Jennifer Roberson (15 page)

Because you need the silver too much.
Cat gritted her teeth. “Do you want me to marry him?”

He was not so drunk as she had thought. The tears had dried on his face. “I want you to go to Kilchurn, to be a guest of the Earl of Breadalbane.”

“To marry his son,” she said flatly, “so you can pay off your debts—or begin new ones.”

“To enjoy his hospitality; he is a Highlander.”

“So am I,” she said tightly. “So am I, Glenlyon.”

Cat’s father smiled. “Dinna you think I ken that? Dinna you think I see it?”

She thought he could not; that he saw nothing but dice, debt, and lost silver. “Then why?”

“Because you may
like
the man!” Glenlyon shouted, coloring. “You know I canna do much for setting you up . . . and you’re no’ a lass anymore. You deserve the chance I canna give ye.”

Two years before, in the echo of Stewart words and MacDonald perfidy, she had given up hoping, of dreaming. She was a laird’s daughter and, therefore, above a common tacksman or gillie; she was an impoverished laird’s boy-faced daughter, and therefore pitiable by another laird, or his son, though neither would admit it.

This was, indeed, her best and only chance. He could not give her another. But she was not prepared.

“ ’Twould be a good match, aye,” her father said wearily, “but I willna wed you to a man you canna like or respect. . . . I’m not so
fou
as that.”

Cat almost laughed. But she couldn’t, quite, because she didn’t want to go to Kilchurn. Not under the circumstances.

She knelt, picked up the abused bagpipes, rose again, and put them into her father’s lap. “And if I said I wouldna?”

He made a noise of disgust. “I willna force you, Cat. You’re my daughter, not a cow.”

This time she did laugh, but only a little, and the sound of it died as quickly as it was born.

She faced her father squarely. “He may not like me, aye?—Breadalbane’s heir. I’m no’ like other women.”

Her father stared at her. And then he began to laugh.

 

The house was small, made of stone, smelling of peat-smoke, whisky, dampness, though it hadn’t rained all day. There was little of wealth or refinement about the house, it being little more than a plain rectangular block of rough-cut drystone, hollow in the middle where Dair MacDonald lived beneath the roof slates. He was a man who required no trappings of luxury, though he had seen plenty in France. He left appointments to his father and his mother in MacIain’s house at Carnoch, a short walk up the glen.

But neither was the house a byre; it showed a woman’s touch. It was small but comfortable, and the company tolerable. He and Robbie Stewart sat together contentedly at the felted table over a game of backgammon.

Stewart leaned forward to catch Dair’s line of vision. “Your face is as long as my cock!” he cried. “Did you think I’d never notice?”

The backgammon game, obviously, was no longer a diversion. Neither was the whisky; Dair pushed his horn cup aside. “Your sister,” he said quietly, giving voice to what annoyed him, “has a tongue as sharp as yours.”

Stewart grinned. It set his blue eyes alight and crinkled the flesh at the corners. The habitual hot temper, for now, was hidden. “Och, aye, she does, my Jean . . . but what should it matter to
you,
so long as she knows how to use it in bed?”

Dair grimaced. Robbie’s tongue too often went unbridled, tending toward the vulgar. In its place the slyness was more than amusing, but Dair was not a man who liked it applied to himself. “Any sharper,” he said pointedly, “and she could use it for a sword. And I dinna like to take a sword to bed.”

Stewart laughed aloud. “Och, aye—‘twould be more than painful wielded wi’ my Jean’s skill.” He grinned, sandy gold hair curling crisply against his linen collar. “Where is Jean tonight? Have you put her out of your house?”

If I thought she would go, aye . . .
Dair smiled a little, keeping the thought from his face; he and Jean spent more time arguing of late than trading gentle words. “Up the glen at Carnoch with my mother and MacIain.”

“Well then, shall I say something to her? Shall I warn her your temper’s fragile?”

But Dair shook his head; only rarely did he speak of Jean to Robbie, because they were so close. Twin-born, they’d defend one another to the death. Dair thought it unlikely Robbie would take his side when the conflict involved his sister.

“I’ll tell her myself.” If she did not know already. She should; they had spent much of the day before gibing at one another, though she tried to smooth his hackles in bed, as always.
—and I weary even of that
. . . But Dair shut off the thought. He did not choose to waste more time thinking of Jean Stewart.

Robbie sat back in his chair. “What you need is more cattle in your glen . . . and a fierce, bold raid to get them!”

Dair nodded sagely. “How far is it to Appin? How many shall we steal?”

Robbie laughed aloud. “No, no, not
my
cows. I was thinking Campbell cattle.”

The lure was instantaneous. Dair was restless, as was Robbie, and feeling hemmed in by the fort near Inverlochy. But there were still concerns to be addressed. “They’re not yet at the shielings,” he said. “Still on winter fodder, close to Glenlyon’s house.”

“Which makes it all the bolder.” Robbie shrugged. “ ’Tis easier in the summer, when the shielings have people in them and the cows go on the braes, but where is the risk in that? ’Tis greater if we go now . . . and all the more irksome to Glenlyon.”

Irking Glenlyon was not necessarily what Dair wished to do, being more interested in cattle than in spilling blood. But one could not go cattle-lifting without irritating the laird who owned them. MacIain was proof of that, whenever MacDonald cattle were stolen.

But then, it was Robbie’s nature to revel in irking folk. Particularly Campbell folk, though he had less reason than MacDonalds. The heir of Appin, plain and simple, enjoyed stealing cattle no matter whose they were. Highland wealth was measured in cows, but Robbie didn’t do it for wealth. He did it for the risk.

Dair did it for the cattle. “Well,” he said at last, “MacIain will want to know.”

Robbie snorted. “MacIain will want to
come.
”

Dair, smiling, shook his head as he rose. “He has a new book from France. He’ll not be free for days.”

Robbie rose as well, catching up Dair’s unfinished whisky to swallow it down himself. “ ’Tis a waste of time, books. They canna lift a sword, nor bed a bonnie lass.”

Dair grinned. “Nor steal a Campbell cow.”

Robbie, rounding the table, reached up to slap a shoulder. “Nor drink good usquabae.”

There were, Dair thought wryly, countless things books could not do, yet also those they could. But he didn’t say it to Robbie, who wouldn’t understand.
He will keep on counting the things they CANNA do all the way to Glen Lyon!
“Rouse your tacksmen,” he said. “I’ll go up to tell MacIain, then gather a few MacDonalds.”

“Only a few,” Robbie cautioned, “or we’ll have no fun at all.”

S
houting awakened Cat. Peat motes filled the shieling, floating on dawn light let in through cracks in the walls and the time-rent leather door-curtain. She rolled over on beaten earth, half-tangled in her plaid, and sat up rigidly, blinking bleariness out of her eyes even as Una awoke.

—
I dinna ken those voices
—At first there was alarm; then a spurt of relief, the dissipation of shock. Cat tugged the twisted loop of plaid from under her hips as she looked at Una, whose face was gray as oatmeal porridge. “If ’tis trouble, Angus and the others will stop it.”

Then she heard a muffled shout, a strangled outcry; a thump against the wall knocked crumbling peat to the beaten floor and relief was instantly banished.

Cat scrambled to her feet even as Una gasped a prayer, yanking wool aside to jerk
sgian dhu
from beneath heavy, still-damp skirts. She had carried one ever since the MacDonald raid on Glen Lyon following Killiecrankie two years before. No doubt Una would complain it wasn’t a woman’s task to go about with a knife gartered below her knee, but that did not disturb Cat unduly. Una wasn’t a muckle-headed fool always.
She’ll no’ complain till the danger is passed.

“Step away, Una.” Cat motioned her back. “Give them naught to catch if they come through the door—”

Even as she spoke the curtain was jerked aside and men spilled into the shieling, men she didn’t know, Highlanders all, in kilts and breeks and bonnets
—not Campbells., none of them!—
bent on some violence. Cat, recoiling even as Una did, was snatched abruptly back ten years to when MacIain of Glencoe had come to Chesthill demanding word with her father.

She was small suddenly, so small, infinitely insignificant to the huge Laird of Glencoe—

But the old memory faded, replaced by one more recent: MacDonalds in her house, tearing down her mother’s curtains.

Even as she fetched up against the peat wall farthest from the interlopers, outrage kindled. It damped fear, gave her something else on which she could focus attention. As a child she had been spectacularly helpless in MacIain’s grasp; seven years later a Stewart claymore tip teasing her throat had forced compliance. But she was no longer a child. Now she was full grown and angry, very angry, so angry she looked to it for courage, and found a cold, deliberate strength in place of helplessness.

The men clustered inside the door. That they were astonished was plain; they stared at her in amazement.
“Jesu,
” someone whispered. Another crossed himself, muttering of red-haired women and bad omens.

A wild, unbridled laugh bubbled up, was swallowed back only with effort.
They didna expect to find us here!
It was the cattle raid all over again, when young, inexperienced MacDonalds had caught Campbells in place of cows.

And then she thought of her oldest brother, of six-years-dead Robbie, long rotted in the ground like Norse bones in the barrows. Memory gave her a weapon. Recollection lent her strength. She shut her hand more tightly on the the
sgian dhu’s
stag-horn handle. They’d not take her blade this time.

A sandy-haired man strode through the curtainless door, letting dawn come into the shieling. He was not tall—was shorter, in fact, than she—but what he lacked in height was made up for in width, in a compact, vital strength. There was an edge to his presence that made her unable to look away, like a mouse transfixed by cat.

Anger ebbed. She made a soft noise in her throat. Her hand on the
sgian dhu
was abruptly damp with sweat. She forgot dead brothers, forgot the raid that had won her a calf, then lost it, much as it lost her a brother. She recalled another time, another raid, and a Stewart in place of MacDonalds.

This time, there was no claymore. He was like other men, like all the men in the shieling, armed with dirk and
sgian dhu,
but this time there was no sword.

His smile was very broad, the glint in blue eyes pronounced. “A bonnie lass,” he said, “trysting with her man.”

Shocked, Cat was unable to answer. She had expected recollection, laughter, ridicule, the degradation such as she had suffered before, not the provocative overture of man to woman she had witnessed in her brothers when they soft-talked a Campbell woman. For this manner of battle she was wholly unprepared.

Cat felt a flicker of fear solidify, expand to fill her chest. She was experienced in derision both subtle and blatant, tuned like a harp peg to the song she believed he intended to play. But the notes this time were different, and the words she did not know.

He stopped before her. Smiling, he extended fingers to catch an errant lock of her hair—

Instantly Cat brought up her hand with the deadly, sharp
sgian dhu,
nicking impudent knuckles. She was distantly pleased to see his shock, to watch him snatch back his hand and press fingers to his mouth.

“You will not.” She was relieved to hear the steadiness of her voice. In the face of his vulgarity some of her courage crept back to steady fragile pride. “These are Campbell lands—go home to your Glencoe hovels, to your Stewart castle keeps. Leave my woman and me in peace.”

The man tilted his head, measuring her as he took away from his mouth the bloodied knuckles.
‘Boy-faced lass
,’ he had called her. A
‘lad with breasts
.’ Surely he would remember.

Cat could not forget.

Softly he said, “I am heir of Appin; no one, man or woman, tells
me
where I am to go or what I am not to do.”

She hated him for that, for what and who he was, for what he had done and proposed to do; she did not doubt that, given leave, whatever it was he did would compromise self-confidence, erode self-esteem. “
I
do,” she said clearly. “A Campbell tells you to go.”

He laughed. “Appin does as he chooses!”

She wanted to put the knife to his throat so he felt the lick of its blade. He and men like him—men like Dair MacDonald—reduced in the name of arrogance the pride and spirit of other people. “Appin does as he chooses?” She matched him glare for glare. “Then he’s no man at all, aye?—but a spoiled, selfish swankie wi’out the sense of the cows he’s come to steal from men better than he.”

She had struck well. The light in Stewart’s eyes faded. Something of anger replaced it, tightening the line of his shoulders, robbing his posture of grace.

“Robbie.
”

Cat jumped. The voice rang out clearly, cutting through the cluster of men inside the door. They broke and made way, all the MacDonalds, though some of the Stewarts were slow. And then he was through them all, stepping into the room, and she saw him very clearly.

Something inside her leaped, then burned away into ash.
He is no better than Stewart.

“Robbie,” Dair MacDonald said quietly, “we’ve come for cows, not women.”

Robbie. His name was
Robbie.
It made her bitterly angry. He besmirched her brother’s memory by tainting his name.

“Look
at her!” Stewart cried.

“I see her,” Alasdair Og said steadily.

“Bluidy fool,” Cat declared. “I am Glenlyon’s daughter. Shall I cut out that tongue from your mouth to stop your foolish noise, or let him do it himself?”

For an instant she saw surprise in Dair’s whisky-colored eyes; had he not known her at all? But he must have—how could a man forget whom he had humiliated?

Surprise faded from his eyes, replaced by intensity. “Cat,” he said—overly familiar, she thought—“you’d do better to hold your own tongue.”

Stewart’s head jerked around. “D’ye know this lass, then? Is she waiting here for you?”

MacDonald’s tone was unchanged, though his mouth twitched a little. “ ’Twas your idea to come here; how could I have planned it?”

It cleared the blackness from Stewart’s face, lending it merriment. “Aye, so it was!” He grinned, good temper restored. “And you’d no’ be looking to another woman wi’
Jean
in your house!”

Cat glared at Dair. Anger made it easy for her to speak so blatantly of a topic women avoided. “Hold my tongue? Well, I willna. Not if it puts me in his bed . . . I’ve better taste than that!”

Dair took a single noiseless step into the center of the shieling. He stood very close to Stewart, though he did not touch him. “This is not our way, Robbie—would you risk Letters of Fire and Sword?”

Stewart’s head snapped around. “D’ye think
Glenlyon
would go so far as to involve the Crown? They’ve a bit to think about now, those Privy Council men . . . they wouldna involve themselves.”

“What more would give them reason to put us to the horn?” Dair asked. “Ewan Cameron of Lochiel tells Colonel Hill at Fort William that he and his Camerons will no’ raise arms, and you ken as well as I there are MacDonalds and Stewarts who have done the same. But we’ve not, have we, either of us?—’twill be the excuse they need to send Sassenachs against us!”

She could not keep quiet, not with a MacDonald standing surety for her. Campbell pride would not permit it. Cat seized the opening and inserted the blade with care. “I’m doubting the earls of Breadalbane and Argyll would ignore what was done here . . . likely they’d see to it the Appin Stewarts were made over into MacGregors!”

She might as well have slapped Stewart’s face with a glove as tell him that. He turned burning eyes upon her and said something in Gaelic so distorted by fury she could not understand it. Cat doubted anyone did; his temper, now, was unchecked.

“Robbie.” Again Dair MacDonald, who moved forward quietly, smoothly, casually inserting a shoulder between Cat and Robert Stewart as he swung slowly to face his friend. “I’m asking you to let her be.”

“Why?” It was thrust out between Robbie’s teeth, extruded like a blow. “What is it to you if I want a kiss of the lass? What is
she
to you? Your enemy, MacDonald—as much as Glenlyon himself! You’ve heard—had a taste of her tongue, aye?—sharp as an adder’s bite!”

“Robbie,” Dair said quietly, “no kisses of this lass.”

Stewart challenged him immediately. “What will you do to stop me?”

“Knock you senseless where you stand and carry you home myself.” Dair grinned. “You are outnumbered, aye?—we’re ten men to your four.”

She could not hold her tongue. She did not trust MacDonald’s motives. “And what have you done with
mine?
Have you dirked them all in their sleep?”

Dair did not look at her; he was too intent on Stewart. “I’ll take you to them, lass, as soon as we have Robbie’s answer.”

Stewart looked at Cat, at her
sgian dhu,
then back at MacDonald. A muscle leaped beside his mouth. “Christ, MacDonald—d’ye think I care so much? She’s only a Campbell quean—there are others to be had, and more willing than the bizzem. She isna worth fighting over!” He slapped Dair on the arm in a gesture of restored goodwill, but Cat saw his eyes. He was not wholly reconciled, no matter what he said. “Dinna fash yerself, MacDonald . . . we’ve cattle to acquire!”

Dair glanced at Cat. She saw the twitch of his mouth, though the smile did not blossom. “We stopped because of the storm; we didna ken you were here. But then we saw your garrons, and the gillie before your door.”

Cat thought of Angus, of the shouts outside the shieling. “Did you harm him?”

“A wee scratch on the neck,” Dair explained, “when he tried to pull free of my men. He’s with the others now, held in another shieling.”

“I want to see them.”

“And I told you I’d take you to them.” Dair turned to stare directly at Stewart, as if challenging him to refuse.

Robbie swung away abruptly, plaid flaring from his shoulder.

Appeased, Dair turned to her. “Come out of the shieling, Cat . . . I’ll take you to your men.”

 

The Earl of Breadalbane, awaiting the arrival of his cousin Glenlyon’s daughter, drank fiery usquabae as the sun went down and reread a portion of the Master of Stair’s latest correspondence from Flanders regarding the recalcitrant Highlanders and his proposal to tame them. It pleased him that Stair put into writing his own confidence in Breadalbane’s ability. It pleased him mightily.

The earl called his gillie to him. When Sandy Campbell came, his master smiled upon him. “Send word to the clans.
All
of them, aye?—no’ just Campbells, Sandy. Have it said—have them reminded, aye?—that I am not merely an earl, but a chief even as they are, and that I am well cognizant of the demands upon the honor of his fellow chieftains.”

He savored the peat-water flavor of his whisky, weighing words before he spoke them. “Tell them also they are right to distrust the words of a Sassenach, to distrust
that man Hill
at Fort William who even now plots against them, and should look to a fellow Highlander, a chief in his own right, to lead them out of war into a time of peace. There is honor to be satisfied in any such undertaking, and I willna have it overlooked by Lowland Scot, Sassenach, or Dutch king.”

The gillie waited mutely.

Breadalbane finished the whisky and set the cup aside. “I value their words, Sandy, as I value their pride. Tell them to come to Achallader in late June, and we will each of us have something to say of the future of Stuart Scotland.” When the gillie had gone Breadalbane poured more whisky and smiled at the closed door. “Achallader,” he murmured, “so that no chief can but see for himself what I have lost to the MacDonalds. And when, in the ruins of my castle, I welcome even pawkie, thieving MacIain of Glencoe into our confederacy despite the evidence of his enmity, they will count me sincere!”

 

Dair pulled Cat out of the shieling, relieved her of
sgian dhu
before she could protest, and took her immediately to the closest shieling but twenty paces away. He pulled the leather curtain aside and escorted her inside where other MacDonalds waited, watching Glenlyon’s men.