Jennifer Roberson

by Lady of the Glen

  Cat did not like resorting to condescension, but had wearied of provocation. And it had proved successful; Una departed swiftly. But when the door below was struck open so hard it banged against the wall, Cat realized Una had merely gone, like a pawkie coward, to bring in artillery .

  They were no respecters of privacy, her brothers, had no tolerance of her wishes. They thudded their way up the stairs, yanked open her door, then crowded between the jambs. The room was not so large it supported three tall men in addition to herself, but they tried regardless of it.

  Jamie was furious. He spilled such offal in his words and so many all at once that she could not decipher the insults, only their intentions. When Jamie stopped swearing at her, Dougal joined in, if with less heat; Colin merely waited until both of them were done.

  “Why?” he asked then. “Why a MacDonald?”

  Cat found it ironic. Not ‘why a man?, ’but ‘why a MacDonald?’To him she offered answer; his mildness merited it. “Because at that moment, with him in my house, in my heart, there was nothing else to do but go to bed with him. Nothing else I wanted but to go to bed with him.” There. Frank enough. No man could mistake it, not even her brothers.

  Jamie was disgusted. “I’ll no’ have any man say my sister is a whore—”

  “Good. Dinna let him say it. Last I kent, a woman was no’ a whore unless she took silver for it.”

  Dougal was curious. “You dinna care what they think?”

  “I dinna,” Cat said plainly. “Did wondering about it ever keep you from bedding a lass?”

  “ ’Tis different,” Jamie declared. “ ’Tis a man’s right to choose a woman—”

  “He chose me.” She shut one of the trunks. “I dinna see the sense in explaining myself. ’Tis done.”

  “Where are you going?” Colin asked.

  Cat set the latch. “Glencoe. I’ve been invited.”

  “Why?” Jamie, for all his noise, was desperately perplexed. “What business have you there in the midst of MacDonalds?”

  Cat lifted the trunk off the bed and set it on the floor. “To tell them the truth of what’s become of him.”

  “I dinna doubt they ken that already.” His irony was weighted with contempt. “The Sassenachs went there first, aye?”

  “They dinna ken the truth,” she answered steadfastly. “ ’Tis for me to tell them.”

  Dougal was incredulous. “Glenlyon’s daughter in Glencoe? Are ye daft, Cat? They could hold you there and demand a trade: you for Alasdair Og!”

  Cat shut the second trunk and latched it. “You are daft, Dougal. What value am I to the Sassenachs? We are none of us Jacobites, aye?—and the Laird of Glenlyon serves King William in Argyll’s regiment.”

  “You have some value to us,” Jamie declared sourly. “If Breadalbane’s son will have despoiled baggage.”

  Cat laughed at him. “Breadalbane’s son despoiled his own baggage,” she said, “and then ran off with it. I dinna think he’ll be home to consider having me.”

  “Cat—” As she turned toward the door with one trunk clasped in her arms, Jamie moved to obstruct her. “I canna have it.”

  “Because of your pawkie pride? Well, I dinna care what you can or canna have,” she said. “I will do what I wish.”

  He did not give ground. “I’ll no’ have it.”

  Anger boiled up. “You are not the laird yet!” she cried. “Christ, Jamie, had Robbie lived you’d be naught at all, save a drukken man’s second son! Let me pass.”

  “And Robbie died because of MacDonalds.”

  It took effort not to shout at him, to take out her frustrations on a man who would not, or could not—despite the honesty of them, the perilous power of them—comprehend her feelings.

  Cat glared into his face. “Robbie died because of me. Me, Jamie! Because I lifted our father’s dirk and snooved away to follow you on your cattle-lifting. Blame that! Blame yourself! Blame me for following you! But I’ll no’ have you blaming Dair for a thing he wasna there for!”

  “And where was he?” Dougal asked. “Lifting our cattle, aye?”

  “Or raping Campbell lands on his way home from butchering Argyll,” Jamie said harshly. “He was there, aye?—with all the rest of Glencoe to watch the beheading, save for the lads who came out to lift our cows!”

  “You were going to lift theirs!”

  “But we didna kill anyone!”

  “Stop it,” Colin said, who had been quiet for too long. “Houd your gab, the pair of you. You dishonor our mother’s house with such bitterness.” He looked at the eldest. “Let her go, Jamie.”

  Dougal was clearly surprised. “Colin—what are you doing, man?”

  “Let her go,” Colin repeated. “Short of chaining her to the bed, you’ll no’ keep her here. She’s enough of us in her, aye?—and naught at all of our father, who’s no spine to hold him upright. You willna make her grovel, Jamie. You willna make her beg.” He flicked a glance at his sister. “And even if you could, I dinna think I would let you.”

  Jamie was speechless. Colin took the trunk from Cat and nodded at her bed. “Fetch the rest, Cat. You willna go to Glencoe with naught but what you’re wearing.”

  “Trews,” Jamie muttered. “Dressed like a lad.”

  Dougal laughed. “Aye, but she proved she was no lad when she bedded a MacDonald!”

  Jamie’s expression was bitter. “Unless he prefers lads . . . he is a MacDonald, withal—”

  “Oh, stop,” Cat said wearily, wrapping up rope, and mirror, and bonnet. “Go back to your bairns and your wife, Jamie . . . surely they would do better than I to hear the droning of your pipes.”

  Colin waited. Cat tucked the small bundle into her belt, then hoisted the trunk from the narrow bed she would not, so long as possible, sleep in ever again.

  “Dinna be a fool,” Dougal said, with a note of urgency in his voice. “Oh, Cat—”

  “Let her pass,” Colin said.

  Jamie shot him a look of pure venom. “You’ll be the one to tell the tale to our father.”

  “So I will.” Colin went out of the room, following Cat as she headed down the stairs. Where Una, taut-faced, waited at the bottom.

  “Catriona—”

  “ ’Tis decided,” Cat said. Then, more gently, “I must go, Una. But if you feel you must come to give me chaperonage—”

  “I will not,” Una said sharply. “You’ve proved yourself without honor. Nothing I do can buy it back again.”

  It hurt worse than expected. Cat clamped her teeth shut and went out into the dooryard.

  Colin set her trunk down on the bench beside the door. “I’ll fetch a garron for you. And I will write our father—I’ll tell the tale more kindly than Jamie would.”

  That was true. Cat put a hand on his arm. “Colin—why?”

  He smiled. “Because I’ve never seen you want a thing so badly as this. And you have always demanded whatever there was to have.”

  It made no sense. “Colin—”

  “You love him,” he said.

  Cat’s belly tautened. “As much as I am able to love anything in this world.”

  “Aye, well . . .” Colin shrugged awkwardly; such truth came hard to him. “You’ve never hoarded your passions, Cat. You share with everyone what is in your heart . . . and you’ve the words in your mouth, and wit enough, to make it sting! ’Tis what makes you gey hard to be with. ’Tis what angers Jamie so.” He smiled crookedly, the best of all of them: a man who would permit her the freedom to be whom she needed to be. “But if he will have you, MacDonald or no, ’tis his to deal with. ”

  She was not certain if that were flattery or insult, but she did not ask an explanation. She would take what was offered, gratefully, and remember him in her prayers.

  Cat smiled through tears as Colin walked away. At least one of my brothers is worth them!

  Dust rose from the parade ground as the soldiers with their prisoners rode into Fort William. It was midafternoon of the fifth day since Captain Fisher r
eported the attack on the Lamb; excellent time had been made in the apprehension of the Scots involved.

  Governor Hill, accompanied by his aide, stood before the officer’s quarters as the prisoners, summarily halted, were ordered off the shaggy Highland garrons dwarfed by the larger, heavier military mounts of his soldiers.

  Against the uniforms and rigid discipline of Major Forbes’s troops, the Scots were supremely barbaric in appearance. Bare of foot, naked of knee and leg, swathed in gaudy tartan, there was nothing about them that suggested civility. And yet Hill knew better. The lairds were not savages but often highly educated men who, Highland-born, chose to remain in their wild country, to live by the most rigorous code of all, shaped by tribal loyalty and the sacred law of hospitality despite clan rivalries that bloodied the gorse and heather. Their sons were taught the same.

  And now Hill held two of them: the heir to the Appin Stewarts, and one of MacIain’s cubs.

  Another man might rejoice. But Hill thought it unfortunate, if providential, that imprisonment was required. He did not know of a single Scot who adapted to captivity, any more than African lions did to the Tower of London.

  According to Captain Fisher’s description, Hill sought out the Stewart and MacDonald. One was not difficult: Stewart was indeed a powerfully built young man despite his lack of height, and he carried himself, even in iron, with an arrogance wholly unmitigated by his circumstances. He stood planted squarely beside his garron and stared straight at Hill, a mocking smile discounting bonnetless head, heavy shackles, and the grime on his face.

  The other was another matter. MacIain’s son was identifiable by the signal gray in his hair, but also the grim concern on the faces of the clansmen who wore the MacDonald badge. He did not stand on his own but was supported by two soldiers. Dried blood stained the cloth of his shirt, crusted his hair, smeared one side of his face as if he had tried to tend himself, and failed. Hill recognized immediately the unfocused look in the eyes, the minute unsteadiness, the overly careful carriage of an injured head. MacDonald was conscious, but not fully cognizant of his surroundings. Or he hurt too much to care.

  Forbes came forward at once, saluting smartly. He gave his report succinctly and without excess comment: Robert Stewart and certain clansmen arrested in Appin lands, as well as certain MacDonalds from near Glencoe, and Alasdair Og MacDonald.

  MacIain’s younger son, not the heir. Hill looked past Forbes at the dazed prisoner. Under scrutiny, MacDonald stirred in the soldiers’ grasp and attempted to stand unaided. Iron chimed as he pulled himself upright. The lurid beginnings of an ugly bruise bloomed on his swollen jaw. He met Hill’s gaze and raised his head, disdaining the pain of movement. But Hill saw it in the rigid mask of his battered face, the pallor of bitten lips.

  Anger flared; he would not countenance unnecessary brutality. “How was that man injured, Major Forbes?”

  “Sir—”

  “I did it. ”Robert Stewart took a step forward before a soldier barred his way. He checked, sent the soldier a mocking, sidelong glance, then looked Hill in the eyes. “I did it, aye?—’twas an issue twixt the two of us, and naught to do wi’ you.” His English was good, if accented thickly with Highland dialect. “ ’Tis for Scots, no’ Sassenachs. Ye wouldna understand.”

  Hill repressed a smile. “Do you know, young sir—do you ‘ken’ it?—that if the Scots just once ceased killing each other long enough to unite and meet the Sassenachs in true battle, you might very well succeed in regaining your independence. After all, Dundee did a proper job of it at Killiecrankie. A military genius; pity he was killed.”

  Stewart blinked his surprise. Belligerently he said, “Would your pawkie king no’ accuse ye of treason for saying that?”

  “My pawkie king is not present to hear it,” Hill answered. “And yours, I fear, is no closer to hear what you do in his name. We are left to our own devices, sir—and to our own war.” He looked back at Forbes. “Major, you will escort these prisoners to the stockade, and secure them. Put Robert Stewart and Alasdair MacDonald in one cell, the rest in another. And have the physician in; I’ll not give MacIain any more cause to hate us.” He was aware of MacDonald’s unnatural stillness; of Stewart’s start of surprise, and turned to look at them. “Gentlemen, be assured that while we await the king’s pleasure in this matter, you will be treated with such hospitality as I am able to offer. I only regret it must be extended under such circumstances.”

  Neither young man believed him, nor the Highlanders with them. For that, Hill grieved. If the world were his to remake, he would have men trust one another.

  Even Scots and Sassenachs.

  Even Robert Stewart and Alasdair Og MacDonald.

  Two

  It was an alien land, although Cat knew its character, even knew its names. The Big and Little Herdsman. The Devil’s Staircase. Cliff of the Feinn. The Pap of Glencoe. She had been raised on the tales of the land, of feuds and killings, of cattle raids and field games. No Highlander was ignorant of his geography, and she no more than men.

  Rannoch Moor fell behind, of the bogs and twisted trees; the memory of a hanging. Into the glen she rode, the lush and fertile valley cut through by the River Coe, cradled by a stark and desolate beauty jealously warding secret splendors: craggy cliffs cut apart by waterfalls, tumbling into burns that carved the softer braes into setts, like the warp of tartan cloth; the wild, hurling power of a river halving the glen from end to end; the upthrustings of rock bursting free of tree-clad hills; the rills in the valley floor, the meanderings of creeks flowing down to Loch Linnhe beyond the ferry at Ballachulish.

  It was not a soft place, Glencoe, but hewn by hasty hands, then shaped by the ages. Its strength lay in its ruggedness, its rigorous demands; its splendor in survival. It was here Dair had been born, here Dair had been raised, here where the giant, MacIain, made a home for his people, tending their welfare with all the cunning and strength of a robust personality well matched to a massive body. MacIain was Glencoe, his bone knit of its stone, his blood milked of its burnwater, his pride of the cliffs and crags. And it was she, an enemy’s daughter, who would have to tell the father what had become of his son.

  Cat allowed the garron to pick its way stolidly, requiring no haste. She had departed Glen Lyon certain of her course, urged on by the need to carry word of the truth and her own desire to go. But now she was here, in the womb of Glencoe with the Pap overhanging, where hatred of Campbells was bred from conception.

  Her shoulders ached with fretting. It was all she could do not to halt the horse, to turn it back, and leave. Who was she to ride in unaccompanied with word of the laird’s son: taken by Sassenachs from the house of a Campbell, from the bed of Glenlyon’s daughter?

  They none of them knew her. Only of her, if that; a drukken man’s lass, meant to marry Breadalbane’s son. But even in that she was repudiated by Duncan’s elopement with his Marjorie; and though she approved of it, wanting nothing of him for herself, to others it was dishonor. A man had refused her to reject his father’s wealth.

  The garron plodded on. Cat shut her eyes. Sweat stung in creases and hollows, tension in breasts and groin; despite the languor of summer she felt urgency, and apprehension.

  ‘Come home with me to Glencoe. ’Well, she had come. But he was not here.

  “Are ye ill?” a voice asked.

  Cat’s eyes snapped open. A man stood beside the track, reaching out to catch the garron’s headstall. With him, clutching his kilt, was a young lad.

  She snatched at reins, hastily scraped a lock of hair out of her face, tried to regain even a trace of composure. “I’ve come to see MacIain.”

  He arched a dark eyebrow beneath silvered hair. “Oh, aye? I would have said you came to see his son.” He smiled to mitigate the deliberate irony. “I am John MacDonald. Alasdair’s brother.” He dropped a hand to clasp the crown of the boy’s head. “And this wee sprat is my son, Young Sandy.”

  It escaped her mouth before she could jerk it back. “Dair sa
id that was why he called himself that: too many men were Sandys.”

  “Oh, aye . . . but here he is Alasdair. Alasdair Og. Though none that I ken would mistake him for our father.” His eyes, like Dair’s, were brown, the bones of his face similar. His smile was his brother’s, kind and very bonnie. “No one in the world would mistake anyone for MacIain. Certainly not his sons.”

  “He’s been taken,” she blurted abruptly, and wished it back badly. This was not how she had planned it. “Sassenach soldiers. They’ve taken him to Fort William, with Robbie Stewart.”

  John’s smile vanished. He glanced briefly at his small son, then looked at Cat again. For all he disclaimed any portion of his father, Cat in that moment saw MacIain in his heir, a predatory stillness in brandywine eyes. “Is he injured?”

  Not by Sassenachs—not yet—“He and Stewart had a scuffle.”

  “He and Robbie?”And then the surprise faded. “Ah. Aye, well . . . I kent that would come. But the Sassenachs didna harm him?”

  “Not yet. But they put him in irons.”

  John’s mouth flattened; the eyes were again predatory. “Come with me,” he said quietly. “I’ll take you to my father.”

  His father. Dair’s father.

  To her, the roaring giant who had frightened a lass so very badly ten years before. And who, by his thunder, by abject arrogance, had set Dair to gentling, with bonnie smile and honesty, Glenlyon’s furious daughter.

  There was a past between them, as well as what bound their bodies. And she would not permit MacIain to devalue any of it.

  She climbed down from the garron; if MacIain’s heir would walk—and his heir walk—so would she.

  “I am Cat,” she said. “Glenlyon’s daughter.” There. Truth. Confession. She waited for reaction, prepared, she hoped, for hostility, to keep it from hurting her.

  “Oh, aye,” he said matter-of-factly. “My mother had hoped to meet you.”

  Cat froze. Somehow, suddenly, the prospect of Dair’s mother was far worse than Dair’s father.