Jennifer Roberson (14 page)

Duncan did not color up well. His sallow complexion darkened perceptibly, but in a complex network of splotches altogether displeasing. “ ’Tis something I’ve been considering—”

“Considering!”

“—for some time,” he finished stolidly.

“Ah.” Trust Duncan to look to himself rather than to his father’s counsel; John knew better. “And have you chosen a woman? Or have you no’ got so far?”

“Far enough,” Duncan countered, grimly implacable. “Her name is Marjorie.”

“And is Marjorie a Campbell?”

Surprise flickered in Duncan’s expression; he had not the imagination to entertain the idea that women of other clans might be potential wives. “Aye, Marjorie Campbell. Of Lawers.”

Breadalbane snorted. “ ’Twas her idea, was it?”

The overlarge head rose a fraction, stretching to its debatable length the overshort neck. “ ’Twas mine.”

“But she kens what you’ll be when I am dead.”

“Who doesna?” Duncan answered with a brief spark of asperity. “There isna a man in Scotland who doesna ken Breadalbane.”

The earl smiled. “There isna, is there? So, Marjorie Campbell of Lawers has a notion to be a countess?”

“She’s a notion to be my wife.”

“One and the same, lad. Not now, but count the years; no man lives forever.”

The dark eyes were opaque. “If it were one and the same, wouldna she set her cap for you? You’ve outlived three wives. You may be an old man, but you’ve more substance than ‘wee Duncan,’ aye? Aye, I ken what they say, and I ken how you answer: but for the order of our births, John would be your heir.”

“I’ve never hidden it from you.”

“You havena. You’ve done me the honor of being an honest man.” Duncan’s smile was slight and without levity in it. “Meanwhile, there is a Campbell lass I’d take to wife, but I need your permission. I am as yet your heir.”

“Then ’tis a verra serious matter, this taking of a wife. I must think on it.” The earl smiled thinly as he saw Duncan’s dismay. “Tell the lass she’ll have to wait. ’Twill give us the time we need to see if she is breeding.” He gestured casually. “You’ve said the thing, then. Let me consider it without you in the room.”

He did not doubt there was more Duncan desired to say, but he did not remain to say it. There were times the earl despaired of the lad’s wits, and other times, though less often, he saw the vestiges.

A man with no wit was never a threat. A man with just enough was often too easily led.

He did not dare permit Duncan to have his way, lest he begin to exert himself in political matters. He was, after all, to inherit one of the most powerful and wealthy positions in all of Scotland. Men would listen to Duncan, even now. Some men, enemies, would seek to use him against a father for whom he professed no love.

“In that we remain in mutual agreement,” the earl muttered to himself, then gave himself over to thought. “A Campbell lass for Breadalbane’s heir . . .”

It did not require much thought, and even less time to initiate. He took up fresh paper, reinked his quill, and began in his careful hand to write with equal care the words he knew would elicit the response he required.

Cunning as a fox, they called him; slippery as an eel. Well, let it be true. When a man recognized power in another, he took it, controlled it, destroyed it.

Or married it.

Cat teetered on the brink of sleep as if she walked a sword. If she fell
this
way, she was awake . . .
that
way, she was asleep. It was a sensation she particularly relished, warm beneath the bedclothes on a still-cold, dark March night, and she wanted no one to interrupt it.

No one did. Some
thing
did: a harsh, hooting, honking drone that jerked her off the edge of the sword into wide-eyed wakefulness.
“Jesu,
” she whispered violently, “the man is at it
again!”

She considered stopping up her ears with pillows, or fingers, or bedclothes and burrowing back beneath the covers, but the sound of bagpipes in distress was enough to disturb the bones in the barrows for a thousand years. Instead of stopping her ears she’d do better to stop her father. Certainly no one else would: the laird was in his cups.

Irritated, Cat threw back quilts and thrust herself out of bed, loath to leave the warmth, and swung her heavy braid behind one shoulder as she reached for a wool wrap. Quickly she yanked fabric around her shoulders and crossed the room to her door, nearly slamming it open in her haste. She caught it, cursed as she’d heard the tacksmen do—knowing her father abhorred it—and marched out of the room to the stairs that led down to the laird’s quarters.

Cat snatched open the oak door. Weak light met her eyes, shed from an oil lamp blackened by spent smoke, for her father sat mostly in darkness, hugging the cloth-covered bag as if the pipes were a woman and he the woman’s hungry son.

The reeds had fallen free of his mouth, fetching up against his cheek. She saw dampness there, and, ashamed of her twinge of disgust, believed it was saliva.

Then she realized the dampness was tears. The Laird of Glenlyon was crying.

Cat stood very still. The shutters were latched, the curtains dropped; the room was close and stuffy, redolent of whisky, of smoke, of a sour loneliness, and the acrid tang of a man less concerned by the scent of a body than the taste of his liquor.

She was ashamed of him, and
for
him: he was Glenlyon,
still
Glenlyon, still laird despite the excesses that had nearly destroyed them, lurking yet in corners; still a Campbell and therefore worth the respect Campbell blood bought in Campbell-built Scotland if for no other reason; still a Highland Scot, though some said now his English sympathies made him over into a Sassenach.

He has no one else. If I turn from him, he is lost.
Shame faded. He was not a man she admired because the whisky had robbed him of that, but he was nonetheless her father.

Cat moved forward in silence, though she knew he saw her well enough, even against the sienna wash of poor candlelight in the corridor beyond the open door. She went to him, and knelt, and put gentle hands upon his knee. “It canna be so bad.”

The smoking oil lamp illuminated him from the side, throwing harshly patterned shadows across his ruined face and casting a nimbus around fading, yellow-red hair. Once he had been a glorious, handsome youth. Now he was nearly sixty, and looking years beyond that. The drink had stretched his skin, pulling it into bags at the eyes and jowls at his jaw, the once-fine, longish jaw his sons had inherited. He was puffy-faced, ill-kempt, smelling of whisky, sour linen, bad teeth.

Glenlyon blinked. Watery blue eyes peered at her from under sandy-lashed eyelids. His damp smile was tremulous as he wiped distractedly at the tears. “ ’Twas only the pipes, lass. The wail and moan of the pipes . . .” It trailed off. He looked at her in silence, and put one hand over both of hers.

Cat’s throat was tight. Painfully, she swallowed. “Leave the pipes to Hugh Mackenzie. He’s as good as Auld Archibald the Red . . . and quieter about it, too.”

Glenlyon stared back at her, still hugging the pipes against his chest. “ ’Tis Breadalbane.”

Cat’s mouth curled. “That pawkie, useless man . . . what has he to do with you
now?
”

“He’s offered to pay my debts.”

She made a disrespectful noise. “He must want a service, then, aye? Now, or one day. He swore he would not give you silver again.”

Glenlyon rubbed wearily at equally tired flesh. “ ’Tis bad, Cat—unco’ bad . . . ’twas all I could think to do. The creditors want their silver, and I have none to spare—”

She could not suppress the bitterness, the shame-bred hostility. “The MacDonalds left us little enough two years ago, after Killiecrankie, and you sold so much to Murray . . . now have you staked even Chesthill on a game?”

Color spilled out of his face. With an awkward, frenzied motion, he threw the bagpipes to the floor.

Cat nearly gaped. It wasn’t the pipes that stilled her heart, but the look in her father’s eyes. “Have you lost it?” she cried.

The sagging jaw tautened. Dulled eyes sparked briefly as he was roused to protest his daughter’s temerity. “Breadalbane has agreed to pay the debts; Chesthill is still mine.”

Cat was on her feet, clutching soft-combed wool around her shoulders. “But for how much longer?” she asked. “Until the next time? Until all the earls of Scotland say no to your crying and begging? What
then
, Glenlyon—will you even sell your clan?”

He looked at Cat. “I thought I might sell my daughter.”

It silenced her instantly. She stood before him, shivering, digging nails into her arms. “You’re
fou,
” she accused. “In your cups—you’d not say it, otherwise.”

“Aye, in my cups,” he agreed. “Could I sell my daughter sober?”

“You havena,” she declared. “To whom would you? To whom
could,
you?”

“Breadalbane.”

Cat laughed harshly. “He’s had three wives already, and sons aplenty, besides. What would he want with me?”

The pupils of his eyes, in dimness, in dunkenness, swallowed the blue of the irises. They were fixed on her face in a blind, empty stare Cat could not interpret. Then the gaze shifted, altering as he looked briefly lower than her face, to her breasts, her hips, her slippered feet. Glenlyon’s eyes, before he shut them, filled with a too-bright, damp acknowledgment to which Cat was not privy.

He drew in a breath slowly, stentorously, and let it out again. “I’ve no’ sold my daughter.”

Relief nearly made Cat waver, but she was not the swooning sort. She swallowed the dryness out of her mouth and licked her lips to wet them.

“But I
could,
” he told her.

Panic had subsided; she knew how to handle this mood. Her mouth pulled into a sideways hook of wry disbelief. “ ’Tis for the father to pay, not sell . . . ’tis what the dowry is. He’d be wanting silver
with
me, not giving it to you.”

Glenlyon’s mouth denied it; his eyes avoided hers.

“So,” Cat said, “the earl will pay your debts. What I want to know is:
why?
He wouldna do it when you asked before; nor did he overturn the sale to Murray of Atholl. He’s done little enough for us these past two years . . . why does he offer now?”

“We’re cousins,” he said softly.

“ ’Twas
Argyll
who gave you a commission in his regiment. Breadalbane did naught.”

“We’re Campbells. The man looks after his house.”

“It has been Argyll’s house for years, since his father was executed—” Cat frowned. “Breadalbane and Argyll are both of them Campbells, but no’ the friendly sort. Always rivals, the earls, always wanting the honor of cosseting Clan Campbell . . . ’tis a matter between them, aye?—to tend impoverished Glenlyon?” She considered. “If Breadalbane does make this offer, I ask: At what profit?”

Glenlyon shook his head. “He asked no collateral. He does it out of loyalty to the clan. He is Laird of Glenorchy, Cat, and a chief in his own right. Despite our troubles, he has Campbell welfare at heart.”

Cat’s mouth twisted again. “Grey John Campbell may have been born to Glenorchy, but he didna get to be the Earl of Breadalbane out of simple generosity . . . nor did he become as powerful as he is through kindness without intent.” She wove fingers through her braid. “Isna he a favorite of King William? Or is it Queen Mary?”

“No, of Sir John Dalrymple, Master of Stair; he is William’s favorite.” Glenlyon scratched the first trace of stubble on his chin, a thin, watery shadow of dulled silver-gilt. “What does it matter, Cat? He is going to pay my debts.”

The retort came too quickly. “So you can start over again.”

He did not protest, not even with a glance, though she believed—she hoped—he would. Glenlyon was too drink- and debt-wasted to mark the complexities of her tone, her posture, her expression.

Cat shook her head, aware of a great emptiness in her soul and a knot of grief that would not lessen. She pleaded now, hoping it might stir him to something more than the dull indifference bred of habitual despair. “You have wasted so much. Waste no more,
lose
no more; let us hold up our heads again.”

“He has asked you to come to Kilchurn,” he said abruptly, as if he had heard nothing of what she said; likely, he had not.

Cat stared. “Who?”

“Breadalbane,” he answered. “His heir has yet to wed.”

In shock, Cat swung around and took two steps away from her father before she realized what she was doing. And then she did realize it, and stopped, and swung around to face him. “Why does he choose me? I bring his heir no dowry, no honor . . .” She would not speak of other things she could not offer; Breadalbane had seen her two years before. He knew.

“I havena asked his reasons.”