Jennifer Roberson

by Lady of the Glen

  Instead, he would think of Cat. Cat, who had tried to skelp Robbie; Cat, who had tried to lie for him; Cat who had, despite her innocence, taught his body new things about a woman. To know the companionship of spirit as well as flesh.

  Dair shut his eyes. Christ, what if they mean to hang—

  The latch rattled. He sat upright, swore to deflect the darting lance of pain in his head, and saw the door swing open to admit Robbie Stewart. And also two soldiers, who gestured for him to come out.

  Robbie still clattered with shackles. The set of his mouth and the tilt of his head was arrogance personified, as was his swagger; Dair could not help a crooked smile.

  “Well,” Stewart said grandly, seating himself on his thin pallet, “ ’tis worth letting him mewl if only for the whisky.”

  Dair rose with infinite care. The soldiers made no effort to hurry him, but let him gather himself and exit without haste. The door as he stepped out was closed, bolted, locked.

  From behind the heavy wood came the sound of a wandering whistle. Robbie had never been able to make behave the notes required to follow a proper tune.

  Then he ceased whistling. Instead he began to bellow out in broad Scots his tuneless version of a song attributed to a Stewart who was once a king:

  “An’ we’ll gang nae mair a-rovin’,

  A-rovin’ in the nicht,

  An’ we’ll gang nae mair a-rovin’,

  Let the müne shine e’er sae bricht.”

  His legs were pillars, Cat decided, holding up MacIain as Atlas held up the world. And more to the point, she thought, perhaps he was Atlas, for on his massive shoulders rested the weight of a clan.

  He waded out into the shallows of the river, bare feet finding purchase. He did not go far, but far enough; another man might have sought a rock on which to climb from the water, but MacIain did not. He planted himself in the current, then turned and stared at her.

  “Well?” He pitched his challenge over the sound of the river. “D’ye think you should be carried?”

  She did not. She glared back at him and traded shore for water, picking her way with care.

  They were not in the deeps. They did not truly risk themselves. But it was harsh going all the same, and only undertaken because he wanted her to fail.

  Or wanted her to succeed, so he might know her worthy.

  “Worthy,” Cat muttered. “Like a cow, or a horse . . .”

  She wore the trews she had come in two days before, and now the bottoms were soaked. Water crept up the wool toward her knees.

  “Aye, test the mare’s mettle—test the bitch’s temperament . . .” Arms outflung, she maintained a precarious balance. “—escort her to the brink, then step back a pace or two to let her decide if she’s man enough to take it. . . .”

  A rock rolled. Cat hissed a curse as her foot banged against another, then clamped her mouth shut and recovered her balance. She flicked a glance at MacIain, who waited impassively. But she spied the glint in his eye. “D’ye mean to be a dam?” she called. “Or a rock to change the river?”

  His teeth showed briefly. “I am a rock,” he said, “and on me will the Sassenachs be broken.”

  She wobbled, then kept moving. “D’ye think they mind you, MacIain ? One lone laird in a forgotten glen—?”

  “Forgotten?—no, not Glencoe. Look around you, lass—could you forget this place?”

  She did not need to look. If she never saw it again, she would remember it.

  “A rock, aye,” he declared. “Though some say the rocks reside between my ears.”

  He extended a hand. She felt it close around her own: huge, callused hand, hard as horn; a grasp that could break a man, if MacIain desired it. It closed, gripped, brought her across to stand beside him. The rush of the river, albeit quieter in the shallows, purled against her shins. Tugged at her trews, wool now sagging from the weight.

  MacIain flung wide his other hand: elaborate presentation. “Glencoe,” he announced, with infinite satisfaction.

  She stood in the waters of the River Coe with a man bred of warriors, of the hostility of the land. And knew she was safe. That MacIain, unlike her father, would never permit harm to come to her, or dishonor, or vulgar treatment. Unless MacIain himself metes it out. Cat assessed him even as he assessed her. He had not broken the clasp. Neither had she.

  “ ’Tis a difficult thing,” he said at last, “to do your will when others dinna desire you to.”

  Shocked by the subject, Cat held her tongue.

  “ ’Tis a gey difficult thing to ken what you want, and take it.”

  Still she said nothing.

  “ ’Tis even harder, forbye, to do what others will curse you for, especially a father.”

  When she could, Cat swallowed tightly. “I have given my father cause to curse me. He never has, to me.” She stared hard at rushing water. “Because he doesna care enough.”

  It was his turn for silence.

  She raised her voice. “You skelped Dair for loving me.”

  “I skelped my son for disobedience, for delay, for weakening my state before Breadalbane. It had naught to do wi’ you.”

  She looked at him sharply. “Naught?”

  “Where my son sleeps is no concern of mine.”

  It was a challenge now. “Not even when the bed is under a Campbell roof?”

  He grinned. “Ah, but now the roof is MacDonald-made, aye? And is here in Glencoe.”

  Cat sighed. “So it is. And so am I. But he is not here.”

  His hand tightened on hers. “He will be.”

  She looked at him fiercely. “And if you dinna bring him out—”

  Teeth were bared briefly. “What? Will you skelp me?”

  Cat eyed his massive frame. “If I thought I could reach your lug-holes, I’d box them both.”

  He shouted aloud. “Both?”

  “One after another. Until you yelped for mercy.”

  He grunted. “ ’Twould be gey hard to make me yelp, you ken.” “Even a giant has his weakness,” Cat reminded. “The story of David and Goliath, you ken.”

  “And Achilles his heel.”

  “And Samson his hair.” She eyed him critically. “You could do with a shearing yourself.”

  The snowmelt of his hair curled against massive shoulders. MacIain squeezed, then loosed her hand. “You’ll do.”

  Cat snorted. “Because I’m daft enough to walk the river with you?”

  “Och, no.” MacIain grinned. “Because you like it.”

  From close proximity, John Hill discovered that the face beneath the graying hair was younger than anticipated. Not a lad, Alasdair MacDonald, unlike Cameron of Lochiel’s son——closer to thirty than twenty, methinks——but neither a man as old as his hair painted him. The bones of his face were fine and clean, the flesh over them—despite mottled bruising and nearly a week’s worth of sooty stubble—taut and youthful. Hill had seen spectacularly handsome men before and did not count this man among them, but even in shackles, even in soiled clothing and lurid bruises, he compelled the eye.

  Confidence . . . But not swagger, not arrogance, such as Robert Stewart employed. A wholly different appeal, entirely unremarkable until a man looked, and marked.

  Hill marked it now. He watched MacIain’s younger son enter, clanking quietly of iron; watched him take a position in the center of the small, lamplit room; watched him settle himself to wait, to listen, to weigh. Not Robert Stewart at all. He gestured to the bench against the wall. “Please—seat yourself. Will you have usquabae?”

  “I will not.”

  Hill paused. A soft, courteous voice, lacking the edged scorn of Stewart’s. A calm, quiet voice, offering neither irony or enmity. “Sitting in my presence, drinking my whisky, does not make you mine,” the governor told him. “I am quite familiar with your loyalties.”

  The mouth was mobile and expressive, but barely acknowledged the exquisite dryness in Hill’s tone. “If it please you, Governor, you dinna sit inside my skull.”
>
  “And from the look of you, it should please me,” the Englishman shot back, and was pleased to see the momentary lifting of eyebrows that acknowledged his retort. More equably, he said, “I am given to understand your injuries are none of my soldiers’ doing. Is this the truth? I would know if you were maltreated.”

  “Whoever had the giving of it, aye,” MacDonald answered. “But as I was in no fit state to ken what happened on the ride here, I’m no’ the one to ask, aye?”

  Oh, there is pride after all, and arrogance!

  Hill sat down at last. He would not insist that MacDonald do so; let the man decide for himself if he, head-wounded, was capable of standing for so long, or if he, the son of a Highland laird, would deign to sit in the company of a Sassenach.

  “It is not my task to punish you,” the governor declared. “It is my task only to hold you until I may know the wishes of the king or queen. Nor will I belabor the obvious: that you and Robert Stewart, accompanied by Appin men and MacDonalds, what some name barbaric Highland savages, stole an English ship, and supplies meant for English soldiers.”

  MacDonald’s face was a mask of self-restraint, impassive and unprovoked.

  “And yet you killed no one, nor attempted to,” Hill said. “No deaths, no serious injuries, and all the sailors were permitted to escape.” He paused. With infinite clarity he said, “You kill more fellow Scots in cattle raids than you did Sassenach sailors supplying a fort you would sooner see burned as stand another day.” Hill marked the impassive expression. “I admire your restraint,” he said, “and I thank you for it. It may well save your lives.” He suppressed a cough, then rose. In silence he walked around his table to meet the MacDonald on common ground, standing before him so they might view one another face-to-face. MacDonald was taller, but did not use the greater height to advantage in trying to impose. He simply stood, and waited.

  The governor marked the dark, dried bloodstains on the collar and right shoulder of the linen shirt. He noted also the collar was torn away from MacDonald’s throat, displaying the ruined flesh beneath.

  John Hill knew a noose scar when he saw one. He looked more closely yet at Alasdair Og MacDonald, at the still features, the clear-eyed patience; at the tension in the shoulders despite attempts to relax.

  But only now. Only now did the tension show, the attempt and its failure, as a Sassenach soldier looked fixedly, in dawning awareness, at the scar in his throat.

  Scots did this . . . Hill tore his gaze from the rumpled, too-pink flesh and looked again at the still expression, the unwavering gaze. And the shame, so subtly displayed, by the minute narrowing of his eyes, the rigidity of his mouth. Iron chimed faintly; the king’s governor had at last reached MacIain’s son, who did not desire a Sassenach to know the truth of his shame.

  Or was it courage, and luck no other might purchase? —to hang, and survive—A man killed once might brave it twice. Might know it, and be unafraid of such small consequences as a king’s cast-off governor, sentenced to serve —and die?—in the land of savage barbarians.

  But John Hill did not judge a man by barbarism, by savagery, unless he witnessed it. And he had not. Yet. Not here, where he was offered opportunity to bring peace to the Highlands, and was undone by Breadalbane.

  “I cannot answer for you,” Hill said, “because such punishment as you deserve will be named by the king, or queen . . . but I will tell you this: if MacIain does not come forward for his people and sign the Oath of Allegiance by the first day of the new year, he and all of his kin, all of his clan, will be subject to the utmost discipline as can be devised by two men who would sooner have him slain than forgiven.” Hill looked into the unwavering whisky-brown stare. “Do you truly wish to have Glencoe’s fate decided by such man as the Master of Stair, a Lowlander, and the Campbell Earl of Breadalbane?”

  Iron sang again, softly, yet MacDonald did not move. Not so a man might see it.

  “Think on it,” Hill said quietly. “Think very hard. And then, should you be given your freedom, share this truth with MacIain, who is not only your father but the father of a clan. It is in his hands, now, the survival of Glencoe.” He drew in a painful breath pulled deep into inflamed lungs. “I have failed. I am a laughingstock. I am but a poor jest, a name passed among coffeehouses in London and Edinburgh.” Hill paused. “Scotland will survive. Scotland will always survive. But men such as MacIain, proud people such as MacDonalds, may not have the same future.”

  He turned. He moved quietly back to the other side of his table, pausing briefly to collect himself. He had not meant to be so bald in speech, so plain in confession; he had not been so with Robert Stewart. But it was done. It was said.

  The voice was quiet, but clear. “I will drink your usquabae now.”

  Hill turned sharply, setting a steadying hand atop the table. And for the first time saw Alasdair Og smile.

  “ ’Twas honest, that,” MacDonald said, “and deserving of respect.” Gratified for the honor, an odd, unexpected honor——they would laugh at me, in London——John Hill poured whisky.

  Three

  In the looming grandeur of Glencoe’s Pap, Cat stood atop the massive pewter-hued stone thrust upward out of the earth. Beneath bare feet she could feel the ridges and pockets, the treacherous tributaries of ancient rock twisted as Celtic knotwork, rumpled and folded upon itself like a plaid beneath a brooch. To the west spread the glen; beyond it Ballachulish and its ferry, the waters of Loch Linnhe. Where Dair and Robbie Stewart had stolen a ship.

  Frustration burned within her. “Too long,” she said aloud.

  John MacDonald, beside her, put a hand upon her shoulder. “For me as well, aye?—but MacIain kens what he is doing.”

  “He is letting his son rot in a Sassenach gaol,” she said bitterly, “that is what he is doing. How many days is it now?” How many days have I lived in MacIain’s house, wondering about his son?

  “A fortnight,” John answered, “but it feels like two months; I ken that, Cat.” His hand tightened briefly, fell away. “He canna pursue it so quickly, aye?—or the governor and those he serves will ken they have won. Deliberation is called for.”

  Wind rustled the trees, the foliage below the rock. She smelled the glen, and freedom, verdant in summer trappings. “And meanwhile Dair is in irons.”

  “I am no more pleased than you,” he said with infuriating mildness, “but I have learned the wisdom in letting MacIain do what he means to do. He is nearly seventy . . . no man lives so long lest he kens the means to do it.”

  The breeze teased her hair, lifting it from her face. A stronger buffet blew her clothing taut against her body, limned in the lattice of light and shadow. Cat shivered. She was young and newly awakened; she found it tedious to be still. She wanted to run, to leap, to fly from the rock; to share the day with the man who had taught her to live, and to love.

  Yet she also felt oddly naked, stripped of everything save desperation. “You are telling me if MacIain went forward too quickly, they would assume his word has no value. That he intends to break it.”

  She heard his soft laugh. “You are canny enough yourself, aye? ’Tis the only way, Cat. Alasdair will understand.”

  “If they free him.”

  “No one was killed,” John replied. “Bruises and blood, no more. They willna hang him for that.”

  She could not hide the upswell of bitterness. “Only send him to the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, where he may rot at the king’s pleasure!”

  John was silent a moment, as if the wind took away the means to answer. He set his face into it, folding his arms, and spoke very quietly. “You are afraid, aye? Of what the others think?”

  Cat stared down the glen, unable to meet his eyes. “I am a Campbell.” It was sufficient, she knew, unto all explanation.

  “You are a guest of the laird.”

  “That doesna alter my name.”

  John laughed softly. “That might come yet, aye? Catriona Campbell . . . Cat MacDonald.”

  She t
urned to him sharply, needing to know. “Would that matter so much?”

  “Not to me, no. Nor to most of us, if to any.”

  “But there was Jean Stewart . . .” She had spoken the name at last. She supposed it would be better discussed between women, but she was easier with men. Four brothers had taught her that. “Six years, I was told—and now supplanted by a Campbell.”

  “ ’Tis no one’s concern who shares his bed, Cat.”

  She smiled lopsidedly. “MacIain said the same.”

  With eloquent irony and an equally bonnie smile: “Then you’ve heard it twice, aye?—perhaps you might believe it.”

  Cat persisted. “But she has friends here . . . people who kent her well.”

  He shrugged idly, toeing a pebble from under his foot. “No one kent Jean well. She wasna disposed to having any of us so close.” He sent the pebble plunging over the edge and down the stony face. “She was hidden in her thoughts. Private in her feelings.”

  “Except for Dair.”

  “Aye, well . . .” John sighed. “ ’Tis over, Cat. ’Twas over before he saw you again at Achallader.”

  She took fire at that. “Dinna lie to make me feel better, John MacDonald!”

  He laughed. The flesh by his eyes crinkled. “Och no, I am not disposed to do so . . . not even for courtesy’s sake.” He pulled a stray lock of hair away from his left eye. The silver now boasted strands of white, as if age promised premature solicitation. “We stood up here, he and I, discussing this very thing.”

  “Discussing me?”

  “Not you by yourself, no. But how a man learns he is mistaken, and must set his life to rights,” John said quietly. “He kent it already, Cat. I canna say if he kent ’twas you he wanted, but he didna want Jean anymore. He made that plain. And plainer still that he meant to tell her so, once he came back from Achallader.”

  She crossed her arms and hugged herself, face bared of hair by the wind. “I wondered how he could ask me to his home, with Jean still in it. ”