Jennifer Roberson

by Lady of the Glen

  MacDonalds would be blamed.

  And to MacDonald lands the Williamite governor would send his Sassenach soldiers.

  “Let him,” Dair murmured. Robbie and the boat would be safe in Appin lands, and he, being wise, would take himself entirely elsewhere. He suppressed a grin of sheer delight and anticipation. They will all of them, even Robbie, least expect me to go where I most want to be.

  In his private quarters, John Hill unrolled the map upon the table, arranged it, weighted it down at four corners with inkhorns and books. When he was satisfied with its placement he looked at the man who stood on the other side of the table. “If you please, Captain Fisher, show me where this incident occurred.”

  Captain Fisher did please. He planted a definitive forefinger on the map. “Here,” he said succinctly, eyebrows locked together balefully over the flattened bridge of his misshapen nose. “Out of Ballachulish, from the smaller stem of the loch. Two boats, perhaps two dozen men. Scotch pirates, Governor. Bloody heathen savages!”

  Hill nodded amicably, but forebore to correct the crude terminology. He did not entirely blame London-born, sea-reared Fisher for being so out of sorts; the man had lost his ship, his cargo; had had to swim to shore and skulk for two days through the wild Highland terrain, all the while trying desperately to avoid “heathen Scotch pirates.”

  In truth, Hill was no happier; Fort William badly needed the supplies now on their way elsewhere. “You are certain no one was killed?”

  “No, sir, we all made it to shore safely, and all are here with me. But wounds aplenty, sir, from pistols and those bloody Highland short swords—begging your pardon, Governor.”

  “Dirks,” Hill said absently, looking again at the map. His own finger traced a path. “From Ballachulish—here . . . to here, where the Lamb was . . .” he mused. “Yes, I see it—Glencoe is but miles up the glen . . . it would be an obvious target to MacIain’s people, more food for their mouths and less for ours, whom they detest. . . .” Hill nodded; it made perfect sense to an old soldier, if not to an old sailor. He glanced from the map to Captain Fisher. “Did you hear any names called out?”

  “MacDonald,” Fisher answered promptly, “as you said. And Stewart—like their Papist king, the foolish old bastard.”

  “Different clan, I think,” Hill said diffidently, but did not explain the details to Fisher of how Stewart became Stuart at the whimsy of a Scots—not Scotch—queen who spoke more French than Gaelic; how a single clan could become more than one in time, so large, so piecemeal, so scattered throughout the country.

  It was a simple thing for John Hill to piece the truth together despite the paucity of evidence. He knew the map very well, and the clans who lived by its boundaries. “Think, if you please, Captain. Can you recall who was in command?”

  Fisher glowered. “I don’t understand their bloody heathen tongue!” he declared curtly, then mitigated it as he recalled to whom he spoke. “Sir.”

  “Ah, no, of course not; why should you?” Hill agreed mildly. “But I must ask you to think again, Captain Fisher. . . was there one man who spoke the ‘bloody heathen tongue’ more than the others? With pronounced authority?”

  Fisher considered it, and nodded. “Young man, aye, sir. Sandy-haired, wearing the colored wool. Not tall, but well-made. And barefoot, like them all.” He grimaced. “Bloody savages!”

  Hill nodded patiently; it served nothing, with men like Fisher, to debate the truth. “Is there anyone else you recall? Another man who might have answered this one back more often than the others?” No MacDonald would take orders from a Stewart; he would command his own clanspeople.

  Fisher’s expression cleared. “Yes, of course, sir . . . ah, I take your meaning! Indeed, there was this young man who did most of the jabbering in the Scotch tongue, but another had as much to say. I marked him well, sir. Young face, old hair.”

  Hill’s attention sharpened. “Graying early, was he?”

  “Yes, sir. He wore no hat, sir. He was nearly gray as myself, Governor, but twenty years or more younger.”

  “MacDonald . . .” Hill murmured. “MacIain’s son—what, John? John, I think . . . perhaps. Indeed, perhaps—the old fox’s sons, they say, will be white-headed before they are forty . . .” But more telling yet: “And they’ve none of them signed the treaty. Nor will. This is their declaration, their defiance.” He looked more pointedly at Fisher. “Good captain, I thank you. I believe you have solved their identities for me, if it please God.” He moved the weights aside and began to reroll the map. “I do thank you, sir. You have saved me wasted effort.”

  Fisher was taken aback by the Hill’s abrupt decisiveness. “Your pardon, Governor, sir—but what do you mean to do?”

  Hill examined the parchment roll, then slid it carefully back into its leather storage tube, taking care not to tear the edges. “Catch them,” he said succinctly. “I have troops, Captain Fisher, fine English troops. If it please God, I will send half of them to Glencoe and half of them to Appin.” He smiled. “Despite their heathen tongue, Captain, Scottish foxes are no different than English ones. They will go to ground in territory they know best.”

  Her brothers had come up from their own dwellings, their own business, to tell Cat hers. That she was back from Kilchurn, back as well from Achallader where the treaty had been signed, took no time to be carried about, and soon enough her brothers came back to the house they had left years before to marry and raise their own bairns, leaving their sister to make her own life.

  Until now. Until they heard of Duncan Campbell’s elopement—it was a popular coffeehouse story, traded like wagers among Breadalbane’s enemies—and the dishonor done their sister. Who was to have been a countess.

  She had no choice but to let them in. One day Chesthill would be Jamie’s, after all, when their father was dead. And so they came in, drank whisky, gathered themselves to her like kilt-clad chicks around a hen, appraised her closely——like a cow to be bred!——and muttered blackly among themselves that such treatment as she was shown by Breadalbane’s son called for harsh words and dirks.

  “Oh, aye,” Cat said in blatant disgust. “Even the earl canna find his son . . . d’ye think you might do better?”

  Jamie paced like a Highland wildcat, noiseless in bare feet. Dougal and Colin, less high-tempered than he, sat decorously in wooden chairs and drank down their father’s whisky. She was mildly surprised any was left, but they had found a tun put away beneath the house. Its smoky, powerful tang put her in mind of her father, smelling always of usquabae.

  Cat disdained a chair. She sat instead on the bottom step of the staircase near to the front door, where Robbie Stewart had once pressed a sword to her throat. She wore trews, of which they disapproved, but she had never put on skirts when left to her own devices. She folded up her legs and leaned her elbows upon them. “You ken gey well ’tis your honor besmirched,” she muttered sourly. “You never cared much for mine.”

  Jamie stopped pacing and wheeled back, plaid swinging. “And what does the earl mean to do? ’Tis his dishonor as well . . . we are all Campbells, aye?”

  “Silver might do,” Dougal offered.

  “Silver!” Jamie cried. “ ’Tis our sister’s future I’m thinking of, not having her substance bought and sold like a cow!”

  “Och, save your thunder for Breadalbane; d’ye think to fool me?” Cat said wearily, shifting long legs and arms to plant elbows and buttocks into the stairs, and sprawled inelegantly. “You’d take silver for it, Jamie—you just want to make your noise so you might get more out of him.”

  Colin laughed briefly. “Aye, well . . . ’tis a good way to fatten our purses, Cat. Even yours.”

  “This is my home,” she said, intending to remind them she had a right to stay in it.

  Jamie interrupted. “Mine.”

  Cat stared, astounded, then scrambled up untidily to face him toe to toe, drawn up straight as a Lochaber ax. “And would you throw me out of it?”

  “I’d sooner se
e you married,” he retorted, moving a step away. “You need a man, Cat.”

  “And would you marry me off only so you can have this house?” She wanted to spit at his feet. “Just so you can move Ellen in here and spawn more bairns upon her? Well, ‘tisn’t your house ’till he’s dead, Jamie—”

  “Or until someone kills him,” Dougal put in mildly. “For debts, most likely.”

  Colin laughed. “Or he’ll put the gun to his own head!”

  Cat stared at her brothers one by one. “Have you no shame?” she managed at last. “The man is our father!”

  “And likely he sired us one by one in various drunken fits,” Jamie said flatly. “I doubt he’d have the wherewithal, else.”

  “Oh, but you do!” she shot back. “Isna Ellen breeding again?”

  Ellen was. The retort darkened Jamie’s face. “ ’Tis no surprise to me no man will have you . . . you’d shame him with that tongue.”

  “Or shrivel his cock with her spite,” Dougal agreed cheerfully.

  Colin grinned at her. “You’d best mind it, Cat, if you want to catch a man.”

  “Aye,” Jamie said pointedly. “Or are we to think Duncan Campbell eloped to escape marrying you?”

  “Go home,” Cat told them. “I’ll hear no more of your whisky-soaked wind. You are as bad as he is. Glenlyon breeds raukle fools for sons.”

  “There are amends,” Jamie said darkly.

  Cat sighed. “Then go to Flanders, aye?—and have the earl give you the silver you think you’re due. Now, go home. All of you. Una isna here—I’ve washing to tend.”

  “If you were a countess,” Colin declared, “you’d have more women than absent Una to do the washing for you.”

  Cat marched to the door and snatched it open. “I dinna want to be a countess. I dinna want untold women to do my washing for me. I dinna want anything at this particular moment save to be let alone.” She swung the door so it thumped against the wall, letting the daylight in. “Go. ”

  They went, Jamie muttering of stubbornness and ingratitude for their great care and affection while Colin and Dougal, less annoyed by her mood, set horn cups into her hands as they passed through the door.

  “If you’re washing linens,” Colin said, “you might as well wash the cups.”

  Cat slammed the door behind them. Angrily she set her spine against it in a vain attempt to bar further entry; if they truly wanted in, in they would come. “Pawkie bastards,” she muttered. “There isna a man in the world worth a woman’s time!”

  She scowled at the cups. One was empty, the other nearly half-full. She would indeed have to wash them, but it was a waste of good whisky to pour it out on the ground.

  —I should ken what it is my father likes so gey well! Cat lifted the cup, paused, examined its contents suspiciously, then gulped the liquor swiftly.

  “Cruachan!” she gasped as the fire burned into her belly. “Och, oh Christ Jesus . . . ’tis no wonder a man goes screaming like the bean sidhe into battle—he’s coals heaped up in his belly—” She coughed, pressing the back of one hand against her mouth. Her eyes watered. She caught her breath, tasting peat-smoke in her mouth along with the coals in her belly, then nearly choked in shock as a scratching sounded at the door.

  She lurched off the door, spinning in place. “Which one of you doesna understand good Gaelic—?” Clutching the cups in one hand, Cat grasped the latch and yanked open the door. “I’ll hear no more of your pawkie words—”

  Nor would they. Nor would he, leaning nonchalantly slantwise in the door with one shoulder lodged against the wooden jamb. “I’ve lost my bonnet,” he said. “Have you one I might wear?”

  And Dair MacDonald smiled.

  —bonnie, bonnie prince—

  “Oh Christ,” Cat blurted. “I canna be drunk already—”

  He arched one brow incongruously dark beneath the silvering forelock. “Already? Have you begun on it, then?” He spied the cups in her hands. “One for each fist, aye? Well, I’ve kent men as prefer it that way . . . though never a lass.” He grinned. “But then you have never been like other lasses.” “Och, indeed,” Cat said, senses all atumble and nothing at all in her world, in her body, making any sense. “I dinna like other lasses.”

  The grin transmuted itself. Cider-eyes, whisky-eyes, were abruptly dark and intense. “Nor I,” he said plainly.

  Glenlyon’s daughter said nothing as he came into her house.

  MacDonald, in her house.

  —bonnie lad, bonnie lad—

  He shut the door on sunlight. “Cat,” he said. “Come home with me to Glencoe.”

  She laughed at him. Och, good Christ . . . does he think I’ll say him nay? And dropped the cups altogether to fill her hands instead with the plaid across one shoulder, with the linen of his shirt, with the thick wind-tumbled hair unhindered by missing bonnet.

  —with silver in his hair, and white teeth a’gleaming—

  And a fierce, wild music skirling through her body far greater even than ceol mor, piping the Gaels to war.

  She waits impatiently as he brings up two horses. She sees the expression on his face, the tension in his body, but gives in to neither unspoken plea. And when he halts, she reaches out swiftly and takes the rein from his hand.

  His expression is troubled. “What will this serve?”

  Does he believe she might reconsider, given time? Or merely hopes? Grimly she says, “It serves me to see what has become of my home, and of the man I married. ”

  He still frowns even as she mounts her horse, though he says nothing.

  “You’ve a wife yourself, ”she tells him, “and two bairns. Think of them as I do this. Think of not knowing if they lived, or if they died. For the rest of your life. ”

  He grimaces. “Not knowing might be easier. ”

  “Oh, no. No . . . ”she turns her garron toward the track that winds through Rannoch Moor.

  No one can understand who has not been there. And until she goes back she will never know the truth.

  She needs to know. Until she knows the truth there can be no future, only the past.

  In Glencoe, she will know. If he lives. Or not.

  Part V

  1691

  One

  The floor, as the braes of Craigh Eallaich before the Battle of Killiecrankie, was a field of tartan spoor. Dair’s kilt, unbelted, unpinned, had been discarded into tangled folds, mingling with woolen trews that once had been a man’s, but more recently—and with much greater grace!—had attired a woman instead. All such impediments as clothing lay strewn across the hardwood floor of a room Dair believed must be the Laird of Glenlyon’s; the bed was large enough for two, and as they were neither of them lacking in height nor length of limb, he found it much in favor.

  But far more in favor for the woman who was in it, dawn-gilded hair caught now beneath his shoulder as well as her own.

  He touched a sleep-tangled, wiry coil improbably red against pale linens; nothing, with Cat Campbell, so restrained as sandy rose or sullen auburn. But Cat slept on, no more self-conscious in sleep than she was awake, blatant in posture and pride.

  Dair smiled drowsily, content with the day, the dawn; content within himself of what they had wrought in Glenlyon’s bed. Her passion, unschooled, had been the greater for his guidance, for his restraint and hard-won patience; she was an apt pupil and did not stint response. While Jean had been well cognizant of how to please a man and did so with consummate skill, Cat was wholly unaware and thus more honest. She was virgin and he hurt her, but the moment passed. Between the dusk and the dawn she had forgotten the pain, disdained the blood, and gave of herself freely even in awkwardness.

  For her, he doubted the earth had shifted. It was more difficult for a woman, he knew, less generous with less time, and he had not been able to wait so long as he might have liked. But she, clearly, was not displeased. Once roused beyond the beginning there was pleasure in it for her, and would be more yet. They had all the time in the world to learn the wa
ys, the movements, that most pleased them individually as well as mutually.

  He shifted closer. Feet and knees aligned themselves perfectly. She was nearly as tall as he, so they fit together far better as spoons than one might expect. With his breast against her spine he could feel her steady heartbeat, and knew when her breathing changed.

  She went rigidly stiff, as if astounded by his presence. Then she softened all at once and turned, grasping the hair caught beneath his shoulder to rescue her scalp. He shifted, smiling, and freed her.

  She faced him now, brows level and eloquent, staring at him so critically Dair had to laugh. “Did you think I might be gone? Or naught but a dream?”

  “No dream ever did that, ”she declared. “But gone—aye. ’Tis dangerous for you here.”

  “Why, d’ye expect your brothers to come in with dirks drawn, and claymores?” He grinned. “Aye, I saw them yesterday—had to hide myself away until they left the house. One of them had a gey black face, but the others were no’ so worried.”

  “Jamie.” Cat’s generous mouth twisted. “He thinks I should be married with a house of my own so he might claim this one the sooner. As for dangerous—aye. I’ve a woman who stays with me.”

  “I heard her,” Dair agreed. “Last night when she came up the stairs, but she didna look in here.”

  “Christ, no!” Cat said fervently. “Una would have screeched like a snared coney. . . .” She shifted against the sheets, one foot hooked with his tentatively, uncertain of her welcome but wanting it nonetheless. “This is my father’s room. She’d no’ come in here.”

  “Then we are safe,” he said, trapping the ankle between his own, “from such prying eyes as a screeching coney and three pawkie brothers.” He bent close, then rolled back as she jerked the covers from his hips. “Christ, Cat—what?”

  She peered warily beneath the coverlet. When she lowered the bedclothes at last her eyes were stricken.