with linen for his face.

When he was clean, when he could manage the smile against the pain in his head, he offered it to her freely: twisted wry a little, acknowledging his folly.

“Here,” she said. “There is more, aye?” And took the soiled linen, gently blotting away the last of the blood. She eyed him critically, “ ’Tis stopping on its own. Will you come in, then?”

He looked beyond her to the house in which his parents lived; in which he and John had lived until building their own dwellings down the glen a way. “I’ll go to Jean,” he said. “I owe her an explanation.”