Governor Hill did not answer. He had an entirely different opinion of the Campbell earl, whom he believed to be a man singularly dedicated to seizing the main chance for himself. For now Breadalbane spoke of treaties and peace; but Hill had heard rumors that from the other side of his mouth the earl, a Highlander himself, whispered of war to the chiefs.
“It will be left to you,” Mackay said. “ ’Twill be your task to bring the Highlanders to heel; the king has defeated the Irish at the River Boyne, but now there is another threat. A French fleet lies of Beachy Head and may invade . . . ’tis time I saw to soldiering instead of building forts.”
Hill would not be sorry to see Mackay go, though he murmured his regrets. Mackay was a Scot, but his long years of service abroad in the Scottish Brigade had painted over his nationalism with a more lurid dedication to William of Orange. He held his fellow Scot in contempt, while Hill admired the Highlander’s fiery pride and virulent traditionalist’s culture.
“If it be within my power to persuade the government to send me the meat they promised, as well as other necessities such as beds, of which we yet have none, I shall be content to do as I may here,” Hill said. “But leave me English in place of Scots, and all shall be well.”
“No.” Mackay shook his head. “You will have companies from Clan Grant and Clan Menzies—and four companies of Campbells from the Earl of Argyll’s regiment.”
Hill felt a twinge of uneasiness. “This is MacDonald country. To invite Campbells here—”
“This is land belonging to whoever is able to hold it,” Mackay interrupted disagreeably. “Across the loch are Camerons and Macleans; to the east lie Murrays and Menzies, with the Hendersons closer yet. And Campbells.” He glared up at the hill crowned with MacDonald tartan, sparking MacDonald steel. “They are cattle thieves, no more; let them all be hanged.”
Hill, no longer young, was decidedly nearsighted; he could not see the steel. But he knew it was there. Mildly he said, “If you hang a man for lifting cattle, you will have to hang half of Scotland.”
Mackay turned a congested face upon him. “I am a soldier! I know my duty!”
Hill did not dispute Mackay’s choler; he did not blame the man for his frustrations. “Indeed, our duty is to the king . . . but just now a plan for peace prevails in place of force.”
“Peace,” Mackay muttered. “ ’Twill delay the only means for subduing these savages.”
“I have had some experience of men such as these,” Hill began diffidently; he was not a man who sought confrontation or bombast. “A man keeping in his mind that these Highlanders are at once a proud and honorable people, but wholly reasonable when the way seems clear, can often persuade them to sheathe their claymores and set aside their targes.”
“They are savages!”
“Savage in battle, savage in pride and honor; indeed, they are men apart from all, save the Irish, who are similar.” The governor smiled; he had reason to know the Irish, after service in Belfast. “But there is kindness in them, given leave to show it.” He squinted up at the man-shaped silhouettes clustered on the hilltop. “It is my task to present them with presence; with the promise of strength. They will respect that.”
Mackay glared at him. “Is that what you will do? Promise them kindness?”
“Honor,” Hill replied simply. “If you hold them in contempt, that is what you yourself shall reap.”
General Sir Hugh Mackay of Scourie, defeated by the ‘savages’ now watching him from the hills, barked a derisive laugh. “And how will honor succeed where military strength has not?”
Hill smiled gently; he did not wish to offend the general, who remained in William’s favor, but neither did he desire the man to consider the fort’s governor incapable of grasping even rudimentary procedures. “I have promises of John Stewart of Ardshiel, close-linked to Appin’s laird, that he and others like him will not protest my governorship with a show of arms. I have promises of Coll MacDonald of Keppoch that he and Ewan Cameron of Lochiel may yet be moved to persuade other clans not to rise, if—in his words—‘they can be made to live.’ ”
“ ‘Made to live?’ Bribed, you mean.” Mackay’s mouth knotted beneath his nose. “A dishonorable way of winning a war . . . and I’d trust no Highlander to respect his promise!”
Hill sighed inwardly, though he maintained an even tone. “If I can save the life of a single man, be he Sassenach or Highlander, I will praise God for the chance.”
It brought hot color to Mackay’s face again. He muttered imprecations beneath his breath as he swung away. “I have duties to attend!”
Hill felt a sense of relief as the general stomped off. He prayed nightly for peace, knowing its path was thick with human obstacles such as Hugh Mackay and John Dalrymple, Master of Stair—now also Secretary of Scotland—who advocated main force. But it was because of men like Mackay and Stair that an old campaigner such as John Hill was made governor, whom they believed could use his experience in the easing of Jacobites from freedom to subjugation.
“Ease it I will, in the true sense of the word, if they give me leave to do so.” Hill shielded his eyes from the glare of the setting sun. There were men of the clans he trusted to hold their word if not shown another way as honorable. But a Highlander equated oaths and promises with a system of honor not wholly comprehended by Sassenachs. If one laird stood up to the rest and persuaded them that to tolerate William was to dishonor James, their rightful monarch, all of Hill’s careful plans could collapse in disarray.
“One man,” he murmured. “One old fox, such as MacIain of Glencoe, could bring down everything.”
Breadalbane had lost Achhallader to the MacDonalds on their way home from Killiecrankie; therefore, the earl, possessor of many fine castles, took up residence in Kilchurn on the shore of Loch Awe and immediately set about repairing damages to his reputation.
A knock sounded at the door of his private study. Breadalbane sanded his signature at the bottom of the newly completed letter, then set it aside as he called for entrance.
It was not his gillie, Sandy, whom the earl expected, but his eldest son, Duncan, whom he did not like, had never liked, and did not desire to inherit; but short of petitioning the king to have Duncan set aside in favor of John, his second son, there was little he could do.
Breadalbane could not suppress a twinge of displeasure, though no guilt accompanied it. “Aye?”
Duncan Campbell was a thin, slight young man narrow through the shoulders, with long, ill-fleshed limbs. The neck separating head from shoulders was short, and the skull perched atop it a trifle too large, Breadalbane felt, for ordinary proportions. Duncan’s coloring was sallow, his hair more brown than fair, but with no life in it to lift it from his scalp.
John should be in his place. “Aye?” he repeated.
Duncan Campbell shut the door behind him. He did not approach his father. “I’ve a thing to say.”
“You’ve many things to say,” his father observed, “but I’ve never known any of them to be worth my effort to hear them.”
Dull color flushed the sallow, sensitive features. The eyes were brown, but so dark as to be indistinguishable between pupil and iris. “I wish to be married.”
It was astounding news, though Breadalbane did not permit his surprise to alter the austerity of his expression. “Do you?”
“I do.”
“And is this notion something that occurred last night over a dram of whisky, in some harlot’s bed—or something someone else has put into your head?” There were men who would, the earl knew, seeking preferment through their daughters.
Duncan did not color up well. His sallow complexion darkened perceptibly, but in a complex network of splotches altogether displeasing. “ ’Tis something I’ve been considering—”
“Considering!”
“—for some time,” he finished stolidly.
“Ah.” Trust Duncan to look to himself rather than to his father’s counsel; John knew better. “And have you chose
n a woman? Or have you no’ got so far?”
“Far enough,” Duncan countered, grimly implacable. “Her name is Marjorie.”
“And is Marjorie a Campbell?”
Surprise flickered in Duncan’s expression; he had not the imagination to entertain the idea that women of other clans might be potential wives. “Aye, Marjorie Campbell. Of Lawers.”
Breadalbane snorted. “ ’Twas her idea, was it?”
The overlarge head rose a fraction, stretching to its debatable length the overshort neck. “ ’Twas mine.”
“But she kens what you’ll be when I am dead.”
“Who doesna?” Duncan answered with a brief spark of asperity. “There isna a man in Scotland who doesna ken Breadalbane.”
The earl smiled. “There isna, is there? So, Marjorie Campbell of Lawers has a notion to be a countess?”
“She’s a notion to be my wife.”
“One and the same, lad. Not now, but count the years; no man lives forever.”
The dark eyes were opaque. “If it were one and the same, wouldna she set her cap for you? You’ve outlived three wives. You may be an old man, but you’ve more substance than ‘wee Duncan,’ aye? Aye, I ken what they say, and I ken how you answer: but for the order of our births, John would be your heir.”
“I’ve never hidden it from you.”
“You havena. You’ve done me the honor of being an honest man.” Duncan’s smile was slight and without levity in it. “Meanwhile, there is a Campbell lass I’d take to wife, but I need your permission. I am as yet your heir.”
“Then ’tis a verra serious matter, this taking of a wife. I must think on it.” The earl smiled thinly as he saw Duncan’s dismay. “Tell the lass she’ll have to wait. ’Twill give us the time we need to see if she is breeding.” He gestured casually. “You’ve said the thing, then. Let me consider it without you in the room.”
He did not doubt there was more Duncan desired to say, but he did not remain to say it. There were times the earl despaired of the lad’s wits, and other times, though less often, he saw the vestiges.
A man with no wit was never a threat. A man with just enough was often too easily led.
He did not dare permit Duncan to have his way, lest he begin to exert himself in political matters. He was, after all, to inherit one of the most powerful and wealthy positions in all of Scotland. Men would listen to Duncan, even now. Some men, enemies, would seek to use him against a father for whom he professed no love.
“In that we remain in mutual agreement,” the earl muttered to himself, then gave himself over to thought. “A Campbell lass for Breadalbane’s heir . . .”
It did not require much thought, and even less time to initiate. He took up fresh paper, reinked his quill, and began in his careful hand to write with equal care the words he knew would elicit the response he required.
Cunning as a fox, they called him; slippery as an eel. Well, let it be true. When a man recognized power in another, he took it, controlled it, destroyed it.
Or married it.
Cat teetered on the brink of sleep as if she walked a sword. If she fell this way, she was awake . . . that way, she was asleep. It was a sensation she particularly relished, warm beneath the bedclothes on a still-cold, dark March night, and she wanted no one to interrupt it.
No one did. Something did: a harsh, hooting, honking drone that jerked her off the edge of the sword into wide-eyed wakefulness. “Jesu,” she whispered violently, “the man is at it again!”
She considered stopping up her ears with pillows, or fingers, or bedclothes and burrowing back beneath the covers, but the sound of bagpipes in distress was enough to disturb the bones in the barrows for a thousand years. Instead of stopping her ears she’d do better to stop her father. Certainly no one else would: the laird was in his cups.
Irritated, Cat threw back quilts and thrust herself out of bed, loath to leave the warmth, and swung her heavy braid behind one shoulder as she reached for a wool wrap. Quickly she yanked fabric around her shoulders and crossed the room to her door, nearly slamming it open in her haste. She caught it, cursed as she’d heard the tacksmen do—knowing her father abhorred it—and marched out of the room to the stairs that led down to the laird’s quarters.
Cat snatched open the oak door. Weak light met her eyes, shed from an oil lamp blackened by spent smoke, for her father sat mostly in darkness, hugging the cloth-covered bag as if the pipes were a woman and he the woman’s hungry son.
The reeds had fallen free of his mouth, fetching up against his cheek. She saw dampness there, and, ashamed of her twinge of disgust, believed it was saliva.
Then she realized the dampness was tears. The Laird of Glenlyon was crying.
Cat stood very still. The shutters were latched, the curtains dropped; the room was close and stuffy, redolent of whisky, of smoke, of a sour loneliness, and the acrid tang of a man less concerned by the scent of a body than the taste of his liquor.
She was ashamed of him, and for him: he was Glenlyon, still Glenlyon, still laird despite the excesses that had nearly destroyed them, lurking yet in corners; still a Campbell and therefore worth the respect Campbell blood bought in Campbell-built Scotland if for no other reason; still a Highland Scot, though some said now his English sympathies made him over into a Sassenach.
He has no one else. If I turn from him, he is lost. Shame faded. He was not a man she admired because the whisky had robbed him of that, but he was nonetheless her father.
Cat moved forward in silence, though she knew he saw her well enough, even against the sienna wash of poor candlelight in the corridor beyond the open door. She went to him, and knelt, and put gentle hands upon his knee. “It canna be so bad.”
The smoking oil lamp illuminated him from the side, throwing harshly patterned shadows across his ruined face and casting a nimbus around fading, yellow-red hair. Once he had been a glorious, handsome youth. Now he was nearly sixty, and looking years beyond that. The drink had stretched his skin, pulling it into bags at the eyes and jowls at his jaw, the once-fine, longish jaw his sons had inherited. He was puffy-faced, ill-kempt, smelling of whisky, sour linen, bad teeth.
Glenlyon blinked. Watery blue eyes peered at her from under sandy-lashed eyelids. His damp smile was tremulous as he wiped distractedly at the tears. “ ’Twas only the pipes, lass. The wail and moan of the pipes . . .” It trailed off. He looked at her in silence, and put one hand over both of hers.
Cat’s throat was tight. Painfully, she swallowed. “Leave the pipes to Hugh Mackenzie. He’s as good as Auld Archibald the Red . . . and quieter about it, too.”
Glenlyon stared back at her, still hugging the pipes against his chest. “ ’Tis Breadalbane.”
Cat’s mouth curled. “That pawkie, useless man . . . what has he to do with you now?”
“He’s offered to pay my debts.”
She made a disrespectful noise. “He must want a service, then, aye? Now, or one day. He swore he would not give you silver again.”
Glenlyon rubbed wearily at equally tired flesh. “ ’Tis bad, Cat—unco’ bad . . . ’twas all I could think to do. The creditors want their silver, and I have none to spare—”
She could not suppress the bitterness, the shame-bred hostility. “The MacDonalds left us little enough two years ago, after Killiecrankie, and you sold so much to Murray . . . now have you staked even Chesthill on a game?”
Color spilled out of his face. With an awkward, frenzied motion, he threw the bagpipes to the floor.
Cat nearly gaped. It wasn’t the pipes that stilled her heart, but the look in her father’s eyes. “Have you lost it?” she cried.
The sagging jaw tautened. Dulled eyes sparked briefly as he was roused to protest his daughter’s temerity. “Breadalbane has agreed to pay the debts; Chesthill is still mine.”
Cat was on her feet, clutching soft-combed wool around her shoulders. “But for how much longer?” she asked. “Until the next time? Until all the earls of Scotland say no to y
our crying and begging? What then, Glenlyon—will you even sell your clan?”
He looked at Cat. “I thought I might sell my daughter.”
It silenced her instantly. She stood before him, shivering, digging nails into her arms. “You’re fou, ” she accused. “In your cups—you’d not say it, otherwise.”
“Aye, in my cups,” he agreed. “Could I sell my daughter sober?”
“You havena,” she declared. “To whom would you? To whom could, you?”
“Breadalbane.”
Cat laughed harshly. “He’s had three wives already, and sons aplenty, besides. What would he want with me?”
The pupils of his eyes, in dimness, in dunkenness, swallowed the blue of the irises. They were fixed on her face in a blind, empty stare Cat could not interpret. Then the gaze shifted, altering as he looked briefly lower than her face, to her breasts, her hips, her slippered feet. Glenlyon’s eyes, before he shut them, filled with a too-bright, damp acknowledgment to which Cat was not privy.
He drew in a breath slowly, stentorously, and let it out again. “I’ve no’ sold my daughter.”
Relief nearly made Cat waver, but she was not the swooning sort. She swallowed the dryness out of her mouth and licked her lips to wet them.
“But I could, ” he told her.
Panic had subsided; she knew how to handle this mood. Her mouth pulled into a sideways hook of wry disbelief. “ ’Tis for the father to pay, not sell . . . ’tis what the dowry is. He’d be wanting silver with me, not giving it to you.”
Glenlyon’s mouth denied it; his eyes avoided hers.
“So,” Cat said, “the earl will pay your debts. What I want to know is: why? He wouldna do it when you asked before; nor did he overturn the sale to Murray of Atholl. He’s done little enough for us these past two years . . . why does he offer now?”
“We’re cousins,” he said softly.
“ ’Twas Argyll who gave you a commission in his regiment. Breadalbane did naught.”
“We’re Campbells. The man looks after his house.”
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