Jennifer Roberson

  The Earl of Breadalbane was not a man for soft words, even in his mind, and did not waste time admiring scenery. To him the most beautiful of all things was the accomplishment of a task that added luster to his name, holdings to his legacy, coin to his coffers, and status to his house. But at this moment he was caught unwary and unaware, and when he glanced out of a keep window to look upon the glassy surface of Loch Awe, well satisfied by his plans for the Achallader meeting a matter of days away, he saw the woman at water’s edge and stopped thinking altogether about the clans, about the king, and his own part in Scotland’s future.

  Scotland’s past and her present walked the water’s edge. He saw the crimson of her sleeves, the glint of buttons and brooch, the brilliance of braided hair. She was not so distant that he could not mark her height, nor the way she carried herself, and he knew it was Glenlyon’s daughter who, quite alone, paused and raised a hand to stare across the loch with eyes shielded against the setting sun.

  In a moment she lowered her hand. Breadalbane watched her bend and strip off her shoes, setting them aside, then kilt up her skirts around her knees. She was not wearing stockings; a flash of pale leg showed, and then she waded out into the reed-spiked shallows, sending ripples across the surface.

  He might otherwise be offended by her informality, by the mud and damp hem such enterprise would incur, but he was not. He smiled. In that moment she was everything that was and everything that could be: a proud, unyielding Campbell born of an ancient heritage that he hoped would bring spirit back into his own line, much as he bred a specific deerhound bitch to a specific dog to fix a temperament.

  Duncan has need of such a woman to strengthen his seed.... And the earl was convinced Catriona Campbell might do it. She was everything her father was not in all the ways a man might count; bred to Duncan who was, despite his demeanor, a direct descendant of Black Duncan of the Cowl and might yet possess some modicum of ambition and competence, she could well produce the kind of grandsons of whom the earl could be proud. He desired to die knowing his lands were left to heirs who could properly administer them.

  Behind him a deerhound stirred. The earl glanced back briefly, watching the bitch stretch, sneeze, then resettle herself near the bigger dog. He could not help but smile; she was a lovely red fawn with black ears and muzzle, very keen of intelligence. The big storm-colored dog was the finest hunter he had ever bred, and he had high hopes for their get.

  He turned to the window again and saw Glenlyon’s daughter was no longer entirely alone; a single figure made its way out of the castle toward the woman on the shore. Duncan himself, walking out to speak with her.

  At his call she turned, holding up her skirts. She did not leave the water, nor make any indication she would, merely stood quietly in the shallows, straight as a spear or claymore with hair glowing red in the sunset, and waited for him to join her.

  It was a subtle tableau few would mark, but Breadalbane was not a man who let such things pass; they might be important if one knew how to read them.

  They had met. They were not strangers, nor enemies. They accepted one another’s company without expectations of prescribed behavior, nor made any indication of enmity or false modesty.

  Breadalbane smiled. He had seen her earlier, had spoken with her. She was in many ways the young woman he remembered, and in the most important of ways nothing at all as she had been. And she was ideal for his heir, who would surely see her worth as only a man could, even unprepossessing Duncan.

  —’Twill do, aye? She would accompany them to Achallader and see Duncan’s promise as heir, and by the time they left there would be nothing left to do save escort them to a kirk.

  With care Cat waded out through spiky reeds, tending her hem, then stopped as the water lapped above her ankles. It felt inexpressibly good just to stand still, to let the setting sun warm her face, its light glowing red-gold through closed eyelids.

  An old tune came into her head, a snatch of childhood song.—so bonnie, so bonnie was he . . . with white teeth a’gleaming and silver in his hair—Cat’s eyes opened wide as she stopped, shaken. She recalled the tune, recalled the words, recalled the progenitor of them—

  “Catriona!”

  Peace was broken, but it was respite from unexpected memories. Cat turned, saw him; smiled as he approached, content within herself. The pain of his rejection had lost its small sting; she had never expected a man to be won by her features, despite Dair MacDonald’s words, any more than by her tongue, and was not disappointed that Duncan Campbell should prefer someone else to her. It simply meant she would go back home to Glen Lyon rather sooner than expected, where she would tend her father’s house while he was away at Stirling—or wherever else the army might care to send him—and indulge herself in unfettered freedom, which was all she had ever wanted for as long as she could remember.

  Duncan Campbell at last arrived at the water’s edge. He eyed her askance, but did not reprove her.

  “Come in,” Cat invited, knowing he would refuse. “ ’Tis cool, but no’ like winter.”

  “I dinna think so.”

  She smiled to herself. “Would Marjorie come in?”

  He scowled faintly. “She would think to ask me.”

  “How tedious. And would you give her your permission?”

  “I dinna ken.”

  It did not surprise her. She provoked purposely. “A man who prefers the company of turnspits and cooks to those his father believes more acceptable isna put off by the thought of shedding shoes and stockings . . . aye?”

  He scowled. It did not improve his features. “I didna come to argue, Catriona.”

  Cat grinned. “Am I being difficult? As difficult as you?”

  After a moment he relaxed, offering a smile and a resolute expression less severe than he had been wont to wear. “Gey difficult; but ’tis me, if you’ll recall, and I am master at it . . . can we speak of something else?”

  She studied the reeds breaking water near her feet. “Of what, then?”

  “Marjorie Campbell.”

  “Ah. Marjorie.” Cat sloshed along the shoreline, squishing her toes into the bed of the loch. “What is there left to say?”

  “I want you to meet her at Achallader.”

  There was an undertone of desperate declaration mixed with uncertain hope. Cat stopped sloshing and held her place, intrigued by his suggestion. “Why, Duncan? D’ye want us to be friends? D’ye expect her to like me, when I’m the woman the earl wants you to marry in her place?”

  “I expect—I expect . . .” He set both hands into his hair and stripped it back from his face. “I dinna ken what I expect . . . only that perhaps you’ll see why I love her, and why I canna love you.”

  It was a most peculiar hope. Cat stood very still while the water warmed on her ankles. “Does it matter?”

  “John said—”

  She did not let him finish. “John said; I thought you didna care what your brother did or said.”

  Duncan sighed and closed his eyes. A trickle of perspiration made its way down one temple, until he wiped it away impatiently. “John said I could say what I would to my father, but I’d no call to be rude to you.”

  She could not suppress the irony. “Then ’tis no surprise why they prefer him to you; he has sense, does John.”

  He scowled at her. “I thought you would want to marry me no matter how I was . . . that you would want to be countess. But you say no, and I think perhaps if you met Marjorie you might understand—”

  “—and then I wouldna be ‘difficult’ when you asked the earl for a release from the agreement.” She was no longer disposed to laugh, nor to provoke; he was not, she understood, so very different from her. “There is no need. I told you earlier: I dinna mean to marry you.”

  “But—” His perplexion was manifest. “Then what will you do?”

  Cat turned slightly, gazing at the horizon as the sun slid below it. It was clear to her, abruptly, utterly clear, as if God had cracked open her sku
ll and put a thought into it. This was opportunity if she chose to accept it. Duncan did not know it, but he held out a weapon, or offered her a key; she need only decide which one she wanted, and the manner in which she desired to use it.

  A chill breathed across her flesh, until the blood beneath warmed it to burning and chased the chill away. This is how Breadalbane treats with others ... and Argyll also, and any number of other men who aspired to higher places.

  It was power and promise. Cat tasted it for the first time and discovered its appeal, the subtle seduction of its traps, the sweet cruelty of its potential. She understood at last. This is what men are. . . This is how some men think. She smiled across the loch. ’Tisn’t so large a step, when the man whose back you muddy is deserving of the muck.

  Cat slanted a glance at Duncan. “You ken my father has debts . . .”

  “I ken.”

  “You ken he is in the army now, but will still have debts; there are dice with the soldiers, and he’ll no’ stop now.”

  His tone was less certain. “I ken that.”

  “Then you’ll ken also that your father can hardly be expected to send me on my way with no payment for my trouble; ’tis an insult you’ve offered, and there are costs to be paid.” She turned to face him squarely, unmindful of splattering water. “I dinna want it for me. I’ve no need of it. But the earl has ignored Glenlyon’s need for two years.”

  Duncan stared mutely, blind to subtlety. She understood in that moment why his father despaired of him. Her calculated approach was suddenly consumed by emotion: Breadalbane had failed her father, failed her house, failed her.

  “We are Campbells, aye?—and deserving of better! He is head of the house of Glenorchy . . . and ’tis time he served those Campbells in need of his aid!”

  The color departed Duncan’s face. “ ’Tis blackmail!”

  Ice trickled down Cat’s spine, though the flesh of her face burned. “I tend my house,” she said tautly. “I tend my father in it. Now I tell you to tend your father, to tend your house, and put Marjorie Campbell in it.”

  After a lengthy moment of crackling silence, Duncan Campbell laughed. “Christ!” he cried. “You’re a match for my father!”

  Cat glared at him. ’Twould be easy to scoop up a handful of mud and daub his face with it! But she let the impulse die. She had purposely set out to grasp the earl’s methods; the intent was wholly successful.

  “Well,” she said finally, “that may be taken as insult, or also flattery; dinna tell me which—you’re no’ a respectable party to tell me unbiased. I suppose what matters is that we will between us sort things out so we both get what we want. If that makes me a match for the earl, then I’ve no cause to complain.”

  Duncan, sorting that out, eventually grinned. Cat, turning away, was pleased she could offer him such happiness at so little cost; and Glenlyon’s debts paid, also.

  He stood slantwise in the doorway, left shoulder set against the jamb, spine hidden beneath linen and tartan plaid, barefoot in summer warmth. Jean Stewart knew Alasdair Og well enough to understand he was not as detached as he seemed; that, in fact, he was acutely aware of the movements she made, as always, but steadfastly refused to acknowledge them.

  She supposed it was not necessary that he acknowledge such movements; after six years, no matter how many respites, they knew one another’s bodies as well as their thoughts, and the intentions of both.

  His intention, at present, was to ignore her; hers was to seduce him from intransigence.

  There was Achallader, of course; it was his excuse, offered for days. And it was not wholly untrue, because nearly every man in Glencoe prepared to accompany MacIain to Breadalbane’s meeting.

  He had taken some time and care laying out his things, leaving her with no task. She had looked on such duties as a private, personal thing, the tasks a woman undertook for her man, who was more often than not pleased to have her tend such things as the shining of his metal, the folding of his clothing. For years, when she was present, he had allowed her to do such things, but this time, this first time, he did them for himself.

  She had been up the glen to his brother’s house, spending time with Eiblin, but that was no excuse. He would have waited; he always had before. But this time he had not, and she came home from her visit to find herself with nothing to tend but his melancholy.

  But there be cures for that, aye? . . . And he as much as most answered to the healing in a woman’s body. But she had seen something in his eyes, an unfamiliar taint in the whisky-warmth of them, that kindled her apprehension.

  He turned from her mutely to stand silhouetted in the doorway of his stone, slate-roofed house, gazing out across the glen instead of into her eyes.

  Her belly knotted. For the first time in her life Jean did not know what to do. As a girl she had been pretty, and men responded; as a woman beautiful, and men responded. She did not know what they needed, save her body; they none of them, prior to Dair MacDonald, suggested there was anything more a man might desire.

  She could not play chess. At backgammon she lost, and he preferred a challenge. She sang indifferently, had no skill upon the harp, sewed, wove, dyed, and cooked as well as any woman in the glen, if no better than most. Her skill was in her company, her wisdom in her bed; if a man desired neither, there was nothing left to offer.

  By his detachment he did not insult her, but stripped her of her purpose. While some men beat their women, Jean Stewart was wholly diminished by a man’s indifference to her.

  She went to the bed and turned the covers back. She had set fresh herbs beneath the pillow to lend a sweeter scent. With care she took off her belt, unpinned her brooch, unwound her arisaid, then set all aside. The ankle-length tunic was loose now, unbound, and shifted against her flesh with a seductive caress. But tunic she shed also, so that she stood within his house utterly naked.

  Jean unplaited her braid, then shook the loosened hair across shoulders and breasts. “Alasdair,” she said.

  He turned halfway. Then fully, beginning to speak, “I’ll be going up the glen to MacIain’s house . . .” And then let it fall into silence, heavy as a wall between them.

  “I am twenty-five,” she said plainly, “and as ripe tonight as ever I was. Will you deny it?”

  He smiled faintly. “I am no’ a blind man, aye?—and there is light to see by.”

  “You dinna need the light. You never have before.”

  But there was light, soft light, glinting on brooch and badge, and he did not move to extinguish it, or to kindle a new flame.

  “Dair,” she said.

  He came then, left the doorway, but did not shut the door. He came to her and put his hands on her shoulders, her bare, French-scented shoulders, and told her she was beautiful, that even a blind man would know it.

  “And one who sees?” she asked. “Alasdair Og MacDonald?”

  “I see,” he said, “and I am suitably humbled.”

  Jean laughed a little. “I dinna want that!”

  “You always have,” he told her.

  She did not care to debate the issue with him. “Will you come?”

  “Not now.”

  He had never, ever said such words to her. “ ‘Not now,’ ” she echoed. “Not now?”

  “I mean to go up to MacIain’s; there are plans to be discussed.”

  Jean lifted her chin. There were all manner of words in her mind; words meant to deny, to entice, to argue, to disparage, but she brought none of them out of her mouth. “I want you now,” she said only, “as I never have before.”

  “Jean—”

  She was as warm now in her face as she was between her thighs. “Is it old?” she asked. “Has it grown stale? D’ye want me to beg, then, to offer or invent a way we’ve never tried?”

  “Christ, Jean—”

  “Tell me,” she said, “and I will do it for you. I will do it to you.”

  His hands were yet on her shoulders. He moved them now, sliding them down, not up; not up to c
radle her face as he did so often, or had; but down to her elbows, clasping them slackly. “ ’Tisn’t that, Jean. I’ve things on my mind.”

  She put her hand on his kilt and shifted wool, grasping him skillfully, but knowing now what he would not tell her.

  Desperately she said, “A man has two minds: the one in his head, the one atop his ballocks . . .” She did not know a man in all of Scotland who could remain slack at her touch; she did not know a man in the Highlands who would not harden at her glance.

  —except Dair MacDonald . . .

  He took his hands from her. “I will come back before dawn.”

  She watched him turn, watched him move away, watched him pause long enough to pull the door closed, so she would not share her nakedness with all of Glencoe.

  Jean laughed aloud. She strode to the door and snatched it open, crossing the threshhold to stand in the dooryard where anyone with eyes might see what bounty she offered.

  “Alasdair Og!”She thought she might yet seduce him; she had never done this before.

  But he was gone, did not come back, and it was all for naught.

  There is no shooting here, no shouts of fear and fury, no triumphant war cries. What has been done is done, and no one remains behind.

  She runs until she trips over an obstacle just before the door. Pain steals her breath; until she finds it again she lies where she has fallen, unmindful of her sprawl.

  It isn’t until her senses, less startled than her thoughts, identify the obstacle as a body does she makes any attempt to get up—and then it is in a lurching scramble that flings her back from the corpse.

  Her fall has disturbed the snow. She sees the trews around his ankles, the bloodied nightshirt, the hair dyed crimson. Nothing remains of his face save the dull white splinter of jawbone.

  Part IV

  1691