Jennifer Roberson (5 page)

Dair knew better. John loved his wife and she returned the favor. His brother would no more think of bedding another woman than Eiblin would consider removing his ears.

He cast a sidelong glance at his father, then looked across to Robert Stewart. The heir of Appin, smiling faintly, stared back with a hard, speculative look in clear blue eyes. Then slowly, with measured movements, the new-named compatriot lifted his cup to Dair and tipped his bonneted head in a quiet, respectful salute that was nonetheless as much a challenge as acknowledgment.

 

The Glen Lyon Campbells, despite their name, despite their father’s title, were not a wealthy clan. Well-worn wool trews were passed down from Robbie to a succession of brothers: first to Jamie, then to Dougal, lastly to Colin. To Cat he left nothing; she was a lass, and he a lad.

Therefore Cat stole an old pair of threadbare trews nearly worn through in the seat, cut off the ragged hems, and snugged a belt around her waist to keep them up. She was taller than Dougal and Colin, respectively sixteen and fifteen, and exactly the same as Jamie at seventeen, who was himself nearly as tall as eighteen-year-old Robbie. She added soiled shirt, mud-stained plaid, a bonnet to hide her hair, and one of her father’s old nicked dirks tucked through the leather belt wrapped twice around her waist.

“Go without me, will you?” She stuffed tightly plaited braids into the bonnet, from which she had removed the badge. She knew enough for that; in the moonlight the silver would glint and betray her presence. “Plan all you like, aye?—but you willna leave
me
behind! ”

The laird was gone but three days, and already they planned a raid. Cat approved of that well enough “—’tis time Glen Lyon cows are retrieved from MacDonald lands!—” but she
dis
approved of her brothers leaving her out. She was a Campbell, too.

The lone candle in its clay cup guttered, shedding wan and fitful light in the tiny room that was not much more than a closet, containing a narrow bed, a chest with hasps and hinges verdigrised with age, a three-legged table (once there had been a fourth) wedged into a corner, and a single rickety stool.

It was nearly time to go. Cat studied her face critically in the small mirror she retrieved from the chest. The glass was cracked through the middle, but its grime-etched ivory frame held the halves together. Helen Campbell had bequeathed few things Cat wanted, since she preferred her father’s pipes, dirks, and claymores, but the mirror occasionally came in handy.

Cat laughed softly. “Even though ’twas was meant for a lady, and not a cattle-lifter!”

She stilled abruptly, twisting her head to listen. From downstairs she heard a sound she could not identify, then muffled conversation. She could decipher none of the words, but recognized two of her brothers by the breaking of their voices. Jamie and Dougal would sound like men in a matter of weeks, but for now they were caught somewhere between boyhood and adulthood.

She scowled, knowing full well what they were about. They believed her innocent of their intent, but only a deaf man could miss their whisperings, and a blind fool the furtive, excited glances Dougal and Colin had exchanged all day. Robbie and Jamie were better at it, but she could read them also.

She heard the rattle of the latch on the front door, the throttled exclamation of someone who had, apparently, put a foot where he shouldn’t, and the brief cuff of remonstration undoubtedly from Robbie, who knew better than any of them what risks they undertook. For all she detested her eldest brother—usually—Robbie was not completely witless.

Usually.

Cat grinned fiercely at her distorted reflection and hissed the ancient battle cry of her clan. “
Chruachan!
” She was above all a Campbell. “With brothers or no, I’ll bring home to Glen Lyon a cow!”

In Edinburgh, Robert Campbell of Glen Lyon sat rigidly in the chair, waiting for the Earl of Breadalbane. The room was small, dark, sparsely furnished.
Much like my cousin’s soul!

No whisky. No pipes. No dice. Nothing with which to content himself, to occupy his thoughts, his restless hands and spirit, while he waited on the man who had assumed Clan Campbell in the executed Earl of Argyll’s permanent absence.

He pressed fingertips deeply into his fleshy sockets. The eyes beneath wrinkled lids were overweary, protesting the journey from Glen Lyon; the hours without sleep; the smutty atmosphere of the earl’s room illuminated by a single sooted lamp.

“Christ Jesus, will he keep me all night?” Glenlyon slid more deeply into the chair and chewed obsessively at a ragged fingernail until the nail itself was vanquished, and the flesh around it bled. When that finger grew too painful he began on another. It was not the nail or cuticle he desired so much to destroy, but the tension in his soul that so blatantly defied the calmness of demeanor he wished to display before the man, before this man of all men, to whom he had, in his desperation, in despair and helplessness, sworn the oath of
comhairl’taigh.

The latch clicked. Hastily Glenlyon roused, wiped bloodied, damp fingers on the journey-soiled kilt, and pulled his coat into order.
Should have taken more time
—A hand passed quickly across his head restored haphazard neatness to his hair; with effort he summoned decorum and dignity to match that of Grey John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane.

The earl came in and shut the door. He carried under one arm a leather-wrapped casket hinged with beaten bronze. The high arch of his nose displayed the shape of the bone beneath, and the rectitude of a man who trusts himself to be profoundly correct in all things.

Glenlyon rose, thrust out his jaw, and turned handily so that his plaid swung. In a perfect courtesy he inclined his head to acknowledge the earldom if not the man who held it. “Cousin.”

The latch rattled again as Breadalbane released it. “We shall be undisturbed,” he said evenly, “so you may speak out honestly with no worry of being overheard. ’Tis family business, this, as well as a clan concern.”

Glenlyon waited tensely as the earl moved to his desk and sat down. A deft gesture indicated he was to take his seat; after a pause Glenlyon did so. He pointedly eyed the decanter on the sideboard.

Clearly Breadalbane saw it, yet he extended no offer, no hospitality beyond a chair, his roof—and the honor of his presence.
Good Christ—he denies hospitality to a kinsman?
Glenlyon clenched his teeth.
Or just to me?

The earl set forth the casket between them, then folded slender fingers atop the wooden desk. His gray eyes were steady, belying no intent beyond a quiet conversation. “Have you spent it all, Robin?”

Glenlyon began to perspire, though the room was cool. Breadalbane, when he fell back on familiarity, was at his most dangerous. “I paid my debts.”

The earl registered the belligerence. His answering smile was slight. “Of course. You’re an honorable man, aye?”

For all it was couched in gentleness, the blade struck keenly. Campbell’s armpits tingled.
He knows the silver’s gone
—
all five thousand
—And none of it spent on debts.

Glenlyon tensed as the earl’s water-colored eyes took on a wholly unanticipated sparkle. “I was thinking of Jean Campbell just before I came in. A redoubtable woman, your mother—and well worth the wake ye hosted for her.”

Wary of kindness, Glenlyon picked his way with care. “I willna deny it. ”

“And they still tell the tale of the stone.” Breadalbane’s smile broadened. “How you wouldna let the MacGregors or Appin Stewarts beat a Campbell and sent for that herdsman to defeat them.”

The remnants of tension vanished. Glenlyon laughed in relief. “Good Christ, no! That pawkie MacGregor thought no one could match his throw!”

“Through the tree . . .”

“Through the
farthest
tree; through the crotch . . . but I sent for MacArthur.”

“Who came at a run—”

“—wi’out doffing bonnet or plaid—”

“—and hurled the stone farther yet.”

“A brawlie man, MacArthur!”

Breadalbane laughed. “And in celebration you didna bury your mother that day after all, but broached more whisky and bade them celebrate again.”

“The feat deserved it!”

“And so she wasna buried until the day after that.” The earl nodded as the flesh by his eyes creased. “No one went home speaking poorly of your hospitality.”

“They wouldna.” Pride inflated Glenlyon’s chest. “No wake ever was like it before or since, nor any woman the like of Jean Campbell.”

“Well mourned by sixteen children.” Breadalbane’s narrow mouth below the prominent nose stretched a fraction more. “A fine woman—a
brawlie
woman—my aunt. She would have been proud of you then, Robin . . . but no’ so proud now.”

Tension flooded back.
His knife cuts sideways, snooving through my ribs!
Glenlyon swallowed down the dry lump in his whiskyless throat and sat more rigidly in his chair. Mutilated fingers pressed new folds into his kilt. “Say your words, John. You ken I’ve come all this way to hear them, aye?”

“I ken.” Breadalbane undid the hasp on the casket and lifted back the lid. From the interior he took a folded paper. “Not my words.
Your
words, Robin. The oath you swore yourself.”

He had anticipated discussion, a hint of sternness, but not abject humiliation. It stung. “Good
Christ,
John, I’m no bairn to be treated this way—”

“Comhairl’taigh.
”Breadalbane’s tone was gentle, his precise enunciation lacking in hostility. His Highland dialect faded into more precise speech. “You did confess before the Provosts of Perth and Edinburgh, Robin, that your way of life had brought your estates and family into ruin. And that you alone were incapable of saving them.”

Pressure built up in Glenlyon’s chest.
I’ll burst with it . . .
like a bagpipe overfilled, spilling out his anger, his shame, his bitterness in a cry that would shake the rafters of Breadalbane’s fine town house.

Breadalbane said, “You did confess so, aye?”

On a hissing breath Glenlyon admitted, “I did so confess.”

Breadalbane observed him in something akin to grave sympathy. He stroked his narrow top lip, then proceeded to read aloud the words which now burned away the last vestiges of his kinsman’s dignity.

Glenlyon stared straight ahead. His neck was a cairn of granite mortared into place around the iron of his spine.

Lengthy moments of the facile reading, condemning stupidity. At last, silence. And then Glenlyon barked a sharp, ironic laugh. “He is dead, is Argyll, and well beyond such oaths be they his own
or
mine!”

The earl did not immediately answer. In the rift between them Glenlyon heard the rattle of unexpected rain against mullioned windows. It would be a wet walk back to the tavern.

Breadalbane’s posture did not alter, nor did his expression. “I am not dead.”

“Good Christ, John—”

“Campbell or no, I will pay no more debts.”

Glenlyon thrust himself from the chair. “Then I’ll see to them myself! D’ye think I want your silver? I’ll tend my own business—”

Breadalbane, quoting, cut him off. “ ‘—
how easy I may be circumvented and deceived in the management of my affairs—’
”

“Then I’ll sell all I own in the glen, you pawkie bastard, so that henceforth not a single blade of grass will belong to a Campbell—”

Tears threatened to wrest away what small portion of dignity remained to him. “Christ, John, you leave me no choice!”

Breadalbane put down the paper. It crackled in underscore to the pressure of decisive fingers. “Whisky leaves you no choice. Dice leave you no choice.
Weakness of character
leaves you no choice.”

“I once led an army for you—”

“I ken it well, Robin. But you’ve indebted your family since. Getting no satisfaction of you, the men who hold your bonds have come to me. To the head of Clan Campbell. To the man who holds your oath of
comhairl’taigh.
”For the first time a trace of contempt edged the earl’s tone. “I’ve paid them so many times, ye ken, with none of it paid back. Well, I will not pay them this time.”

The redoubled effort to stop tears of bitter frustration made it difficult to breathe. “Then I’ll do as you make me do; blame yourself, John! I’ll sell all but what Helen brought me.” Glenlyon snatched from the chair his fallen bonnet. He yanked it onto his head. “And you’ve no hospitality to deny a man whisky!”

Breadalbane did not rise. “And you’ve no honor, to deny your family the legacy of Glenlyon. But there may be, there may yet be, a way to restore it . . . if what I work toward comes to fruition.” Then his voice cracked in the room. “Sit down, Robin!”