The earl raised his brows. “And why not? Is she not worth it?” He looked pointedly at her. “You risk a treaty for her.”
Her face was taut and white, but the eyes were not subdued. He saw her father in her—and perhaps her mother; he did not recall Helen Campbell—save her strength of will was greater.
“You willna do this,” she declared. “Not to me.”
He smiled, intending her to see it; she was no fool despite her parentage, but she understood nothing of politics. She comprehended only emotions, as all women did, especially those emotions the MacDonald had recently roused. She thought in terms of herself and of newfound appetites, and now of MacIain’s son.
But not in terms of a country, or of the insult she does my son.
Steadily he said, “I will do it to anyone, ye ken, be he man or she a woman. ’Tis for Scotland, aye?—and I am a man who considers his country worth it.” It silenced her, as expected; free of the woman, he turned again to MacDonald. “He is gey stubborn, is MacIain. He’ll no’ take my silver, I ken, and he’ll no’ take my word that what I do now is done for Scotland.”
“Is it?”
“In all I do.” He glanced again at Glenlyon’s daughter, who lingered yet despite implied dismissal. “Go to Duncan,” he told her flatly. “He is expecting you.”
Flags of brilliant color suffused her face. MacDonald moved, reaching, even as she turned in rigid retreat. “Cat—”
But she was gone before he could stop her, walking straight-backed into shadow. His hand fell to his side in a futile, eloquent slackness.
“Now,” Breadalbane said, “let us speak of Glencoe.”
“And Campbells?” It was derisive, but clearly it required effort for MacDonald to forget Cat and speak of other things. “If you will speak of Glencoe,” he said plainly, “speak to Glencoe.”
The earl offered an inoffensive smile. “So your brother said.”
“He is wise, aye?” MacDonald retorted dryly. “And he will be MacIain; you’ve no need to speak to me.”
“I speak to any man who may have a say in Scotland’s future.”
MacDonald’s answering smile was thin. “The future I would speak of is no’ a country’s at all, just at this moment. This particular moment.”
There it was: risk after all, if on a highly personal level. He did not shirk the truth, nor attempt to underplay what the earl had witnessed. It lay between them, bright and sharp, and full of consequences.
Breadalbane did not easily lose his temper, but he thought now of the ramifications that had nothing to do with preferment and even less with politics. “She is bonnie, aye? . . . and as unlike her father as a woman might be. Strong where he is weak. Determined where he is malleable. Fully cognizant of her pride.” He waited, sure of his course. “But more: she is a Campbell. And is wholly subject to Campbell authority. My authority, aye?”
MacDonald was, the earl thought, indistinguishable from other men save for the incongruity of prematurely graying hair—and except when he chose to be someone altogether different, even as he did now with a subtle shifting of posture, of assessment of the enemy.
Breadalbane was instantly alerted. He had seen this in dogs. Such intangibles as these set the pack leader apart from the pack.
“She is not my price,” MacDonald declared, “as you would have it, aye? Because there is no price. Not for Scotland. Not for a woman. What I do, I will do. What my father does, he will do. Have you a thing to say of MacIain, say it to MacIain.”
“I see the old fox bred true.” He paused. “You are more eloquent than your brother.”
Teeth were bared briefly. “I am not the heir, aye? It affords me latitude.”
“The latitude to seduce a woman meant to wed my son?”
If MacDonald had known, he had forgotten. Ruddy color stained his face, then drained slowly away. Even his lips were white.
The earl smiled coolly. “You have lifted our cattle,” he said, “with impunity much of the time, though your neck might argue it; oh aye, I heard the tale. But you will no’ lift our women.”
It roused a tangible anger; the self-control was no longer suppressed, nor its presence overlooked. “Is this how you court MacIain?”
“But you have made it clear I canna do it through his son.” The earl paused. “I breed deerhounds. Did you ken it?”
MacDonald clearly did not, and as clearly did not know why it should matter that he did.
Breadalbane said, “The bitch I have in my kennel is meant for a better dog.”
MacDonald’s hand went to his dirk. “Good Christ, Campbell—” But the taut hand moved away again, albeit the fingers trembled; he was as angry as a man might be, as the earl had intended, but was cognizant of his place, of his name, of the name of the man who baited him, and decidedly disinclined to start a fight that would lead to a war his clan could not win. He would not risk Letters of Fire and Sword, and the breaking of MacDonalds as the MacGregors had been broken.
“There is little to lose,” the earl said, “of what is left to win. Glengarry. Glencoe. How will either of you stand against a united Scotland?”
“United under William? Or James?” The fury had passed, or was better controlled; MacDonald’s eyes were steady. “Or does it matter? To you.”
“It matters. But it will not be under kings.” The young man’s presumption had angered the earl more than he knew; he offered honest emotion in place of diplomacy. “Under the Master of Stair. Under the Earl of Breadalbane.”
The fine mouth curved. “The Earl of Argyll might have something to say of that, aye?”
“He is not here. I am. It is I who make this treaty.” The earl paused delicately. “Which all the chiefs have signed, as promise of an oath, save Glengarry and Glencoe.”
“Appin,” MacDonald blurted, and Breadalbane knew he had won.
“Ask,” he suggested, in perfect courtesy.
She sat under the light of a bloated moon, surrounded by the ruins of Achallader Castle. Time had softened the edges; grass overtook fallen bricks, lichen cloaked the cobbles, strangers had carried off anything of value so that only the bones remained. The flesh had fallen away in the aftermath of the raid. All that remained standing were three of four corners.
Her seat was a pile of brickwork, tilting slope-shouldered to one side. It was not a comfortable seat, but Cat did not want comfort; she was angry, very angry, wishing she were a man who might say what she thought, who might, in fact, challenge the man who injured her so.
—that pawkie bastard. . . that God-cursed, pawkie bastard!
She wanted very much to shout at the earl and tell him what she thought of men who used women, who relied upon a woman’s presence to manipulate other men. She had seen his eyes, heard the steel beneath the tone. Within his words, ostensibly of Scotland and of loyalty to his king—whichever king it might be—was a wholly separate conversation intended mostly for Dair MacDonald with a little left over for her, enough to punish her for presumption, to remind her of her place. She was angry for herself, but angrier for Dair.
And cognizant of a loss far greater than there should be, for something just begun.
Just begun? No. Indeed, it had existed in her girlhood, in her childish dreams; in the memories of kindness, of gentleness and compassion, freely offered the enemy. In even the dismay that he had seen her as Robert Stewart presented her, sodden with mud and horse-piss, with the smell of whisky about her from that which she had spilled so she need not serve MacDonald.
Need not serve him; but had she known it was he, she would have served him gladly. He was deserving of that, even as MacDonald, for being honest with the lass.
And now? Loss. The ending of something not so newly begun, though perhaps it was new in his eyes; he was a man, and grown, and with lasses aplenty, no doubt; he had said something of that, of experience. And that experience had seen she was different that day before the shieling, when he had wanted to kiss a Campbell.
An ending, before a prope
r beginning. An ending to girlhood dreams and the beginning of adulthood, now stolen from her in the blade of Breadalbane’s words.
Dair knew, or had once known. She had told them in the shieling, Alasdair Og and Robert Stewart: that she was on her way to Kilchurn to visit Breadalbane. It had been Stewart who pieced it together, who declared she must be meant to marry one of the earl’s sons. Not John, he had said, because John was already wed. Therefore Duncan, whom Breadalbane detested despite his pedigree; but then it had not mattered what Dair MacDonald thought. There was nothing between them then but an enmity shaped of tradition, except what they overlooked. What they chose to overlook, because it was easier.
And overlooked it they had, choosing to do so, in spirit if not in words, though neither of them would acknowledge it to themselves or to one another.
It made a cruel sense, the ending. There was no future in it, no purpose to the madness. There could never be anything more than what their clans had sown, and the crop of acrimony was what she and Dair must reap.
I dinna want to.
There. It was said. Her loyalty declared.
Cat yet held the mirror. She raised it, turned it, looked into its glassy surface. The night behind her was dark; there was little illumination save the diffused glow of distant campfires and the moon overhead. The woman in the mirror was nothing more than a collection of blurred features leached stark and pale by tension, and the false brilliance of unshed tears.
It had not just begun, what Breadalbane ended, and was not easily reconciled. She could count the days, the years, all the meetings between them, and knew in no way did their infrequency influence significance.
She lowered the mirror and stared blindly at the encampment as tears ran down her face. “You pawkie bastard,” she said. “I am pleased they razed your castle.”
Dair wanted to go to Cat at once, to find her and tend her chancy temper as well as explain himself; he had invited her home to Glencoe without thought, without preparation, reacting to his heart and the tension of the moment. In this it was his thought, his will, not Jean’s, who wanted him then as he came first to Castle Stalker. . . as he wanted Cat now, in the ruins of Achallader, if for different reasons. For deeper, more honest reasons as well as requirements; companionship of the spirit as well as of the body.
But he knew he must not go to Cat. Not now, not so soon after the earl’s interruption. It was what Breadalbane no doubt expected, what Breadalbane probably planned for, and was therefore far too dangerous for Dair in his present mood. He did not anger easily, but the fire burned hot as Robbie Stewart’s once fully kindled.
But there was yet another thing for him to discuss, and with another man. Dair set out to broach it.
He wound his way through clansmen clustered around fires in tartan-clad companionship and went directly to the Appin Stewarts. They were snugged against the slope, content to pass the evening in talk and usquabae. Ceol mor had at last given way to subtle music, piping down the night.
Dair came to a halt at the fire. “Did you agree?” he demanded without preliminaries; without an invitation to bide a wee with them. “Good Christ, Robbie—did you agree?”
Robert Stewart, sprawled inelegantly across battered turf with his head propped on a braced elbow, offered detached consternation. “You are shaking, MacDonald . . . and verra black in the face.”
It took effort not to shout. And that made him shake all the more. “I dinna care what color my face is, and I am shaking because I’d as lief put a dirk in Breadalbane as spend another night on his land.”
“Fletcher land, once,” Robbie observed mildly. “A Campbell stole it from them. . . but I wouldna say now ’tis so much to claim; there is no more roof, or walls against the wind.” He swung a boiled-leather bottle in the general direction of the castle ruins. “He’s no cause to thank you, has the pawkie earl.”
“To thank MacIain, ” Dair clarified. “You and I were in Glen Lyon when they burned Achallader.”
“Aye, so we were, collecting cows and other plunder.” Stewart hoisted the leather bottle. “Usquabae,” he explained. “By your face, you need it.”
“I dinna want whisky, ”Dair said plainly, “I want the truth of you. Did you agree to sign the treaty?”
Robbie sat up. In firelight his hair shone gold. “ ’Tis a Stewart concern,” he said. “I thought you were MacDonald.”
Dair spared a glance for Robbie’s men. They looked at him briefly, then away to the fire, to their whisky, to their comrades, avoiding his eyes entirely. He knew most of them; they had gone on raids with their laird’s son, gone to war with their laird’s son. They would defend his life, but they knew Dair MacDonald; they would let him say what he meant to say and keep themselves out of it.
“MacDonald,” Dair said. “So I am, aye? Robbie—” He sat down abruptly, too angry to stand without taking action, and accepted the proffered whisky. With some violence he tilted the bottle to his mouth, drank much of the contents, then glared at his friend. “How could you, man? He is of two tongues, is Breadalbane, promising a thing to one man, and a second thing to another.”
“I havena sworn for him yet.”
Dair looked at him sharply. “He said you had.”
Robbie muttered an imprecation and gestured; one of his gillies tossed over another boiled-leather bottle. “ ’Tis precipitate of him—but aye, I think I will put my name to this treaty. D’ye see a way out of it?”
“Aye—dinna do it!”
Robbie drank deeply, then wiped a glistening smear of liquor from his upper lip. “ ’Tisn’t so easy as that.”
Dair swallowed whisky, welcoming the burn. “No? You dinna sign, Robbie; that doesna seem gey hard.”
Stewart eyed him assessively. “Have more. Dinna spill it, now; you’re still shaking, man.” He grinned in delight. “ ’Twas always you telling me no’ to be so angry. . . Christ, MacDonald, ’tis a shame we’re no’ in battle! You’d hew down a hundred men!”
“Fifty,” Dair said darkly. “Dinna exaggerate.” Then the anger boiled up again. “Christ, the bluidy Campbell. . .” He wanted badly to speak of Cat, of Breadalbane’s deliberate insults, to share his rage and the true reason for it. But he did not because he knew better, even in his anger: Jean’s brother would hold no sympathy for a man who was upset because of another woman. “I’m unfit for company. . .” He held the bottle out. “Here, have it back, aye?—I’ll go.”
“Sit,” Robbie said. “What will MacIain do?”
“MacIain?” It distracted him. He relaxed muscles tensed to rise, settling back onto his buttocks. “He isna pleased by this meeting.”
“Well, no, I wouldna think so,” Robbie agreed mildly. “Not MacIain, aye?—he’s no love of Grey John Campbell.”
“Have you?” He had drunk too quickly with no food to mitigate it; the fire in his belly now threatened his head. “Has any man here cause to love Breadalbane?”
“Och, the Campbells might. . .” Robbie grinned and made a placating gesture to ward off sputtered protest. “But it isna a question of love. ’Tis survival.” Humor dissipated; his expression was pensive as he set aside his bottle. “There is that fort at Inverlochy. . . and an army in the hills—”
With withering disdain, “I have eyes, ye ken, and I live in Glencoe; I’ve seen it for myself.”
Stewart judiciously chose to overlook it. “Then ye ken what we’d face, were we to go against William’s forces.”
Dair raised his bottle. With deliberate derision he said, “Those are no’ the words of the man who was at Killiecrankie.”
Robbie brightened. “You want to fight me—!”
“Not you specifically. But someone, aye; you seem the most fit for it . . . and God in Heaven kens I’ve wanted to before! ’Tis time we learned who is the better man.”
Stewart was delighted. Blue eyes kindled. “You would lose.”
“I dinna think so.”
“Fou or sober, you’d lose.”
Dair smiled with ca
reful condescension. “I dinna think so.”
“ ’Tis the usquabae.”
“Does it matter?”
“Och, but it lies, does usquabae . . . it convinces a man of his own superiority.” Robbie laughed at him. “I’d prefer you sober. I’d want you to remember the beating I gave you.”
Dair set down the bottle. His thighs tingled with tension. He trembled again, but no longer from anger. His body demanded release; if it was through a fistfight rather than lovemaking, he’d not debate the issue. “Well?”
“Tempting as it may be”—blue eyes were speculative—“no.” Robbie sighed and settled back on his elbow. “We are here for the purpose of peace.”
In deep disgust, Dair said, “Dinna sound so pious; you havena the makings of a priest, or a kirk minister either.”
Stewart grinned briefly, but it died away. “Killiecrankie is over. ’Twas two years ago. There is a fort now, near to Glencoe—and Appin isna so far from it, either. Think, man; which clans would see Livingstone and his army first? Which clans would meet with Governor John Hill first?”
“Robbie—”
“Let be,” Stewart said briefly. “Whatever the earl said, ’twas said of a purpose. Would you let him win? ’Twould be something of which to boast, to rouse Alasdair Og.”
Dair glared at him blackly. “Will you sign, then? For Appin?”
Robbie’s expression was solemn. “Before you shout at me—aye, I can see ’tis in your mind—you’d best ask your father what he intends to do. Then you may be shouting at us both.”
Dair shook his head. “He willna sign.”
“He has said so?”
“Breadalbane hasna spoken to him yet.”
“He told you he wouldna sign.”
“He told me he will hear what William’s lapdog has to say; ’tis why he came, after all.”
“Ah.” Robbie considered it. “Then by this time tomorrow night you may be telling me how sorry you are for your words.”
It provoked, as Stewart intended. “Glengarry isna so quick to agree, either, aye?”
“He told me that. The earl.” Robbie frowned, taking up his bottle again. “Appin isna so large—”
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