Jennifer Roberson

  John MacDonald laughed. “She willna bite, I swear it—but will even a Campbell refuse Glencoe’s hospitality?”

  No Highlander would, nor would he abuse it. It was a sacred trust. Cat scowled at him. “I will not.”

  “Come along, then, aye?” He scooped up Young Sandy and set off with the lithe, long-legged grace she had seen in his younger brother.

  Dair awoke when the door latch rattled. A moment later a soldier stepped in briefly to set a covered tray on the floor, then stepped out again without saying a word. The bolt was shot again, and the lock clanked shut.

  Disorientation lasted only a moment. He knew where he was, why he was there, and who was there with him. None of the conclusions pleased him.

  Two narrow barred windows permitted the sun to enter, but the day died into gloaming and the light went with it. Within half of an hour they would be swallowed wholly by darkness with neither lamp nor fir candle to pass a night grown longer and gey blacker for their captivity.

  He heard the ringing of chains. Slitted eyes showed him Robbie moving to the tray, stripping back the cloth cover. Two mugs, bread, meat, and cheese. “A feast,” Robbie muttered in sour derision. He squatted by the tray and cast a penetrating glance at his fellow prisoner. “Is it alive after all?”

  Dair dimly recalled being brought to the cell. He also recalled, equally dimly, that he had managed to reach the pallet on the floor before losing consciousness once again. He did not recall stretching himself out upon his back with his chain-weighted arms crossed peaceably over his ribs, as if he were a corpse. He doubted very much it was Sassenach doing.

  “Will it eat?” Robbie asked.

  It was hungry, but it knew better. Its belly was not yet settled, and its head ached abominably. But it doubted it could chew anyway with its very swollen jaw.

  Dair tongued his teeth on the side Robbie had struck with shackles and chain. Aye, loose . . . If he were lucky, he would keep them. He ceased examination; even the slightest pressure sent a jolt of pain through his jaw into a skull already sore. “—bastard,” he murmured.

  “Ah, it speaks!” Iron chimed. “D’ye want food, MacDonald?”

  “Water.”

  Robbie brought a mug and sat down next to the pallet, legs crossed comfortably as if he hunkered around a mellow fire with pipe-song in the air. His face was dusty and bruised, his hair a wind-tangled cap of golden curls. Gilt stippled his jaw; Dair did not doubt his own, through the bruises, required a razor as well.

  He hitched up on an elbow, then stilled utterly. Sweat broke out on his flesh, sheening his face. He wanted very much to release a string of vile oaths, but it hurt too much to loose the barrage with the appropriate vehemence.

  “Here.” Robbie brought the cup closer. “D’ye want help?”

  With his free hand Dair took the mug. He was weak and shaky, but managed to hold the rim to his mouth. The water was cold; it set his teeth to aching. He wanted to gulp, but didn’t; his belly’s temper was chancy.

  “Done?” Robbie accepted the empty mug. “D’ye want more? There’s mine.”

  Dair managed a scowl. “You near broke my head, aye?—d’ye mean to drown me, now?”

  In waning light, Robbie eyed him critically. “You ’re in poor temper.”

  “Christ,” Dair muttered, levering himself to the pallet again. He put a filthy, rust-speckled hand to his forehead and gently massaged the flesh in an attempt to ease the ache. “D’ye expect me to forgive you? To forget? You near killed me, Robbie!”

  Stewart’s tone was curiously flat. “Then we each of us has something to forgive the other for.”

  Dair froze, then lowered his hand in a rattle of iron shackle to look at Robbie. The Stewart’s expression was as colorless as his voice, and wholly eloquent in ambiguity.

  “D’ye blame me?” Robbie challenged.

  He wanted to. He could not. Kindling anger was snuffed on the bitter breath of acknowledgment. “No,” he said finally. “I deserved it, aye?”

  “You did.”

  Dair smiled barely; a faint twitch of his mouth in wry self-contempt. “And I’d have done the same.”

  “Well, then.” The relief was subtle, abetted by satisfaction; the issue, for now, was settled. Robbie reached for and pulled the tray over. “D’ye want food, MacDonald?”

  He tongued his swollen cheek. “Not unless you chew it for me first.” “Och, no . . . I think not. Forgiveness doesna go that far.” Robbie slapped cheese and beef onto a slice of bread and began to eat. “I’d have killed you, then; I wanted to, that moment. But a clean death, aye?—and for a sound reason. Not hanging for the Sassenachs because we lifted a pawkie boat.”

  Robbie’s perspective had always differed diametrically from his own. Despite the ache in his jaw, Dair could not repress a breathy gust of laughter. “You should have used a dirk.”

  “Och, well—they’d taken mine, already.” He chewed meditatively.

  “I did feel a wee bit better when you dropped like a felled stirk—only then the lass began to skelp me, and I forgot all about you in worry for myself.”

  Dair opened his eyes. “Cat skelped you?”

  “Tried. Took the Sassenach to pull her away.” He gulped water from his mug. “Fitting name, aye? Cat. She did all but claw me.”

  Under the circumstances, considering the company, Dair could not think of an adequate response.

  “A raukle fool,” Robbie said lightly, “to trade a Stewart for a Campbell.”

  Dair waited tensely, but nothing more was offered. Robbie finished his meal, his water, then settled himself across the cell with his spine against the wall.

  Darkness came down, and with it came a silence neither of them broke.

  Lady Glencoe, Cat discovered, had bred more into her sons than MacIain. They had a portion of his height—John more than Dair—and the early graying of his hair, but there the resemblance ended. It was their mother’s eyes in their heads, her elegance of feature, the quiet grace in movement.

  Most of all they claimed her smile, and the warmth of her welcome. She was not a young woman, but withal a friendly one.

  Cat was nonplussed. She did not see how Dair’s mother could show her such kindness, despite the requirements of hospitality. There was nothing forced in her manner, no tension in her demeanor. She offered drink, food, a chair, then carried the conversation as John, still lugging Young Sandy, went out to find MacIain. But she spoke of inconsequentialities beyond determining Dair was not seriously injured, until Cat left off answering and sat in stiff silence. She was hideously aware of Lady Glencoe’s studied assessment, and not for the first time wished there were less of her to assess.

  “Do you have the mirror, Cat?”

  It shocked her. Hastily Cat drew the tartan bundle from her belt and set it upon the table, carefully folding back the edges until the contents were displayed: rope, mirror, bonnet. She took up the mirror and held it out, trying to still the minute trembling of her hands.

  Lady Glencoe smiled. “Och, Cat, I dinna want it back. I only wanted to be certain he gave it to you.”

  She was, for possibly the first time in her life, utterly bereft of speech.

  The thought was fleeting: Jamie would be pleased, aye?

  Desperately self-conscious, Cat took up the bonnet in place of the mirror and tended it with singular absorption, pulling the wool back into shape, grooming the eagle feather. When it was done, when she could delay no longer, she set it on the tartan and stared at the badge.

  “What is the rope?” Lady Glencoe inquired.

  Astonished, she met his mother’s eyes—his eyes—and gave her honest answer. “I cut it from the tree. I couldna leave it there, you ken . . . I wouldna give my father the pleasure of seeing what he had done.”

  It shook the woman profoundly. She had not anticipated any such answer. Color flowed from her face, aging her instantly; the heavy white threading in faded brown hair was abruptly more pronounced, and the fit of her skin over the contours of
her fine skull slackened.

  Cat bit into her lip, damning herself for an overbrutal tongue. “Forgive me—”

  Dair’s mother reached out to catch one of Cat’s hands. “There is naught to forgive. You are not your father, Cat—and you saved my son’s life. For that alone I bless you, but there is more.” She looked at the items: her French-made mirror, her son’s blue bonnet, the rope a Campbell laird had used against that son. “Men dinna understand. They canna. They use the name to stir the blood, like war-pipes and a pibroch. MacDonald. Campbell. MacGregor, and Stewart. In names there is power, but also blood, and killing—and men forget too often there are more important things than how a man calls himself, or the slogan of his clan.”

  Cat, transfixed, stared at her.

  Lady Glencoe smiled, and was suddenly young again. “He told me only what he felt, and why, when he spoke of a broken mirror . . . he could not tell me what you felt, and was afraid of the truth lest it be other than he desired. But now I ken it, when I see what you have carried so close to your heart. No word is required.”

  Cat swallowed tightly. “I am afraid. Of you. Of MacIain. Even of Dair.”

  His mother squeezed her hand a final time and released it. “It takes us all the same: loving a man so much it frightens you near to death, and wondering what his people think of you. And you have more to fash yourself over than most, aye?”

  Cat nodded mutely.

  “Have you a temper?”

  “Och, a muckle great temper—” she blurted, and blushed instantly.

  There was noise outside the door. MacIain had arrived.

  “Good,” his wife declared. “You’ll need it with MacIain—and I daresay with my son! For all his fine looks and bonnie words, he’s as much MacIain’s son as my own. They are none of them peaceable men, when pushed to it.” The skin by her eyes crinkled as the door was yanked open. “Though John and Alasdair Og are less noisy about it!”

  “Less noisy, is it?” MacIain inquired. “Am I to fret about the noise I make in my own house, woman?” But he did not wait for an answer. He came through the door, ducking his snowy head, and crossed to Cat in two paces. “Rise,” he said. “Show yourself to me.”

  Her skin prickled; were she deerhound, she would hackle. It was beyond discourtesy; was everything she expected, everything she had seen and heard ten years before.

  But she was no longer ten. And there was nothing in her now, any more than existed then, that would permit in silence such pawkie, high-handed treatment.

  Cat pressed a palm against the table and rose with deliberate and painstaking care to her feet. “Like a bluidy cow?”

  John, in the doorway, shut the door swiftly and took his son off straightaway to sit in a corner.

  MacIain’s eyes glittered in deep sockets. “Like a bluidy cow, a bluidy ewe, a bluidy chick if I ask it!” But a slight frown furrowed his brow. “You’re no wee lass, aye? Tall as half the men in Glencoe!”

  “I am,” she agreed coolly. “ ‘Twould be gey difficult now to pick me up from the floor and dangle me in the air!”

  It baffled him. “What gab is this? Pick you up? Why?”

  “You did so ten years ago.”

  “I did?” White brows knitted. “Where did I do such a thing?”

  “In my father’s own house.”

  “I did no such thing, ye glaikit girl!”

  “You did,” put in John from the corner. “Glenlyon’s lass, aye?” His smile was crooked. “I recall it myself, now I am reminded.”

  She was tall as half the men in Glencoe, perhaps, but MacIain still towered over her. She had never known any man so huge. “I thought you meant to drop me.”

  He thrust out a bearded chin in challenge. “And why would I drop a wee lass?”

  Cat grinned. “Because I said you had no manners, and had come to steal our cows.”

  “You did!”

  “I did. And indeed you had no manners—but you had not after all come to steal our cows.” She paused. “Then. ”

  “Then?”

  “You came later.”

  MacIain grunted. “You’ve likely got Glencoe cattle out on Glen Lyon braes.”

  “And will you serve me meat tonight from a Campbell cow?”

  “Och, and are you expecting a meal of me?”

  “Lady Glencoe did offer.”

  His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “And did she mean to serve you supper? Or serve you to me as my supper?”

  “Och, I am too tough,” Cat retorted, enjoying herself immensely. “No softness in me, ye ken. No meek-mouthed lass to cower in the corner because MacIain roars.”

  Blue eyes glinted. “Such as Jean Stewart might, are you thinking?”

  Humor was extinguished. She stared back at him with shocked silence in her mouth.

  “Hah.” MacIain glanced at his wife. Mildly, he said, “He’s got himself thrown into Fort William, he and Robbie Stewart. And naught to show for it; the Sassenachs took back their supplies. And the boat.”

  She nodded. “I had the news of Cat.”

  Cat scowled at him. “Is that all you care about? Supplies and a boat, when your son is imprisoned?”

  The giant grunted and hooked out a chair with his heel. As he sat down, Cat could not but wonder if the chair would break. “Sit.” He waved a massive hand. “Dinna greet for him, lass—they’ll no’ hang him for this.”

  She sat. “How do you ken that?”

  “Because the pawkie governor there has wanted me to speak with for more than a year.” He smiled, though it was barely discernible in the depths of his beard. “I’ll offer to sign his bluidy treaty.”

  “Offer,” she echoed, reading the implication.

  “Offer, aye. And he will give me my son.”

  “What about Stewart?”

  MacIain shrugged. “He’s his own father, aye?”

  Cat’s smile was quick, but faded as quickly. “Do you believe they’ll release him for your promise, when you’ve no intention of signing this treaty?” She paused, struck by his expression. “You willna sign, aye? Dair says not.”

  The glitter died from his eyes. “What I will or willna do is for me to say. And I’ll mind my own house, I thank you.”

  She had transgressed, but there was more in her mind than such things. Conviction. “I have the right to ask what you mean to do about him.”

  “And what right is that, in my house?”

  His arrogance was apalling. “In your house or out of it, I will ask of his welfare! ’Tis my right, MacIain. Were it not for me your son would have hanged.” She snatched up the rope and tossed it at him. “Ask that, MacIain! It has a tale to tell.”

  Treacherous ground. She had abrogated her responsibility to repay the hospitality in kind; defying convention, trampling tradition, would not sit well with this man.

  His mouth worked briefly, then relaxed. “You go too far, lass.”

  She dared the truth again. “With you, one must. Else you wouldna hear me.”

  “There is that,” John agreed, forgotten in his corner. “He is a thick-skulled old king bull, aye? Forgets to listen, forbye.”

  “She has more right,” Lady Glencoe said quietly, “and you ken that, MacIain. You beat him bluidy for it . . . for that, and Breadalbane. Alasdair . . .” She flicked a glance at Cat. “You’re a stubborn old fool, but no’ a blind one, aye?”

  MacIain fingered the rope’s weave, examined its ends. Then put it back on the table. His gaze was steady as he looked at Cat. “Has he asked you to his house?”

  “He has.”

  “To his bed?”

  “He’s already been in mine.”

  A flicker in blue eyes acknowledged that. “And would you leave Glen Lyon—leave the laird’s house—to live in Glencoe?”

  “I have. ”

  He waited, poised as a wolfhound set to bring down the game. He knew there was more. He was not a patient man, MacIain of Glencoe, but in this he would be. In this he had to be.

  For his so
n. For his house. For the honor of his name, that she had cursed so often.

  Cat laughed at him then, cognizant of commitment with but a handful of words. “I’ll leave a laird’s house to live with a laird’s son. Seems a fair trade, aye?”

  MacIain leaned back in his chair. Wood and leather creaked. “The better end of it, lass, is living in my glen.”

  “Hah,” Cat retorted.

  MacIain bared his teeth. “Pour usquabae, Margaret. I’ll share a dram wi’ the lass.”

  Cat recalled the result of the first and last time she had drunk usquabae. She blushed hideously.

  MacIain saw it. And smiled.

  Presented with water, soap, and cloth, Dair washed, ridding his face of grime and crusted blood, his hands of rust and dirt. The bruises remained, and the stubble, but he felt somewhat clean again. Carefully he soaked some of the dried blood out of his hair, inspecting by fingertips the scabbing cut within the lump, but it was nothing that would not heal. His jaw still ached, but improved.

  He tongued a molar, testing its seating. I may keep all of my teeth after all, wi’ no thanks to Robbie. . . . But he had been wholly, if painfully, honest, despite the ache of head and jaw. He did deserve it, from Jean’s brother. And he, in Robbie’s place, would have done the same.

  Dair set aside the damp cloth. They had left him alone to wash; as well, he knew, to think. Robbie, who had disdained such amenities—and who needed no time to think, save how to frame vulgarities—had been taken off sometime before. Dair was alone in the cell, sitting mutely with his shoulders and spine against the wall. He was aware of a greater sense of self-possession, a renewal of hope; food, drink, the means to wash himself, provided him with a scrap of dignity, a chance to recover confidence.

  Dair wondered cynically if the treatment had to do with Governor Hill’s personal desires to treat his prisoners well, or that he was MacIain’s son, and Robbie heir to Appin.

  With care he let his head settle against the wall. He drew up knees beneath his kilt and rested forearms upon them, chain dangling, then released a sigh of resignation. There was no profit in debating the intent of a Sassenach, even within his own head; John Hill was governor of Fort William, a king’s man, a soldier, and wholly dedicated to the subjugation of the clans.