There were no secrets in the honesty of the bones underlying duplicitous flesh; she hardened, as he watched, like mortar under the sun.
“Come inside.” He spoke more harshly than intended; but harshness diverted truth, and truth he could not afford. “There will be rain again; will you drown yourself outside merely to spite Robbie?”
She, being Campbell, desired to refuse a MacDonald; he saw it clearly, and grieved. But a quick glance at decaying skies told her he spoke no falsehood. Cat stared at him a moment from the mortared mask of her face —is she expecting a chisel?—then turned away abruptly and preceded him into the shieling as he pulled aside the curtain.
Inside, Robbie Stewart prowled restlessly like a Scottish wildcat, ill content to bide his time. “Well?” he asked abruptly, swinging to face them. “Well, Alasdair Og, what becomes of our moonlight ride?”
There was little desire in Dair for conversation. He raised a plaid-draped shoulder in a passive half-shrug; his mind was not on cattle. “We could go back.” Robbie said nothing, waiting. There was more he should say; he said what he could. “And return later.”
It was something, it was enough, though Stewart’s expression was baleful. “ ’Tis not how I entertain, sending my guests hither and thither like a clutch of day-old chicks.”
The image was so inconsequential that Dair laughed aloud, relieved to fasten his mind on something entirely innocuous. “Day-old chicks, indeed! I doubt Glenlyon would call us so . . . and as for entertaining, have you no’ had a bonnie ride?”
Robbie scowled, though his eyes flicked momentarily to Cat consideringly, as if he intended to make a crude comment. But he didn’t, being more disposed to growl at Dair. “If I wanted to ride the glen, I could have stayed home in Appin.”
Cat’s muted tone was nonetheless ironic. “In your stolen castle.”
Caught by surprise, Stewart nearly gaped. He swung toward her, plaid flaring, astonishment remolding his features. The expression was so alien to his features that Dair, equally startled by Cat’s declaration, paid less attention to her than to his astounded friend. He laughed aloud at Robbie. “ ’Twas a blow you didna expect!”
Robbie ignored him altogether. “Stolen?” Then, more strongly, “Stolen! ’Tis no such thing, you muddleheaded bizzem! Castle Stalker belongs to the Stewarts!”
Glenlyon’s daughter smiled. Dair felt his own mouth mimicking its irony. Give her a dirk, this lass—she’s a match for the man—
“Oh, no, I think not,” Cat countered lightly. Then, with a deliberate pause, “Dinna you ken your history?”
“Dinna I ken—” Stewart cut off his response abruptly, color rising in his face. He was not a remarkably handsome man, was Robbie, but there was a ruthlessness in manner, eyes, and mouth that attracted certain women as much as legacy and reputation.
Dair’s amusement dissipated. Cat isna a woman for that—
As if sensing that thought, Robbie Stewart tucked ruthlessness away. He could be charming when he chose; he knew how to lure women. Dair had seen them answer such summons avidly.
“Tutor me, lass,” Stewart invited. “Tell me my history.”
Dair saw contempt show itself briefly in her eyes, then she dismissed it as if understanding emotions might become weapons turned upon herself. Evenly she said, “Castle Stalker is a Campbell castle.”
“Was,” Robbie retorted; Dair was surprised she got that much of him.
Cat shook her head. “More than eighty years ago an Appin Stewart traded it to a Campbell for an eight-oared boat. A boat, man! ‘Twas a silly thing to do, but ’twas done . . . except the Appin Stewarts refused to honor the bargain.”
Unexpectedly, Robbie grinned. “Wouldna you?”
Cat scowled. “ ’Twas a bargain—”
“ ’Twas nonsense,” Robbie said firmly. “They were in their cups, the both of them . . . and the Stewart no’ called Silly-Headed for naught.” He chewed thoughtfully at his cheek, then bestowed upon her yet again his bright-eyed grin. “Would ye care to come and see it, the castle you claim as Campbell?”
Cat’s face was tense and white. “My father is the drukken man. D’ye think I’m in my cups, to be so baothaire as that?”
Robbie’s smile was diminished under an abrupt, focused intensity that was nearly tangible. Dair, being male and not impervious to similar needs—who had felt his own urges as they sat talking on the hillside—knew what it was, realized what it portended. Cat, wholly innocent, clearly did not; she gazed warily at Stewart with no comprehension of such things as male desire and the sometimes overwhelming impulse to satisfy it immediately with few preliminaries, without explanation.
Stewart said, “I think you’re a bonnie lass.” And he put out his hand to touch her, as he had done before.
It shifted abruptly from baiting to stalking. Dair tensed, poised to move, but Cat brought up the hand clasping the sgian dhu he had returned to her. Even as Robbie reached, Stewart blood was renewed on the blade. “Christ—”
Her words were spoken quietly over Robbie’s blurted protest. “Dinna touch me, Stewart.”
Dair waited. Robbie was unpredictable; even he did not know what Stewart might do. He knew only that Cat would not thank him for fighting her battles—and that he would, despite her wishes, despite Robbie’s intent, prevent the young heir of Appin from harming Glenlyon’s daughter.
’Twill set us at odds . . . It would do more than that; it invited dissolution of the sometimes turbulent bond they shared, but Dair could see no other alternative. He would not risk Cat Campbell now, not even to Robert Stewart. He had in youth and manhood, despite her ignorance, despite her blatant resentment, committed too much of himself.
But the bond yet held, and with no need to break it; Robbie swore and sucked a finger, assessed her anger briefly, then turned from her entirely and cast a murderous scowl at Dair. “Have you lost your wits, man, leaving her a knife? ’Tis twice she’s cut me, now!”
The tension snapped like morning ice beneath a dirk handle. Dair, relaxing, could not suppress a smile. “I thought she might require it, knowing you so well.”
“Aye, well . . .” Stewart’s black scowl faded. He was high-humored again, if rueful. “No’ so much blood lost that I’ll die of it. And worth it, I’ll swear, to see the lass color up.”
The lass duly colored up, which infuriated her as much as amused Robbie. She looked instead at Dair. “What will you do with me and my men?”
“Send you home,” he answered. “We came for cows, no’ you.”
Robbie’s sandy brows arched up. “And will we take her up to Glenlyon’s door, where he can hang us before midday?”
“I wasna going home.” Cat hesitated as they looked at her, startled, then explained more fully. “I was bound for Kilchurn Castle. And if you’ll give me leave, I’ll be on my way again.”
Dair’s attention focused abruptly. “Kilchurn . . . Breadalbane’s there, they say. What d’ye have to do with Grey John?”
Cat’s chin rose. “ ’Tis a Campbell concern.”
“Campbell concerns are often MacDonald concerns—”
“—and Stewart,” Robbie interjected.
“—and therefore of interest to me.” Dair did not so much as glance at Robbie; he wanted truth from Cat. “Why would Glenlyon send his daughter to Breadalbane?”
Cat offered no answer. It was Robbie who fashioned one. “He’s sons, has the earl . . .” His slow smile filled his face, lighting up his eyes. “Which are you meant for? The heir, likely; Duncan’s as yet unwed . . .” Robbie’s tone was thoughtful. “Breadalbane hates his heir.” As Cat stared, he shrugged. “ ’Tis well-known, lass . . . Duncan Campbell is no’ the son he wants to inherit his tides; he’d prefer the second son—though he, I think, is wed.” Again the negligent shrug, but a glint in shrewd eyes belied the laziness of the tone. “There was talk of my sister Jean wedding wi’ Duncan Campbell a year ago . . .” He slid a bright glance at Dair. “Was there no’?”
Dair, wh
o did not at this moment desire to think of Jean, remembered it vividly; they had both of them, he and Jean, protested vigorously to Robbie, who had enjoyed the incident.
He baits both of us now, even as he did Jean and me . . . Yet he answered with a careless shrug; he would give no satisfaction.
The Stewart’s grin widened. “ ’Tis no’ so bad a match, when all is said and done; Stewarts and Campbells have wed before.” His look on Cat was openly suggestive. “But my Jean would have naught of him, being a bold, brave Stewart—and being disposed to take no man for husband who might yet be disinherited.” The glint in his eyes made it quite clear he understood how mercenary the words sounded; but Dair knew Robert Stewart was not a man much troubled by what others thought. “Being disposed instead to have a MacDonald in her bed”—he cast a glance at Dair—“where titles are less important than the wielding of the sword.”
The vulgarity burned crimson in Cat’s cheeks. But it was not at Robbie she looked, nor at Dair she could; she fixed her eyes instead on the brooch of his plaid. “Well then,” she said, “will you be letting us go on?”
Dair was less compelled to answer than to contemplate possibilities. A wholly inexplicable intransigence left him indisposed to consider seeing her wed to any man, one of Breadalbane’s sons or no. He had not risked Robbie’s wrath for this . . . And Duncan Campbell is not the man for her, either. Christ, everyone knows his own father despises him; what marriage would that be?
It was folly, such thinking. He thought it nonetheless, moved by a hostile belligerence alien to his nature. “Is it true?”
His brooch lost its fascination; Cat met his condemnation with equal belligerence. “And if I said no? Would you let me go the sooner?”
He scowled at her even as she scowled back. “I would not.”
“Then aye, ’tis true.” Color moved in her face beneath the pale surface of flesh, like a curl of newborn wavelet breaking free of wind-kissed loch. “I’m not worth so much, aye?—to keep me from one or the other.”
Robbie snickered. Dair knew what he thought; a man like Robert Stewart might ask payment in something other than coin and would measure her worth by that. He would not look at Robbie to see collusion there; Stewart would expect a crude witticism, or even implied agreement.
Dair looked straight at Cat and shook his head. “I said it before: we came for cows, not you.”
“Then release us.”
Stewart sighed and folded his arms across a plaid-slashed chest. “Lassie, lassie, have ye no wits? My name isna Baothaire, so you willna call me Silly-Headed . . . if we let you and your braw laddies go, they’ll be setting about dirking us the first moment we look away.” He cast a bright glance at Dair. “Though the entertainment ’twould make the ride worthwhile.”
Dair ignored Robbie. “We’ll send you down the glen,” he told Cat with a glance at Una. “You and your woman and two Campbell men—the rest will bide here a wee bit.”
Robbie nodded. “Until we have what we’ve come for.”
Cat was astonished. “You dinna mean to steal the cows now!”
Dair frowned as he saw Robbie’s grin expand; such risk would garnish the task. “We’d do best heading home to Glencoe.”
“No,” Robbie said. “No, no, not yet, not empty-handed, to face the ridicule of MacIain.” Thoughtfully he sucked again at the cuts Cat had inflicted. “We came for cows and we’ll take them, even now.” He grinned, eyes alight. “ ’Twill sit in Glenlyon’s throat like a clot of soured cream—d’ye think he’ll choke of it? Christ, his body’ll keep forever, soaked so much in usquabae from the inside out; if you dinna bury him, we’ll no’ forget his pawkie face!”
Dair stripped the knife from Cat’s hand before she could so much as raise it. His grasp was tight on her wrist, squeezing the bones together. “You will not,” he said mildly.
She twisted, testing, then stopped. She stood quite still and fixed him with bright, angry eyes. “You’d do the same,” she told him, between set teeth. “In my place, Alasdair Og, you’d be doing the same!”
Dair had never believed the simple use of his name could incite him to anger. But she wielded it now as a weapon, when he had presented it ten years before as a gift to a young girl. “I would,” he agreed tightly. “But there are two of you—here, this moment—to our twelve . . . I think the odds are in our favor.”
Robbie snorted. “If she’s as bad as her father at wagering, she’d not know what odds to play.”
Dair saw the outraged tears and looked away from them so she need not count him again among those who ridiculed. “Four men,” he said. “They’ll see you safely down the glen, while we go about our business.”
“I’ll get them back,” Cat promised. “Every Campbell cow.”
The heir of Appin laughed. “I’d like it verra much to see you try!”
Dair named four of his men. He told them to take Cat and her woman and two of the Campbell men with them as far as Balloch, where they were to turn back; Balloch was Campbell-inhabited, and they’d be hard-pressed to win free if Cat’s men raised an alarm.
And then he took Cat out of the shieling, into the damp dawn of the day, and escorted her to her garron. A MacDonald saddled it for her; Dair lifted her up. It required effort wholly unexpected to take his hands away. “They’ll see you safe.”
“I was safe,” she said. “ ’Tis you who means me harm.”
“Cat—” But Dair dismissed protest, banishing the desire to make her think kindly of him. He gave her truth instead and let her think what she would. “I mean you no harm. If I did, it would have happened.”
Scorn was plain. “With you and Appin taking turns?”
The flesh of his face felt stretched over stone and very near to splitting on the sharpness of it. “Robbie is Robbie,” he said with a mouth too stiff to shape the words easily. “I am Dair MacDonald. Never confuse us.”
Cat laughed. The sound was ugly, comprised of something akin to shame, leavened by bitterness. “You bed with Stewart’s sister, you ride with him lifting cows . . . how could I be confused? You’re one and the same, I think; you’ve shown me no differences.”
That stirred him at last to strike back if only to assauge his own guilt, the fears that he and Stewart were indeed too much alike. Before she could say more he jerked up her hem and jammed the knife back into the sheath strapped to her stockinged leg. “If you mean to carry one, learn when and where to use it. Otherwise you’ll do naught but arm the enemy.” He yanked the skirts back down.
“Which fact you’ve learned, I’ve no doubt, from all the brave battles you’ve fought. ’Tis a change, aye?—stealing cows instead of lives?”
He thought of Jean again, of the knife she made of her words to bleed him bit by bit. But her blade was honed of frustration, of an absence of comprehension; he could not explain the words that lay in his heart, and Jean in her ignorance could not speak them for him. Instead she cut at the canker, thinking to give him relief, and cut into his heart instead.
Jean would not understand. Cat Campbell would. “I was at Killiecrankie.”
It was enough, he knew, for her—and then more, far more than enough. The words proved his manhood if not his potency, but he remembered too late even as she recoiled that Glenlyon’s daughter knew very well by its aftermath who had been at Killiecrankie.
Her mouth warped briefly even as he tried to explain. “ ’Twas a brave battle, that . . . and braver still when MacDonalds stripped Glen Lyon of everything—including our pride.” Her hands gripped the reins, white-knuckled and trembling. “People died,” she told him, “inside as well as out. Tell me again, MacDonald, how I should feel safe with you.”
Governor Hill, when told of the royal commission given the Earl of Breadalbane to treat with the clans, was first astounded, secondly disbelieving, lastly infuriated. He himself worked to bring peace to the Highlands, going among the people with candor in his mouth as well as honest kindness, and had been justly treated by them in return. He held
hopes that his efforts would be repayed by renewed willingness to swear oath to King William as opposed to supporting James, and while Breadalbane’s proposal was much the same, Hill could not but complain that much of his own work was undone, or at least appropriated by a man who himself was a Highlander, and whose true interests in the outcome could be discerned by no one.
He did not consider himself a petty or malicious man, but his patience was ended at last. Clearly a man with no more than the interests of Scotland at heart would not be heard without proofs of duplicity where other men worked, and so he set about interviewing friendly clanspeople who had been given warranties to attend the meeting at Achallader but weeks away. It was Breadalbane he examined through the earl’s own promises to give silver to the clans, and it was Breadalbane whom Hill knew to be playing a dangerous game.
The governor had his information from such chiefs as Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, less disposed to hear from the Campbell earl, and was explicitly told that the preeminent MacDonald of Glengarry would spend his time raiding Ross instead of listening to Breadalbane’s lies.
And yet the lies might be believed. Silver meant much to clans who in winter found living difficult. John Hill knew it entirely possible that even those who disparaged Breadalbane would nonetheless meet with him at Achallader; there was nothing to be lost in going, and perhaps much to be gained.
To the governor in Fort William there was little to be gained, and everything to be lost. He was caught between a Dutch king advised by a Lowland Scot who despised Highlanders, and a Highland-born Campbell earl who had a trunk full of coats from which he might choose a color, depending on circumstances.
Hill capped his inkhorn, set his quill aside. Someone will suffer. Someone must suffer. He put his papers into order, aligning tattered edges. There will be an example made of those who are innocent, or wholly inconsequential, to prove that Highland power is negligible when compared to that of a combined Parliamant, and a king who brooks no rebellion.
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